The Jesse Owens Mentions at the WC

It's not dishonest. If they said he came back to great treatment in the US it'd be dishonest. They're merely focusing on a certain part of Owens' life, namely the track part.

They're not focusing on track. They're focusing on track in the face of Nazi Statements about white supremacy. To ignore his treatment at home is dishonest. There's affirmative dishonesty (a lie) and dishonesty by omission (omitting a necessary and relevant detail).

yea if i was german i would be pissed. ok yea so they make the germans look like racists assholes (at the time the country was) but completely ignore the fact jessie probably made not even half of his white counterparts and could not enjoy the simple luxuries of life they could. double standards

Door Knob wrote:

I find it very interesting whenever anyone brings up the 1936 Olympics, that they always remember to bring up Jesse Owens and how he showed those Nazis what's what. However, they fail to mention that fact that Nazi Germany actually annihilated everyone else on the medal table ( Including good old USA). Now if that isn't slanted history, then I have no clue what is.

Furthermore, it didn't stop Germany invading Czechoslovakia or Poland and everywhere else. Hitler was not disposed by Owens. World War II still broke out.

Jesse Owens was a truly great athlete but he didn't change the world.

What's all this about "descendants of Bolsheviks," professor. This meet is being put on by Germans and the IAAF in Berlin. The JO logo is approved by the USATF and its chief, Doug Logan. Where are the "Bolsheviks?"

The fairy tale of Jesse Owens and the ‘myth of Aryan superiority’ might have made slightly more sense had Nazi Germany had a sprinter of any consequence, resulting in a Rocky - Drago type confrontation.

Of course they didn’t, but they did have worldwide means of communication - and stopwatches!

So they knew perfectly well that Owens, the greatest athlete of that era (broke 6 records in an afternoon in 35) would win the Olympic sprint titles and, as the world record holder - the long jump.

Just how he was supposed to shocked them into revising their political philosophy is incomprehensible.

The fact that black men could run fast, was enough to revise their belief that Germans were the master race?

All their history, accomplishments and achievements over the centuries came down to how fast they could run?

Bloody ridiculous.

Hitler just shrugged his shoulders and explained they were faster because they were more primitive.

Actually, the surprising thing is the media missing an opportunity to bash America over the head about its injust racial HISTORY.

When does the media miss a chance to describe "historic" elections (for instance Obama) or prattle on about the first black winning Superbowl coach, or first black winter olympic medallist and on an on. The subtext being that this is entirely due to racism. They do it so much and unceasingly that I completely tone it out as p.c. propagandizing, which it is.

hypnotoad wrote:

Thank you! Yes, this hypocrisy is disgusting. Hitler wouldn't shake his hand, blah blah blah, yeah well guess what, neither would FDR. He didn't send him a telegram and he didn't invite him to the White House. When JO toured in Europe he stayed in the same hotels as his white team mates, in the US he had to stay in negro pensions.

The only reason the IAAF allowed the USATF to put that sticker on the uniforms is that they knew what a meal the US media would have made of it, had it been denied.

In the context of history, it doesn't make much sense to compare what happened to him in Berlin with what happened in the US. He was a member of the US team and a citizen of a country that was battling to move toward equality

while the fascist/socialist states were about the burn the world down.

Jesse's experience was a great step in the right direction for the world and America.

See, this is exactly why they needed to tell the whole story. This Disney version of what happened (A country battling to move toward equality) just wasn't true. The man came home and couldn't eat at a restaurant, couldn't drink from a water fountain, couldn't get a job and ended up racing horses to eat. So not only can you compare what was going on in Berlin to what was going on in America but you must tell that side of the story if you're going to attempt to tell the story.

KUFI wrote:

See, this is exactly why they needed to tell the whole story. This Disney version of what happened (A country battling to move toward equality) just wasn't true. The man came home and couldn't eat at a restaurant, couldn't drink from a water fountain, couldn't get a job and ended up racing horses to eat. So not only can you compare what was going on in Berlin to what was going on in America but you must tell that side of the story if you're going to attempt to tell the story.

The discussion must make some sense; the moral equivalence is obnoxious. Owens was a member of the US team. He could have never been a member of the German team and in fact may have ended up in a camp.

Millions upon million of Americans had been fighting, literally and legally, and dying at home and abroad for over a hundred years to right the wrongs initiated long before the American revolution. In 1936 most of the US was moving toward viewing racism as repugnant and illegal while racism was the legal and political system of Nazi Germany.

Recall that 500,000 to 600,000 deaths in the Civil war in a pop. of thirty million is the equivalent of a war today with 5 to 6 million casualties.

There is a pretty fair movie that lays out Owens' difficulties throughout his life in America. I think it starred Darian Harwood(sp?). It is a sobering account of what discrimination can do, even if one is a superstar.

And yes, it is important to know the history of what America was like when Owens went home and that history included America fighting and battling the most aggressively racist regimes in history, right after Owens returned home.

Within 5 years of the Berlin Olympics America started a decads long campaign battling Socialist Russia and China, Fascist Japan and Islamo-leftists/totalitarians or whatever term one prefers; all murderously racist and genocidal regimes.

By all means, tell the whole story but tell the entire story.

I stand corrected.

OK, so is that the story you think is being told? Has NBC aired that movie about JO?

And I think it's a little grand to claim that the story of Jesse Owens is the story of America's progress over centuries. Owens' exploits in Berlin were 29 years before the Voting Rights Act and 5+ years before America's grudging entry into WWII. In 1936 America had no real quarrel with Nazi Germany - we famously neglected to react against Hitler's reoccupation of the Rhineland, as did Britain. Kristallnacht was still 2 years away and the occupation of Poland 3 years in the future. Few people thought Hitler was a real problem and they were probably relieved that he restored order to a Germany that was falling apart during the Weimar Republic.

The story of JO is that he demonstrated athletic superiority in a world where racial supremacist theories were thriving - in Europe AND in America. Racism was very much "the legal and political system" of the US as well. Sure there were many Americans who thought segregation was wrong but that was true in Germany, Italy, Spain, and everywhere else too.

In any case, you would expect Owens' legacy to be most strongly felt in his home country. If people anywhere should have looked at his achievement and changed their mind about racial segregation, then certainly in America first. And for that to happen it wouldn't matter if he ran in Berlin, Rome, Chicago or Los Angeles.

I'm appalled by the hypocrisy of all this. Either tell the real story or don't mention it at all. You may call that "obnoxious" moral equivalence but that doesn't make it false.

There is no story. It's a made-up tale for AA consumption.

Till I moved to the US I only heard the Owens name mentioned along with Zatopek, Nurmi and other multiple champs.

I puked quite a bit last week courtesy of Hammond mentioning 1936 nauseatingly over and over.

JO was already a multiple WR holder from 1935 (didn't he break 4 WR's at 1935 Big 10 champs?).

So to make it seem like his athletic superiority magically appeared in Berlin (overcomimg the NAZIS) in 1936 is hypercritical of the US media.

He was already athletically superior WELL before Berlin.

Yes????

Why wasn't there a BM on the shirts of the US team at 1991 World Champs in Tokyo?

What exactly is JO's legacy? Does he actually have a "civil rights" legacy, I'm not sure he does. Did he prove that black people are athletically superior? Probably not - if anything Joe Louis should have shattered any notions of white athletic supremacy. Besides, even if he had proven that, did it really matter? Racial segregation in America wasn't predicated on athletic ability. And JO didn't prove that blacks are intellectually equal to whites - that wasn't his domain.

And not many people would have drawn the conclusion that if blacks can run as fast or faster than whites, then they can probably be as smart or smarter as well. After all, lots of animals can run even faster and we wouldn't consider them intellectually superior.

I really don't think the media are quite sure what they should be making of Jesse Owens' story. The Hitler thing seems like a convenient but very very cheap appeal to Americans' nationalist tendencies.

No one is saying that JO had a civil rights legacy, or even that his legacy was to be celebrated. Our point (and I think most of us agree) was that once they decided to mention him (every 15 mins) they should be honest and tell the complete story and not just some edited for disney version.

I agree with you, KUFI. I think this thread so far has been far more enlightened than NBC's coverage. Which says more about NBC than it does about letsrun.

What I was getting at is, maybe there isn't much of a story there, besides the story of one man's athletic achievements. But then, Carl Lewis won 4 golds in '84 so why not put a CL on the uniform too.

silly old fossil wrote:

Why wasn't there a BM on the shirts of the US team at 1991 World Champs in Tokyo?

Are you serious?

Do you equate Billy Mills' winning one race with Owens' 4 medals? Or think that the backstory is any where close. The Japaneses are highly xenophobic, but I do not recall a lot of "we are superior" language coming from Japan during that time frame.