Gerald Early on Jackie Robinson, unabated racial alienation, and the meritocracy of sports; is sports business a meritocracy?
Gerald Early's 2011 book A Level Playing Field: African American Athletes and the Republic of Sports , contains an essay titled "American Integration, Black Heroism, and the Meaning of Jackie Robinson . He writes: Robinson arguably was the person who launched the American era of racial integration after World War II. This rush and flood of people and events--the Brown decision, the Montgomery bus boycott, the sit-ins, the March on Washington, Birmingham and Selma, Martin Luther King Jr., the Watts riots, Malcolm X, affirmative action, multiculturalism, the Million Man March--provoked unprecedented historical change in how Americans perceived pluralism and race, but shockingly, in the end, did not at all lessen the abiding sense of alienation that African Americans felt toward their native land. Early's point-- did not at all lessen the abiding sense of alienation --could be debated (not at all ?), but clearly it did not come close to removing that sense of alienation. ...