Clemson University’s football program just had its first player decommitment in many years. No, now make that two. Both, interestingly, are Black.
Is this an aberration, or a trend?
It sure looks like a trend.
The problem began with coach Dabo Swinney’s agonizingly slow
response to the George Floyd murder. He was almost a week behind other coaches
(and his own quarterback) in providing words of outrage and sympathy. The
silence was beginning to speak so loudly he had to offer something, so he
finally came out with a weak statement that said he’d needed time to choose his
words.
I buy that explanation. Dabo has to be careful what he says.
On the one hand, most of his players are Black. On the other…
Dabo is very much a child of the White South. He played with
African Americans at Alabama and he relies on them for his success at Clemson.
He gets along.
But getting along and admitting Blacks have a role that
isn’t subservient are two different things for White Southerners.
Dabo’s friends, the power structure people who donate to the
program - including to his salary -- are Trump-cheering right-wingers who love
their confederate “heritage.” To be fair, they’re also modern. They sincerely think
it’s OK for Blacks to ask for justice -- just so long as they do it in a
carefully limited, almost invisible, way.
This is why Dabo condemned Colin Kaepernick. It’s OK to say
things in a news interview that White people won’t see because it won’t be on
Fox. It’s not OK to demonstrate at a game where the White donors can’t
avoid noticing. Having to see things that conflict with their “heritage” is
something Southern Whites really hate.
The White South thinks it’s wrong to leverage athletic
success for a political goal. But they celebrate using corporate money,
including shareholder earnings, to advocate for their extremist views
When Clemson’s Black players led a movement to remove from
the campus names and monuments celebrating some of the South’s most notorious
racists and traitors, Dabo professed shock. He had no idea – no idea! – these
things had been all around him for a dozen years. Somehow, he’d never noticed
the pride with which Southern Whites rank Clemson’s especially strong confederate
“heritage.”
Dabo was also shocked when he heard a report that one of his
assistant coaches had used the n-word with a player. He wasn’t shocked about
the fact – he’d known that at the time – he was shocked at the report appearing
out of nowhere. In Dabo’s world, surfacing awkward facts about race from the
past is, well, not appropriately subservient.
If there’s football this fall, Clemson’s players will
demonstrate and Dabo and the Donors will have churning guts. Those players,
they’ll say, are privileged to be a part of the Clemson Plantation! Somehow,
they’ll need to learn their place!
Expect South Carolina to soon have new laws regulating
protests. If they come from the legislature, they can’t be blamed on Dabo. We’ll
see.
In the meantime, Black recruits from around the country will
continue to notice that they have options.
