Last Chocolate City contributor and resident football fanatic Tommy Gibbs is convinced that ESPN is up to no good. The titles of his two recent posts (ESPN is Racist I and ESPN is Racist II) are blunt and to the point.

I don’t know if ESPN.com columnist Gene Wojciechowski is aware of Tommy’s accusations, but his column about Fritz Pollard, the NFL’s first Black player and head coach, is significant in the way it discusses (or doesn’t discuss) Pollard’s legacy.

Lovie Smith, one of the first two Black coaches to lead NFL teams to the Super Bowl and the lowest paid head coach in the league, works for the Chicago Bears, a team founded by the legendary George Halas.

Remember the cement block-sized piece of hardware Smith hoisted after winning the NFC championship a few days ago at Solider Field? It was the Halas Trophy, and it was held tightly by, technically speaking, the first black head coach to lead a team to the Super Bowl.

“That is ironical,” says 85-year-old Eleanor Pollard Towns, one of two Pollard daughters who live in the Chicago area.

Ironical, she says, because Halas was no friend of Fritz Pollard or his causes. Ironical because Halas has always been linked to the 1934 unwritten edict by NFL owners that banned black players from the league until 1946, as newspaper reports at the time detailed. (more…)

Two weeks ago the San Diego Chargers took the field against the New England Patroits in one of the best playoff games this post season. The Chargers had the best record in the NFL this season without the help of their leading tackler and defensive captain, Steve Foley.

Foley was out for the season recovering from injuries after being shot by an off-duty police officer. ESPN has failed to provide the facts in this story, and most of the sports media have ignored developments in the case. Foley’s story is a blatant example of how police officers target athletes, rappers and Black men in general.

Sunday, Sept. 3, 2006, Steve went out with his girlfriend, Lisa Maree Gaut and after a night on the town, a 23 year-old off-duty rookie cop named Aaron Mansker felt that Steve appeared to be driving under the influence. (more…)

Three days ago with the country in the wraps of war, and the sports world caught in the grips of the games that will decide our nation’s Superbowl contenders, ESPN couldn’t produce enough coverage of Falcons Quarterback Michael Vick and his marijuana charges.

Almost every commentator aired out their heartfelt convictions against Vick, accusing him of being an unfit leader and a classless guy. The Falcons General Manager actually held a press conference expressing his disgust toward Vick. Today Vick was found innocent, with no weed in his system or in the mysterious water bottle he held, and it’s a blurb scrolled across the bottom of ESPN.

Hmmmmmmmm. Accused is a headline. Not guilty is a short mention.

(more…)

For those Jennifer Gratz types who think some underserving African American is keeping them from getting into a top tier school…think again. It is probably some deserving Asian student. The NY Times, in their special Education News supplement, has some surprise news for those MCRI-types who are always bitching about merit-based admissions. If admissions are only based on merit, Asian folks are getting in.

Currently FORTY SIX PERCENT of the students at University of California Berkely are of Asian descent.

“Here, many people speak Chinese as their primary language,” says Mr. Hu, a sophomore. “It’s nice. You really feel like you don’t stand out.”

Smarting from the sting of globalization and the loss of those good ole’ industrial wage jobs, Michigan voted to end affirmative action. Voters said ‘no more preferential treatment.’

Yet, can the majority of Michigan deal with this new world order? Can white America really deal in a merit based world? One day soon, affirmative action could have saved your behind.

NYTIMES “Little Asia on the Hill”

So its not just a Black thing, the police are killing everybody.

A white community college student who alledgely beat up another white college kid and stole two Playstaion 3 consoles was shot by a white police officer in his apartment.

He was unarmed but the officer thought he heard shots, which other officers present didn’t hear.
The officers used a RAM to get the Playstation 3 consoles back.

Wait, they used a ram, like they were going to a raid to get a game back?

Police believed they would be at risk when serving the search warrant, and used a police battering ram to break down the door. Long opened fire, hitting the unarmed Cape Fear Community College student in the head and near his right shoulder, an autopsy found.

Now the police are scared of everybody. 16-year old boys, men at bachelor parties, college kids, 82-year-old grandma’s.

Nobody is safe, white, Black, young, old…. I’m confused.

In order to stay alive these days, I guess you have to be a cop.
Yahoo!News

It is clear when you watch the racist rant by Michael “Kramer from Seinfeld” Richards at LA’s Laugh Factory that he “went into a rage” at “Afro-American” heckler Kyle Doss and lost his ever-lovin’ mind. What isn’t clear from the cellphone video is what Doss said to provoke his tirade.

Still there is no excuse. As a public figure and performer, Richards can’t lose control like that in a public setting. Was he drunk? Was he coked up? Or was he just having a bad night that turned into a nightmare after what Doss calls “good-natured heckling”?

This could be a career ender for Richards who has been struggling with the so-called “Seinfeld curse” since that show was cancelled years ago. If he had turned the whole thing into a joke, as most comedians do with hecklers, this would be a non-story. Instead he let the jibes get the best of him, lost his sense of humor and perhaps ruined his life in the span of three minutes.

Watch Richards’ apology on David Letterman
(Notice how quickly the machine got golden boy Jerry Seinfeld out to do damage control. We must save those DVD sales and syndication dollars!)

Richards banned from The Laugh Factory
Paul Rodriguez: “The audience came expecting to see Kramer, and they got Mark Furman!”

A UCLA a student says he was racially profiled on campus and then tasered with a stun gun.

If minorities united to fight similar ills, we’d be a bad shut yo mouth.

Yahoo! News