Decoding the Racial Rhetoric of GOP Candidates | Urban Cusp

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Decoding the Racial Rhetoric of GOP Candidates

By David J. Leonard

UC Columnist

Some days it feels like race is everywhere – central to American life, race and its corresponding signifiers is indeed ubiquitous to American life. Racial language, narratives, and stereotypes are circulated with tremendous frequency. This has been especially evident during the Republican Presidential primary. From Newt Gingrich’s “food stamp president” and constant demonization of Black youth to Ron Paul’s newsletters, Rick Santorum’s constant denunciation of “illegals,” Michelle Bachman’s celebration of slavery, and the commonplace frame of returning to a 1950s America, the GOP has hitched its hopes to racial fear, racial ideas, and racial rhetorics. Although often transparent and clear as night and day, much of the arguments and frames are articulated through racial codes. Affording GOP candidates a certain level of deniability, it is therefore crucial to understand the power and prevalence of racial rhetorics.

Enter Kent Ono and Michael Lacey, whose new collection, Critical Rhetorics of Race (New York University Press, which provides readers with the necessary perspective and tools to decipher and understand, challenge and decode the ways in which race is circulated within the GOP, as well as from other political, media, and cultural spheres. In the introduction to the text, Raymie McKerrow describes the work as a “critical perspective on the ways symbols perform in addressing publics.” Challenging the dominant ideas of a post-racial society where race is declining in significance or only present when inserted into the discourse, the collection offers an important intervention. “Contemporary U.S. media culture represents race in ambivalent, contradictory, and paradoxical ways. Media tell us that the United States is a post-racial society, in which race and racism are passé relics of a bygone era,” writes Michael G. Lacey and Kent A. Ono in their introduction to Critical Rhetorics of Race. “Yet, those same media sources bombard us daily with spectacles of racial violence and disturbing racist images that serve as evidence that race and racism are alive and well in the United States” (p. 1)

Examining how racial “discourse masks and mystifies power to oppress and liberates people,” produces knowledge, and legitimizes, “sustains, resists, or disrupts hegemonic interest” (p. 13), the collection provides great insight into a variety of issues, examples, and spectacles, all while providing readers with the necessary tools to unmask the ongoing racial realities of American culture. It brings together a range of schools all committed to examining and reflecting on the powerful ways that race, and daily utterances of race, penetrate, define, and shape contemporary culture.

The book is divided into four distinct sections: (1) racialized masculinities, where authors explore hegemonic representations of men of color, and particularly Black men, are constructed as criminalized villains. Examining new reports, two chapters focus on Hurricane Katrina and Virginia Teach and Columbine respectfully, with a third dealing with “how dominant media stories” so often “pit and rank” “one marginalized groups against another (LGBTQ) by highlighting the anti-gay epithets made by black male celebrities, who serve exemplars for the larger black U.S” (p. 9-10).

Highlighting an aversion for dealing with systemic homophobia for the sake of homophobic slurs uttered by prominent Black figures, this chapter identifies how the media’s deployed racial rhetorics turns homophobia into a spectacle used to demonize and exonerate and in doing perpetuate the systemic realities of anti-LGBTQ. “Media spectacles routinely erupt after a famous African American celebrity makes a bigoted remark about other marginalized group members (usually gays),” writes Catherine Squireso. “By doing so, the media exposes African Americans to be hypocrites, while releasing white Americans from any moral responsibility or reparations” (p. 66).

via Decoding the Racial Rhetoric of GOP Candidates | Urban Cusp.

Drug Culture on College Campuses and the Criminalization of Student Athletes | Urban Cusp

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Drug Culture on College Campuses and the Criminalization of Student Athletes

By David J. Leonard

UC Columnist

In a world where the stigmas of drugs and the destructiveness of the war on drugs have been confined to the black community, particularly those segregated urban spaces, the recent announcement of the arrest of several students from Texas Christian University should cause pause. Following a 6-month investigation from the DEA, the police arrested 17 students, including 4 football players, selling a myriad of drugs – marijuana, cocaine, prescription drugs and ecstasy on and off campus. The inclusion of 4 football players resulted in widespread media coverage, few which made note that 3 of those arrested were white, an important fact given the media-produced stereotype about race, crime, and American athletes. Worse yet, the efforts to isolate the problem of drugs to student athletes, not only plays upon stereotypes about black athletes, even in instances such as this where only 1 person involved is African American, but once again exonerates whiteness from the discussion. In narrating the problem of drugs on college campuses through athletics, an identity difficult to disentangle from blackness within the white imagination, the media sensationalism perpetuates a racially-defined war on drugs.

Described as a “stain on the football program,” and “an especially embarrassing blow to the school because it included four members of the high-profile football team,” the media response focused on the arrest of the 4 student-athletes, simultaneously rendering the other students (at least 11) and non-students involved as insignificant to the larger story. Those from the football team became the story, the starting team, with the others involved reduced to peripheral bench players unworthy of media investigation or commentary. In “TCU Will Survive Shameful Day,” Jean-Jacques Taylor denounced the players as “shameful, embarrassing, stupid,” seemingly letting the other students involved, the school, and the coach off the hook. In fact, Taylor celebrates the coach for how he handled the situation even though according to the article, 80 players tested positive for drugs (other sources put this number between 5-16): “Perhaps he’s simply observed what’s happened at Ohio State and Penn State recently and decided the fallout from the cover-up is so much worse than the crime that it’s far better to come clean and deal with the consequences,” writes the reporter for ESPN Dallas. “Either way, Patterson should be applauded for having the gumption to reportedly order team-wide drug testing when a recruit told him that he was declining a scholarship offer because of the drug culture.” Like much of the media coverage, Taylor turns a 6-month investigation that netted the arrests of at least 17 people for narcotics distribution to the “drug culture” of the team.

He was not alone with a significant media emphasis on how the arrests were emblematic of an epidemic ravaging college athletes. Eric Olson, with “TCU Bust Sign of Increased Pot Problem,” sought to contextualize the arrests as evidence of a larger problem. Noting that 22.6% of student-athletes reported using marijuana once during the last 12 months, and how that number is up from 21.2% in 2005, Olson argues that these arrests are indicative of a larger problem for college sports. Yet, the “evidence” provided by this study is actually contradicted by the study itself, which argues that the slight increase in marijuana use reflects a societal shift rather than something specific to college athletics. Moreover, the study found that within the NCAA, marijuana use is least common amongst Division I student-athletes (16.9%), with Division II student-athletes (21.4%) and those from Division III having the highest level of usage with a number of 28.3%. In fact, while drug usage declined at the Division I level, those other two levels saw increases. Olson also references usage amongst student-athletes playing football and basketball, coincidentally those sports with the most visible number of African Americans, implying that the problem is acute within these sports. While basketball (22%) and football (26.7%) mirror widespread findings within all sports (the study doesn’t break the information down for each sport within each division), men’s lacrosse (48.5%), women’s lacrosse (30%) and women’s field hockey (35.7%) might as well get a feature article in High Times.

Conflating their arrests for alleged drug distribution with drug use amongst student-athletes, all while arguing the existence of a growing problem (up 1.5%), the efforts to construct this as a product of athletic culture and specifically an out-growth of football and basketball programs is telling.

The efforts to narrate a story specific to a college athletics, playing upon the sensationalism and particular stereotypes, has significant consequences. In isolating and confining the narrative to basketball courts and football stadium, the media representation continues the erasure of drug uses and criminal activity amongst college students. Most studies put drug use amongst college students at rates higher than general public, with almost 23% of college students meeting the clinical definition of alcohol or drug dependence.

Continue reading at Drug Culture on College Campuses and the Criminalization of Student Athletes | Urban Cusp.

NewBlackMan: Bigger Than Rush: The Violence of Language and Language of Violence

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Bigger Than Rush: The Violence of Language and Language of Violence

 

 

 

Bigger Than Rush: The Violence of Language and Language of Violence

 

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

 

 

Rush Limbaugh has once again demonstrated the entrenched misogyny of American culture.  Calling Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute,” among other things, is telling of both his own ideological foundation as well as society’s.  Unfortunately, the conversation and public outrage has often drifted away from the broader issues of violence, sexism, and misogyny, away from the broader attack on girls and women, instead focusing on “politics,” on removing Rush from the airwaves, on sponsors, and myriad other issues.  Increasingly, as Rush’s defenders cite double standards, whether in the form of societal acceptance of sexism within hip-hop or from liberal commentators, the debate is moving away from the issues of violence.  In focusing on only Rush (he is reprehensible), the politics, and in debating claims about hypocrisy, we are failing to see Rush and his comments as a symptom thereby obscuring the consequences of this language and its place within the broader war against young girls and women. 

 

 

Rush Limbaugh once again illustrated the reasons we need to “occupy” the airwaves.  As I wrote last month about Fox News and the soiling of already violent public discourse, the ubiquity of racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia within the public square represents a major threat:

 

 

Racism, homophobia, immigrant bashing, misogyny and a general tone of violent rhetoric is almost commonplace at Fox.  Their motto of “Fair and Balance” seems apt at this point where they are fairly balance with comments of racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia.  The saturation has produced an almost normalizing effect whereupon progressives and society at large don’t even notice at this point, simply dismissing as Fox being Fox.  Yet, the consequence, the pollution of the public discourse, the assault on the epistemology of truth, and an overall souring of the public airwaves with daily morsels of disgusting, vile, and reprehensible rhetoric, illustrates that “Fox being Fox” poses a serious threat to Democracy, not too mention justice and equality. 

 

 

Limbaugh’s recent comments are yet another example of “Rush being Rush” and the level of violence that “occupies” America’s airwaves.   The demonization of women, the criminalization of blacks and Latinos, and the overall climate of racial/gender pathologizing are as commonplace as the scapegoating of hip-hop within today’s media.  This is evident in the language of everyday life.   Violent rhetoric has consequences evident in ubiquity of sexual violence, racial profiling, and job and housing discrimination.  They matter not only because the words themselves are violent, but also because they provide a window into a larger structural reality; words matter because they hurt and because the sources of meaning, the history embedded in our language, and our sense of imagination all emanate from this place. 

 

In a recent Daily Beast column, Kirsten Powers, citing examples of misogyny from the likes of Bill Maher, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews, among others (not surprisingly as a Fox contributor she doesn’t cite any examples from her employer despite the following examples), argues that, “It’s time for some equal-opportunity accountability. Without it, the fight against media misogyny will continue to be perceived as a proxy war for the Democratic Party, not a fight for fair treatment of women in the public square.”

 

While not buying the narrative that seeks to directly or indirectly excuse Rush’s comments by noting the sexism of the “left” as evidence of both a double standard and a selective denunciation of sexism from the right (see here for example and here and here and here and here and here), any effort to transform public discourse must account for all forms of violence and the ways that racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia pollute and define media culture.  Rush’s comments are not an isolated incident (for him or talk radio) given his consistent demonization of Michelle Obama (#1, #2).  Yet, Rush’s comments must also be understood in relationship to the disgusting comments from Michael Moore (among others), who responded to Limbaugh with the following tweets:

 

 

I guess Romney knew that Rush, who made the mistake of saying what most Republicans think (women as sluts), had cost him the Nov. election.

 

 

Or after losing 6 sponsors yesterday Rush decided he loved $ more than he loved calling women prostitutes. Musta been a tough call, eh Rush?

 

 

Some sponsors don’t care how much Limbaugh apologizes: mmflint.me/Awf562 (I know – what were they doing there in the 1st place?)

 

 

RT @pattonoswalt Ayn Rand would be very pleased with how the free market bitch-slapped Limbaugh today.

 

 

Dear Rush: Please don’t stop! You say what the R candidates don’t. Voters must hear every day til Nov what Republicans truly think of women.

 

 

Don’t give up, Rush! It’ s a WAR ON WOMEN & you’re the Supreme Leader. Keep reminding voters how hate & violence drives the Republican agenda

 

 

Rush – As soon as u started losing the big $$ from your hate speech, you caved & obeyed the men who pay u. Who’s the prostitute now, bitch?

 

 

And BTW Rush, your vile & vicious attacks on me over the years – I wear them as a badge of honor. You are sad & sick & I’ve always pitied u.

 

 

The use of “bitch,” “bitch-slapped” and prostitute here, just as the sexualization of women from the likes of Bill Maher, is not a cover for the likes of Limbaugh.  Sure, the ideological underpinnings and the larger visions of society are different, but that doesn’t sanction the language nor does it limit the consequences.  Limbaugh’s comment read inside of a larger context points to the necessity of not simply removing Rush Limbaugh from the airwaves but transforming a society that needs and props up the Rushes in our mix. 

Continue reading @ NewBlackMan: Bigger Than Rush: The Violence of Language and Language of Violence.

[OPINION] Trayvon, Sports and Me – News & Views – EBONY

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Trayvon, Sports and Me

David J. Leonard

I grew up in segregated Los Angeles. While often celebrated for its diversity, L.A. is community. Divided by freeways, inequalities, and policing, the Los Angeles I remember was defined by its segregation. For middle-class white kids such as myself I was in constant ignorance about the persistence of inequality and my own White privilege. I never thought a second about leaving my house to buy a bag of Skittles; I never contemplated how others – teachers, employers, and even the police – might interpret my saggin’ pants or my hoodie; I did not even give a second thought when I showed up to play basketball at my local park with my hair in braids. The ignorance of privilege and the power of Whiteness defined my youth. Yet, the privileges of Whiteness gifted me each and every day. I was able to move throughout the city without fear from driving while White, and without fear of being suspicious, because in America “the assumption is that the natural state of Black men is armed and dangerous.”

It took leaving Los Angeles for the Pacific Northwest to truly understand the nature of American racism. In the 20 weeks that I attended the University of Oregon, notions of colorblindedness and equality shattered before my eyes. Walks to the store, to dinner, or to class with African American friends often found us followed by the police, stared at by others. It was a lesson in the ways that Blackness equals suspicion whereas Whiteness protected me from prejudgments. Racism wasn’t just the daily assault on my Black friends, but the unearned privileges I was granted each day.

Looking back, these experiences taught me not just about racial profiling and “Walking While Black”, but the many contradictions that exist in an integrated country that never came to terms with its racism. Several of my friends on campus at the time were student-athletes (another issue, of course: the disproportionate number of Black students in the athletics program versus the few who were present at the school otherwise); these young men and women regularly experienced praise and adoration while on the court. Celebrated as heroes, cheered as superstars, and anointed as celebrities, they were desired, wanted, and cherished… as commodities. Yet, while walking the streets, while eating at restaurants, while in class, and while attending various parties, the desirability was replaced by suspicion, contempt, and surveillance.

The murder of Trayvon Martin speaks to this country’s fear of Black people, particularly males. It also reflects the country’s contradictory concept of Blackness. The fact that Trayvon ventured out during the halftime of the NBA All-Star game (taking place in Orlando as well) only to lose his life at the hands of George Zimmerman highlights the valuing of Blackness inside the arena and the devaluing of Black life elsewhere. As fans cheered Kobe, CP3, and King James, Trayvon lied in a pool of blood. Having seen pictures of Trayvon in his football uniform and read about his love of sports, his murder taking place during this grand celebration of Black athleticism speaks volumes. Like DJ Henry and Robert Tolan, both of whom were shot (Henry died) by the police, Marcus Dixon, Mychel Bell, and Genarlow Wilson, all of whom despite athletic prowess endured the grips of a Jim Crow justice system, the status as athlete, star or otherwise, did not protect Trayvon Martin.

The murder of Trayvon Martin speaks to this country’s fear of Black people, particularly males.

Even as millions of fans announce their love for Kobe and LeBron, even as tens of millions voted for Barack Obama, even as a growing Black middle-class has made inroads throughout society, the likes of Trayvon Martin, Oscar Grant, Sean Bell, and countless others remind us about the dangers of living while Black in America even in 2012. Essex Hemphill, in his brilliant poem “American Hero” describes a world where Black men can simultaneously be celebrated for dunking a basketball during a globally televised game while just miles a way a young Black male is dying at the hands of American racism:

Squinting, I aim at the hole fifty feet away. I let the tension go. Shoot for the net. Choke it. I never hear the ball slap the backboard. I slam it through the net. The crowd goes wild for our win. I scored thirty-two points this game and they love me for it. Everyone hollering is a friend tonight. But there are towns, certain neighborhoods where I’d be hard pressed to hear them cheer if I move on the block.

via [OPINION] Trayvon, Sports and Me – News & Views – EBONY.

NewBlackMan: In Conversation with History: Speaking Back to Trayvon

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In Conversation with History: Speaking Back to Trayvon

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

In wake of the murder of Trayvon Martin, in the face of anger, sadness, frustration, outrage, sadness, and more anger, I found myself returning to several quotes that reflect on racism, violence, injustice, and resistance. I found myself wanting to dialogue with these thinkers, these organic intellectuals, and those who continue to promote “freedom dreams.” This is my conversation within an experimental dialogue that emphasizes the continuity of violence and resistance throughout our history.

Sojourner Truth: “That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain’t I a woman?”

DJL: Why does this continue to be so true for women, for people of color, for the poor? The parent over there sends their child out to play, without a worry; the child over can go to the park, walk to school, or go to the store, without any fears. Innocence is protected. Nobody can say that for Trayvon Martin; ain’t he a person; ain’t a child?

Frederick Douglas: “Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them.”

DJL: Mr. Douglas, your words remain true today. Where Trayvon’s was deprived of his humanity, where his rights were ignored, where his future was denied “neither persons nor property will be safe.”

Kahil Gibran: “Learnt silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, I am ungrateful to these teachers.”

DJL: Yes, in just three weeks, we have seen injustice from those responsible for justice, terror from those who claim to protect, and erasure from those responsible for education and informing the collective. We have once again seen the stains and violence of American racism. Yet, we have seen the apathy and ignorance concerning these painful realities.

Shirley Chisholm: “Most Americans have never seen the ignorance, degradation, hunger, sickness, and futility in which many other Americans live. Until a problem reaches their doorsteps, they’re not going to understand. . . Racism is so universal in this country, so widespread and deep-seated, that it is invisible because it is so normal.”

DJL: Ms. Chisholm, we are still seeing this today. When black and suspicious becomes normalized, racism is invisible; when the murder of black youth is not breaking news “it invisible because it is so normal.” When black death goes unnoticed it has become normal and acceptable. Only when fathers and mothers, grandmothers and grandfathers, brothers and sisters, and sons and daughters begin to contemplate “what if,” what if my family or friends couldn’t go to the store without fear, without threat, without potential death will we see change.

Albert Camus: “In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”

DJL: Why do people continue to side with the executioners? But not in every case? It must stop. In a world where black youth can’t walk to the store to buy skittles and something to drink, where black youth are deemed suspicious for walking while black, in “a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.” It is the job of thinking people not to silence the critics, the fighters of freedom.

Continue reading @ NewBlackMan: In Conversation with History: Speaking Back to Trayvon.

The White Coach’s Burden | Racialicious – the intersection of race and pop culture

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The White Coach’s Burden

By Guest Contributor Dr. David J. Leonard

During my “glory days” playing high school football–among other positions I played linebacker–there was a game where, after several tackles (pretty amazing tackles if I remember them correctly), I found myself rolling on the ground in pain. Their running back decided to thrust his helmet into my gut leaving me gasping for air. I would later find out that the opposing coach encouraged his players to “take me out”: a helmet to the gut would do that for at least one play.

The fact that a nobody player in a nothing high-school football game between two tiny private schools in Los Angeles was “taken out” illustrates how encouraged violence is part and parcel to football culture, even if there were no “‘knockouts’…worth $1,500 and ‘cart-offs’ $1,000, with payments doubled or tripled for the playoffs,” rewards uncovered as part of the New Orleans Saints’ “bounty program” last week.

Yet, the NFL, much of the media, and others have acted as if the Saints’ actions are an aberration that can be easily corrected. As such, the league’s response was predictably clichéd:

The [anti-] bounty rule promotes two key elements of NFL football: player safety and competitive integrity. It is our responsibility to protect player safety and the integrity of our game, and this type of conduct will not be tolerated. We have made significant progress in changing the culture with respect to player safety and we are not going to relent. We have more work to do and we will do it.

The NFL wasn’t alone with its shock and outrage (and hypocrisy). The Los Angeles Times’ Bill Plaschke referred to the bounty system as “sanctioned evil” that in one game constituted a “blatant mugging by the New Orleans Saints.” Eamon Quinn described bounties as antithetical to the values of sports: “Such malicious intent—regardless of whether the particular hit was legal by the letter of the law—totally undermines the camaraderie and goodwill inherent in participation in sports. It is diametrically opposed to the inherently benevolent nature of sporting competition.” Similarly, ESPN’s Gregg Easterbrook identified the bounty issue as “Sinnersgate” which “is about being paid to cause injury, which takes a beautiful sport and makes it a low, filthy thing.”

Dave Zirin rightfully highlights the hypocrisy in the league’s resisting calls for reform while marketing itself on the “Orwellian staple” of comparing NFL players to warriors:

There is no morality in war — but that doesn’t stop our political and military leaders from insisting otherwise. Invariably, the enemy consists of immoral, medieval cave dwellers who respect neither human life nor the sacred rules of combat. Our side, on the other hand, engages in “surgical strikes” to limit “collateral damage” in a noble effort to liberate the shackled from tyranny. They tell us to ignore the innocent killed in drone attacks, the piling body counts, and just remember that our enemies are savages because they don’t play by civilized rules.

The moral indignity of the media is striking given its own promotion of on-the-field violence. The proliferation of a highlight culture dominated by jarring hits is as much a bounty as any direct or indirect payment system.

 

An ESPN culture that leads with bone-crushing, de-cleating tackles, turning relatively obscure defensive players into household names, illustrates the role of the media in offering incentive for viciousness on the field. The hypocrisy and faux-outrage from the media as well as fans, given the widespread acceptance of a culture of violence, seems more about disappointment the behavior of any coaches involved; bounty gate isn’t a challenge to perception of football and the NFL, but the league’s patriarchs – the coaches.

Continue reading @ The White Coach’s Burden | Racialicious – the intersection of race and pop culture.

Andrew Luck and Racial Assumptions: Are Stereotypes a Part of the Game? | Urban Cusp

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Andrew Luck and Racial Assumptions:

Are Stereotypes a Part of the Game?

By David J. Leonard

By now you are probably sick of reading and talking about Jeremy Lin. Thankfully, with Linsanity calming down, the conversation has turned back to the court, a shame given his own struggles and those of the Knicks in recent weeks.

Yet, at the same time, I find myself disappointed and frustrated by the missed opportunities within the media avalanche. Amid the endless articles about Lin, many reflected on the ways in which race and stereotypes about Asians limited the ability of scouts to recognize Lin’s talent. Stereotypes not only about the lack of athletic ability of Asians as well as the stereotypes about African American success within basketball impacted the difficult roads traveled by Lin.

“Lin was almost certainly underestimated, or misevaluated, because as an Asian American he does not look the way scouts and general managers expect an NBA player to look,” wrote Touré. “If he’d walked into the gym and wowed everyone right away he would’ve stood out, but when he didn’t, it confirmed the societal script that does not expect Asian Americans to be pro-level basketball players. That’s the prejudice Lin had to fight through.” This sentiment was commonplace throughout the public discussion, revealing a willingness to acknowledge that race does matter, that racism exists as an obstacle, and that stereotypes impact the ways that people interact on a daily basis.

Similar conversations about stereotypes and obstacles faced by athletes because of racial assumptions have followed the NFL Scouting Combine. The likely two-top picks, Andrew Luck (Stanford) and Robert Griffin III (Baylor), have been at the center of these conversations. Luck, a white quarterback, has shocked scouts because of his surprising speed, whereas Griffin has been praised with a level of surprise for his intellect and his field vision (still despite his precision in passing some scouts have lamented his propensity of “mental mistakes”).

With both men, stereotypes have guided the conversation, either through the replication and recycling of longstanding ideas associated with white and black athletes, or with a shock and awe over their not fitting into these boxes. For example, in “Andrew Luck is pretty fast, too,” Michael David Smith highlights how racial stereotypes associated with speed and quickness that leads black quarterbacks to be labeled as scramblers and white quarterback as pocket passers, has led to surprise about Luck, even though his 40 time matched that of Cam Newton:

Luck turned in an excellent 40-yard dash time today of 4.59 seconds at the NFL Scouting Combine, the third-fastest among quarterbacks this year behind only Baylor’s Robert Griffin III and Wisconsin’s Russell Wilson.

No one runs like Griffin, but Luck is faster than the vast majority of NFL quarterbacks. To put Luck’s time in perspective, it’s exactly the same as the time turned in by Cam Newton at last year’s Combine.

In “Do Racial Stereotypes Dictate NFL Success,” kgans laments the ways in which race impacts personnel decisions and the NFL product:

Racial stereotypes in draft evaluations are something you can see all the time, and it’s not only for the quarterback position. All the time you have draft evaluations describing white defensive ends as “high-energy guys, with great motors.” Or a black linebacker described as being “freakishly athletic with sideline-to-sideline speed.” These racial stereotypes are ignorant and they hurt the integrity of the game.

Just recently, Jeremy Lin, an Asian-American point guard has taken the NBA by storm. On http://www.draftexpress.com, the website described Lin as being “deceptively quick and assertive off the dribble.” Deceptively quick, what does that mean? Is he deceptively quick because you didn’t expect him to be quick since he is Asian?

Kgans makes clear that racial stereotypes are not only restricting the opportunities afforded to athletes but at the same time undermining the quality of the game. Because of racial stereotypes, players are not judged by the content of their crossover, or the precision of their passing, but the color of their skin. “I think racial stereotypes in draft evaluations could have something to do with this. If we could all be more “colorblind” in our talent evaluations we might be able to increase the amount of black quarterbacks in the NFL,” writes Gans. “And believe me, after NFL GM’s have seen what Linsanity has done for the Knicks no one wants to miss out on the NFL’s version of Jeremy Lin. Being more ‘colorblind’ in talent evaluations will help make sure that doesn’t happen.”

via Andrew Luck and Racial Assumptions: Are Stereotypes a Part of the Game? | Urban Cusp.