00:15:00

Fifteen minutes. I had been back in the United States for fifteen minutes when I heard racist comments about Latinos. I had passed through customs in the Houston airport and had boarded a tram that carries travelers between terminals. A recorded voice announced in English and in Spanish the terminal at which the tram arrived. A man with three chins, carrying a book entitled Master of War (the biography of a Civil War general from Virginia who fought with the Union, I discovered when I looked up the title on Amazon.com), mocked the Spanish announcement – “Poooor faaaavor, Muuuuchos Graaaacias” – while muttering his displeasure about having to listen to the announcements in Spanish. The woman by his side, presumably his wife, acted embarrassed and tried to shush him, “Shhh… there are some of them on this train.”

***

During my two months of sabbatical travel in Ecuador and Peru I sought to improve my Spanish language abilities. I also was interested in exploring the intersections of race, culture, and religion. To the degree that racism manifests itself subtly, I certainly missed a lot as I traveled. And yet there was plenty to observe. Billboards selling everything from beauty products to cell phones almost universally depicted men and women with very light skin.

On my third day in Ecuador I went to visit what I thought was the city’s museum of contemporary arts. Actually, that is what it will be. The museum is situated in a renovated military hospital and its inaugural exhibit marked the bicentennial of a violent massacre of those who were trying to bring about independence from Spanish colonial rule. The exhibit included an excerpt from a 1615 sermon by a Catholic priest that warned against racial mixing. According to the priest, only pure-blooded Spanish children were beautiful. The offspring of mixed racial couples were “monkeys,” “bears,” or “Indian slaves.”

In a previous entry I mentioned some of the stereotypes that some of the American and British expatriates I encountered hold about the people of Ecuador.

I also encountered racial stereotyping among Ecuadorians. My visit to Ecuador coincided with a stretch of atrocious play by the Ecuadorian futbol team as they played other teams from South America in a World Cup qualifying tournament. Ecuador managed to defeat Peru, a perennial doormat, but lost key games against Colombia, Uruguay, and Chile. Following the loss to Chile, the final nail in the coffin for Ecuador’s World Cup hopes (I think), one Ecuadorian I spoke with lashed out against the racial composition of the team. The Ecuadorian National Futbol team has a high proportion of Afro-Ecuadorians. The descendents of African slaves brought to the New World by the Spanish, Afro-Ecuadorians make up somewhere between three and eight percent of the population of the country.

The man with whom I spoke characterized Afro-Ecuadorians as gifted in size and speed but deficient in intelligence, work-ethic, motivation, and the passion at the heart of a champion.

***

Comments like these are eerily similar to the racism present in sports coverage in the United States.

Whenever a player is described using terms that might be used at a slave auction such as long, thick, or wide; whenever a player is referred to as gifted, a physical specimen, or naturally talented; whenever an athlete’s performance is described as “effortless”; whenever a player is said to live up to his potential: chances are the player that is being described is African-American.

However, in the United States, whenever a player is described as scrappy or gritty; whenever a player is praised for his work-ethic or his intelligence; whenever a player is described as exceeding his potential through hard work or willpower: chances are the player that is being described is white.

While I was in Ecuador news broke that Rush Limbaugh was a member of a group that expressed interest in purchasing the St. Louis Rams football franchise. Limbaugh soon dropped off of the list of potential buyers of the team, but not before everyone dug up the footage of Rush Limbaugh’s criticism of Donovan McNabb, the African-American quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles, who Limbaugh accused of being given too much credit by members of the media who were “desirous that a black quarterback do well.” Limbaugh made these comments in 2003 while serving as a commentator on ESPN. His comments generated a cloud of controversy and Limbaugh resigned. If you listen to the entire segment, it is telling that another white commentator jumped in and framed the discussion of McNabb’s performance as a quarterback who was skilled at “making plays” but lacking when it came to “running the offense.”

Limbaugh’s comments were ludicrous. The NFL had already had several successful African-American quarterbacks including Doug Williams who won a Superbowl 15 years earlier, Randall Cunningham who is the all-time leader in rushing yards at the quarterback position, Steve McNair who was the reigning NFL co-MVP at the time Limbaugh made his comments, and Warren Moon, a prototypical pocket passer, who made 9 Pro-Bowls and ranks fourth in passing yardage in NFL history despite playing his first six seasons in the Canadian Football League.

However, the comment made by the other white commentator about the difference between “making plays” and “running the offense” went unnoticed and unchallenged. This odd parsing – it is not possible to do one without doing the other – only makes sense within a racist worldview where African-Americans display physical giftedness required to "make plays" without possessing the intelligence, discipline, or leadership necessary to “run the offense.”

***

Later this week I will post a reflection about racism on my main blog because I’ve been sharply aware of it lately in the cultural and political discourse in the United States. It was chilling to observe, in the context of a discussion of Ecuadorian futbol, the very same racist assumptions that we find in coverage of sports like football and basketball in the United States.

["00:15:00" is a song by the Dallas-based alternative rock group Chomsky.]