Jason Whitlock Pretty Much Just Asking For Controversy

Over the years, Star columnist Jason “Oversharer” Whitlock has gotten himself mixed up in a few race-based media imbroglios. Whitlock has long been the go-to guy for a juicy quote about issues of race in sports, and has earned more than a few enemies for his frank assessments of the various biases and prejudices in the media world. And all that is well and good, of course — provided he’s doing the columnist’s job correctly and placing issues of the day in a larger context. (This is probably actually the third job of the sports columnist, coming after “going to games for free” and, we assume, “hating yourself for choosing a career in sportswriting.”) But in his latest column, Whitlock decides to try his hand at generating controversy by declaring that we are in a new era: the age of the great white athlete. Well… at least he’s probably basing this on carefully documented research, right? I don’t have any hard evidence. I can’t back it up with 40 times and vertical leaps. I’m basing it off what I see when I travel the country watching the best athletes compete. Huh?

Yeah, it’s true: Whitlock has gazed upon football messiah and media darling Tim Tebow, and he has seen the glory of white athleticism:

Well, now here comes Tim Tebow, and it appears everyone is ready to fall in love with Touchdown Timmy, the half-man, half-monster quarterback. He appears to be a novelty, a white athlete with limitless athleticism.

I think he’s a symbol of what has already transpired and what we’ll soon recognize. The boys from the suburbs are spending just as much time as the boyz from the ’hood working on their bodies and skills.

Sure, we could do without the “boyz from the ‘hood” usage, but whatever. Whitlock is basically saying that white athletes are no longer to be described as mere “good game managers” or “smart players” or “field generals.” They can now be referred to as “mobile” and “athletic,” or something. Not too much controversial stuff there, we suppose. Just overstatement. Spotting a generational shift in sports requires more than one square-jawed, too-smiley quarterback. It’s this next part that gets JW into some hot water:

Too many young black men are rotting in jail.

America’s out-of-control incarceration rate has devastated the black community in many ways. Athletics has not been immune.

When you hear the stat rattled off about more young black men being in jail than in college that also means that there are a lot of talented athletes throwing away college scholarships by running afoul of the law.

Athletics used to be a poor black kid’s ticket to education and out of poverty. You can’t punch that ticket if you’re saddled with felony convictions before you get out of high school. You can’t participate in state-of-the-art training methods if you’re locked up.

Ah, so that’s why all the great athletes are now white! Because all the black athletes are in jail, apparently. So to sum up: white players have developed better athleticism, black players are in jail, and the bearer of this message has no proof for any of this beyond casual observation.

Solid gold journalism, Whitlock.