Thanks for the interview, King. I've always been a big fan of Len, he's easily one of the best college hoops color guys out there, knowledgeable and fair without being obnoxious -- he's kind of an anti-Vitale. I'm not surprised to see him speaking eloquently with you here on race or anything else for that matter.

Is there a big sports story out there that doesn't have some sheen of the race issue associated with it? From steroids/Barry Bonds to Terrell Owens to NBA dress code to a black-free Houston Astros roster...

Interesting that Elmore mentions Malcolm Gladwell's work in "The Tipping Point". I'm personally a big fan of Gladwell's work, and read most everything he's done. He's written a particularly fascinating article on this very subject, called "The Sports Taboo".

http://gladwell.com/1997/1997_05_19_a_sports.htm

To me one of the highlights of the interview was that, perhaps inadvertantly, Elmore makes the terrific point that a lot of what tends to be looked at as racism on the part of the NBA's fans usually has as much to do with age as it does with race. I have the hunch that if asked about the more out there fashion choices that NBA players may have made in the 70's, you'd get more positive noise.

In response to your quotes of DeBerry and Paterno, it seems that at least some amount of how a sport would change after African-Americans began being allowed to play would be explained by the pool of talented athetes becoming larger. If marginal white athletes began being replaced by better black athletes -- and keep in mind that you wouldn't ever see the marginal black athletes because the better white athletes would still be playing -- wouldn't it stand to reason that, for example, college football would pretty quickly become a faster sport? This would be true if the segregation had been geographical or religious instead of racial, right?

Of course, this is only part of the answer. It doesn't tell you how an SEC defensive team might be composed of 11 black athletes.

This question of the relative athletic abilities of African-Americans and Caucasians is a VERY complicated subject. Which is why it's so common for someone to think they're saying something very obvious yet really be saying something that's totally wrong and borderline racist.

When reading todays' column I couldn't help but think of the brilliant mind of Bill Walton, who ascertains that quickness is a mental skill (!). No better assertion than that to dispel the 'dumb-jock syndrome' Elmore touched on. Whether it's a point guard dextrously dribbling around, between and through a defense or a guitarist unleashing a dizzyingly intricate solo, in executing either, your brain is as hard at work as your limbs.

Mr. Kaufman: Some years ago my brother became ill with prostate cancer. In the process of dealing with his illness, I did a lot of research. I came across some studies that said African-American males in the US had 15 to 25% more testosterone than whites, Caribbean blacks and blacks from Africa; and other groups. Such a higher level contributed to a more agressive form of prostate cancer. My tall dark and handsome brother passed on and I had forgotten about those studies.

How do you suppose this idea translates on the playing field?

The fundamental thing that Americans miss or don't understand, as exemplified by two older colege football coaches Paterno and DeBerry, is that race itself is not biological. The black athlete does not exist independently or objectively. Rather, the category is culturally and socially constructed often, as Elmore and Edwards point out, to demean or create an unbalanced power relationship. So, in essence there is no biologically different race only a set of characteristics which have come to be associated with a particular pigment of skin.

However, since this is not widely understood, we continue to think of race in sport as the double-edged sword Elmore mentions. This also means the debate gets stuck on whether a "race" can or cannot do certain things or achieve certain goals rather than on the cultural and social factors which actually limit or create opportunity. That is, race is only real to the degree to which people believe in it, and we must deal with it as such. The key to better understanding is to debunk the notion of race as objectively observable and biological to reveal the meanings and power relationships in culture.