winners wrote:
I feel like if Curtis Beach was black, like I originally assumed he was, he would not be Dyestat's poster boy with with new interviews and photos and articles and his own blog every day. People wouldn't be drooling over him like they are now. People would be just as indifferent now as they always have been to the decathlon.
Compare Marquis Goodwin with Mason Finley. Both have broken national high school records this year. Both have received significant media attention from sites specializing in coverage of track and field. Both deserve it. I hope that neither is messed up by the attention they've received. I hope both go on to represent us in the Olympics. Goodwin is black; Finley is white. Both have been celebrated on the front page of Dyestat. Ultimately, though, neither accomplished what Beach has accomplished. You said it yourself, "he is competing in an event that very few high school athletes are even able to try." I don't know that "try" is the right word--anyone can try the decathlon--but it's the right idea. Beach has so excelled in so many disciplines that it is that fact that sets his accomplishments apart.
Go back a year--Chanelle Price and Laura Roessler. One white, one black, both 800 phenoms. Both got lots of attention. Neither got the kind of attention Beach is getting.
And part of what Beach is getting owes to the fact that he happens to be both extroverted and articulate. Not all high school phenoms are. In fact, most aren't.
It helps if we don't go about looking for examples of racism. It helps all people.
And, always indifferent to the decathlon? Why, then, was Bryan Clay one of our more celebrated American track and field athletes of the most recent Olympics?