Study of sports race relations leader speaks to University students

By Mitch Blomert

A national leader for the study of race relations in sports spoke at the University of Georgia Wednesday, encouraging students to be the difference-maker in the eradication of racism in the nation.

Dr. Richard Lapchick, director of the DeVos Sport Business Management Program at the University of Central Florida, discussed the history and solutions to racism in sports and in general life as part of the 2010 Clifford Lewis Lecture titled “Sport: A Bridge Across the Racial Divide,” at Masters Hall in the Georgia Center.

Lapchick, son of Boston Celtics center and former New York Knicks head coach Joe Lapchick, discussed the race issues his father faced as a National Basketball Association Coach, then the hatred he received himself when he became the American leader of a sports boycott in South Africa during apartheid.

Lapchick also explained how sports acted as a commonplace of people, where racism and hatred often subsided in favor of competition, as it did at a Virginia Tech baseball game following the shootings that killed 32 people on campus in 2007 and in February’s Super Bowl XLIV, which “elevated spirits like nothing else possibly could.”

“Something about sport makes it different,” Lapchick said.

Lapchick emphasized that the current generation of college students are tomorrow’s leaders, and can continue the stand against racism that Lapchick and his father started in sports.

“My father’s generation developed integration of basketball,” he said. “You can be the difference. That’s why I started to talk to student audiences—about passing the torch to you.”

Lapchick also recollected his time with long-time Grambling State University football coach Eddie Robinson, whom he co-wrote the book Never Before, Never Again with in 1999. He described Robinson and highly influential in integrating sports by display kind acts to his wife in front of his players.

“He always had dinner with his wife and held her hand, which he showed to his players,” Lapchick said.

When Lapchick isn’t speaking the colleges across the country or managing the DeVos Sport Business Management Program at Central Florida, he is also part of the Hope For Stanley Foundation, which promotes diversity and ethics in sports and releases an annual report card that tracks the long-term trends of diversity in coach and management.

Lapchick stated that current racial statistics among NCAA Division-I coaches is 91-percent white among men’s sports and 90-percent among women’s sports. However, he also noted that the Georgia is the first school to hire a black Athletic Director when they appointed Damon Evans to the position in 2003.

Lapchick, who received his Ph.D. in international race relations from the University of Denver in 1973, also founded the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University in 1984. He is also a frequent columnist for ESPN.com and the Orlando Sentinel, with over 500 columns published. He is also one of only 200 guests to former South African president Nelson Mandela’s inauguration in 1994.