Harvard Hires a Coach
Posted on June 16th, 2007 in Uncategorized | 5 Comments »
After the Boston Globe reported that Harvard didn’t have a single African-American head coach, the university has now hired its second (basketball coach Tommy Amaker was the first): former University of Florida star Traci Green.
5 Responses
6/16/2007 2:12 pm
Rich, what do you think is the moral of this item? Smirking that the Globe can embarrass Harvard into doing something it refused to do in the past? Happiness that Harvard is thinking about racial diversity more than it has in the past, for whatever reason? or something else? There is a racial lens you’re projecting through by posting this item but I can’t get the image focused.
The Crimson story doesn’t inform us of her race until the middle of the story, so while I glanced at the top of the story when it was published, I missed the SHE’S BLACK!!! part. Should they have put it higher?
6/16/2007 2:16 pm
Well, the Crimson does mention that she’s black in its subhed, the text underneath the headline, online. Maybe that was added since you read the story?
I’m not sure there’s a moral here. It was an unfortunate situation, and Harvard appears to be trying to remedy it. Better late than never, I suppose.
6/16/2007 3:40 pm
2:12 again here. Quite likely I missed the subhead. I wonder why you picked this item as significant when there is a pretty interesting article about the race of the athletes themselves at the bottom of the page. It pokes at the race issue but like your posting, doesn’t really make the case that it’s worthy of attention. It’s just hard to see how we are ever going to get race-blind when we keep being told to look at race. How many Jewish coaches or athletes are there at Harvard? Nobody would know and nobody would care.
6/16/2007 3:50 pm
I disagree. If I remember correctly, Harvard has more teams than any other college in the country. The fact that none of those teams had a black head coach was disturbing.
6/16/2007 4:03 pm
And the item you posted was NOT about Harvard not having any black coaches. My point was, when does this sort of thing stop being newsworthy? But let’s call it a day on this.