The film, "The Journey of the African American Athlete" shed some new light on the black athlete--white audience/white management relationship. Jim Brown, I believe, described it best by saying that as a black athlete, his white audience had a "superficial admiration" for him yet as a black man, they paid no attention to him. As Bill Russell was winning championships for the Boston Celtics, he faced immense discrimination from the city of Boston in more ways than one. When he tried to buy a house, he faced numerous obstacles, and when he finally did purchase a home, neighbors threw trash on his lawn and wished that he would leave. However, once they found out he was a star player for their beloved Celtics, they replaced the trash with flowers and kind words. A third example from the film that stood out to me was when Curtis Flood was describing the white control in baseball. Flood said that he and his management had a "master-slave" relationship and would do whatever they wanted regardless of the player's wishes.

These examples, coupled with years of the "jockey syndrome," are still a cause for concern. While progress has been made on this front, it still irks me to see the domination of whites in management positions and lack of African Americans. It is a business that's success lies firmly on the shoulders of the more than fifty percent of black athletes that make up professional sports, and would be crumble to the ground without them. Something needs to be done and the white grip on corporate positions in pro sports needs to be loosened.