1. Jack Johnson's career illustrates how racism has often been as source of entertainment for sports fans & revenue for media. His matches (like many others) were marketed as racial combat: black man versus "great white hope."
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3. The true heir to this tradition of racist promotion is of course Trump himself, who wanted to do a season of The Apprentice with a white team fighting a black team.
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4. “It would be nine blacks against nine whites, all highly educated, very smart, strong, beautiful,” Told Howard Stern. The white team would be all-blond, but the black team would be an “assortment” of light-& dark-skinned blacks. Stern: “Wouldn’t that set off a racial war?”
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5. And of course, the way Trump targets black athletes (as with NFL protesters) is in the tradition of the scapegoating of Jackson.
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6. All of which is to say that Trump's pardoning of Johnson, however welcome, was rife with irony: https://newrepublic.com/minutes/148534/trumps-pardon-jack-johnson-rife-ironies …
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End of conversation
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I would add that the persecution added to the boxing allure as well. Not only black man v great white hope, but CRIMINAL black man (with a white woman no less!) v great white hope.
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