Former Kentucky star Rex Chapman told the Louisville Courier Journal that school officials wanted him to dump the black women he dated or “hide it” rather than inflame racist fans.
Adolph Rupp still lives in the hearts and minds of many Wildcat fans. It was true 20 years ago, and it’s true now.
“There were certain aspects of my time there that were really ugly,” Chapman, who is white, said. “I don’t know how it is today, but that’s how it was 20 years ago.”
Chapman said this race-based scrutiny by athletic department officials, boosters and others led him to leave Kentucky after two seasons and enter the NBA Draft in 1988.
While this is reprehensible, the SportsEye wonders why these same administrators, fans and boosters had no problem with black athletes dating white women?
Do they want to win so badly they turn off their racist ways to accept interracial dating when the guy is black and the gal is white? Or do they simply throw the woman into the “white trash” folder and lose no sleep because “she obviously isn’t all-white anyway?”
Kentucky isn’t alone, by the way. Many schools in the South still battle with this question of interracial dating and athletes. The rebel flags that fans bring to University of Mississippi football and basketball games are not there to support a team. They are there to support a cause, no matted how twisted.
The South is still fighting the Civil War in many ways, and African Americans are still the scapegoat for the South’s woes in many Southerners’ eyes. President Bush and other Republicans feverishly play this race card at election time in subtle yet destructive ways and, after they win, go right back to laughing at “those hicks.”
The SportsEye salutes Chapman for pulling the hood off the racist behavior of those that once “supported” him at Kentucky. It would have been better if the world learned of his anguish many years ago.