Champion. But winner?

Is John McCain the Great White Hope?

By Carol Forsloff

With Randy Stelly at Ringside

Sports is like politics. Lots of action. That's why writers use similar words for both. Baseball and boxing words dominate, especially aggressive ones. At the Democratic Convention television cameras captured Muhammad Ali, the old boxing champ, and we got the point. But there's another story that showed the underbelly of sports that if played out in this year's politics in the match between Senators John McCain and Barack Obama could hurt lots of us. And that's the story of Jack Johnson, the famous black boxer, whose championship fight brought the word hope in a whole other way than Obama's.

Now Jack was no smooth talker; he was blunt, bold and took chances. He was labeled boxing's best. He defied social convention in behavior and attitude. had white ladies on his arm and was described as an arrogant fellow who didn't know his place. Personal symbols of sex, violence and an in-your-face attitude surrounded him as he pushed his way to the pinnacle of boxing, becoming the heavyweight champion of the Negro division of it in the early 1900's. Jim Jeffries, his white counterpart in a segregated sport, didn't want to fight a black man, but later said yes to voices who cried for Jeffries to be "the great white hope." Johnson beat Jeffries; white folks got angry, and things got bad. Johnson left Texas because of violence and threats. The "great white hope" didn't get him but the controversy did.

 

Barack Obama is bold. He accepted the Democratic Party's Presidential nomination in direct and forceful tones. But unlike Johnson, his image is different. He's a whole different guy than Johnson in a whole different time, but that's not the point. He's in a match against a strong, white opponent who's backed by some whose methods are awful. We can only sit back and watch to see if "the great white hope" notions are played out again.