NBC Sports Claims No African Has Won the 100m Race?

The New Racial Doctrine

Ato Boldon, of NBC Sports Pressbox, declared emphatically during the just ended World Athletics Championships that: “No African has won the 100 meter race.”
What do you make of it?

In order to understand the racial priming here, first, one needs to understand that the 100 meter race at any World Athletics Championship is the most watched event. Second, comments made by analysts are heard by the largest audiences around the world. And third, that there’s special production value assigned to scripted comments such as these during the most-watched events.

By production value, producers (who are always white, or European men) understand that scripted comments, especially racial ones, have a far reaching impact and that these comments have direct consequences within the communities of their large viewership. Now, it is within this space that Ato Boldon makes the comment: “No African has won the 100m Race.”

Furthermore, to understand the context of analyzing this statement a bit deeper, one needs to become abreast with the colonial, imperialist, neo-colonial European/white exercise of writing out Africa, and specifically Blacks, out of major history. Recall any major event, even the idea of the makers of civilization itself: European texts have successfully excised any links of European borrowing from African and Black civilizations out of their historical memory.

Take for instance, the prior civilizations of Kemet and Nubia. Europeans do not believe that these were African civilizations let alone Black ones. They do not even accept that Greece, Crete and Rome borrowed from these civilizations. Take even the early African civilizers of Southern European, the Moors, the Etruscans, etc., nowhere in European history are these acknowledged as truly Black or even in some instances, African.

The examples of African/Black exploits in the pursuit of civilization abound, yet in European history Blacks are carefully removed from the daily imaginations of the European/white-self in order that Europe can assert its imperialist relations with Africa. This process of fabricating history, re-fabricating history, minting new histories, and re-minting newer concoctions of history to appease the European self in order to assert European/white colonialism in Africa is called the European Miracle.

It is exactly within this framework of the European Miracle that Ato Boldon was tasked, by his European/white producers (or is it handlers?), to bleat out the expression: “No African has won the 100m Race.” This exercise in Anti-Blackness is not new among Europeans and among people of European descent (no matter what mask they put on).

Recall the Nazi German instance of the same statement just before the onset of the second European tribal wars (WW2) that simply dared all peoples of African descent around the world to prove that they could be better athletes than Europe’s best—than the blue-eyed, blonde-haired Nordic man? Recall that most sports were not even open to Africans/Blacks around the world, until recently, for fear that Sudan’s Blacks might beat Norway’s Nordics? Recall sports like boxing, tennis, basketball and football were not integrated within the racist United States of America until the Bantu Black athletes, now of America, showed or rather proved that they were superior to the Nordic citizens of America at those sports? Recall that Africans and people of African descent forcibly conscripted into Europe’s colonial armies were not even allowed, at first, to shoot and kill the white enemies of the white men they fought for?

When Ato Boldon’s statement is taken within this putrid context of the myth of the European, and his European Miracle (which is that he is the better man than the African man at all times), little doubt is left about its meaning: that Blacks are inferior to whites, or rather Africa is inferior. Either way Ato Boldon’s statement on NBC is made loud and clear for its viewers (no matter what mask Ato Boldon puts on every morning).

When Ato Boldon’s statement is taken within this putrid context of the myth of the European, and his European Miracle (which is that he is the better man at all times), little doubt is left about its meaning: that Blacks are inferior to whites, or rather Africa is inferior. Either way Ato Boldon’s statement on NBC is made loud and clear for its viewers: Anti-Blackness!

Furthermore, it goes to show the pervasive character of another argument: which is that not only is the European better, not only is Europe as a landmass and clime better, but that European culture itself is better than Africa’s cultures so much so that it is rather able to mold an inferior race of people into better ones. That is, to say that “no African has ever won the 100m race,” is another way to say that Africans/Blacks are better trained by the hands of whites/Europeans since, and this is what it seems, Africans elsewhere, but on the continent of Africa, dominate the 100m race. It is to say that Africa itself is better managed by Europeans if Africa must produce a 100m champion. In other words, it is so say that the violent imposition of genocides, chattel kidnapping, imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism and neo-liberalism by Europeans in Africa is justified if Africa must produce a 100m champion. It is to say that chattel slavery in the Americas itself is justified since it helped Blacks become better athletes at the 100m dash than other Blacks in Africa.

The cultural racism remains stark and insidious when production staff at NBC allow such scripted paralogics into the minds of their viewers: opinion such as European culture is better than African culture, or that Africans are better off in a European culture, all go to rationalize European violence against Blacks/Africans either in Africa or in the diaspora. Violence everywhere is bad unless the European Miracle demands it. Atomic bombs everywhere else are bad for mankind unless only European nations wield them!

Of course, Ato Boldon might plead for plausible deniability and there are certainly those who will feign this kind of dishonesty. He might say what he really meant was that “No African nation has won the 100 meter race,” or that “No one representing an African nation has won the 100 meter race.” Even at face-value that statement will still be incorrect. Perhaps, “no one representing European-colonial states in Africa has won the 100m race organized by the same white people!” This is the appropriate version of history.

An event organized and managed by Blacks/Africans cannot accept the conscription, and re-conscription of the Kenyan, Bernard Lagat, or Christian Coleman (a man of West African descent), as entirely American. (They are African Americans for a reason!) Or would a world event meant to truly celebrate the world, its people and its various cultures completely enslave a whole African team and present it as entirely French! (Only dubious events meant to traumatize the oppressed entail the total conscription of mercenary athletes from Africa without giving any credit to the humanity of the mercenaries themselves).

There are many countless statements one could easily make before arriving to neo-colonial Africa in the twenty-first century. How about: (1) No white man (or woman) has won the 100m race since Blacks (specifically people of West African descent) begun to participate in it, (2) No one of European descent has won the 100m race since it became a global sport, (3) No white man has yet beaten the fastest Black man, (4) No Asian man has won the 100m, (5) No Mongol has won the 100m, (6) No Indian has won the 100m, and the list is endless.

The point is that even if Ato Boldon meant that, “no one representing European-colonial states in Africa has won the 100m race organized by the same white people,” the statement will still be mischievous. Why pick this one statement, and only this one, out of an ocean of many possible others? One answer: the European Miracle, and with it, the insidious and ever-pervasive practice of Anti-Blackness—which is, wherever you see Blacks dominating others, belittle the Black people, and when you cannot do that, belittle where they come from (Africa), and when that’s no enough, belittle their ancestry and their history (African). That is, whatever can be done to make white/European men feel better about Europe, whiteness, and themselves, as they watch one white-Italian man struggle to compete in a field of seven Black men in an event staged/organized by white men, do it!

There’s only one way to crash the myth of the European miracle: All people of African descent must declare sports that is organized by whites a sin and to stay away from it. Let white men (and their women) run around setting fake and mediocre records. If the event is not organized by Blacks or peoples of African descent, please desist from entertaining colonizers. Besides, we have chains to break free from: we have our freedoms to fight for in Africa and in the African diaspora. This is more important than a momentary victory over our European colonizers in under 10 seconds in spikes every now and then while the whole world is entrapped within the religiosity of the mythology of the European Miracle.