Speaking of gaffs (and no, believe it or not, I'm not going to talk about Bush ), I saw something that struck me as weird on MSNBC coverage of the swimming event where the US won a gold medal yesterday.

I haven't been following the Olympic coverage much, hardly at all, but I caught this footage being shown, and it was quite exciting. The really *weird* part was the commentary... they kept on stressing that this was a *swimming* competition, and an *African American* athelete had won it. Yes, (insert sportscaster's name here), that's right, *SWIMMING*, and this guy is *AFRICAN AMERICAN*! Can you BELIEVE it? What a STUNNING turn of EVENTS!

I just about soiled myself laughing. Oh yes, and one of the people saying this astonishing stuff was, himself, also African American.

Unbelievable.


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We had the same Myth here. It was thought that only Anglo Australians could swim. Now most of our Australian swimmers have European names. We have seen that our much smaller Aboriginal population are overrepesented in other sports like football.

Our latest and most famous track and field star was an aboriginee. I think it just proves times have change.Our hero in 1956 was a blond Anglo woman Betty Cuthbeth now it is Europeans, Aboriginals and even Asian ping pong players.

This, it seems to me, is an example of racism of an even more chronic nature than in my example in my op under the thread 'Racism.'

The fact is...there are few black swimmers and fewer champion black swimmers. I was a swimmer...and I once asked Carla Dumlap a black champion body builder, former Ms Olympia (who at the time was a successful synchronized swimmer), why so few blacks swam? Swimming has never been a country club sport, and has been much like track and field, assessable for all who wants to compete. Carla told me, physiologically blacks have higher bone density as well as denser muscularity...and much less fat than caucasians (in general). Often times a black athlete's metabolism is such that he finds it difficult to keep enough fat on his frame to swim competively. Swimming is an areobic exercise, so fat will be lost. A successful swimmer must carry a far amount of fat for buoyancy. Swimmers are never lean, showing vascular muscularity as apparent in track and field athletes. ...

The sports commentator, of course most likely didn't know this... I found his commentary idiotic and demeaning...

I didn't find anything offensive in the comments on the black swimmer winning. The commentater was just excited about the oddity and the victory. I don't think it is racist to call a black man a black man. And stereotypes aren't always a bad thing. Very few swimmers are black so the stereotype is just based on history in the event. They always, me included, point out it is a woman winning a dragrace or an Indy race. Their gender is the story as much as the win so...

And who knew a Jamaican could bobsled?

That's interesting, CG, and most probably true. My daughter was a gymnast for many years and also spent a year on a swim team. Because she had no fat, she had one winning swim--because she had to go to the bathroom, was cold and needed to get out of the pool asap.