The Great White Hope: A History of Subtly Racist Sports Movies
If not for sassy Sandra Bullock, this young black man would be living on the streets.
The Blind Side, a new sports drama based on Michael Lewis‘ book The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game, tells the real-life, against-all-odds story of Baltimore Ravens offensive tackle Michael Oher, who came from a broken home and lived alone on the mean streets of Memphis, Tennessee before becoming a football star. How did he do it? He was saved by some well-to-do white folks, of course!
Not to take anything away from Sean and Leigh Anne Tuohy, the good people who took Oher in and helped him realize his potential, but seriously, why do sports movies always have to focus on black ghetto kids going nowhere fast until their great white hope comes along to teach them how to not be illiterate or go to jail? Whatcha tryna say, Hollywood Honky-wood? Black people can’t make it without benevolent whites? Don’t make us call Rev. Al on you! To see why we’re suspicious and steamed, check out these other, pattern-forming sports movies about light-skinned saviors.
Hardball (2001)
• Keanu Reeves plays a degenerate gambler who’s forced to pay off his massive debt by coaching a Little League team of troubled black kids from Chicago’s notorious, gang-infested Cabrini-Green projects. He plans to repay his debt and ditch his players, but he inevitably takes pity on them and stays to teach them how to be winners. No, not even a degenerate gambler bets on black.
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Wildcats (1986)
• Goldie Hawn plays a girl’s track coach at a bourgeoisie (i.e. white) high school who leaves to follow in her famous father’s footsteps and coach football, only the job is at a scary inner-city high school where there are guard dogs! She manages to transform her rowdy, undisciplined black players into a team because there’s no limit to what white pluck can achieve!
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Radio (2003)
• His bald white head beaming beneficence, Ed Harris plays real-life South Carolina high school football coach Harold Jones, who takes in an illiterate and mentally handicapped young black man (James Robert “Radio” Kennedy, played by Cuba Gooding Jr.). By allowing him to work with the team as head cheerleader, assistant coach, and team manager, Jones transforms Radio from a town joke into a inspirational figure. You see, it’s the kind white man who is really special.
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The Love Guru (2008)
• Romany Malco plays a black hockey player who loses his girlfriend (Meagan Good) to a well-hung white French-Canadian goalie (Justin Timberlake) and is aided in his quest to get her back by a white spiritual leader (Mike Myers) who was raised in India and sounds like a Slurpee-slinger stereotype. There is way more racist fuckery in this turd of a film than we can even begin to discuss here, but seriously, a black man turns to a white savior because he’s intimidated by another white dude’s dong?! This shit is implausible even in Bill Romanowski’s fantasies.
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Cool Runnings (1993)
• After failing to qualify for the 1988 Summer Olympics, four Jamaican sprinters try to achieve five-ring glory in the 1988 Winter Olympics as a bobsled team. Clueless about the sport, they seek wisdom from a drunken, grumpy old ice beast played by John Candy (literally, he was a beast on the ice, winning two gold medals bobsledding for the U.S. in the 1968 Winter Olympics before he got caught cheating in 1972 and moved to Jamaica in shame to become a bookie). Yet again, black athletes are so inept that even the lowliest, most destitute white bum has to be brought in to show them how it’s done. Ice cold, Disney, motherfuckin’ ice cold.
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The Air Up There (1994)
• Kevin Bacon plays an assistant coach who goes to Africa to pry Saleh, a tall-ass teenage Winabi prince with star potential, from his tribe, telling him that playing college basketball will make him a better king. While on his recruiting mission, he helps resolve the tribe’s potentially bloody conflict with an encroaching mining company…with a high-stakes game of basketball. Thank the gods for the white man, otherwise Africa would be really fucked!
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Bring It On: All or Nothing (2006)
• Hayden Panettierre plays a cheerleader at an elite affluent high school who’s forced to move to working-class, multi-ethnic Crenshaw Heights in East L.A. (gasp!). After initially clashing with the cheer team’s black captain (Solange Knowles), she shows her new black and Latina teammates how to really move, so they can beat her old school and win a contest to appear in a Rihanna TV special. It makes perfect sense because, you know, white chicks have historically been known to back that ass up.
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It’s Still Racist! Bonus:
The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000)
• Finally, a black man saves a white man! Will Smith plays Bagger Vance, a mysterious caddy who helps Matt Damon’s character find his stroke again (pause) after the former golf star is traumatized by WWI and becomes a drunk. The thing is, Vance isn’t a black man—he’s a ghost! Way to throw black athletes a bone. Maybe next time don’t sink it in the hole.
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Drake November 20, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Please. This notion is absurd!
Why does it have to be a colour issue?
Black or white. It doesnt matter.
johngone November 20, 2009 at 4:42 pm
^ gtfo. youre one of those pretentious dicks that spell color .. “colour” ..
” this notion is absurd” .. youre on complex.com.. not newsweek. calm the f down
IndiePower.com November 20, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Its a football movie. Lets just watch for entertainment and not think too hard.
Marcus "MdB" Browder November 20, 2009 at 5:39 pm
Cool Runnings is my shit!! Haha, I could watch it for days.
You November 20, 2009 at 6:23 pm
uhhhh Sunset Park, Finding Forrester, Gridiron Gang (they showed the man the Rock was playing at the end of the movie, dudes white!!)…
shakes November 20, 2009 at 6:32 pm
i thought i was the only person that noticed this shit
Marvin November 20, 2009 at 8:16 pm
Good grief….calm down. You have way too much time on your hands if you have to write a story like this.
Bruthas too uptight!
Londoner November 21, 2009 at 10:25 am
Editor DOES have a point…
GTEK November 21, 2009 at 2:36 pm
Everytime we bring up the discussion of racial barriers they want to act as if “colour” doesn’t matter.
As if we are just “thinking to hard” or “wont just let it be”. Mean while they still enjoy the many factors of white privliage.
Downplaying the convo everytime with this fantasy of a joyful peaceful united society.
How are we supposed to have that if we can’t discuss these issues?
Colleen February 5, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Did you not realize that there is also a pattern in some these movies? They are actors playing “real-life” people. That’s the way the story went. Seriously, black people do need to get over it. Still enjoying white privileges? Last time I checked white people don’t get to go to college for free just because we are white.
jack hoff November 22, 2009 at 1:07 am
I do see the pattern though. ha ha.
nylander77 November 23, 2009 at 2:08 pm
There is an obvious pattern here, but apparently its not as obvious I thought, because the author is way off base. “Honkeywood”? Are you serious? Just because those in power in Hollywood have fair skin, doesn’t at all connect them to the common white person in middle America. These are stories intended to make whites feel guilty, not empowered. The “feel good story of the year” does have a racial tone, and Mrs. Tuohy explains it all when she says that she came from an evil white family. To be racially aware is to be evil. White people forget your genes and heritage, your ancestors were evil bigot garbage. Whites should encourage their children to mix interracially. Let America absorb enough of these propaganda films and maybe in the coming centuries there will be no more blue or green eyes to weep for them.
President 4 Life November 30, 2009 at 10:30 pm
It’s comedy/social commentary people, lighten up!!!
And nylander77, essentially saying that minorities are helpless without White people is inherently a “White supremacist” message. Whether it’s on purpose or by accident.
The idea that Black people can’t raise their own kids and needs Mr. Drummond, Mam & George, or Sandra Bullock to raise their kids, is inherently a little silly.
I laugh at those types of movies, but I know they are a little racist, just because there are two types of Blacks in those movies, innocent helpless Blacks and like drug dealers/drug addicts degenerates.
matthew jones December 9, 2009 at 7:50 pm
this is straight bullshit. youre just looking for a reason to complain. youre last example in particular didnt make any sense! plus the entire time you just make jokes about white people, and somehow YOU are the authority on race. fucking loser.
dO IT 2 it December 28, 2009 at 5:57 pm
make love not war.
little dick January 1, 2010 at 1:17 am
why are “you people” so insecure about your race? it is pathetic.
So true February 6, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Watching the previews for this movie, every time they showed the scene where Bullock says, “You never had a room?” and Oher says, “No a bed,” I cringed. I knew that I didn’t want to see this movie. The last movie I saw like this was “Radio.” However, I had some family members come into town and they wanted to watch it. I got through about 30 minutes of the movie before I had to leave. I understand this is a true story, but it is obviously extremely exaggerated. First of all, he comes into the picture with a black man and another black boy that seemed to have helped him up to that point. He was like 17 or so when he started living with the white family, right? So I would like to know how he survived until then. He had to have somebody else helping him. I’m sure they were black, but there is no reference to them in the movie. Secondly, why did the movie have to portray him like he was mentally retarded? He didn’t know when to get up in class, even after every other person in the room had left, he had to ask, “Can I leave now?” He doesn’t know how to talk to five year old little girls without the help of this little white kid telling him how. When they bring him to their home to eat, he stares at everyone as they pray like he has never seen anyone pray before. He holds his fork in his fist like he has never had a civilized dinner. My goodness! This is absolutely ridiculous. I don’t understand how people can’t see this. They helped him out and I think it is great, but he learned how to survive on his own with the help of many other black people in his life. From the movie, you wouldn’t know that.