Bryant Gumbel's Comments on HBO: Racist? - Page 2

If you mean physical effort, I believe a certain amount of that is required to keep the luge on the optimal course. Not to mention sharp reflexes. I'd say it takes some balls to risk smacking a wall at 80 mph.

I think this is more of a social issue than anything else.

Why aren't blacks represented well in the Winter Games? Because of the huge upfront investment required in such sports (luge, snowboarding and skiing aren't game's you can play on the cheap in your backyard) pretty much eliminates a large percentage of blacks right out of the gate as they are more often then not on the lower end of the economic scale. Why do you see alot of blacks in track, basketball, and baseball? Because these are relatively inexpensive games that can be played almost anywhere on Earth.

So I don't think it's a question of why there aren't many blacks in the Winter Games, but why aren't many blacks on the same economic scales as whites to be able to participate in them.

The Winter Olympics aren't really worth defending however I do believe if it were made up of mostly black athletes and someone white made these comments people of Devin's ilk would be up in arms.

As it is this is Bryant Gumbel (who practically is white as someone above noted) so give rats ass?

I'm pretty fucking open-minded when it comes to Olympic sports, but after watching curling I have to say that that's something a bunch of drunk Norwegians came up with one night after all the girls left their party.

Lifting fork to mouth takes effort, but I don't think eating is much of an athletic activity.

Do it in a chair moving a 60mph.

...while sitting in another man's lap.

You mean like eating while driving on the highway? Eating a Big Mac while driving 80+ MPH in a thousand pound vehicle while surrounded by other thousand pound vehicles going 80+ MPH isn't athletic, either.

Dangerous doesn't equal athletic.

Well after Gumbel said all of this he went back home to his white wife. If he thinks it's so racist why doesn't he do something about it instead of just bitching about it. I am sure he just said this for Shock Value. The Olympics are boreing.

Pssst. Canadians are North Americans. I think he meant that only people in this part of the continent are allowed.

But then again he is British.

the idea that these comments are racist towards white people specifically speaks more to the oversensitivity of offended whites than to gumbel's alleged racism. in a larger context, however, I think you can infer some racial bias in gumbel's remarks.

many athletes in different sports have been referred to as "the world's greatest" without complaint, even though pretty much no sport has enough participation around the world to say that, overall, their athletes draw from the most talented pool or are simply the greatest. one wonders how you would measure that, anyway, considering all sports require different skillsets and varying degrees of reliance on pure athletic abilities like speed, strength, agility, stamina, and spellcasting. how far you can pull a vw with your penis, perhaps?

the olympics do draw from a pretty wide international group, and, though the events are silly, they can reasonably be called "the greatest" in the sense that you'd be hard pressed to find many people better at their particular discipline. looking at "the greatest in the world" comment in that sense, as you'd have to figure someone as smart as gumbel would if he was being honest and not just looking for a straw man to tear down in an editorial, the fact that he would still dismiss the olympics for a lack of black athletes, when it's patently obvious not a lot of blacks participate in these sports (else they'd be represented) is ridiculous. I mean, there are a lot more guys from detroit vying for spots in the NBA than from dubai or dublin, yet I haven't heard gumbel ever take a shot at someone who calls nba players the world's greatest athletes (although I could have missed that.) and why only mention a paucity blacks? I don't see a lot of latinos, for example, in the winter olympics.

by suggesting that a lack of blacks calls the winter olympics credibility as a great sporting event into question, gumbel seems to be asserting a racial bias that ignores the fact that the olympics cast a pretty wide international net by any sporting event's standards, and feature the best of the best at each (silly) competition.

I was trying to say that a lot of the white people I've heard complaining about this (on espn radio, the internet, etc.) seem to think his comments reflect negatively on white athletes, which is not the case. there's a difference between saying "I don't like this because the athletes are white." and "I don't like this because none of the athletes are black." the latter is not an inherently racist statement- especially considering the recent history of exclusion and the considerable athletic talent on display by blacks in many of today's most popular sports. but given the cultural context of the sports in the winter olympics and the sheer number of outstanding athletes of all races and nationalities competing in a myriad of sports and leagues around the world, gumbel should know better than to imply that the games cannot contain world class competition simply because there aren't a ton of blacks who play those sports. still, it doesn't mean he's attacking the quality of the other athletes. nobody disputes babe ruth was a great player, but his home run record would have meant more if he had been competing alongside guys like josh gibson.

Even using the baseball example, the mechanics of the game can just as easily be learned using inferior equipment. The rest of your point is appreciated though.

of course it would. like I already said, gumbel said "the olympics don't have enough black representation for my liking." not "the olympics have too many whites." he's not saying the whites are the problem, just the lack of blacks. I don't agree with him because I think that the quality of the athletes in the olympics is very high, that they're drawn from as wide a pool as pretty much any other athletic event, and that there is little doubt they are among the best practitioners in the world of what they do. he's just overemphasizing the need for blacks, given the cultural context of the particular sports (they are not excluded, they just don't often participate.) but he's not saying he doesn't want to watch whites, or that they are inferior.

There is a difference between a white person's remarks about race and black person's remarks. The whites are the majority, they control the media, the government, the army. African-Americans do not pose a threat to the freedom and liberty of white america.

Caucasions have not had the same Black American experience. African Americans have only had true citizenship for 37 years. Not to mention sharecropping, de facto segregation in the North and forced prison labor (chain gangs) for black vagrancy.

Segregation wasn't ended until it was overturned by a set of civil rights laws passed between 1964-1968. This doesn't even mention the fact that slavery wasn't abolished till June 19th, 1865, only 140 years ago.

The recent events with Shani Davis show that Bryant Gumbel might be right about more than a few things. Davis could never get the support of the USOC and American sponsors so he had to get sponsored by a Dutch corporatoin, which allowed him to buy skates, train and become the skater he became. Due to hostility between the USOC and the Davis family, they had to train in Canada. AT one time, one of the other speed skaters repeatedly degraded Shani at a practice. When Shani retaliated by throwing a basketball, he was suspended. The white speed skater was not. This same guy is the brother of another white speed skater who tried to taint Davis's qualifying run into the Olympics by falsely stating that other skaters like Apollo cheated so that Davis could win. There was an investigation and it was proven false.

A week ago, team USA asks Shani Davis to enter the team pursuit so that Chad Hedrick can go for 5 medals. But Davis never trained for this event and this event is a joke anyway, new this year. Davis declined and the media and HEdrick attacked him calling him "not a team player." So now that Davis is the first African American male to win a winter olympic gold medal, his victory is tainted because of this. Asked if he was happy for Davis, Chad Hedrick replied, "I'm happy for Joey(the second place finisher)." Real class act there.


A lot of white-Americans get angry anytime a black person mentions race. They say that it's history, that slavery and segregation are in the past. Okay, we'll stop talking about race when you stop celebrating the 4th of July, Lincoln, Washington and any other holiday that claims this was always a free country.

And it's a fact that caucasions benefit from their ancestor’s actions. The wealth, property, access, freedom, privileges accrued by those who instituted these policies was inherited by whites today. Whites had hundreds of years without any competition for land, jobs, politics ect. Most do not recognize this, deny it vehemently, get angry or upset and cannot argue about the idea logically.

So when Gumbel brings this issue to light, I cannot do anything but applaud him.

Lincoln's concern wasnt slavery.

While not trying to discount the Black racial experience in America, your diatribe begins with the almost now standardized reactionary comments by Black Americans. The bizarre disclaimer that Blacks cannot possibly be racist because "They don't have the power" is naive, and a disservice to the African-American community. It represents a double standard whose sentimient is it's fine to continue the abhorent practice of racism "because Whites started it first..."

The goal of eliminating racism is to discount race entirely in your judgements of people. It is just as unfair that a Black commentator would infer that the Oylmpic committee is somehow repressing Black atheletes, as it is for a White one. Giving a by to Gumbel's comments "because he's Black", does nothing to forward this goal.

It might be useful to note that he was probably the top inline speed skater in the world for years before he started training for ice speed skating. It wasn't like he was a pro blackjack player who was 60 lbs overweight who thought speed skating might be fun.

Both of the Olympics suck. The only reason anyone bothers to pay attention to them is out of some bizarre obligation.

I'd like to meet one of these "Caucasions".

Racism implies a belief that identifiable physical features can be used to group individuals into distinct genetic categories, which can subsequently be ranked on an arbitrary scale. There is no racism here.

Not watching the winter olympics because they're too "white" implies a valid frustration towards an underrepresentation of minority atheletes on certain national teams — ie, Canada, USA, anywhere with significant minority populations. This frustration is accurate insofar as class and ingrained social prejudice prevent upward movement of minority atheletes in a particular sport — say, snowboarding. It is invalid insofar as minority culture is not drawn towards certain sports to the same degree as non-minority culture.

The comments are mislaid to the point that the olympic games are an international event, and minority representation will vary from nation to nation — and national participation will vary from sport to sport, as well as between games.

That said, the extent to which the olympic participation reflects global wealth distribution is a more telling observation — and reflects a greater degree of prejudice — than what inhibits Latinos from having access to the the Canadian snowboard team equivalent to stoner rich kids from North Vancouver.

Finally, the olympics are more of an indulgence than anything. They're a showcase. Expecting that the games should pander to some silly notion of sporting "purity" is ridiculous. Games are for entertainment, and if enough people are entertained by ice dancing and luge, that's enough to keep those sports olympic. Besides, the fact that Olympic Games are a waste of resources and money, usually involve cultural whoring, superficial nationalism, and represent the "more circuses" attitude of declining empires is more to the point.

First, that's a straw man argument. I said that there is a difference when a black person says something racist and when a white person says something racist. I never said that we can't be racist.

I think the scrutiny you have to apply differs from case to case. It's like the 14th Amendment -- racial discrimination is automatically a suspect classification while gender discrimination is at a different level of scrutiny and harder to sustain in the Constitution.

And Shani Davis is an example of the USOC acting in a way that might be considered racist. First, they do not help him get sponsors even though they help other athletes get American sponsorships. So Davis had to get a Dutch sponsorship because skating is very expensive and he could not afford to continue without sponsorship. But the USOC tried to take that sponsorship away because they said it violated USOC protocol that states that your sponsor must be American.

Then in one instance, while playing pickup basketball, one of Davis's white teammates repeatedly berated Davis and kept calling him boy. There were multiple witnesses to this. After taking so much, Davis throws the basketball at the other skaters feet. For this, Davis was suspended for something like 10 days but the other guy got a slap on the wrist.

Then when Davis qualified for the Olympics, the same guy who got into the altercation with Davis before's brother charged that APollo Anton Ohno cheated in order to allow Davis to win the race and qualify. The guy claimed that they did this so that a black person could go to the game. But an arbitrator investigated this and proved the claim false.

When Davis finally wins the Gold medal, isntead of congratulating him, the media attention is on the fact that he did not race in the team pursuit. Why did they change the subject from Davis being the first individual AFrican American to win in an individual Winter event to Chad HEdrick and others claiming that he was not a team player.

if you take all of this into consideration, you might be able to make a reasonable inference that the USOC and others were trying to prevent a black athlete from succeeding in the Winter Olympics. This does not validate what Gumbel said, but it does show you that things haven't changed as much as you'd like them to, it's good to bring up certain issues.

Using ad hominem attacks really validate your argument.

that's not remotely the same thing. there are plenty of white people who have the opportunity to make it in the nba. the black (and white) players who get there do so because they're the best in the country. the complaint here is that, though we can go back and forth on the racial, economic, and other cultural factors that are playing a role in the lack of black participation in the winter games, the fact is not many of them do participate. now, as I said earlier, I don't think that should call into question the credibility of the athletes who DO participate, as they're great at their respective sports. but others find the lack of diversity troubling, and I don't see how you can simply dismiss that as reverse racism. it's nothing of the sort. devin used the term honkey, but he's a white guy- tell me, are you that sensitive?

All cases, regardless of the race of the person who is making them, should be judged individually. Just yesterday in Detroit, a city council member (Black) stated as one of the reasons that the City council refused the Detroit Zoological Societies offer of money to keep the Zoo open in exchange for 50% control of the Zoo's operation by stating "This is not a plantation, and that black people don't need white people telling them what to do...". That comment is so out of left field regarding the situation it's laughable. You are right though, because a reverse statement made by a white person would have met with complete public outrage, but this was met as business as usual. Therein lies the problem. All statements like that should be met with same reaction, regardless of who makes them.

You're solely looking at this case from the race angle, instead of at an individual level. The problems between the USOC and Davis could stem directly with their dealings specifically with him. Other incidients, such as Most of the U.S. team training in Salt Lake City, but Davis chosing Calgary because "that location best suited his attempt to be the first speedskater to compete in short and long track at the same Winter Olympics." shows a loner attitude that may have been prevalent in the USOC wanting to exclude him for not being a "team" player, as opposed to anything involving race.

Had Gumbel pointed to specific incidents, then you would be right. His arbitrary statement regarding the entire lack of Black athletes falls into an obvious sweeping assumption, the very basis of prejudicial thought.

Thanks for responding logically, it's good to see. A lot of what you say makes perfect sense, because you can never know what is really true and what just seems to be true.

On your first point, I agree with your line of reasoning but I have to disagree to a certain extent. I agree that you should judge these cases on an individual basis, whether the person making the remarks is white or black. A lot of things can be taken out of context and sometimes we say things that are unintentional. But I still believe that if both circumstances are hypothetically equal, it's worse for someone in the majority to say something racially insensitive than it is for a person in the minority, especially if there is a long history of racial prejudice. There are too many variables -- wealth, power, influence and history that make it very difficult to establish a bright line rule that all racism should be treated equally. Using that line of reasoning, I will admit that Gumbel is in a position of influence and you could attack his statements more than if some poor white person in no position of power or influence made the same type of remark because I think the lack of wealth, power and influence on one side overcomes the lack of a white history of being racially persecuted by blacks.

this is completely off topic.

Keith Olberman covered this story last night. The accompanying footage -- while they played Gumbel's comments about the Olympics being whiter than the GOP convention -- was of Gumbel arriving at some event with his white wife/girlfriend.

I don't know why you directed that first paragraph at me, as I have been saying that I think the representation in these sports has to do with the different levels of participation and not any overt exclusion towards a particular race.

your second paragraph, however, is an assumption. there was nothing in gumbel's comments that indicated he thinks blacks are better than whites. that's what you guys seem to be misunderstanding. he is talking about blacks not being represented, and given their history of exclusion it's certainly not an indefensible position. I personally don't agree with it in regard to the winter olympics, but it doesn't mean he's a racist.

as for dickson's comment- what does gumbel having a white wife have to do with anything?

Just ironic, given his opinion on the supposed "whiteness" of the Winter Olympics.

Maybe she's black at heart.

Perfect.

that you're reading that in to his comments doesn't mean that's how they actually read. but if you keep repeating it I'm sure it's more likely to be true.

it's not weird to extrapolate that from what he said- but it's not what he said. all he said was that the winter olympics do not represent a significant portion of the world's population, so how can those athletes truly be called the best? the GOP joke was clearly in reference to the history of blacks being excluded by whites, which is probably what he thinks is happening here on some level, but does not say anything about whites being inferior to blacks athletically. given what I said earlier, it's obvious I don't agree with him. so don't call me an apologist. I am merely addressing your and other's knee jerk reaction to the comments. sure, he could have meant what you thought he meant, but to say that his comments unequivocally stated that is false.

I'm not gonna spin my wheels on this any longer, but I don't think I'm the one that needs reading comprehension class. "so try not to laugh when someone says these are the world's greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the winter games look like a GOP convention." he's saying the reason the athletes aren't "the world's best" which is different than simply "world class" is because blacks, who are among the world's best athletes, are not represented. he said nothing about white athletes being deficient, or that the competition would be better if it was filled with all blacks and no whites.