Minnesotans must be ready for curling season or something - anything except
basketball. After the fiasco of this past spring, after hiring a promising
young coach to clean up the mess Clem Haskins made, they
now face angry African-Minnesotans who are upset that Dan Monson isn't Black.Â
They are claiming that a long-standing pattern of racial discrimination exists
at the University and are clearly upset that a Black Coach wasn't hired to
replace the Black coach who was fired. At the risk of being politically
incorrect, may we point out that this is precisely the logic which got Clarence
Thomas on the Supreme Court?
More to the point, may we point out, again, that a large-scale academic
scandal took place at Minnesota, one which disproportionately exploited
young Black men - who were under the charge of a Black coach. We know
nothing of Monson's academic record at Gonzaga, but if we remember correctly,
it's a Catholic school and thus required to take schoolwork seriously as are
Georgetown, Notre Dame, Xavier, and the like. You don't push it with the
priests.
At the very least, Monson has no discernible record of scandal, and we assume
he was hired at least partly because his reputation was squeaky clean. Yet these
"activists" are planning to ask Black athletes to avoid Minnesota.
We don't know much about Minnesota frankly, other than lakes, Ice Fishing,
Garrison Keillor and funny accents. We know nothing at all about any other sport
and only know basketball because every Gopher coach in our lifetime has crashed
and burned. We do know that the state is pretty pale and that liberal areas
which are mostly white often have surprising racial issues which don't always
show on the surface (think Boston and busing, for instance). We wouldn't
be surprised if there were an institutional racism at the University - we're not
saying we think there is, but in a state so overwhelmingly white, there
may well be racial issues which are not perceived by the majority. Â
Nonetheless, here's the situation: under Clem Haskins, wholesale academic
fraud was apparently going on, and a University report indicated that sexual
assaults were covered up. So young Black men were cheated out of their
education and if any of the alleged assailants were Black, then they were not
held to a standard of responsibility we would hope that ministers, of all people
(the Coalition of Black Churches is heavily involved in the protest), would
require.
Is this insane? First Minnesota was accused of racism for getting rid
of a man who apparently ran his program like a whorehouse. Now they bring
in a coach much more likely to behave ethically, and to equip young Black men
for the working world - and it's a step backward? This is idiocy of the
highest order. It's vastly preferable to graduate (and graduate
legitimately, not through fraud) as many Black males as possible than to give
one Black coach a job he kept largely by exploiting other Blacks. Clem Haskins was
exploiting kids for his own benefit. Monson might turn out to be just as bad.
But the activists might at least face up to the fact that as far as his Black
athletes futures are concerned, Clem Haskins was a disaster. Mateen
Cleaves is suing after walking away from an accident several years ago.Â
But if anyone should sue anyone, it's the parents of the kids who were so
ruthlessly exploited. They should sue the tutors, the academic support
department, Clem Haskins, the University and the State for abusing and
exploiting their children. And they should tell these "activists" to
get a life.