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The question answers itself. And wrong. Most people have no problem talking about it. When Jackie Robinson broke the Major League Baseball color line in 1947, everyone talked about it. Some of the talk was shameful by today's standards, but there was no lack of talk then about blacks in sports than is today's situation. The gab is much less discriminating about color, but it can be just as opinionated and emotional.

Black athletes dominate in sports that can be played free by all children, rich or poor, on city streets: basketball, football, baseball and running games. Therefore, once discrimination ended, those young black men who had developed their skills from age 4 or 5, then honed them to star in high school sports could go as far as their talent carried them.

As opportunities for athletic scholarships opened to them, those black athletes poured into colleges and anniversaries throughout the country. Their first claim of domination started in 50s and 60s basketball, as the tall, lean high school athletes starred in college, and then the best of them went on to professional NBA careers. The same happened in baseball and football, though not quite as quickly, and where the competition is keener.

Black athletes, usually due to economic conditions of their childhood, have not yet gone on to dominate other sports, although there's certainly no lack of talent and promise of the future. Such sports as tennis, ice hockey, ice skating, swimming, diving, golf, skiing, bike racing and others usually consist of white men whose parents had the money to pay for private lessons when they were very young. The white domination will not last much longer.

With superb athletes like Tiger Woods and the Williams sisters now dominating their formerly white-only sports, the color line will continue to advance. In the world of sports, there is no longer any shameful discrimination, and the qualifications are restricted only by talent, conditioning, practice and motivation. I'm not afraid to talk about it, because that's the way sports should be.

Learn more about this author, Ted Sherman.
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