Historian Darlene Clark-Hine writes that “the experience of black men and women in American sports are a microcosm of their lives in American society.  The privileges whites enjoyed in sports paralleled the disadvantages and exclusions that were a constant part of black life.”

Certainly the ordeal experienced this year by 2006 Olympic Gold Medalist Shani Davis is yet another example of how the privileges white athletes enjoy continue to parallel the disadvantages that are continuing to be a part of black life.  Shani Davis is the first African-American male to win an Olympic Gold medal in an individual competition of the Winter Olympics, however he is not able to enjoy the privileges afforded to white Olympic Gold medalists due to the disadvantages he has experienced.  These publicized disadvantages support the notion that institutionalized racism in America is certainly still alive.

Norman Kelley recently wrote that the greatest unrecognized achievement of the civil rights movement is the unintended consequences of convincing white Americans that racism is no longer a serious social and structural problem in the United States.  By studying the stark similarities in the experiences of pioneering black athletes such as Althea Gibson and that of Shani Davis, it is clear that racism in the greater corporate society is still a serious social and structural problem in the United States.  However I advocate a study from an alternative perspective from the one Davis himself has revealed in his recent quotes in Ebony and Jet articles.  In the March 27, 2006 issue of Jet, Davis states: “When I skate and people try to get me down, I’m thinking, Malcolm X had to do this, Martin Luther King had to do this or Jack Johnson went through this and it's nothing compared to what they had to go through.  So I just draw strength from those guys who paved the road that made it possible for Black people period.”

As important as this is, it is even more imperative for Davis to draw even more strength by studying and mentioning the black female athletes who also have important lessons to teach.  While I am not implying that Davis has not sufficiently considered the experience of black female athletes, I am simply stating that Davis must be sure to include their perspectives in his public statements.  Especially since Shani Davis’s most vocal and articulate defenders have been black women such as his mother Cherie Davis, Deborah Mathis, Julianne Malveaux, and Melissa Harris-Lacewell.  These perspectives undoubtedly can help Shani Davis to overcome the hurdles of the entrenched American racism.  However, to overcome such hurdles requires understanding the nature of the problem.  To understand oppression in professional sports in its most complete form requires the perspective of a black woman.  Darlene Clark-Hine writes in Speak Truth To Power that:

“It is senseless to discuss the impact of racism on the formation of black identities without concomitant explorations into the ways race, a social construct of tremendous importance, nevertheless intersects with constructs of gender and class.  Arguably, the history of black women in the United States provides the best available lens through which to illustrate the intersections of race, gender, and class across time.”

Therefore, to discuss the impact of racism on Shani Davis, I hope to compare his experience with that of a black female athlete who also broke color barriers in what was then an elite sport, professionally played by only whites:  tennis champion Althea Gibson, who later became the first African-American to win Wimbledon in 1957 and 1958.

Certainly Althea Gibson’s experience in the early to mid-twentieth century provides illuminating sources of strength that could encourage Mr. Davis and should be recognized.  Like Davis, Althea Gibson became a pioneer in a sport dominated exclusively by whites, an elite sport that arguably demands more finances than others.  To date, an important primary source about the experience of Althea Gibson is her authorized biography Born To Win, written by Frances Clayton Gray and Yanick Rice Lamb.  Gibson’s experience with the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA) and the greater American society in the Forties, Fifties and Sixties mirror Davis’s experience with the U.S. Speedskating Association and the unchanged American society that operates with a more covert yet latent racism.

There are events in Gibson’s life as told in Born To Win that draw disturbing similarities to the experience of Shani Davis as stated in current media reports.  For example, Born To Win states that in 1949, when Gibson became the first black woman to play tennis in the exclusively white Forest Hills court, the United States Lawn Tennis Association nonetheless “maintained a cold shoulder given the widespread segregation in society at the time.”  Reasons like these are why the American Tennis Association (ATA) was founded in 1916, to increase the field of black athletes.

While many ATA players were thrilled for Gibson’s 1949 breakthrough, many said the USLTA needed to strengthen its opposition to exclusions based on race or religion at USLTA events.  They also felt that the USLTA had an “implied quota” and too many barriers. “No Negro player, man, or women, has ever set foot on one of these courts,” wrote the journalist Lester Rodney of the West Side Tennis Club at Forest Hills. Rodney says, “In many ways, it’s even a tougher personal Jim Crow-busting assignment than was Jackie Robinson’s when he first stepped out of the Brooklyn Dodgers dugout.”

Deborah Mathis writes that Cherie Davis, mother and personal manager of Shani Davis, describes the relationship between Davis and the U.S. Speedskating Association as “poor,” evidenced by the fact that they have not, to this day, posted his biography and record on its website. However the biographies and records of all other athletes who are over 90% white have been posted.  Of course, the U.S. Speed Skating Association in their willful ignorance would probably not attribute this to their racism, but to their heavily publicized disagreement with Davis over the corporate sponsorship logos on his skinsuit.

Tracey Robinson-English in the May 2006 issue of Ebony writes that under the association’s national team agreement, athletes are supposed to wear skinsuits with logos provided by U.S. Speedskating.  However, Davis opted for a corporate sponsor outside of America, Deutsche Bank (DSB Bank of Holland) which clearly angered the U.S. Speedskating Association and is probably responsible for his long-standing fallout with the organization that exists to this day.  In my personal interview with Ms. Robinson-English, she revealed that in helping her son avoid American corporations for sponsorship, Cherie Davis was protecting her son.

Cherie said that she refused a Wheaties endorsement offer because they did not really plan to unequivocally support her son.  She said their full endorsement was very conditional; they only guaranteed commercial spots if he medaled, without the type of provisions that were arguably less friendly than those offered to white winter Olympic athletes.

This kind of endorsement was weaker than the one DSB Bank of Holland provided.  Second, she also noted that Nike in particular wanted him to make a lot of personal appearances that conflicted with his own personal training schedule; ultimately, Nike simply did not have Davis’s best interest at heart, according to Cherie Davis and thus did not deserve her son’s endorsement.  This kind of endorsement was also arguably weaker than the one DSB Bank of Holland provided.  Why couldn’t American corporations offer Davis their full support without it being riddled with conditions?  Why couldn’t these giant corporations find ways to work around Shani Davis’s schedule to support him so that he would not feel forced to look outside America?  In a March 10, 2006 interview with Shani Davis, Tavis Smiley said:

Tavis:  “I like your spirit and attitude but it does not make me happy to hear that you ain’t been able to get no phone calls from nobody about endorsement opportunities as a result of doing what you’ve done historically?  As an African-American?  And your phone ain’t blowing up?”

Davis: “No.  I guess that’s just the way it is.  I think maybe, maybe…there might be something but I don’t know.”

I urge to inform my brother, Shani Davis, that there is something.  Its called American institutionalized racism and in order to continue surviving it, it is important to study methods of surviving such oppression by studying the experiences of one Althea Gibson.  Born To Win reveals that Althea Gibson “had more freedom moving about Europe and other parts of the world than she did in her own country.”

The relationship between corporate America and Shani Davis demonstrates in very significant ways the ultimate value that the center of corporate marketing, or Madison Avenue places on black life.  This kind of disrespect that Cherie Davis rightfully discerned and rejected is discussed at length by another scholar, Sheryll Cashin, a Georgetown Law Professor who happens to be a woman of color and writes in her latest book The Failures of Integration when she describes the pattern of white flight, that includes not only residents but also major businesses and markets, away from black communities:

“Even when minority-owned, minority-formatted radio stations were number one in terms of ratings, mainstream advertisers would send their advertising dollars elsewhere.  The practice of making racist or ignorant assumptions about the buying habits of people of color in order to justify not spending advertising dollars with stations that were reaching more people than any other in their markets was widespread.  In short, black communities and the assets they bring are frequently devalued by nonblack institutions and people”

Many American corporations probably devalued Shani Davis’s endorsement of their product because of their racist or ignorant assumptions about what he should be giving up to them for their money.  Cherie Davis clearly proved to them and to the American public that money will not be their god.  The American dollar bill will not dictate the direction of her son’s professional advancement.  The relationship between these American corporations and Cherie Davis is a crucial, essential, instructive example as to how to maintain your dignity and morals in the face of million dollar offers.

What was apparently more important than millions of dollars was the integrity of her son’s career work and ultimately of course, her son.  This kind of decision certainly is not popular, but was certainly more moral.  Popular approval would advocate a “profit-at-all-costs” relationship with American corporations that Cherie Davis clearly avoids.

This kind of relationship is seriously challenged in an upcoming book by New York Times sportswriter William Rhoden entitled Forty Million Dollar Slaves, suggesting that the relationship between professional athletes and team owners are like slaves to plantation owners.  It was this kind of slave relationship that Cherie Davis was trying to prevent her son from entering.  Like Margaret Garner, Cherie Davis was doing all that she could to make sure her child avoids living in a certain kind of slavery, a kind that is undoubtedly more inhumane and brutal than that during Garner’s time, but one that is nonetheless comparable.  Rhoden’s book explains the dangerous relationship between the black male athlete or “new slave” and the American corporate world.  It includes provocative chapter titles such as Integration: The Dilemma of Inclusion Without Power.  Certainly Cherie Davis by asserting her son’s ability to earn a Gold medal and her insistence on a stronger contract from corporations was trying to assert power that American corporations were clearly unwilling to yield.  Therefore she had to move the way so many African-Americans are forced to move when backed into a corner: outside the country.

Commentator Julianne Malveaux succinctly and articulately described this incident when she said on a February 23, 2006 News & Notes program that:

“…white folks are sending e-mails to him under friend’s page using the n-word.  It is utterly absurd…our country missed an opportunity to celebrate an excellent athlete because we are so seeped in our racism, and in the pathology of so-called patriotism that we forget the U.S. Speed Skating Association does not support this young man.  He trains in Canada.  His momma is running around wearing orange, the Danish colors, as opposed to our colors, because of how rude they have been to him and this is a single mom who has sacrificed all kind of stuff to get this young brother going and that’s the story that needs to be told here.”

Speaking of American corporations, BET also missed a phenomenal opportunity to celebrate an excellent athlete when they did not even nominate Shani Davis for their 2006 Best Athlete of the Year Award.  They gave it to yet another basketball player.

That was utterly disrespectful.  The rudeness of other American individuals such as speedskating teammate Chad Hedrick reveals other reasons why a corporate endorsement from the U.S. would be unlikely.  Mathis wrote that Hedrick wanted to bring home five Gold medals, including one for a race involving the U.S. team.  Hedrick was angry that Davis would not participate in the team event, saying that he “felt betrayed in a way.  Not only did he not participate, he wouldn’t even discuss it with me as a leader of the team.”

In fact, Melody Hoffman in Jet writes that “Shani was never among the five skaters U.S. Speedskating officials entered in the [team] event.  Since January, Shani and his coach made it clear that he would not be skating in the pursuit and preferred to concentrate on his later individual races…Shani could never have pulled out of the inaugural event because he never entered.”  However the American media has insisted on unfairly characterizing Davis as “unpatriotic” and “selfish” because he did not participate in the team event with Hedrick.

NBC commentator Bob Costas has gone to great lengths to castigate Davis as not being a team player.  When Davis won the 1,000 meter race, Hedrick would not congratulate him, according to Davis who said “it would have been nice after I won the 1000 if he would have been a good teammate and shook my hand, just like I shook his hand – or hugged him – after he won the 5,000.”

Being the fierce competitors that Hedrick and Davis are, why exactly would Hedrick think that Davis should immediately perform the team event when he was struggling with endorsements from American corporations?  And based on the type of coverage, it was clear that corporate-network coverage of Shani Davis was clearly biased against him.  Davis was labeled ‘rude’ for his terse interview on NBC, where Davis said about an NBC reporter that “I didn’t have anything to say to her because I saw the way she was with Chad and I didn’t have any respect for her.  I had no intentions on talking to NBC at all but they (the U.S. Olympic Committee) forced me to.”

Melissa Harris Lacewell poignantly traces Davis’s treatment to Jim Crow:

“He made a decision to put his personal goals for success above those of another athlete.  He chose not to grin for the camera and announce that he’s not going to Disney World.  These hardly seem like headline provoking choices, but when these choices are made by a black man, the first black man of Winter Olympic Glory, they provide America’s racial angst.  Black men in America face very strict constraints on their public behavior.  Powerful images of black men as aggressors, sexual predators, emerge at the same time that the black men first assumed the role of citizen following Reconstruction.  Under lynch mob rule, black men could be murdered for the slightest infraction of the social code.  When Shani Davis failed to act sufficiently gleeful after his win, he was asked ‘are you angry?’  Our nation continues to read black male autonomy as frightening, angry, and aggressive.  The subtext here is racial.  How dare you keep a white skater from reaching his goal just so that you can pursue your own?  How dare you not smile broadly enough for the cameras in order to reassure the nation that you are a safe black man?  Black men have the right to claim their victories and their humanity, unconstrained by nation’s racial rules.”

The racial rules that Lacewell mentions are unspoken, however Davis has stated that he feels like the Jack Johnson of speed skating.  In Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson, Geoffrey Ward writes that U.S. authorities were seeking the arrest of Johnson under the 1912 Mann Act, which made it a crime to transport white women across state boundaries for “immoral purposes,” and Johnson then had a white wife.  It was said about Johnson that he “has insulted every white woman in the United States.”

No doubt similar repercussions were felt by Davis when he refused to engage the white female NBC reporter who refused to engage him before he won the gold medal.  Davis felt the retaliation of this insult against white women when he was attacked by the American media for being “selfish” and “rude.”  Johnson fled to Canada, while Davis trains in Canada.  Davis also discloses to Tavis that to this day, money is still hard to come by, despite his Gold medals.  Althea Gibson said less than two years after her Wimbledon win that “I may be queen of tennis right now, but right now I reign over an empty bank account.”  She later says:

“The taste of disappointment was distinctly bitter to me.  When I looked around me, I saw that white tennis players, some of whom I had thrashed on the court, were picking up offers and invitations.  Suddenly it dawned on me that my triumphs had not destroyed the racial barrier once and for all, as I had – perhaps naively – hoped…But once a Negro has established himself and the snubs still come, does he really have any alternative but to believe he is being discriminated against by virtue – or should I say by vice – of his skin color, I boil over with indigination”

William Rhoden writes in Ebony that Althea Gibson was “the most significant black athlete in America.”  However Born to Win reveals that for a long time she was “dead broke.”  Gibson came along too early to have the monetary awards to go along with her talent.  There was no prize money when Althea won Wimbledon.  Venus Williams, on the other hand, earned $650,000 for winning Wimbledon.  The most Althea ever made in playing tennis was $100,000 during the year that she turned pro – and that was before expenses.

David Dinkins is quoted as saying, “it’s one of the many injustices in life that Althea never really made any money at this sport as she should have.  But those were tough times.  One appreciates the fact that she was not only black, but a black woman – and those were pre-civil rights days when she was accomplishing all this greatness.”

In her 1968 memoir, Gibson noted the lack of endorsements, the lack of offers to teach or tour, the lack of pros, to play, the lack of money from seemingly good business ventures gone bad.  Most of all she noted that any barriers she had destroyed had been erected behind her again.  Arthur Ashe pointed out that it took him years to understand “the emotional toll of repressing anger and natural frustration.”  And he, far more than Althea, was acknowledged to have been proactive and outspoken in venting his feelings on racism.  So much so that he published three volumes of the African-American athlete’s experience entitled A Hard Road To Glory, where he describes the presence of Jim Crow in every conceivable American sport.

Certainly Shani Davis’s experience proves that the barriers that Gibson broke down are still present and produce yet another hard road to Glory.  These barriers need to be assessed by the U.S. Speed Skating Association and other professional sports associations with currently low numbers of people of color so that this country is not shamed by their own citizens being sponsored by corporations in other countries.  That is, assuming that America is comfortable with its athletes of color being endorsed by companies outside the U.S.  This assumption has yet to be challenged on a systemic, nationwide level at the moment.

Althea Gibson was no doubt profoundly affected by the impact of institutionalized racism on her life.  She dealt with racial injustice in her own way, one of them was her medically diagnosed depression.  Her niece said that “she didn’t like talking about her sickness.”  Her doctor said that “she had a lot of pride.  That’s part of the depression, and becoming more or less reclusive.”

However, Gibson’s experience of her depression is an instructive lesson for Shani Davis.  It teaches Davis to not underestimate the impact of psychosocial forces and to identify them before they in fact try to obliterate his accomplishments.  Rhoden writes that Althea Gibson had a profound impact on the “psychosocial impact of black America.”  However as much psychosocial influence she gave, she was also on the receiving end of such influence by a very real and racist society that denied opportunities to pioneering people of color in sports.  Darlene Clark-Hine writes that:

“…an enlightened future is possible only if we are finally able to comprehend and confront the damage that historic sexual [and gender] exploitation has done to black girls and women.  Further, we must fully understand the close friendship and family ties between black women.  Only within the realm of these critical relationships can they receive the psychosocial support that has helped them escape the paralysis of being the country’s greatest and most total victim.”

Clearly family relationships are essential to athletes coping with the lack of endorsements due to a racist society that suppresses accomplishments, evidenced by the U.S. Speedskating website’s omission of Davis’s information.  The first American woman to win three Olympic Gold medals, Wilma Rudolph, states in her memoir,

“…the fact of the matter is that black women athletes are on the bottom rung of the ladder in American sports.  They wind up drifting back to where they began, and nobody ever hears from them again.  Sure the situation should be changed, but who is going to tell the company presidents and advertising agencies to start making room for black women athletes?”

More specifically, Rudolph’s question can be rephrased in the context of Davis’s experience to ask:  who is going to tell the American corporation presidents and advertising agencies to start making room for black speedskaters?  Especially when, as Davis admitted to Tavis Smiley, speedskaters of color are pushed away from the field.

Davis describes a speedskater of color to Tavis and says that “he was one of the first that was considered a true threat to a lot of skaters, but they found a way to get him out of skating because he wasn’t an American citizen; he was of Nigerian descent.”  Still, Rudolph poses a crucial question and an even more important answer to the question of coping with such constraining environments.

Rudolph said “whatever the future holds, I’ll be ready for it, for I’ve learned a family’s a powerful thing.”  This is also exactly what Darlene Clark-Hine states as being the most important coping mechanism with institutionalized racism: the family relationships.  The support Shani receives from his mother proves that he will be ready for any obstacle in his way.

Rhone Fraser is a graduate assistant in the Department of Africana Studies at the University of South Florida. Contact: [email protected].