“There’s something about sport.” This was a phrase continually reiterated by Richard Lapchick, the keynote speaker at the 2010 Clifford Lewis Scholar Lecture, sponsored by the Department of Kinesiology at UGA. It showed his passion for sports was almost as strong as his passion for trying to bring about racial equality. A mix of Sports Business and Journalism majors, as well as many other interested students came together on April 20 at the Georgia Center on a rainy afternoon to listen to one of the most influential voices on race issues in sports over the last few decades.
Lapchick is the creator of the DeVos Sport Business Management Program at the University of Central Florida, founder of the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, and writer for ESPN.com. He has become well known for his efforts in promoting racial equality, especially in opposing the South African apartheid through a sports boycott. In a video shown as an introduction to the speech former Bengals Linebacker Reggie Williams said that Lapchick “put his life on the line for causes, that quite honestly, affect others more than himself.” This is literally true as he was once attacked by two masked men for opposing South Africa’s participation in the Davis Cup due to apartheid.
Lapchick’s lecture, entitled “Sport: a bridge across the Racial Divide”, began as he expressed his appreciation for Georgia and its athletic program, especially for hiring an African American athletic director, Damon Evans, which according to some statistics he would later read, is a rarity in the NCAA, where 93 percent of athletic directors in Division I are white.
“There’s something about sport that makes us different from others in regular life”, Lapchick mused. Lapchick, though white, experienced racial discrimination at an early age, as his father, then the coach of the New York Knicks, received criticism and threats for signing Nat Clifton, the first African American to sign an NBA contract. When he was older he attended a basketball camp where the one black player received so much racial hatred from one of the white players that Lapchick stood up for him and promptly got knocked out. That player was Lewis Alcindor, Jr, or as he is now more commonly known as Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, the NBA’s all time leading scorer.
Lapchick realized that the arena of sports was a great equalizer between races and provided a powerful avenue for making a statement. “In that huddle, you’re part of a team, it doesn’t matter if you’re white, black, protestant, muslim, catholic, young, old, gay, straight, male female, you can’t win if you don’t work together.”
The sports boycott of South Africa proved more effective than boycotts of oil or other goods because as Lapchick put it, “you can smuggle in oil and all that other stuff, but you can’t play sports in the dark”. Lapchick was one of a select number of people invited to Nelson Mandela’s inauguration for his efforts and he said that Mandela later told him that one of the reasons he was eager to come back was bring sports back to his country.
Lapchick’s main goal, however, was to motivate his audience to take a stand against racial injustice today. He said that while the players are now equal, those running and covering sports is still vastly skewed. Lapchick read some recent statistics that said that 95 percent of sports editors and 87 percent of reporters are white, as well as 91 percent of Division I coaches, and 9 percent of hate crimes occur on college campuses.
Lapchick said his focus has changed to passing the torch to a new generation, which is why he speaks to college students. He continued to speak on how even something as simple as just trying to see how those around us may be in need of help; “everybody has a problem that you don’t know about”. As he concluded he implored the new generation of students to rise up and take a stand: “the definition of a leader is someone who stands up for justice and doesn’t stand in its path.” He received a round of applause as he finished and everyone in the audience seemed supportive of his efforts.
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This is a well written article. I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but the two major items missing are links (use the HTML to link us to other websites, etc.- take advantage of the blogging platform) and audience reaction (get quotes from others in the crowd to let us know what they thought of the talk).
Aside from these points, this is a nicely done speech story. Good job!
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