Olympics of Dumbassery

Ignoramous Jonah Goldberg [1] wonders what the sprinters what the Black Power salute on the medal stand at the 1968 Olympics had to be so angry about.

School, brother Goldberg, is in session.

Tommy Smith and John Carlos had both been heavily recruited track stars at San Jose State College. But they couldn't find housing in the lovely town that their athletic feats had so garlanded with glory. San Jose was segregated. So was lodging on team trips. So were all the fraternities at San Jose State. In 1968. In California. Tommy Smith, then known as the world's fatest human, had this to say: "I'm not only willing to give up participating in Mexico City, but I'd give up my life if necessary to open a door or channel to recudce bigotry." Their mentor, a brilliant 25-year-old professor named Harry Edwards had grown up in East St. Louis using "an outhouse which finally collapsed in its home, and we drank boiled drainage-ditch water." The first boy in his neighborhood to graduate high school, Edwards, too, had been recruited to San Jose State, to play basketball. He couldn't find a room to rent in town as a student either; coming back as a sociology professor, he was able to domicile on "a cold cement-floor garage."

Edwards wrote this all up in an essay for the Saturday Evening Post (in possession of author). I love this letter to the editor; like Goldberg, the letter-writer whines at the presumptuousness of people who would protest such conditions, and styles himself as the victim:

We who have worked and played with our Negro companions seem to be forced into a situation of being either for the Negro or for America, but not for both.
Thomas E. Ballentine
Beverly, Mass.