Great White Runner

Article from Salon.com

In the land of the gods, the Acropolis towering above, Jeremy Wariner sprints into history -- and racial stereotypes vanish in a flash.

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By Gary Kamiya

Aug. 24, 2004 | ATHENS -- I want to be Jeremy Wariner! I saw him smoke the competition in the 400 semis on Saturday night, and the dude was so cool with his mini-goat and his shades and long thoroughbred body and his impassive face, and mainly he was so damn fast, that I kept checking him out with the binoculars to see if he really was white. I know, we're not supposed to notice this, and if we do we're certainly not supposed to say anything, but ... come on. As a mongrel racial type myself who could shut down just about everybody of any color in my high school over 60 yards, I never had any truck with the idea that it's somehow indecorous or objectionable to notice that race matters in sports. The subject is so loaded in a bad way most of the time, it's nice to have a few subjects that you can just drop on the table with an innocent, loud thud.

According to the dictates of racial politeness -- as witnessed by this thread from a runner's forum -- pulling for a member of one racial group, particularly if it's your own, is evidence of racism. That may sometimes be true, but it doesn't have to be. Race isn't a zero-sum game, and the best way to be restore some innocence and sanity to it is to allow there to be some places where you don't have to take it so damn seriously. So I'm all for bringing back the Great White Hope. Let a thousand pale-skinned, non-possession wide receivers blossom!

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I thought this article was funny and well written. As a former runner myself, I have always felt that I could never "win" as a white female. But, I guess I was being racist about my own abilities. And honestly it was hard not to be. When 9 out of ten times, I would lose to runners with darker skin than my own. It was easy to on my inferiority to my genes. Thank you Jeremy for proving that some times you just have to train harder.