Indianapolis head coach Tony Dungy said if ABC continues such promos, he hopes the Colts are not scheduled on Monday nights.
By
Darron Cummings, AP

During a teleconference Wednesday with Chicago media, the coach brought it up at the end of the call: "I'm going to get on the soap box for a minute. I am very disappointed in ABC for what took place on Monday night. ... I've got a 12-year-old that does his homework early on Monday to watch that, and I was very, very disappointed."
In the spot, Nicollette Sheridan, a star of ABC hit show Desperate Housewives,
seductively dropped her towel
and jumped into the arms of Philadelphia Eagles star Terrell Owens. Owens is African-American. Sheridan is white.

"No. 1, I think it was racial," Dungy said. "I think it's stereotypical in looking at the players, and on the heels of the Kobe Bryant incident, I think it's very insensitive," he added, a reference to the NBA star now facing a civil suit after criminal rape charges were dropped.

Dungy said ABC wouldn't use Dallas Cowboys coach Bill Parcells, Eagles coach Andy Reid or a team owner in such a scene and consider it "just a spoof."

Would there be as much backlash if one of them had been involved?

"I don't know. But to me that's the first thing I thought about as an African-American man, that we're going to put Terrell Owens in this situation,"
he said.

Dungy said when the Colts played last week on MNF that ABC asked his players to do spots but they declined: "Nothing in that (Desperate Housewives) regard but just trying to get our players involved in a lot of things that are non-football questions and non-football settings that we just didn't think were appropriate."

He added: "If that's the way they're going to promote things, I hope they never have us on Monday Night Football again. ... I think something needs to be done about it. Hopefully, the commissioner (Paul Tagliabue) will."

The NFL has called the opening "inappropriate and unsuitable." League spokesman Greg Aiello said, "We'll be paying closer attention to openings of prime-time games, as will our teams."

Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, didn't rule out the possibility of fining ABC.

Powell said Wednesday on CNBC that broadcasters complain about FCC "indecency enforcement," such as its proposed $550,000 fine of CBS for Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl. Meanwhile, he said, "They keep it hot and steamy in order to get financial gains and the free advertising it provides."

WITH AT LEAST THREE MILLION PEOPLE IN the United States in interracial marriages, racially mixed marriage is no longer a rarity. And with one degree of separation-all the family members of these couples-it touches many millions more. Allowing a second degree of separationfriends, coworkers, acquaintances-intermarriage likely affects most people in this country. Younger people, on average, are far more open to intermarriage than those who grew up in an era of segregation. This trend is a major gain for tolerance and pluralism in America, and families that successfully navigate the challenge of interracial marriage often become more open generally. But large pockets of discrimination continue to exist.
A 1997 Gallup poll found the highest approval rating of interracial marriage ever by both black (77 percent) and white (61 percent) Americans. The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) also has found increased acceptance. By 1994, when people were asked, "Would you favor a law against racial intermarriage?" 84.9 percent of 1,626 white Americans answered in the negative. Even more black Americans-96.8 percent of the 258 polled-also answered no.

Nevertheless, interracial marriage can create deep conflict within families. Opposition reflects not just bigotry. It can reflect fears about loss of valued traditions, and concerns that children and grandchildren will suffer society's lingering prejudice. A NORC poll in 1990 asked Jews, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics how they would feel about a close relative marrying someone from outside their racial or ethnic group. Blacks were most strongly opposed, with 57.5 percent of 1,362 respondents against it; next came Asian Americans at 42.4 percent; then Hispanic Americans at 40.4 percent. Jews were the least opposed, at 16.3 percent, but also had the largest response neither favoring nor opposing intermarriage of a close relative (63.1 percent). Just over 46 percent of Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans were neutral on the question. These data show that despite the increasing acceptance of intermarriage in this country, people are not necessarily pleased when it becomes personal. Families remain highly protective of their most significant "product": future generations.

In their book Multiracial Couples: Black and White Voices, Paul C. Rosenblatt, Terry A. Karis, and Richard D. Powell suggest that disowning interracially married family members may be a way of disowning racially different in-laws. Through denouncement, families attempt to avoid possible contamination by an undesirable status or stigma. The NORC data and my own interviews indicate that people of all races sometimes fear contamination, though for different reasons. Whites may fear loss of privileged status for their children and grandchildren, while people of color may fear loss of cultural identity.

If the couple has children, as most couples do, the children have a blood tie to both clans, which strengthens-and complicates-the links immeasurably. Parents who resisted the intermarriage of a child may soften their opposition when grandchildren come. Or their resentment may harden because of the embarrassment of a blood relation who is a mixed-race child. Late marriages (those that occur past child-bearing age) may receive less opposition for this reason.

An unprecedented fracas in the Indiana Pacers game at Detroit on Friday brought an unprecedented series of penalties from NBA commissioner David Stern today. Stern, citing personal "shock, revulsion and fear" upon viewing video replays of the brawl between Pacers players and Pistons fans at The Palace of Auburn Hills, announced the following suspensions for Pacers players:
• Forward Ron Artest, who rushed into the stands to confront a fan who threw a beverage on him, was suspended for the remainder of the regular season, a total of 73 games, as well as the playoffs. It is the longest non-drug related suspension in league history.

• Stephen Jackson and Jermaine O'Neal, who threw punches at fans during the melee, were suspended for 30 and 25 games, respectively.

• Anthony Johnson, who threw a punch at a fan who rushed the court, was suspended for five games.

• Reggie Miller, cited for leaving the bench while Pistons center Ben Wallace tried to attack Artest after drawing a hard foul late in the game, was suspended for one game.

Wallace -- who shoved Artest in the neck after the foul with 45.9 seconds left in the Pacers' 97-82 victory -- was suspended for six games. Pistons Elden Campell, Chauncey Billups and Derrick Coleman were suspended one game each for leaving their bench.

Stern said the reaction of Artest, Jackson and O'Neal "wildly exceeded" the level of self-control the NBA expects from its players and called it the worst incident in his 21 years as commissioner.

O'Neal's agent, Arn Tellem, said they would appeal the suspension.

"Without any consideration of the danger created by fans running wildly and aggressively on the court, without any consideration of the players' fear for their own safety while they were under attack, without review of the security failures of both the NBA and the Palace, and without any consideration of past player disciplinary rulings, the NBA has singled out Jermaine O'Neal in an arbitrary and capricious way," Tellem said in a statement released by the Pacers.

“The expectation is that there would be more African-American head football coaches given the number of African-American football players on college teams,” Richard Lapchick, author of the report, told BlackAmericaWeb.com.

But when it comes time to hire a new coach, college presidents and athletic directors, who are mostly white men, often look within their circle of contacts. “White men,” said Lapchick, “will likely hire people who look like them.

“Many African-Americans are waiting in the wings, ready to lead Division I-A programs, but when significantly more than 90 percent of our campus leaders are white, chances are they will seek who they know,” Lapchick said.

Only five out of 120 athletic directors at Division I-A schools are black, and there are only four Division I-A schools with black presidents.

The number of black head coaches at major colleges has dropped since 1997-98 when there were eight, said Lapchick, with Sylvester Croom at Mississippi State University being one of the most recent hires. The first black coach hired at a Division I-A school was William Jeffries, who took the job at Wichita State University n 1979. Since that time 18 black men have filled 21 coaching positions at Division I-A schools.

Floyd Keith, executive director of the Black Coaches Association, puts it like this: “If you are black, you have a greater chance at becoming an Army general than a head football coach in Division I-A.

“The Army is 26 percent black, and 8.3 percent of the generals are black. In Division I-A schools, 51 percent of the players are black, but only a paltry three percent of the head coaches are black.”

The Indiana-based Black Coaches Association, which includes more than 3,000 members, released a related report last month that questioned the low number of black football coaches at major universities and why the trend persists.

“Since 1996, only one African-American male each year has been hired to fill head coaching positions out of a possible 142 openings,” the BCA report stated.

“Most people assume that when 51 percent are on the field and playing that everyone is happy,” said Keith. “When you go to the game, you don’t pay to see coaches. You pay to see the players. You don’t notice the sidelines unless you are sensitive to the issue.” Keith said he wants more people to be sensitive and ask why.

Robert Vowels, commissioner of the historically black Southwestern Athletic Conference [SWAC] said HBCUs are a good place to look for job candidates for vacancies at Division I-A schools.

“We will always have a plenty of folks for consideration for all positions,” said Vowels, who heads one of the largest HBCU sports conferences in America. “When you look at the SWAC, the MEAC, CIAA and the SIAC, you are talking about more than 50 schools with good programs and leaders,” he said.

Vowels also heads the NCAA’s Minority Opportunity Committee, a group he said is working to bring more inclusion through college sport.

“Since Floyd (Keith) and Richard (Lapchick) have been producing reports on this issue, there is a greater awareness,” said Vowels. “Just this week, I received a call from an [athletic director] at a Division I-A school who wanted a list of potential candidates for a job. With football season coming to an end, there will be more jobs opening up.”

The BCA also can help link colleges with candidates coaching and AD jobs, Keith said. And they’ve started a new program that grades universities on the diversity of their hiring practices when feeling vacancies.

Lapchick says colleges’ part of the answer could be in having more diverse search committees for coaches and athletic directors instead of making quick decisions with input only from a few.

“They need to follow their university affirmative action guidelines and allow groups such as the Black Coaches Association to weigh in,” Lapchick said. “Don’t simply shrug your shoulders and say, ‘We can’t find anyone.’”

Clarence Major, in his study Juba to Jive: A Dictionary of African-American Slang, traces the origins of hip to the Wolof verb hepi ("to see") or hipi ("to open one's eyes"), and dates its usage in America to the 1700s. So from the linguistic start, hip is a term of enlightenment, cultivated by slaves from the West African nations of Senegal and coastal Gambia. The slaves also brought the Wolof dega ("to understand"), source of the colloquial dig, and jev ("to disparage or talk falsely"), the root of jive. Hip begins, then, as a subversive intelligence that outsiders developed under the eye of insiders. It was one of the tools Africans developed to negotiate an alien landscape, and one of the legacies they contributed to it. The feedback loop of white imitation, co-optation and homage began immediately.

From these origins, hip tells a story of black and white America, and the dance of conflict and curiosity that binds it. In a history often defined by racial clash, hip offers an alternative account of centuries of contact and emulation, of back-and-forth. This line of mutual influence, which we seldom talk about, is not a decorative fillip on the national identity but one of the central, life-giving arteries. Though the line often disappears in daily life—through segregation, job discrimination and the racial split in any school cafeteria—it surfaces in popular culture, where Americans collect their fantasies of what they might be.
For better and worse, hip represents a dream of America. At its best, it imagines the racial fluidity of pop culture as the real America, the one we are yearning to become. As William Burroughs said, revolution in America begins in books and music, then waits for political operatives to "implement change after the fact." At its worst, hip glosses over real division and inequity, pretending that the right argot and record collection can outweigh the burden of racial history. White hipsters often use their interest in black culture to claim moral high ground, while giving nothing back. When Quentin Tarantino tosses around the word nigger, he is claiming hipster intimacy while giving callous offense. Really that high ground lies elsewhere. Hip can be a self-serving release from white liberal guilt, offering cultural reparations in place of the more substantive kind. This is white supremacy posing as appreciation. Neither of these verdicts on hip is strong enough to cancel the other out. Hip serves both functions: it is an ennobling force that covers for ignominy. Steeped in this paradox, it tells a story of synthesis in the context of separation. Its métier is ambiguity and contradiction. Its bad is often good.
During the 1992 presidential campaign, Bill Clinton made hip a campaign pitch, working sunglasses and sax on The Arsenio Hall Show; for his troubles, both Toni Morrison and Chris Rock anointed him America's first black president. (A decade later Al Sharpton refined this title, quipping, "There is a difference in being off-white and being black.")

Anyone can be hip, even if everyone can't. In a nation that does not believe in delayed gratification, hip is an instant payoff.
Hip sells cars, soda, snowboards, skateboards, computers, type fonts, booze, drugs, cigarettes, CDs, shoes, shades and home accessories. Hip shapes how we drive, whom we admire, whose warmth we yearn for in the night.
Like the advertising world that grew up alongside it, hip creates value through image and style. In its emphasis on being watched, it anticipated the modern mediascape, which values people not for what they produce or possess but for their salience as images. For all its professed disregard for wealth, hip would not have thrived unless it was turning a profit.

Hip is a social relation. You cannot be hip in the way you might be tall, handsome, gawky, nearsighted or Russian. Like camp, its unruly nephew, it requires an audience. Even at its most subterranean, it exists in public view, its parameters defined by the people watching it. You decide what is hip and what is not. Hip requires a transaction, an acknowledgment. If a tree falls in the forest and no one notices its fundamental dopeness, it is not hip.

From Hip: The History © 2004 by John Leland. HarperCollins Publishers.