Black head coaches

ball state was 16-18 the three years before hoke got there

i was talking about each of their FIRST three years. in terms of in-conference gill is 12-13 and hoke is 9-15. overall gill is 15-22 and hoke 10-24

again, the argument is not specifically for Gill.

Lovie Smith, Tony Dungy, Mike Tomlin? I might have given you the benefit of the doubt if you were just talking college, but you decided to throw Romeo Crennel in there. The bad black coaches reflect poorly on themselves and themselves only. The same as bad white coaches. Maybe Ty Willingham set black coaches back in the minds of some specific schools that probably wouldn't have hired a black coach anyway, but saying he set black coaches back 10 years is absolutely ridiculous.

It's not unreasonable to question if race played a role in Willingham's dismissal. For some reason he was given a much shorter leash than Charlie Weis. Why wasn't he given a 10 year extension after starting 8-0 in 2002? By contrast, Weis' was given a $30-40 million deal after beginning his inaugural campaign 5-2. Given those facts, again, it's worth asking why Willingham got the short end of the stick.

'... if the football coach is the face of the football programs and represents the boosters and alumni, and if the alumni would prefer that that person not be a black man, isn't it in the athletic department's best interest to abide? AD's rely heavily on their alumni and booster support, it's important to keep them happy, even it may not be the "worldly" thing to do.'

That would be a terrible, terrible reason to deny someone a job. Sometimes leadership needs to come from the top. A lot of Southerners in the 50's and 60's were against black voting rights, but that didn't make it right, and didn't stop LBJ and co. from passing the Voting Rights Act in 1965. Just an example, FWIW

It is not in the athletic department's best interest to support their boosters' personal bias and racist attitudes. Moreover, many of these institutions are public universities and engaging in discriminatory hiring practices for any employment position at a public institution is illegal and, as such, very much not in the athletic department's best interest.

"Maybe schools don't hire people because people with influence at those schools don't like black people. That's not 'racism' that's just 'being conscious of race to the extent that black people don't get the same opportunities as whites'. Not sure why you liberals can't see the difference."

"Also, if black people weren't so whiny all the time about this racism hoogabooga, maybe white people would be nicer to them in the first place. Maybe it's not fair that black men don't get offered HC positions, but too fucking bad."

(See esp. nos. 57, 59)

First, show me the evidence as to what the "accepted definitions" of racism are. You may as well have said 'my definition.'

I don't agree with your distinction between definition and practice, but even assuming your argument, isn't the practice of racism more relevant here than the semantic definition? Even if racism in a vacuum is defined as "any consciousness of race whatsoever" what we are dealing with here is consciousness of race in combination with power - racism in the world, not in abstract theory. Race itself is a construction of history and power - or are you going to tell me that it's a biological absolute?

Furthermore, in earlier posts you admit that the decision to hire Chizik instead of Gill may very well have been the result of racism in practice (differential racial judgment plus agency) - your primary argument seems to have been 'too bad - that's just the way things are.'

I never said that you said white people are victims, I just characterized the (utterly simplistic) idea that every time anything is done based on race, it's racist as part of the 'white people are victims' lexicon. Saying that "any decision based on race, one way or another" is racist implies that racism is something that can equally 'victimize' whites, right? My point is that this is preposterous. In America, where being white tends to automatically bestow privilege and power over minorities deemed non-white (and especially African Americans) it is misleading and disingenuous to call preference for those minorities 'racism' in an equivalent sense to the pervasive effects of institutional white racism.

In another society, racism may certainly be expressed differently. Perhaps, in a theoretical vacuum, the definition of racism as "anything that acknowledges race" would obtain. In the real world, racism and race are inextricably linked to power.