Our sport-mad culture has hardly softened the ground for black political leadership. If anything, it's produced a value system that prizes material gain and the almighty scoreboard over any kind of collective responsibility.
This is seen even more clearly when we look at the three figures that Bianchi holds up as the most crucial trailblazers: Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods and Indianapolis Colts coach Tony Dungy.
Bianchi writes, "the two most successful product pitchmen of the modern era—Tiger and Michael Jordan—are both black men who won over white corporate America."
But at what cost? These are also the two most aggressively apolitical athletes to ever walk the earth. They live by the creed that taking serious stands gets in the way of good business. If anything, Obama has had to overcome the racial landscape these two have charted, which says you must wear the cool mask and betray nothing.
Dungy is a different case. One of the most respected coaches in the NFL, he is also an evangelical Christian who has raised funds for the Indiana Family Institute. IFI organizes anti-gay marriage initiatives and takes part in the process of what's called "praying the gay away."
In fact, when you think about it, Woods, Jordan, and Dungy—signifying respectively disengagement, corporate greed and the right-wing side of the culture wars—hold the values many voters wanted to repudiate.
No doubt, black American athletes unafraid to be political will be part of charting us out of this wilderness. But it will not be those content to be money-making sideshows when the main stage is a real-world battle for change.
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