We are Penn State

New column at VDare, Penn State’s Disgrace Leads To A Whiter Football Team—Which May Make Them A Winner Again, a sequel of sorts to 2011's Joe Paterno And The Penn State Rape Scandal: Discrediting The Opiate Of America.

By attrition, white running backs are getting chances at Penn State

 Here's a portion of it:

Right after the Freeh Report [PDF] detailed how “a culture of reverence for the football program” permeated Penn State and enabled now-convicted child rapist/predator Jerry Sandusky, ultimately destroying the legacy of Coach Joe Paterno, I argued with a mix of hyperbole and disgust that “College football should be banned.”

The naive might have thought the university would indeed drop its football program. The NCAA, the governing body of collegiate athletics, imposed a $60 million fine on Penn State and banned the football team from playing in the post-season. In an Orwellian move, the school vacated football wins since the Sandusky cover-up began, meaning that Paterno lost his spot atop the list of all-time wins as a head coach in Division I (FBS) football, and also removed his statue from outside the football stadium.

But never underestimate the power of the Opiate of America. Forbes magazine valued Penn State’s football program at $100 million in 2011, with the program generating a $53 million profit. Dropping football was never an option at Penn State.

The NCAA was nice enough to offer every member of the team the chance to transfer to another program without sitting out the year normally required of all athletes who transfer. Prominent among those who fled Happy Valley: black running back Silas Redd, whose goal of landing an NFL contract probably supersedes that of attaining a college degree.

Additionally, the new coaches of Penn State can no longer recruit the top high school athletes with promises of playing for a Big Ten or national title, or an appearance in a Bowl Championship Series (BCS) game.

Ironically, however, this means an important opportunity has appeared to address what I have argued is the “inefficient market” in football recruiting: the systematic undervaluation  of white athletes. (These inefficiencies do occur in sports: another one is documented in Michael Lewis’s book MoneyBall).

This anti-white discrimination from college recruiters has been documented anecdotally for years. Tom Lemming, the pioneer of high school evaluation  has stressed that there are hundreds of capable white athletes being passed over because of the stigma attached to their abilities. [What college coaches don't talk about, by Taylor Bell, Chicago Sun-Times, October 1, 2009]

One example: Fred Bacco told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that recruiters informed him he was the “wrong color” to play running back. [Recruiting: Hopewell LB follows family tradition to BYU, January 27, 2004]

Another white high school running back sensation from the Pittsburgh area, Trent Wissner, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s Mark Madden a similar story. [Plenty of talent, but too white, January 2, 1999]

A case from this summer: Rex Burkhead, the white Nebraska Cornhuskers running back:

[Nebraska coach Bo] Pelini can be very opinionated. He was in that type of mood Friday. He knows and we know why Burkhead gets tagged a "throwback player" and "overachiever," but we typically bite our tongue.

Pelini let loose with the truth.

"Let's face it, people also say he's a white guy," the coach said. "People stereotype — that's what society does.

In Pelini’s opinion, Burkhead gets overlooked nationally. He said it doesn’t bother him. It does surprise him, though.
[Bo leads Burkhead bandwagon, by Steven M. Sipple, July 27, 2012]

Now, Penn State is in a position where four or five star recruits, designated as such by online recruiting services like Rival or Scout.com, will pass on the school. It will have to rely on lower-rated players. White players.

Brennan Franklin, a linebacker with scholarship offers this past winter from the likes of Wofford College, Eastern Kentucky and Robert Morris, leaves home Friday for State College, Pa., a journey that casts him as a symbolic figure in the worst college football scandal ever.

For however great an impact Franklin makes at Penn State, history likely will remember him as the program's first new piece after the July 23 announcement of devastating sanctions that include the loss of 40 scholarships and a four-year postseason ban.

Less than three weeks ago, Franklin was just another kid from Peoria, Ariz., who slipped through the cracks in recruiting.

Today, he represents the near future at Penn State, built upon hope that coach Bill O'Brien can find enough overlooked but enthusiastic players to plow through difficult times and minimize the effects of NCAA-imposed probation.

"I just want to play," Franklin said. "People say they might be doing this for publicity. They're not. And I'm going out there to do everything I can to become a starter within the next year."

This addition of one more body to Penn State's class of incoming freshmen illustrates the creativity necessary for it to stay afloat between now and 2016. And the more prospects like Franklin it can uncover, the better for Penn State -- because an attitude like his might just turn contagious.
Brennan Franklin marks new era , by Mitch Sherman, ESPN, August 3, 2012

Another example:

With his head down and shoulders square on his bruising 6-foot-1 frame, running back Michael Zordich can strike an imposing pose before he collides with a defender. The brown hair hanging out of his white helmet just adds to the look of intimidation.

Penn State's new-look passing game might get all the attention, but Zordich's emergence on the ground has added another threat to the rushing attack. His hard-nosed running style epitomizes the blue-collar mentality espoused by the team's senior leaders in the first year of coach Bill O'Brien's rebuilding project in Happy Valley.

"You know that every game you have something to play for. With no bowl game to play for or championship ... every Saturday is our time when we get out there," Zordich said after a 24-13 victory Saturday over Temple evened Penn State's record at 2-2.

The Nittany Lions travel to Illinois next weekend to open Big Ten play.
"At this point, we're just playing for the guys that four years from now will be able to compete" in the postseason, Zordich said….

Next man up against the Owls? Another bruiser in the Zordich mold in 6-foot-1, 232-pound sophomore Zach Zwinak, who also had career highs of 18 carries for 94 yards against Temple's porous defense.
Running back Michael Zordich embodies Penn State football's desired blue-collar attitude, AP, September 23, 2012

Both Zwinak and Zordich are white. White running backs. But unlike Wissner and Bacco, they got their shot to run the ball for a major college football team.

Read the rest there and comment on it here.

One of the primary reasons I wrote this piece was because this past Sunday night, hundreds of people found SBPDL by searching on Google, Bing, and other search engines this phrase: "New England Patriots White"; "New England Patriots all-white offense"; New England Patriots racist"; "New England Patriots short white players"; "New England best white players in NFL".

The reason for these searches? New England was playing Baltimore on NBC, the lone game on Sunday evening. At one point in the contest, 10 of the 11 players on offense for the Patriots were white. Because fans have been conditioned to believe that only a team of black players is legitimate, the sight of an almost all-white offense was creating cognitive dissonance. 

The piece for VDare was a little long, so this portion had to be edited out for space. We share it now to show why so many college coaches refuse recruit white players to play positions that black athletes artificially dominate. Just ask Iowa's Mark Weisman, a big white running back who is producing consecutive 100-yard games on the ground for the Hawkeyes. Not bad for a walk-on that started on scholarship for the Air Force Academy:

As I noted in Joe Paterno And The Penn State Rape Scandal: Discrediting The Opiate Of America and Alabama’s Iron Bowl And Integration—Was Football Victory Worth It?, college football is America’s opiate; alumni of not just Penn State, but Auburn and Alabama derive their identity, and more problematic, their emotional health on the success of the football program. Thus the reason Predominately White Institutions (PWI) field football teams that are majority black; an artificial construct has been created whereby black athletic supremacy is a given – human biodiversity must never be discussed: that a 16-to-18-year-old black high school student has reached a greater state of maturity than his white counterpart isn’t up for discussion - and an inefficient market has been created whereby white high school athletes are undervalued.

A paradox seemingly exists; near all-white crowds watch football games where a cast of near all-black teams compete against each other. One of the reasons this exists was discussed in Michael Oriard Slate article (College Football's Season of Discontent

How today's game was shaped by the racial strife of 1969, 9-3-2009): the counter-culture revolution of the left, who enjoyed a coalition with the Black power movement frightened old-line, white coaches from disciplining their black players. If this happened, the black athletes could rely on the leftists on campus and a sympathetic administration to pressure the coach to placate their demands.

This was addressed in the 1971 book Joe Paterno: Football My Way by Mervin Hyman (p. 41):

Many other coaches have become deeply involved with racial problems. Jim Owens at the University of Washington, Ray Willsey at the University of California at Berkeley, Lloyd Eaton at Wyoming, Johnny Pont at Indiana, Ray Nagle at Iowa, Ed Cavannaugh at Idaho State and Ben Schwartzwalder at Syracuse all were hit with revolts by their black athletes. After a similar uprising; Minnesota Coach Murray Warmath was ordered by his administration to take a course in a sensitivity program. 

Joe Paterno and Penn State would be spared much of the problems that other programs faced; though Joe Paterno would – admirably – fight for higher admission standards for college athletes (obviously, the easiest way to ensure to integrity of collegiate athletics), he would loosen academic requirements to combat a “fight a lily white look” at Penn State in the late 1970s, granting “special admit” status to black athletes:

In truth, Joe Paterno cares about learning—book learning, not just Xs and Os. But, like all coaches, he must grapple with a developing crisis that has resulted in scandal at some schools and the potential for trouble at all. Many athletes aren't making it academically. Many of these never really figured to. Yet the pressures to win are such that coaches and academic administrators take risks with superior athletes who have inadequate educational backgrounds. Too many of them, of course, do a lot more.

McCoy, one of the three starters in the Penn State defensive backfield who were declared academically ineligible, was one of five black football players admitted in 1977 who did not meet Penn State's entrance requirements. However, they easily met the NCAA standard, a 2.0 high school average. McCoy failed, the other four are doing fine. "We are fighting a lily-white look here," says Paterno. "And among that group of five that I asked to have specially admitted, only one was a super high school athlete. As for the other four, we easily could have gotten white players as good or better who were fully qualified." To get them in, Joe went to University President John Oswald and said, "Let's take a chance on some kids who are good bets."

Paterno does concede that "other students don't have somebody going to bat for them to get them admitted, so that's a break for the football player."

No matter. It would be that “lily white look” Paterno fought that won him a national title in the 1987 Fiesta Bowl, when Penn State beat heavily favored Miami in the most watched college game of all time. In Pride of the Lions: The Biography of Joe Paterno (p. 202-203), we learn the interesting dynamics that ruled the game:

Because Miami’s starts were predominately black and Penn State’s team was overwhelmingly white, race entered into the pregame discussion adding spice to an already intriguing matchup. The media’s portrayals only tended to bolster prevailing stereotypes.

Bowl week began with controversy, and the tone seldom eased. Not long after the Nittany Lions arrived in sunny Phoenix wearing jackets and ties, at least a dozen Miami players deplaned in camouflage fatigues. Immediately the message was imparted that they were renegades, and this was war.

Penn State would win the game; Miami would win the war. College football coaches, remembering what happened when they tried to discipline black players in the late 1960s/early 1970s decided to recruit the same flashy, swaggering black athletes Miami fielded.

The type of white athlete that collectively won Penn State the 1987 national title? Left in the past. Any major college football that dared recruit white athletes to play certain positions like running back, receiver or safety was putting a liability on the field, when a black athlete would obviously be bigger, faster, and stronger.

But let’s get back to that “inefficient market” that exists in high school recruiting, what I’ve dubbed a Meat-Market Failure.

The coach that dares exploit the inefficient market in recruiting will, of course, be vilified. But they will cultivate a winner - on the field and in the classroom.

Midnight City

Perhaps we should just call this "downgrade." The future ain't what it used to be, with the thought of some Blade Runner reality no longer the great fear; something similar to Minority Report, however, makes more sense.

Midnight City for much of America: Until we confront the reality of black dysfunction that is...

And in today's minority report, the notion that Waiting for Superman to fix the American education system is cast to aside. Educators no longer "believe that a man can fly"... instead, they believe that standards must be lowered [D.C. schools set new achievement targets for students by race and income, Washington Post, by Emma Brown, 9-18-2012]:

Every public school in the United States has aimed for the same goal over the past decade: that all students be proficient in math and reading by 2014. 

But that noble ambition, educators and experts almost universally agree, was never realistic. Now, in the District and many states, goals over the next five years tend to be lower for black, Hispanic and poor children than they are for white and Asian students, and in the District, they tend to be higher at schools in affluent areas than in poor neighborhoods. It’s a policy shift that strikes some parents as a form of prejudice. 

Officials say the new targets account for differences in current performance and demand the fastest progress from students who are furthest behind. The goals vary across much of the country by race, family income and disability, and in Washington, they also vary by school. 

At Anacostia High, which draws almost exclusively African Americans from one of the District’s most impoverished areas, officials aim to quadruple the proportion of students who are proficient in reading by 2017, but that would still mean that fewer than six out of 10 pass standardized reading tests. Across town at the School Without Walls in Northwest Washington, a diverse and high-performing magnet that enrolls students from across the city, the aim is higher: 99.6 percent. 

Meanwhile, at Wilson Senior High, 67 percent of black students — and 88 percent of Asians and 95 percent of whites — are expected to pass standardized math tests five years from now. 

Setting different aspirations for different groups of children represents a sea change in national education policy, which for years has prescribed blanket goals for all students. Some education experts see the new approach as a way to speed achievement for black, Latino and low-income students, but some parents can’t help but feel that less is being expected of their children. 

“It’s disgraceful,” said Alicia Rucker, a Ward 7 resident and single mother of six, one of whom graduated from Georgetown University and five of whom are still living at home and enrolled in D.C. public schools. “It’s ridiculous to even believe that if you expect less from someone, you’re going to get more.”

Sorry Alicia Rucker -- what was disgracful was the reliance on cheating for the closing of the racial gap in achievement. The Atlanta Journal Constitution, embarrassed by the shame of having the Atlanta Public School - almost exclusively black -fiasco happen in their backyard, has started investigating school districts across the nation that show impossible rises/improvements in test scores.

Patterns begin to emerge for those paying attention. Unflattering racial patterns.

The greatest predicator of cheating? Standardized test scores improvements in heavily minority areas.

Emboldened by the uncomfortable ink the AJC spilt praising the fraud that was Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Beverly Hall (and the test scores that were statistical impossible - because of gross deviation upwards from scores that black students had posted for decades - without cheating), the paper has started a crusade to show that we are "cheating our children" of a good education.

The reality of standardized test cheating in America. Notice anything when overlaid with the map above?

But as the Washington Post story indicates, perhaps it is nature that has - when compared to the standard of academic achievement set by whites - handicapped black (and Hispanic) students. Having more realistic goals for these students, instead of looking to the skies for an educational miracle, makes more sense.

Now, if we could just do something about that pesky SAT [SAT Reading Scores Are the Lowest They've Been in 40 Years, Atlantic, by Alexander Abad-Santos, 9-24-12]:

Coming in with an average SAT reading score of 496, 2012's graduating seniors have the dubious distinction of having attained the worst reading score since 1972. (For those test-takers of a certain age and test-taking history, "reading" is actually that part we knew as "verbal.") Regardless of what you call(ed) it, "The average reading score for the Class of 2012 was 496, down one point from the previous year and 34 points since 1972," reports The Washington Post's Emma Brown, gleaning numbers from the College Board, the organization that administers the test. 

What's troubling beyond the low average score is that seniors' scores in "writing," a section related to "reading" and for most of us, life in some way or another, also dropped—to 488—a decrease of nine points since the College Board started testing for it in 2006. So what gives? Are future generations illiterate? Is the SAT too hard? As Po Bronson wrote for the Daily Beast in 2009, "It’s commonly said that the SAT, taken in a senior year of high school, has only about a 40% correlation with a student’s freshman year college GPA." The line of thinking implied by that statement is that numbers are just numbers, to some extent, and not predictors of future successes, necessarily. They are general predictors of who will get into which colleges, though, and Bronson goes on to defend the SAT, writing, "I’ve always had a skeptical feeling about the 40% correlation statistic, and so I’ve never relied on it or used it in print." 

Brown writes that the reading scores may have been affected by minority test takers, who came out and took the test in record numbers: "The declining national reading averages may in part reflect the ever-widening pool of students who take the SAT, first administered in 1926 to a few thousand college applicants." She continues, "More than 1.66 million graduating seniors last year took the test, the highest number in history. Nearly half were minorities and about a quarter reported that English was not exclusively their first language. More than a quarter of public school test-takers — 27 percent — had family income low enough to qualify for a fee waiver, and more than a third — 36 percent — reported that their parents had not gone to college."

The truly unmentionable? We are seeing the lowest scores because the rise of minority test-takers as compared to the overall white population of students taking the SAT. And this disparity is only going to grow, so that, moving forward, each year will break new records for lowest scores. 

Remember this story [Census: Fewer White Babies Being Born, CNN, 5-17-2012]?:

U.S. minorities now represent more than half of America's population under the age of 1, the Census Bureau said, a historic demographic milestone with profound political, economic and social implications.

The bureau - defining a minority as anyone who is not "single race white" and "not Hispanic" - released estimates on Thursday showing that 50.4% of children younger than 1 were minorities as of July 1, 2011, up from 49.5% from the 2010 Census taken in April 2010.

"2011 is the first time the population of infants under age 1 is majority minority," said Robert Bernstein, a Census Bureau spokesman.

It's not that fewer white babies are being born; it's that more non-white parents and their babies are being subsidized by white tax-payers, in the process remaking America in a most distressing image -- that of the rest of the world.

If there ever was an idea such "American Exceptionalism" it simply bespoke our ability to assimilate Europeans of various nationalities into one identity. Behind a banner of "Manifest Destiny" a mighty nation was forged.

It was a different banner, that of "Manifest Destruction"that helped revert that greatness; it was buckets of bilge (white guilt) splashed on the descendants of a people who once proudly believed in "Manifest Destiny" that we by who now sit by, dumbfounded, at the collapse of this nation.

Were we ever to admit that black dysfunction has its roots in... Black people (the same roots that sprout lower test scores than white children, regardless of the monetary resources dedicated to the latter's advancement), well, the entirety of the second half of the 20th century could be undone.

Until then... it's midnight city in America.

Just remember -- people can wake up awfully quick.

The 47 Percent: The Truth that No One Dares Touch

From The Blaze:

Yesterday, both President Obama and Mitt Romney were in the swing state of Ohio campaigning. At one Romney event near Cleveland, a group of Obama supporters gathered to voice their dislike for Romney.

One apparent Obama supporter was caught on video seemingly giving a very clear explanation of why she is voting for the president and why she does not like Mitt Romney.
The passionate explanation for the former involves Obama giving free phones.

In case you did not hear that clearly, we will transcribe it as best we can. “Everybody in Cleveland, low minorities, got Obama phone. Keep Obama in president, you know. He gave us a phone, he gonna do more.” The person shooting the video asks, How did he give you a phone? To which the woman replies: “You sign up! If you on food stamps, you on social security, you got low income, you disability…” The video includes a cut at that point and picks up with the filmer asking “What’s wrong with Romney?” Without blinking, the passionate Obama supporter says: “Romney, he sucks! 
Bad.”

Saving America - or salvaging what remains of the nation - means confronting Black dysfunction. It means pointing out why majority Black cities have failed and no longer making excuses for the collapse of Detroit, Birmingham, and Gary.

But of course you are racist for daring to notice. The 47 percent is largely - almost exclusively - non-white; the 53 percent is largely white. It is the latter group that goes to extreme measures to promote the few non-white members of their club to the status of "leader" or "mouthpiece" in a pathetic bid to garner support from the former group.

No more.

This is the face of the 47 percent.

This is the face of what "The Day the EBT Runs Out" will look like.

It's not about money... it's about sending a message: $228 Million to HBCUs

Say you have $228 million. What would you do with it?

Set it on fire to prove a point as the Joker did in the 2008 movie The Dark Knight? Or would you give it to historically black college and universities (HBCUs)?

What will $228 million to fix the unfixable? 

Is there a difference?

Why not roll the ugliness [Obama White House awards HBCUs, but how will the money be managed?, The Grio, by David Love, 9-20-2012]: 

The Department of Education recently announced it is providing $228 million in grants to 97 historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in 19 states. The funds will be used for campus expansion, counseling programs, science equipment and faculty training.

“HBCUs have made enduring, even staggering contributions to American life despite the steep financial challenges many have faced,” said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “The grants will help these important institutions continue to provide their students with the quality education they need to compete in the global economy.”

The announcement is welcome news for financially challenged institutions who, like the black community as a whole, have been hurting during the U.S. economic downturn.  In addition, the grants will ease the concerns of critics who believe President Obama has not done enough to help the black community, his most ardent supporters.

Nevertheless, with the collapse of Morris Brown College— due to financial mismanagement, corruption, financial aid theft and foreclosure—and the overall precarious fiscal state of HBCUs, some are wondering if these schools can be trusted to properly manage their finances.

Among the historically black institutions facing economic woes are Bethune-Cookman University and Florida Memorial University. Money troubles have translated into accreditation issues and warnings forFisk University, Tennessee State, Bennett College, Tugaloo College, Saint Paul’s College, Southern University, Virginia Union University, Grambling State University and others. Loss of accreditation affects a university’s reputation, fundraising and access to financial aid— which is crucial to the well-being of HBCUs.

In addition to Morris Brown, Alabama A&M University and Florida A&M have faced financial accountability problems, including financial aid theft.

Although the 105 HBCUs account for 3 percent of all U.S. colleges, they enroll 12 percent of black college students, produce 23 percent of all black college graduates, 40 percent of the nation’s black science graduates, and 60 percent of blacks holding engineering degrees.  Further, these institutions are responsible for generating 50 percent of all African-American professionals and public school teachers, 75 percent of African-American Ph.Ds, 80 percent of black federal judges, and 85 percent of all African-American doctors.

Leadership in the HBCUs is at a crossroads, with vacancies for the position of president open at 16 colleges.  According to John S. Wilson, executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the abnormally high vacancies are part of a problem that has been simmering for years, with an uphill battle in attracting quality leaders, but the immediate issue is the state of the economy.

No, there is no difference. If you set the $228 million on fire, at least you'd be able to discern what happened to it (it would be burned and you'd be fighting inflation!). Instead, with a gift of $228 million you are working to artificially prop up a segment of the educational industry - HBCU - that the invisible hand of the free market is pimp slapping for its inefficiencies.

Though Chicago State University is not considered an HBCU, nearly 90 percent of the 7,000 undergraduates are Black. The same problems of accounting errors and lack of institutional control, unearthed during an audit of the school, clearly indicate that the university is deserving of both the "HBCU" title and for receiving a significant portion of the $228 million. [Audit: Chicago State University a financial messMore than 40 problems reported, including failure to send bills to students, Chicago Tribune, by Jodi Cohen, 4-13-2011]:

 But the scathing audit portrays the 7,000-student university as a financial mess, with federal grants misspent, lax control over contracts and misuse of purchasing cards. The review revealed 41 problems, up from 13 the prior year. The problems ranged from paying vendors above contracted amounts to allowing an elementary education student to graduate despite not completing a course in teaching physical education, a state requirement.

Not that big of deal, considering that Morgan State (with a graduation rate of 34 percent) was bestowed a $95.8 million grant from NASA in 20011 -- the future of our space program in the hands of recruiting future NASA employees from a school whose admission standards are as follows:

 Admission Requirements  

 Morgan State University Office of Undergraduate Admission and Recruitment  Admission Requirements  

 First Time Freshmen   

• 2.0 Grade Point Average (GPA), and  

• 850 SAT (Combined critical reading and math), or  

• 17 ACT (Composite Score)

Yeah, burning the money makes more sense than giving it to HBCUs as grants

Or we could just let the findings on graduation rates at HBCUs published in the Journal of Black's in Higher Education do the talking for us:

The highest Black student graduation rate at the HBCUs is at Spelman College in Atlanta. There, 79 percent of entering students graduate from Spelman within six years. This rate is higher than the Black student graduation rate at many of the nation’s highest-ranked colleges and universities. The Black student graduation at Spelman College is 15 percentage points higher than at any other HBCU in our survey.

The Black student graduation rate at Howard University is 64 percent. This ranks Howard second among the HBCUs in our survey. Morehouse College in Atlanta ranks third with a Black student graduation rate of 61 percent.

The only other HBCU in our survey with a Black student graduation rate of more than 50 percent is Hampton University in Virginia. There, 54 percent of entering Black students earn a degree at Hampton within six years.

At nearly half the HBCUs in our survey, the Black student graduation rate is 33 percent or lower. At these institutions, less than one third of all entering African American students earned a bachelor’s degree within six years. There are six HBCUs in our survey where less than one in five entering Black students earn a bachelor’s degree within six years.

Yes, burning the money makes much, much more sense. But then again, we do live in Black-Run America (BRA) where there are no consequences for being Black. Only rewards.

Eaters of the Dead

PK NOTE: Opiate of America: College Football in Black and White is available now for the Kindle. Pick up a copy. Also, if you can (stressing anonymity), consider leaving a review at the Amazon page for Escape from Detroit: The Collapse of America's Black Metropolis. With a planned series of books that look at the failures of America's cities, it's important to keep getting reviews (Amazon is the biggest driver of books now). I don't stress this enough, but thanks so much to all readers of SBPDL.

The following story could be plucked from the nightly newscast or metropolitan paper of a growing number of major (and increasingly minor) American cities, but you shouldn't be surprised that Birmingham - the unofficial hometown of A&E The First 48 - provides yet another lesson in why patterns of residential segregation remain so prominent throughout the nation [More than 100 people gather for vigil for slain Birmingham teen, Birmingham News, by Jeremy Gray, 9-24-2012]:

 They held candles over their heads, shared memories and shrieked in grief over the death of Devondae Jones, the 18-year-old man gunned down Sept. 19.  

About 100 of Jones' friends and family members gathered for a vigil tonight in the Bush Middle School parking lot, a short distance from where Jones was shot. 

Jones had trouble in his young life, including spending years in foster care, but stayed positive, his grandmother Ora Ranking said. Ranking said Jones had only come into her life a few years earlier. 

The family doesn't have the money for a funeral and desperately wants to know who killed Jones and why. 

"No one knows. If they do know, they ain't talking," Ranking said. Jones' stepfather, Calvin Jones, said the young man was respectful. 

"He gave me the chance to be a father," he said. "He didn't do anything bad enough for someone to take him from us." As young men spoke of Jones, one hinted at wanting retaliation. 

"We lost one and we ain' t going to be satisfied until we get one," he said. Wanda Erskine, an anti-violence activist, denounced the comment. Her son, George Powell, was shot to death in 2006. That case was never solved. 

"We are here for peace, not more violence," Erskine said. "Something has got to change. Our babies are going to the cemetery way too soon."

The quotes from this story have littered the papers throughout the nation; similar vigils have been held where incredulous news reporters ask the same questions of why violence plagues these monolithic communities, a reminder of The Detroit Corollary to Robert Putnam's theory of homogeneity, diversity and social capital/trust; and the exact same reticence by the community at-large to refrain from snitching on the people who make their community unsafe, because of a deep-seated loyalty to protecting ones-own.

Birmingham? Gary? Atlanta? Memphis? Newark? Philadelphia? Camden? Kansas City? St. Louis? Washington D.C.? Baltimore? Chicago? Dallas? New Orleans? Houston?

Shed the attribution to the Birmingham News and this story could effortlessly appear in the papers of the aforementioned cities, a naked admission of why Negro Fatigue is growing rapidly in America.

Though it should be stated that with a name like "Devondae" only three possible outcomes for his life path were: highly-sought after recruit for basketball or football; jail; or dead before 25.

An article that appeared in the Birmingham News back in 2007 reads like a peek into the life of your average resident of 2012 Chicago. The southside of Chicago, which has been described as a war zone.

Well... worse than a war zone. Here's that article [Life in West End-Bullets mark epicenter of city's violent crime, by Carol Robinson, 8-5-2007]:

The playground for Stevin Gardner’s chil- dren lies between a burgundy Chrysler and a red Toyota, a patch of ragged asphalt about 15 to 20 feet square. It holds a bright yellow toy car, a Fisher Price seesaw and a plastic slide that slopes down to a backed-up sewer grate that spawns mosquitoes and flies. 

But that’s not the worst part. That comes when gunfire interrupts child’s play. “They know to run,” Gardner said of his kids, ages 9 and 5. 

“They know to stay close to the wall because, around here, you’re run- ning for your life.” Like many at his apartment complex in the 1200 block of Tuscaloosa Avenue in Birmingham’s West End, Gardner said the echo of gunshots and the threat of violence are commonplace. 

“It’s war, baby. It’s Iraq. It’s Beirut,” Gard- ner said. “There ain’t no fear; that’s life.” Gardner’s mother, 59-year-old Deborah Gard- ner, perhaps says it best: “You just get used to it, like living next to train tracks.” 

Though violence is down in Birmingham, it’s far from gone. Despite across-the-board decreases in crime last year, the city remained among the roughest cities in America — ranked fourth in the nation in murders, and 22nd in vio- lent crimes, according to the FBI. 

So far this year, 48 people have been mur- dered. Through May, 548 people were assaulted; 96 women reported being raped; and at least 9,362 others were victimized through robberies and thefts. And those are just the actual victims. The fall- out from crime stretches beyond those named on police incident reports, coroner’s logs and stat sheets.

West End is virtually an all-Black hamlet in Birmingham, about as close to being an anti-Shire as possible (with apologies to Tolkien). Each vigil held in Birmingham; each vigil held in Chicago; each vigil held across America where the Black community bemoans the "senseless violence" plaguing their communities, while members of that community remain silent on who the culprit is out of respect to the "no snitching" policy governing life there; every member of the Black community who demands "change" to ward off the Black dysfunction violence that represents the sole reason white flight happens; all of this is just another reminder of why Negro Fatigue spreads.

Don't You Know Slaves Built America?

Well, 97 % of National Register of Historic Places in America are for White Males....

Wait, I thought it was Black people who built America while white people sat around drinking. Have you heard Black people say, "It it wasn't for us, there'd be no America?" Or, "Don't you know that slaves built America?" ('Black people built America' returns 54.9 million hits on Google.)

The answer to those questions is a simple statement: "Black people didn't build America, but they are lending a helping hand in its destruction."

How about some real history (and no, ancient aliens didn't help build America either): The Men Who Built America, courtesy of the History Channel:

John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford and J.P. Morgan rose from obscurity and in the process built modern America. Their names hang on street signs, are etched into buildings and are a part of the fabric of history. These men created the American Dream and were the engine of capitalism as they transformed everything they touched in building the oil, rail, steel, shipping, automobile and finance industries. Their paths crossed repeatedly as they elected presidents, set economic policies and influenced major events of the 50 most formative years this country has ever known. From the Civil War to the Great Depression and World War I, they led the way.

Using state of the art computer generated imagery that incorporates 12 million historical negatives, many made available for the first time by the Library of Congress, this series will bring back to life the world they knew and the one they created. The event series will show how these men took a failed experiment in democracy and created the greatest superpower the world has ever seen. We see how their historic achievements came to create the America of today.

 Considering that street signs in America are increasingly being replaced with some fellow named Martin Luther King, it's hard to believe a series such as this is being funded today.

 What do you think?

Now, if we are willing to open the floor for debate on who killed Detroit and Birmingham... that would be primarily the descendants of slaves.

Griggs vs. Duke Power Corporation

Black-Run America: We are all on an escalator to nowhere (courtesy of The Simpsons)

How about a quick change of pace? How about a discussion of Griggs vs. Duke Power Corporation, one of the landmark US Supreme Court cases that joins the 1948 Shelley v Kraemer decision as "back-breaking" to the overall health of the nation:

In 1971, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling in Griggs v. Duke Power, which transformed our nation’s work places.  As a result of LDF’s advocacy, the Supreme Court embraced a powerful legal tool – now known as the “disparate impact” framework – that has proved essential in the fight to eradicate arbitrary and artificial barriers to equal employment opportunity for all individuals, regardless of their race. 
 
In Griggs, LDF represented a group of thirteen African-American employees who worked at the Duke Power Company’s Dan River Steam Station, a power-generating facility located in Draper, North Carolina.  Duke Power had a long history of segregating employees by race.  At the Steam Station, the best jobs were reserved for whites.  African-Americans were relegated to the labor department, where the highest-paid worker earned less than the lowest-paid employee in the other four departments where only whites worked. 

Shortly after Congress passed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made it illegal for employers to discriminate on the basis of race, Duke Power stopped expressly restricting African-Americans to the labor department and announced new standards for hiring, promotion, and transfers.  In order to work in positions outside of the labor department, Duke Power now required a high school diploma or scores on standardized IQ tests equal to those of the average high school graduate.  These new requirements were not an improvement, however.  They effectively perpetuated the discriminatory policies that Duke Power had utilized prior to the enactment of Title VII.  Although the testing and diploma criteria disqualified African-Americans at a substantially higher rate than whites, Duke Power never established that they successfully measured ability to do the jobs in question.  Indeed, the white employees hired before the requirements were imposed performed entirely satisfactorily. 
In December 1970, Jack Greenberg, who succeeded Thurgood Marshall as President and Director-Counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), presented argument in the Supreme Court on behalf of the African-American employees.  Another critical member of the litigation team was Julius Chambers, who later became LDF’s third Director-Counsel.

In a groundbreaking decision, the Supreme Court ruled against Duke Power.  It held that Title VII “proscribes not only overt discrimination but also practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation.”  The Court emphasized that Title VII in no way prohibits testing or diploma requirements for hiring or promotions.  Indeed, when they are properly developed and used, tests and other employment criteria can be effective, efficient means for employers to evaluate applicants.  But as the Court explained in Griggs, “What Congress has commanded is that any tests used must measure the person for the job and not the person in the abstract.”  The Court therefore held that when an employment practice operates to exclude African-Americans or other racial minorities, that practice is prohibited unless the employer can show that it fulfills a genuine business need and is a valid measure of an applicant’s ability to learn or perform the job in question.  Duke Power’s practices failed to meet these standards.

Long-time member of the SBPDL commenting community, Mr. Rational, left a thought-provoking response to a prior post that deserves re-posting here:

Mr. Rational said...

Zenster:  Do you think that maybe, just maybe, the modern working world has made it imperative to have that scrap of parchment in order to get a job when just a few decades ago a high school diploma could get you in the door at many high technology companies?

Why is that? Could it have something to do with Corporatism's control over what was once a relatively Capitalist free-market economy?

Hanlon's Razor applies to this one.  For a long time, college tuition was inexpensive and students often worked their way through a 4-year degree, graduating debt-free.  People could get good jobs without a degree, so the universities had little pricing power.

What changed that was the 1964 CRA and Griggs vs. Duke Power Corporation, which eliminated most employment qualification tests on the basis of "disparate impact".  Academic degrees could still be used without running afoul of Griggs, so employers began requiring them in order to weed out the stupid and feckless.  This also added a lot of demand for university degrees, and the universities got pricing power.  They used it; who wouldn't?

Basically, if we get rid of Title VII of the 1964 CRA and its successors, we eliminate "disparate impact" and the whole thing goes away essentially overnight.  Companies will lay off their diversity consultants and EEO compliance officers, and a huge chunk of BRA just collapses.

Oh, and Tim Wise is suddenly unemployable.

Is this the case that we should start researching? Is this a cause worthy of a legal defense fund that dares speak for the rights of the Historic American Majority (HAM) to take up in the courts?

Heartiste (The Artist Formerly Known as Roissy), back in early January 2012, published "How to Destroy the Education Racket":

Academia. What a scam.

In 1971, the Supreme Court ruled in Griggs v. Duke Power Co., in the first and most famous of the disparate impact theory cases, that the use of broad-based aptitude tests in hiring practices was a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Around 1978, college tuition costs began to skyrocket, and haven’t let up since.

Coincidence? I think not.

The answer to busting the hyperinflationary tuition cost curve is to overturn the Griggs ruling. Employers, deprived of the opportunity to directly screen job applicants, have turned to the next available proxy tool of judgment: college degrees. Naturally, this initially caused the value of a college degree to rise, a stampede of mediocrities rushed into the hallowed halls, and then the college degree was gutted of its worth as employers began to realize how many useless grads academia was churning out. In the fallout, the game was ratcheted up a rung, tuition costs blew up because academia now had monopoly power over employer screening (think of academia as an entrenched and enriched middleman), and the master’s degree has become worth what the bachelor’s was in the past. And the bachelor’s degree? Well, say hello to communications and women’s studies majors.

Faculty and university admin, of course, hate the thought of Griggs being overturned, and disparate impact cases in general going the way of the dodo. Who could blame them? They know that “disparate impact” is code for “butters my bread”.

 Let's open the floor to the SBPDL Community to discuss.

"We Do Own This Game": How the University of Miami Football Team Handicapped White Athletes

PK Note: On September 25, Ray Glier's book How the SEC Became Goliath: The Making of College Football's Most Dominant Conference (published by Howard Books, an imprint of Simon and Schuster) is released. By a strange coincidence, so does Opiate of America: College Football in Black and White. Before reading today's post, read this article from last year -- White Men Can Run.

Ed McCaffrey: What's a white guy doing out there?

In trying to figure out when the shift from majority white teams to majority Black teams happened in college football, I picked up Bruce Feldman's book 'Cane Mutiny: How the Miami Hurricanes Overturned the Football Establishment. Detailing the recruitment of primarily inner-city Black athletes from Broward and Miami Dade County in the 1980s, and the unleashing of these individuals from social-economically disadvantaged backgrounds (and the culture they came from--- an extension of Blackness) on the nation, we learn that it would be white society that would be forced to adapt - acclimate - to the manner of style of these athletes. On p.118 - 119 of 'Cane Mutiny, Feldman discusses the braggadocio of boxer Muhammad Ali and the repercussions of the unleashing the modern Black athlete:

The threats of Ali's psychological ploys and his flamboyance, though, were never so tightly intertwined again. All the lines were blurred. Still the spirit had already spilled out of the bottle. The dancing and the styling that often get derided as showboating today have a larger meaning, some say. That it is about freedom and control. Ali's style was axiomatic for the black athlete - especially coming from a heritage where as slaves they were allowed no identity. And ever after slavery was abolished blacks were still relegated to second-class status right up to the Ali era. This, the way "they" perform, is a by-product of that, said USC professor Todd Boyd, author of Out of Bounds: Sports, Media and the Politics of Identity.

"Ali was saying, 'I'm not just gonna beat. I'm gonna humiliate you,' and that come back to sports being much more than just sports for the black athlete, Boyd said, "because it's not just about winning, it's about winning with style. People always get this twisted, but it's real important for black athletes to be stylish so they can define themselves. It's like telling your opponent that, for instance, you are superior, and for a people who come from an environment where they don't have much to cling to or don't have things that they can call their own, this is something you completely control. That's huge."

For a generation that identity often has been tied into basketball, aka "the city game," which has been made a staple of the hip-hop world, in large part due to its playground hoops artistry and showmanship, but in reality, football operates on another level. As Luther Campbell, the notorious Miami-based rapper of 2 Live Crew fame, put it, football, because of its physical nature, digs even deeper into man's psyche. "Football showed we could rise above the slave mentality, the segregation, and be who we want to be," he said. "This game is our therapy. We can come out to the field and leave all our problems behind. It's therapeutic. While we're out here, we don't care about they fuck us over and everything. Football is all we got, man. They can't take this shit from us. We do own this game. I mean, y'all can take whatever the fuck you want to take from us - our land, our housing, our jobs, everything, man. But we got our pride and we got our dignity. We might not have ever had any leader to lead us to the promised land, but at least we got our football, and y'all aren't gonna take that from us. 

Down here in Miami, football is like a rite of passage. It's even more so like that now because we have a reputation to uphold as the best football players. It's mandatory that we hold that down."

The success of Black athletes at Miami and other schools convinced other schools to drop all pretenses of recruiting white athletes (since Black athletes were obviously superior, right Barry Switzer?); some schools dropped their traditions and began to completely cater to Black athletes through the assimilation of Black culture in the style of uniform the team wore [How Does Oregon Keep Winning? Is it the Uniform?, Michael Kruse, Grantland, 8-30-2011]; most schools just completely dropped the recruitment of white athletes, with the belief that fielding a team of all-Black athletes gave you a competitive advantage over those with "slow white players."

University of Miami (1990 Cotton Bowl): Now that's what athletes look like!

Jeff Pearlman, the same writer who would throw Atlanta Braves pitcher John Rocker under the bus in a 1999 Sports Illustrated article, wrote Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty. Jimmy Johnson coached at the University of Miami before he went to the NFL's Dallas Cowboys, and Pearlman wrote on p. 34-35:

The  Hurricanes of 1985 were brash, bold, and dominant. They went 9-1 through the first ten games and would compete the regular season with a November 30 home matchup against Notre Dame.

… the Hurricanes humiliated their once-proud visitors their once-proud visitors, 58-7. The nationally televised gamed was a coming-out party for the “new” Hurricanes. Miami’s taunted and strutted, trash-talked and end-zone danced.

From that day forward, the Miami Hurricanes were no longer another collegiate football team. They were thugs. Hoodlums. In an era when many universities still instructed their coaches to recruit black players but not that many black players, [Miami head coach Jimmy] Johnson prowled the state of Florida seeking out great athletes, race be damned. “Jimmy got us,” said Brett Perriman, an African-American and former Hurricane receiver. “He understood what it takes to win.”

As long as his players attended classes, showed up on time to practice and games, and dominated the opposition, he could not care less how they carried themselves. At, say, Notre Dame or UCLA or Florida State, black players were asked to conform to a white society. At Miami, white society would conform to the players.

  White society would be forced to acclimate to the underclass Black culture. The results haven't been pretty.

The braggadocios style of athleticism displayed by Black athletes made the straight-laced white athletes look square in comparison. Just ask record-setting Duke University white wide receiver Conner Vernon, who grew up a huge Hurricanes fan [Miami native Conner Vernon took his talents to Durham
Vernon, never on his beloved Miami Hurricanes’ radar, grew into a record-breaking receiver at Duke, Charlotte Observer, 8-27-2012]:

“I was a die-hard Canes fan,” Vernon said. “Going to the Orange Bowl all the time, before they moved to Sun Life Stadium, it was a lot of fun. A lot of good memories in that stadium, saw a lot of football games in that stadium.” 

Shane Vernon, who received offers from FCS or Division II schools, has another theory.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/08/27/3483168/miami-native-vernon-took-his-talents.html#storylink=cpy

“I knew the stereotypes and stigmas that were in football,” he said. “I got to learn it the hard way. It’s an uphill battle, and you have this white boy stigma. It’s always there, no matter how good you are, what you do, it will always be there, so you’ve just got to stand out that much more.”

Vernon stood out during spring football before his senior year. He was named the sleeper of the Under Armour/Scout combine after he ran a 4.41-second 40-yard dash.

Vr
Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/08/27/3483168/miami-native-vernon-took-his-talents.html#storylink=cpy

 Vernon lacked the "swagger" or "style" -- the Blackness -- mandatory for Rivals or Scout.com to heap lavish (if not homoerotic) praise upon his attributes as a high school college prospect. But he's not the only white athlete to be put in this same scenario.

New England Patriots white wide receiver Wes Welker has revolutionized the "slot" receiver position in the NFL. He received one scholarship offer from Texas Tech (where another NFL white receiver, St. Louis Rams Danny Amendola also excelled) and has become such a sensation that virtually every white receiver is compared to him. Including Cole Beasley, a Southern Methodist University receiver who went undrafted in 2012's NFL draft and is competing for a roster spot with the Dallas Cowboys:

Cole Beasley played it cool when asked about the spectacular catch he made over cornerback Teddy Williams on a deep ball Thursday.

“That’s just what you have to do in this league,” Beasley said. “(Kyle) Orton put it on the money. That’s all I can say about that one.”

We’ll say a little bit more.

It was the kind of catch that indicates that Beasley, an itty-bitty undrafted receiver out of SMU, might be more than just the stereotypical, short, white slot guy. He lined up outside, got open deep against a former NCAA sprint champion and made a twisting, leaping grab of a pass that was thrown above his outside shoulder.

One current NCAA white receiver, junior Michael Bennett of the University of Georgia, has come to embrace the "white receiver stereotype," using the lack of interest he received from college recruits as motivation to succeed [Bennett breaking out: Georgia receiver turns heads with long TD catch,David Paschall,Thursday, September 20, 2012, Chattanooga Times Free Press]:

Georgia's passing game is clicking so well these days that Michael Bennett may have shed his label as a possession receiver.

Bennett became the third different 100-yard receiver for the Bulldogs in as many weeks last Saturday when he hauled in four Aaron Murray passes for 110 yards in a 56-20 rout of Florida Atlantic. The most meaningful was a 67-yard touchdown late in the half that blew the game open, and it was the longest reception of Bennett's college career by 35 yards.

"I'm a white guy, but you've got to show them different," a smiling Bennett said this week after adding "deep threat" to his repertoire.

The 6-foot-3, 204-pound redshirt sophomore from the Atlanta suburb of Alpharetta is Georgia's leading receiver with 17 catches for 265 yards and two touchdowns. Seniors Tavarres King and Marlon Brown are next in line, with King tallying 211 yards on 10 receptions and Brown amassing 150 yards on 11 catches.

Kris Durham put me under his wing when he was here, and that was really cool," Bennett said. "A white guy teaching another white guy how to play receiver in the SEC. He showed me how to carry myself, so I owe a lot to Kris and to A.J., who is a down-to-earth guy. He was showing me by his actions on the field every day."
Bennett admits arriving at Georgia with a chip on his shoulder. He was very productive as a redshirt freshman, starting four games a year ago and compiling 32 catches for 320 yards and five touchdowns.

Yet he averaged only 10 yards a catch, hence the possession receiver tag that existed until last weekend.

"He hates that label, because he's a kid who can move," Murray said. "You saw it the other night when he split the safety and the corner and took it for 70. Their DBs had speed, but he separated and showed what he had."

 Kris Durham, Bennett's white receiver mentor at UGA, was drafted by the Seattle Seahwawks in 2011 (though he was cut in 2012). Both players lack the "swagger" that Miami's players have. ESPN's David Ching dared  write an article with the title "Notebook: Bennett proving he belongs"; as if to say that Bennett being a white wide receiver was an automatic liability that disqualified him from being taken seriously on the football field:

Michael Bennett knows there is something that separates him from other players at his position. He jokes about it all the time.

The Georgia sophomore realizes that as a Caucasian wide receiver at a big-time college football program, he is like a living, breathing four-leaf clover -- extremely rare -- but he has also been a good-luck charm for the Bulldogs thus far.

Bennett leads the Bulldogs with 265 receiving yards and, among the SEC’s top 15 players in receiving yards per game -- he ranks fifth with 88.3 -- he is the only one who is not African-American.

“I’ve proved myself throughout my whole life, being a white guy playing a black man’s position. It’s just the nature of how it is,” Bennett said with a grin. “It’s not racist or anything, it’s just the way it is. I feel like I’ve always had a chip on my shoulder in high school and then coming here. No one’s really respected me. I remember going in 1-on-1s and no one wanted to go against me because they didn’t want to get burned by a white guy.”

Bennett regularly has fun with the subject of race, frequently joking that his coaches require him to block downfield for the other receivers because he’s white or that he learned how to function as a token white receiver in the SEC from Kris Durham, who was a senior at Georgia during Bennett’s first season in the program.

Bennett is not exaggerating, however, about players testing him or underestimating him because of his race, senior receiver Tavarres King said. Bennett said opponents make racial comments to him “all the time” and King said some teammates even gave him a rude welcome after he arrived at Georgia.

“When he first got here, our DBs just kept trying him all the time, hitting him,” King said. “Not unnecessary, but they wouldn’t hit me like that. If I had the ball going down the sideline, they wouldn’t just tee off on me, but they’d do him like that. We kind of made a joke out of it, like, ‘Yeah Bennett, it’s because you’re white.’ He just embraced it. He’s been funny with it.”

It helps that Bennett is having the last laugh. Following his career-best 110 receiving yards last weekend against Florida Atlantic, teammates and opponents alike realize that regardless of race, Bennett is a legitimate weapon in the passing game. Maybe even a good enough weapon to advance beyond the college game, as Durham did.

Reminded that the list of white impact receivers in the NFL is also short, King still said Bennett might one day join the likes of New England’s Wes Welker and Green Bay’s Jordy Nelson in the pros.

Have you ever read an article where a Black PhD. candidate in astrophysics is lauded for proving that he belongs? No, of course not.

Chris Doering, a walk-on at Florida: ran a 4.9 40 in high school

What about another SEC receiver, the current all-time leader in touchdown receptions at the University of Florida Chris Doering? A walk-on to the Gator team, Doering was the star receiver for Florida from 1992-1995, catching 31 touchdowns on 149 receptions (2,107 yards). Not bad for a white receiver that received no scholarships offers coming out of college ['The Ultimate Success Story' : That's What Florida Coach Steve Spurrier Calls Chris Doering's Journey From Walk-On to Star Receiver, Los Angeles Times, by Chris Dufresne, 12-31-1995]:

Getting to Florida consumed Doering, taking "total time, thought and effort."
He overcame more rejection than a 17-year-old should: the Gator door that snapped shut in his face, the recruiting calls that never came, the graduate assistant who laughed when Doering's high school coach dropped off a highlight film.

How many times can a kid cry into his pillow?

There was a spite-filled tryout with hated rival Florida State--the chance to stick it back in Florida's face--before Doering came to his senses at a Florida-Florida State baseball game in Gainesville.

"Florida State was doing that little [tomahawk] chop thing," Doering said, "and I realized that was something I had grown up hating and something I really didn't want to be a part of."

Doering was born a Gator on May 19, 1973. He was raised by Gator graduates, who spoon-fed him Gator lore.

As if by osmosis, at an early age, he even started to resemble a former Gator, receiver Cris Collinsworth.

"I used to brag about it when I was younger," Doering said.

Florida Coach Steve Spurrier calls Doering the "ultimate college football success story," but it wasn't as though Spurrier ever paid a recruiting visit.

Considered too slow, too skinny, and not of Florida ilk, Doering has persevered to become one of the Gators' all-time great receivers.

This season, he has caught 70 passes for 1,045 and 17 touchdowns. His 149 career receptions are the fourth most in Florida history, 29 more than Collinsworth totaled in the late '70s.

Doering's 31 touchdown receptions are a Southeastern Conference record.
"If I was any good at all, I'd probably have 60," Doering joked recently.

While he was the self-proclaimed "skinny white dude" at Gainesville's P.K. Yonge High School, Doering made all-state as a senior, good enough credentials, he thought, to warrant consideration from his beloved Florida.

"I didn't consider myself a longshot," Doering said. "I thought I had the ability to play at a major Division I school, but a lot of other coaches didn't see it the same way."
The recruiting season came and went, and Doering was left standing at the mailbox.

"The low point in my recruitment was the entire recruitment," he said. "It was something I should have known. I wasn't getting many calls or letters. I kept thinking sooner or later the Gators would come through and sign me late, but that didn't happen. It was something I should have seen coming, but I really didn't allow myself to see it coming."

Doering, 6 feet 4, was painfully thin and his 40-yard time of 4.9 had him rubber-stamped for Division III.

But he never gave up hope of playing at Florida.

 Doering, a self-professed "slow white guy" who had a 4.9 40-yard time in high school, received no scholarship offers and was a walk-on to the Gator team goes on to being one of the most productive receivers in Florida history, at a time when Steve Spurrier's 'fun and gun' was revolutionizing the passing game in college game.

What about a white guy who actually had some speed?

Bill Flowers, played football at the University of Mississippi in the early part of the 2000s. A high school standout at receiver, he was immediately labeled a "possession" receiver at Ole Miss, a synonom almost exclusively mandated for white receivers [Bill Flowers Builds on Family Legacy, BP Sports, 9-3-2004]

It's OK if you don't give Bill Flowers a second look. Opposing cornerbacks don't. Preseason football publications don't. Shoot, even his classmates don't.

Well, they don't until he makes a clutch one-handed snag, or roll is called and fellow students whip their heads toward the 6-foot-1, 193-pound Ron Howard impersonator and think, or even say, "You don't look like the Bill Flowers on the football field."

It's just further proof that it's not as easy as it looks to cover Bill Flowers, on or off the field.

Add to all that the possession receiver label he's been unfairly stuck with, and it would seem Flowers has a lot to prove this senior season. But he doesn't. He's already proven to himself what and who he is, and that's all he cares about.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/08/27/3483168/miami-native-vernon-took-his-talents.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/08/27/3483168/miami-native-vernon-took-his-talents.html#storylink=cpy

You see, we've been conditioned to view white athletes as automatically slower, their presence on the football an obvious handicap to the team that dares suit them up and put them on the field. Only vociferous, boisterous, heavily-tattooed Black athletes fit the mold of a modern athlete. Just ask former NFL receiver (and a walk-on in college, just like Green Bay Packer Jordy Nelson) Patrick Jeffers. He put a 1,000+ yard receiving season in 1999, but his career was short by injuries afterward. It almost never happened because of the legacy of Black athletes at The U [New Cowboys Receiver Makes Big Impression, AP, 12-4-1998]

Jeffers already has the tag of looking like former Denver teammate Ed McCaffrey.

"All tall white guys get thrown in that same category," Jeffers joked. "I have some size and I'm a little faster than most people probably think. As long as defenders think I'm slow, maybe I can run by a few of them."

Michael Bennett, UGA white wide receiver: proving that he belongs in the Black SEC, so says ESPN

He added he was no speed burner.

"I kept thinking he (Hitchcock) was going to catch me," said Jeffers, who was timed at 4.53 seconds in the 40 at the NFL combine.

Jeffers was a walk-on in college at the University of Virginia and caught 108 passes for 1,785 yards and 15 touchdowns. He grew up in Fort Worth as a big Dallas fan.

 4.53 is impressive speed and a solid time for a productive NFL receiver. Just ask Jerry Rice. And whose this "Ed McCaffrey" fellow that Jeffers was compared to? [White Lightning;With no pomp and precious little padding, the Broncos' deceptively fast Ed McCaffrey has become the NFL's unlikeliest star wide receiver, Sports Illustrated, 11-30-1998]:

He's a goofy-looking white guy in a world of hip-hop flash, and that makes Ed McCaffrey one heck of a target. On Sundays the Denver Broncos' wideout subjects his nearly padless body to continuous punishment. On Mondays he reads rip jobs in the press about his supposed lack of athletic ability. But nothing is as daunting to him as the first practice day after he has had his shock of strawlike brown hair trimmed, a task the man who ranks third in the AFC in receiving yards entrusts to Supercuts. "I have a strong relationship with the people there," McCaffrey says. "They've tried out a lot of techniques on me." Not only is McCaffrey an affable lab rat; he often shows up at the Broncos' facility looking like one. On a recent Wednesday his newly trimmed, uncombed 'do caused a locker room uproar. 

"What'd you tell 'em, 'Screw my s— up'?" John Elway intoned. 

 "Nice bowl," backup quarterback Bubby Brister chimed in over the laughter. "Hope they didn't charge you for that."  No prominent NFL player has munched as much humble pie as McCaffrey. During his eight-year career he has been kicked off a team bus for impersonating a player, ordered to pick up towels by a locker room janitor and laughed out of a golf tournament filled with NFL players after he shot a sterling 155. But if you really want to see embarrassment, check out the body language of a defensive back who has just watched the 6'5", 215-pound McCaffrey beat him for a big gain. "You'll see their heads slump to the ground every time he scores," says Rod Smith, the Broncos' other starting wideout.

It's the same look that NBA players gave Larry Bird as he rose to stardom in the early '80s: the I-can't-believe-I-just-got-burned-by-this-white-dude face. "That's just a big old ego thing, to be shamed because a guy like Ed beat up on you," says Shannon Sharpe, Denver's All-Pro tight end. "But there's reality and there's perception, and people are starting to notice Ed for the wrong reason: because he's a big white guy and not because he's an unbelievable player. He'll probably be the first white receiver to go to the Pro Bowl since Steve Largent. At some point the guy's got to get some credit."

The underlying assumption, of course, is that white guys—especially large, long-striding receivers such as McCaffrey—are slow. McCaffrey can handle immeasurable grief about his hair, unhip wardrobe and nervous neck twitches, but make a crack about his speed and he's more defensive than Calista Flockhart. It's a reaction provoked by years of jabs, including one by a Giants Weekly writer who said he'd "seen better moves by Ironside" and another mat appeared in a 1996 SI article suggesting that McCaffrey "should be an Amway distributor by now, he's so slow."
If you're doing an interview with McCaffrey, speed kills. "Are you going to rip Ed for being slow again, or do you plan on writing the truth for a change?" his wife, Lisa, asks as she bounces through the kitchen of their house a few miles south of the Broncos' facility. While giving constant chase to their two sons—Max, 4, and Christian, 2—Lisa gets off the best lines of the interview. Noting that her father, sprinter David Sime, graced SI's cover in 1956, Lisa riffs, "That's why Ed and I got together—so we could breed fast white guys."

Shortly before the '91 NFL draft, Ed says, he ran consecutive 4-38 40s that were timed by the San Diego Chargers. Though McCaffrey never was a full-time starter with the New York Giants, who took him in the third round of the draft, he led the team in receptions in his second year, with 49. His aw-shucks appearance also made him a primary target off the field. He was routinely denied access to the team bus by drivers who didn't believe he was a player. "Phil Simms and Lawrence Taylor would tell the driver they'd never seen me before and make me wait outside for five minutes," McCaffrey says.

Once at Giants training camp, McCaffrey was the last player in the locker room, and a janitor approached him and began screaming, "Pick up those damn towels!" When the shocked McCaffrey didn't respond, the janitor ordered him out of the room.

The "goofy looking white guy"... this is what we call 'conditioning' of the masses to believe that only one type of athlete is legitimate on the football field (or at certain positions, like receiver). And it ain't white guys... it's the type of athlete that Miami exclusively recruits, leaving athletes like Vernon on the outside of the program looking in. Back to McCaffrey [There's Been Nothing Trivial About Mccaffrey's Performance Two For The Show, Boston Globe, 1-25-1998]:

"People just notice that Ed is white," said Sharpe. "That's all they say -- `He's a white receiver and there aren't too many white receivers' -- and that's all they notice. They don't notice how good he is. Ed's a great receiver."

True, McCaffrey, a product of Allentown Central Catholic High, is a member of a rare breed in the NFL -- Wayne Chrebet, Don Beebe, Ricky Proehl, and McCaffrey are among the few white receivers in the league -- but Sharpe said only fools focus on the color of McCaffrey's skin, not his talent.

"Ed makes tough catches," said Sharpe. "And he catches everything; he has great hands."
McCaffrey said he doesn't look upon himself as a "white receiver."

"You might ask one person one thing and another person another thing and they might say two different things," McCaffrey said. "But to me, it doesn't make any difference. That's because I don't see things that way; I'm just down here playing with my teammates and my friends and trying to be the best football player I can be. Once you put on a uniform, it really doesn't matter a bit what color skin you have."

The few white receivers there are generally are stereotyped as "possession receivers," which are code words for being relatively slow. And relatively slow they are, since few have the speed to make the game-breaking long catch. Still, McCaffrey has a very important role in the Broncos' passing attack as they prepare to face the Green Bay Packers today in the Super Bowl.

Sound like the way Jordy Nelson was treated last year? Maybe Toby Gerhart or Peyton Hillis? At least those aforementioned white athletes get a chance to play in the Black man's NFL, most notably at positions dominated by Blacks with loads of swagger, unlike the 2001 Doak Walker Award winner Luke Staley. A white running back from Brigham Young, Staley never got a chance in the NFL. He almost never got the chance to play running back in college. [Pro Football Weekly: 2002 NFL draft and Scouting Combine Q&A with Brigham Young RB Luke Staley, 3-3-2001, Nolan Nawrocki]:

INDIANAPOLIS — Brigham Young RB Luke Staley declared himself eligible for the NFL draft after his junior season, when he rushed for 1,582 yards. His average of 143.8 rushing yards per game was the third-best in NCAA Division I. Injuries plagued his career at BYU, when he had more than nine surgeries on his ankles, knees and shoulders. The most recent injury was a broken fibula, which kept Staley out of the final three games of BYU’s 12-2 season. Staley answered questions about his health, his decision to leave BYU early and how he developed his remarkably sized calves.

Q: What do you bring to the table for NFL teams?

 A: I think I bring a little versatility. I think I can adjust to whatever the situation calls for. I think I can go with the flow of the game and be able to change paces.

 Q: There aren’t that many top-notch white running backs. Is that something you have dealt with throughout your career?

 A: Yeah, I think a big blow was when I came out of high school. Everybody wanted me for defense except for BYU. They are the only school who wanted me as a tailback. And of course, I’m going to jump on that. I committed to them the day after they offered me.

 Q: You were a running back all during your time before college. How frustrating was it that schools wanted you to play defense?

 A: For me, it wasn’t that frustrating because it has always been a childhood dream of mine to go to BYU. It was an easy decision once they offered me.

One school gave the white running back Luke Staley a chance. One.

Only one school gave him a chance to play offense. One. Despite putting up tremendous numbers in high school and then winning the top award for a college running back, Staley lacked the type of "natural swagger" Luther Campbell brags is solely-owned by Black athlete.

But it's not just white offensive players that are "blacked-out" from playing positions that we have been 'conditioned' to believe are only for superior Black athletes. Jemele Hill, the Black female columnist for ESPN now, once wrote for the lowly Detroit Free Press (if Black people are such great athletes, why can't they convert that dexterity into maintaining a city -- like 90 percent Black Detroit? Never mind...). There, she penned this article on Michigan State - a future NFL player - white safety Eric Smith [Spartans safety defies skeptics and stereotypes, 10-9-2003]:

 He had good speed and size. But there was just one problem with Eric Smith.

He was white.

An assistant coach at a Division II school in Ohio told Smith in high school that he didn't want a white player in the secondary. He wasn't the first college coach to doubt Smith, who had become accustomed to being called too slow, too small -- everything except too good.

"He said he'd rather take a black player than me," Smith said.

But it's interesting how life can work out. The guy who was too slow, too small and er, too white, is the starting strong safety for Michigan State -- the only Division I school that offered the 6-foot-1, 196-pound sophomore a scholarship.

In fact, Smith not only is a starter, he's a playmaker. Smith, who runs the 40 in 4.6, leads the team in tackles with 49 and was Big Ten player of the week following a 12-tackle, two-sack performance against Notre Dame. He also has seven pass-breakups, which is tied for the team lead, and his 59-yard interception return against Louisiana Tech is the longest by the secondary this season.

"People look at me and say, 'He's a white guy. He won't be able to play,' " Smith said. "I just like to go out there and prove them wrong." 

Eric Smith: a white safety at Michigan State (now in the NFL)

Can't get much more explicit then this about how college recruiters evaluate white athletes, as compared to those Black players who look like the University of Miami athletes.

And now, all of college football has assimilated to culture of these Black athletes, alumni and coaches fearful of appearing of 'racist' and losing the opportunity to recruit these individuals (or having their career ruined by an opposing coach who tells recruits and high school coaches of bigotry and discrimination -- especially if they play a white running back or white receiver!).

So white people who make in college football (and those precious few who make it to the NFL) succeed in spite of their debilitating whiteness; Black players succeed because, well, we have been conditioned to believe that in a match-up against a white athlete, the Black player will always be more athletic because of their Blackness.

This is the true legacy of what Feldman calls a 'Cane Mutiny.