Column Archive

20 Years Later: Want to Understand the '92 LA Riots? Start with the '84 LA Olympics

If you don’t light the fuse, the bomb won’t blow. But striking the match and lighting the fuse is only the final step in a process of creating a deadly explosion. The match that started the 1992 LA Riots was struck when a videotape showcasing the brutal beating of African American motorist Rodney King by five police officers was released to the public. It lit the fuse on the bomb when a near all-white jury (10 whites, one Latino, one Asian) in Simi Valley found the officers innocent of all charges. The blast then spread over the next five days in the form of the largest urban uprising in the history of the United States. When the shrapnel had stopped flying, the damage amounted to one billion dollars, 53 deaths, and thousands of injuries.

Echo From the Past or the Present? Washington Capitals victory over Boston Bruins spurs spasm of racism

As rapid-fire as twitter itself, what started as a moment of a sports euphoria turned decidedly ugly. There were the Washington Capitals beating the Boston Bruins 2-1 in Game 7 and moving on toward the National Hockey League's greatest prize, the Stanley Cup. Before my disbelieving eyes, the Caps Joel Ward scored the winning overtime goal against last year’s Stanley Cup hero, Tim Thomas. But Ward is a Black man, and before you could say “post-racial", self-identifying Bruin fans tweeted a cascade of ugly invective, with the “N-word” being their epithet of choice.

Metta World Peace – aka Ron Artest - Did Bad, but Deserves Better

Metta World Peace, the winner of the NBA’s 2011 citizenship award and a player who has done more than any athlete alive to raise the curtain on the taboo sports subject of mental illness, is finding out today that the past is never really past.

Are We Brave Enough to Say Goodbye to Pat Summitt?

Coach Pat Summitt holds a legacy that is greater than wins and titles and even more profound than the bravery with which she's confronting this chapter of her life. In so many respects Pat Summitt is women's sports in the United States: fearless, self-made and tough as hell.

25 years since Al Campanis Shocked Baseball: what's changed and what's stayed the same

The Campanis lesson for Major League Baseball hasn’t been to take on racism in the sport, but find executives who can smile for the camera and talk a cat out of a tree. But the bigger problem today is less the old school prejudice, than something far more systemic.

Ozzie Guillen, Free Speech and the Case of Loretta Capeheart

The space where we can reasonably be heard is becoming constricted exactly at the moment when people are beginning to break out of their shells. We have seen both the Occupy movement and the national struggle to win justice for Trayvon Martin present a new willingness to fight. Attacks on speech are efforts to strangle that impulse in its crib. That’s what makes the legal case of Northeastern Illinois University Professor Loretta Capeheart so critical for anyone who cares about freedom of speech and the ability for us to actually be able to shape our surroundings without fear.

A Question of Human Rights: Keeping the F1 Racing Series Out of Bahrain

On April 22nd, the royal family of Bahrain is determined to stage its annual Formula 1 Grand Prix race. This might not sound like scintillating news, but whether the event goes off as planned is a question with major ramifications for the royal Khalifa family, as well as for the democracy movement in the Gulf kingdom. It will be viewed closely by the US state department and human rights organizations across the globe. From a renowned prisoner on a two month hunger strike to a British billionaire fascist sympathizer, the sides have been sharply drawn.

Big Trouble in Little Havana: The Perilous Politics of Ozzie Guillen

Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen decided to make a statement about Fidel Castro and Cuba. What could possibly go wrong?

Players Getting Played: Why a Look at the NCAA’s Past Makes Me Weep for Its Future

As much as I’d like to believe that shame and scandal would cause the NCAA to change in a positive fashion, the past tells us a different story. It’s worth remembering the NCAA's post-war scandals and the change they wrought. This shows in stark terms that when it comes to the NCAA, change doesn’t always mean progress.

Trayvon Martin’s Death, LeBron James and the Miami Heat

The senseless killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by a self-appointed “neighborhood watch captain” has provoked anguish, rage and now, at long last, resistance. We’ve seen rallies, demonstrations and walkouts at dozens upon dozens of high schools in Florida alone. Even more remarkably, this resistance has found expression in the world of sports. An impressive group of NBA players from Carmelo Anthony to Steve Nash to the leaders of the NBA Players Association have spoken out and called for justice.