Super Blackbowl?

To hear some sports reports, you'd think that the most important thing about this year's Super Bowl is that the head coaches of the two teams are both African-American. What do these commentators think they're celebrating? I wonder if there are really that many people out there thinking or saying, "Gosh! I hate this Super Bowl because I am so racist that black coaches ruin it all for me."

The few who have such an attitude are certainly worthy of all the ridicule we want to heap on them. But I am equally uncomfortable about those who would associate me with racists simply because I absolutely do not care about this supposed milestone in the history of professional football. In fact, I would never even have noticed if white liberals hadn't told me. My guess is, the majority of African-American football fans don't care either; the coaches themselves certainly don't seem to.

Does racism exist? Yes. Is it a bad thing? Yes. But I think some folks don't really care so much about racism as they do about parading their progressive attitude in front of others. These are the same people who would vote to have their taxes raised in order to "help the government feed the poor" - just to prove how compassionate they are. They do not care that higher taxes is the most inefficient way imaginable of actually helping a person who really needs help. They also keep celebrating public education - whose failure becomes increasingly dismal with every new government dollar thrown at it - because they think the only alternative is to be an enemy of intelligent schoolchildren. Are these folks ever so busy taking care of "the poor," "the marginalized," etc., that they have no energy left to look honestly at the little injustices that they themselves practice everyday against their own mates, children, employees or neighbors?

"I feel your pain," a former president was fond of saying. The nation would have been better off if he had put a little more effort into feeling his own pain. Then getting therapy.

It is simply impossible to love a cultural category, no matter how unfortunate. "Love your neighbor as yourself." Not black football coaches, not the homeless, not homosexuals, not the poor. "YOUR" - "NEIGHBOR." In one simple sentence, Jesus rebukes the very people who think they are fulfilling his ideal.

There in a nutshell is the reason such folks use the word "mean-spirited" for anyone who disagrees with their "compassion." They want to feel good about themselves, whether or not anyone's lot is really being improved. If you point out the obvious truth to them, you must be trying to make them feel bad about themselves. And if you try to make a "good" person feel "bad," you are mean-spirited, no matter how much real good you might do privately for real individual human beings.

Tony Dungy, head coach of the Indianapolis Colts, may have had no idea how profound he was being when he said, "It's not about black coaches; it's about the Colts." It's just a football game, and in being such, it is already morally superior to social rhetoric.