The important thing about sports is that sports are also sociology. At any given time, there are certain fixed strata in societies. What sports do is create mechanisms by which gifted individuals can move upwards. In so doing, sports contribute to lessening the distrust and tensions which exist between the different classes in society.
If you question those people who dislike sports or who want sports to be segregated along class lines, you will find that these are individuals who have bigotry somewhere in their résumés.
Before our radio/television show last Wednesday night, Stretch Lightburn was showing me a picture of the 1932 Harley’s football team. Except for Stretch’s dad, the late Bill Lightburn, and one other unidentified individual, all the players were white or white-looking. This was at a time when British Honduras, especially the capital Belize, was definitely majority black in population. But, colonialism and racism ruled.
Everybody who is healthy wants to play sports. Sports leave indelible impressions on the minds of participants and spectators alike. Unfortunately, it is clear to me that there are powerful and sinister forces, inside of Belize and outside of Belize, which are hostile to the development of healthy sports programs in Belize. This will sound paranoid to the more naïve amongst you, but the situation in Belizean sports is a real indication of the sorry state of nationalism here. Belize is not for Belizeans: it is for everybody else besides Belizeans.
On Saturday afternoons I often watch American college football on cable television. The heroes of these games, which excite entire communities, cities and states, are young men between the ages of 18 and 22. College football is a raging passion in the Southern states which comprised the slavery-supporting Confederacy during the United States Civil War (1861-1865). As a result of their love for sports, white Southerners end up cheering for African American young men on Saturday afternoons and watching their daughters cheerleading for same.
I am not saying that sports have erased racism in the American South. But sports have contributed to a constructive change in the way that whites and blacks interact in the South, and indeed in America itself.
I suppose the first great black American hero was Joe Louis, the heavyweight champion who avenged an earlier loss to the German Max Schmeling by knocking him out in the first round in Yankee Stadium in 1938. Schmeling was not himself a Nazi, but he was being used by the German dictator, Adolf Hitler, to embellish Nazi theories of Aryan superiority/white supremacy. In June of 1938, the world was on the brink of the world war which began the following year. Hitler had already occupied the Rhineland territories, overrun Austria, and was preparing to do the same to Czechoslovakia.
After Schmeling had knocked out the previously undefeated Louis in June of 1936, Wikipedia describes the contrasting reactions in New York City and Berlin. “Among the attendees at Louis’ defeat was Langston Hughes, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance and noted literary figure. Hughes described the national reaction to Louis’ defeat in these terms: ‘I walked down Seventh Avenue and saw grown men weeping like children, and women sitting in the curbs with their heads in their hands. All across the country that night when the news came that Joe was knocked out, people cried.’
“Conversely, the German reaction to the outcome was jubilant. Hitler contacted Schmeling’s wife, sending her flowers and a message: ‘For the wonderful victory of your husband, our greatest German boxer, I must congratulate you with all my heart.’ Schmeling dutifully reciprocated with nationalistic comments for the German press, telling a German reporter after the fight: ‘At this moment I have to tell Germany, I have to report to the Fuehrer in particular, that the thoughts of all my countrymen were with me in this fight, that the Fuehrer and his faithful people were thinking of me. This thought gave me the strength to succeed in this fight. It gave me the courage and the endurance to win this victory for Germany’s colors.’”
Well, the night after Joe’s sensational victory in June of 1938, the shoeshine boys in Detroit, where Joe Louis had grown up, began shouting to jubilant customers: “Get your Joe Louis shine – two minutes and four seconds.” This was how long Louis had taken to finish off the German.
In Belize, sports have become a vehicle used to demoralize our people and destroy our self-esteem. There are Belizeans who collaborate in this conspiracy, but the ultimate perpetrators are international and multinational. While multilateral funds pour into Belize for extravaganzas like “16 days of activism against gender-based violence,” Dr. Herbert Gayle’s report establishes clearly what we have been saying to you for more than four decades: young black boys/men in Belize are endangered, frustrated and stressed to the point where they have turned violently against each other. It is for sure that racism within the power structure of Belize is responsible for this, but the larger problem is the tragic absence of nationalism. Belize is not for Belizeans: it is for everybody else besides Belizeans.