Also, Herm Edwards was a military brat. Even as a black man, he most likely did not have the same experiences that Johnson had when he said he prefered African-American coachers because black athletes lifestyle as he described right here:
""They hadn't been in a situation as a young, black athlete and know what we had to go through when we go out," Johnson told interviewer Cris Carter about the previous coaching staff under **** Vermeil. "We like to go out. We like to have fun, but then you have to worry about the guy around the corner with the gun. You've got to worry about this girl on the block. You've got to worry about your parents, your homeboys taking advantage of you. So many things you have to worry about being a young, black athlete. And to be able to have a father like mine and a coach like Herm, I was able to escape a lot of those realities and find myself in a new ray of light." "
This statement is racist in itself in that Johnson assumes that every black athlete lives the gansta lifestyle and a white athlete or coach could not have a similiar background. I am sure many black athletes in professional sports had middle class and upper middle class backgrounds and many white players and coaches came from poor backgrounds.
If that's what you consider to be racist, you're being way too sensitive. LJ is speaking the truth. As a white guy, I have no idea what it's like to be black.
And no, you can't have the same experience as a black person being white. Yes, you can certainly experience the same economic difficulties, but I'm pretty sure the hard part of being black also involves prejudice. Chances are that unless you grew up in another country, or deep in the inner city, you didn't experience the same level of prejudice in our society for being white as a black guy may have.
"Racist" is when you claim another race is inferior to yours, or when you tell someone they can't be in your place of business because of their skin color, or blah blah blah.
I find that we white people as a whole are even more sensitive about race than blacks are. You say one thing that can even be remotely interpreted as negative toward whites and people start screaming pointing, "SEE? SEE? Blacks are racist, too!"
It's almost as if we are trying to excuse the behavior of our ancestors by pointing out that blacks can be prejudiced, too.
Come on now, it's all in the past. LJ should have known better than to speak so frankly about issues of race.
Also, it's not a coach's job to understand where his players are coming from--he's there to make them better players, nothing else. So while I don't agree with LJ's comments, I think calling them racist is a little a ridiculous.
