Elections and Airplane Crashes

            A few years ago, Malcolm Gladwell wrote a wonderful book called Outliers: The Story of Success.  He offered intriguing theories about life and achievement, including the notion that real competence in any endeavor requires doing that endeavor for 10,000 hours. Leaving aside the fact a few social scientists scoffed at Gladwell’s 10,000 hour rule because, they contended, he offered insufficient empirical data in support of it, we’ve found the 10,000 hour idea, and others he advances, compelling.  One of those offers a path for analyzing the election, his way of looking at airplane crashes.

Gladwell devoted most of his attention to cultural factors, like inadequate cockpit communication born out of the reluctance of co-pilots from some cultures to challenge captains about things they saw going wrong because to do so would have been to question authority in a way their societies don’t permit.  Gladwell, however, also made a point some others make about air crashes – that many result from the cascading effect of little things going wrong that add up to a major catastrophe. In most instances, removal of any one of these “little things” from the equation would have averted the crash.  As we think about Gladwell’s view of air crashes, the more parallels we see with the election.

Little Things The issue of race figures prominently in most analyses we’ve seen of the election.  Pundits point out Donald Trump’s support among white working class voters, add in his offensive rhetoric about ethnic groups, and the instant analysis says Trump won because of a white backlash against immigrants, Muslims, the first black president, etc. More left-leaning analysts saw Trump’s appeal to white voters in general, and Hillary Clinton’s weakness among them, and concluded that out-and-out white racism decided the election.

Then, there is the matter of Clinton’s complicity in her own defeat.  People supporting this theory look at both the technical/strategic and the personal.  At a technical/strategic level, they point to her campaign’s failure to see—until it was too late – Trump’s surge in the upper Midwest and her selection of Tim Kaine as a running mate instead of a Hispanic, like Housing Secretary Julian Castro, who might have produced a larger Hispanic vote for the Democrats.  These analysts, in effect, argue that Clinton could have denied Trump the White House just by running a better railroad.  On the personal front, others take her to task for the flaws that created some of her heaviest political baggage, such as her penchant for privacy and secrecy that likely led to installation of the private e-mail server. Another variation of this argument focuses on ill-advised decisions Clinton (and her husband) made before the campaign – giving the Wall Street speeches, how the Clinton Foundation operated, filling her circle with corporate and social elites instead of cultivating more relationships with working class people.

Happenings Then, of course, some things just happened, beginning with FBI Director James Comey’s meddling in the election in the name of keeping a promise to Congress.  Nothing required Comey to make that promise in the first place and nothing compelled him to speak on either of the two occasions he did during the last days of the campaign --- October 28 when he dropped his first bombshell letter and the Sunday before the election when he tried to clean up the mess with an exculpatory letter. The damage was done.

We could go on with the list of theories about why Trump won and Clinton lost, but we’ve made the point. Any of these things, if changed just a little, could have altered the outcome of the election.  In that sense, the 2016 election resembles the air crashes Gladwell describes in Outliers.  No one will ever explain the result by reference to just one thing or one set of things. The outcome just shows how complex and nuanced a world we inhabit.

Lessons What do we learn from looking at the election through this disaster prism?   Three lessons, we suggest.  First, be careful about drawing broad simplistic conclusions.  As journalist Mark Shields reminded us last week, many of the rural and small town areas in Michigan and Wisconsin that Trump carried so solidly went for Barak Obama in 2008 and 2012.  That should give us pause about automatically casting the inhabitants of those areas as bigoted, narrow-minded racists promoting mass backlash. Without absolving them from complicity in Trump’s nastiness, we can acknowledge that maybe they mostly seek a magic bullet that will expunge the effects of the things that make them feel left out of the new economic and cultural order.  Obama promised “change” too. Maybe that message, not the color of the messenger, rings truest with them.

Second, campaigns matter.  Trump ran a terrible campaign as measured by traditional standards of the craft. But, it didn’t matter, given his celebrity status. Clinton, on the other hand, supposedly the superior technical politician, made critical mistakes.  The three of us are avid sports fans and we know what will get any football or basketball team beat, no matter the difference in talent – turnovers.  Hillary turned the ball over plenty in this campaign and it eventually caught up with her.

Finally, in campaigns as in air crashes, some things happen that no pilot can control. If the tail section breaks off no amount of pilot skill can save the plane. That’s probably the best analogy for the Comey letters.  Sometimes things just happen.

A zillion ways exist to look at this election. For progressives like us, it was a disaster of the first order. But trying to assign one simple explanation makes it all the more likely something like this will occur in the future. We need to know all the possible causes, no matter how small.                                       

The Struggles of Charlie Strong: Is the Handwriting on the Wall for the Texas Football Coach?

Even as the Presidential election gets stranger, we’ve kept some attention on college football.  Two-thirds through the season many fans are turning their attention to (1) the playoffs and (2) the coaching carousel. A few schools (e.g. LSU, Purdue) have already fired coaches and will finish the season with interims.  Other heads sit on the chopping block and we expect pink slips right after Thanksgiving – which brings us back to where we started this blog, the plight of Texas coach Charlie Strong.

We wrote in August that Strong who, like all three of us, hails from Arkansas, faced a year in which he had to win eight or nine games to survive.  He won’t win nine, at least not in the regular season, since the Longhorns are 4-4.  Winning out will produce an 8-4 regular season.

A few weeks ago, after a frustrating loss to a mediocre Kansas State team, some media types and fans had Strong already gone.  Firing coaches during the season, however, isn’t Texas’s style (it’s never happened). If Strong’s going to get the axe, it will likely fall after the November 25 finale against TCU.

Being lawyers, we like to construct analytical frameworks through which to examine situations like this. Our Strong framework includes three dimensions – pure football, the outsized Texas expectations, and race.  There are football-based reasons to fire Strong or to keep him.  Most elite college football programs have expectations that obscure reality in evaluating coaches and Texas fits the pattern.  Finally, no matter what happens to Strong, race will arise in the discussion of his departure or his continued tenure at Texas.

Just Football Make no mistake, Charlie Strong can coach football. He proved that as defensive coordinator for two national championship teams at Florida, with spots on the Lou Holtz and Urban Meyer coaching trees, and through bowl victories and double digit win seasons as head coach at Louisville. Moving to Austin didn’t make him forget how to coach.

Still, his Texas tenure baffles even his strongest (yes, we said that) supporters. Unranked California and Kansas State torched the Texas defense. Even in a much needed win over then eighth-ranked Baylor, Texas yielded over 600 yards of offense. Watching missed tackle after missed tackle infuriates ardent Texas fans (as one of us is).

As coaches tend to, Strong attributes many of his team’s problems to youth.  He has a point. Texas plays precious few seniors because it has so few good ones, a testament to what Strong found when he arrived in 2014.  The team’s inability to win away from Austin (0-4, including a loss to rival Oklahoma on a neutral field) no doubt reflects immaturity. If Strong plans to win out and survive, his team must grow up on November 5 and win at Texas Tech. 

Texas has corrected what ailed it during Strong’s first two seasons – an anemic offense.  The Longhorns average ten points more per game this year than last because of freshman quarterback Shane Buechele, an improving offensive line, a deep, talented receiving corps, and the superb running of tailback D’Onta Foreman. Most of those pieces, and much of the defense, return.  Strong himself freely says that whoever coaches Texas in 2017 will have a ten win team.

So, just in football terms, Strong’s 15-18 record in two and two-thirds seasons might deserve dismissal based on the numbers and the eye test.  Much of what Texas fans have seen has been ugly, really ugly.  We won’t sugar coat that.  Still, Strong has a young, talented team poised for future success.  Building football teams resembles baking cakes.  They aren’t ready until they’re ready.  Ample evidence exists that Texas could come out of the oven very tasty next season.  Maybe the cook who whipped up the batter ought to get a chance to put on the icing and enjoy a piece.

Texas Expectations Much has been said and written about the Texas expectations and how the school and its fans see the program. ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit called Texas a “cesspool” in which to coach because of the demands of the fan base.  Former Texas  athletic director DeLoss Dodds famously remarked that it was foolish to talk about Texas keeping up with the Joneses in facilities, fund raising, and other measures of success. “We are the Joneses,” Dodds declared.

At many schools Strong wouldn’t be in trouble with the record he has after two and two-thirds seasons. Many would follow the four year rule that a coach    should at least have the opportunity to get his first recruiting class through. At Texas, however, the powers that be have to decide whether to succumb to the pressure or give Strong time to finish baking the cake, regardless of the hungry, impatient crowd clamoring at the table.

The Matter of Color Our earlier blog asked whether Texas would hire another black coach if it fires Strong.  While his fate on the Forty Acres remains uncertain, it has become clear Strong won’t have a black successor.  That doesn’t necessarily result from racial animus on the part of the Texas hierarchy. Nearly everyone agrees Texas will first go after University of Houston coach Tom Herman, a former Texas graduate assistant and Urban Meyer disciple who has turned the Cougars into a national player despite not being in a Power 5 conference.  Herman, on the surface, appears the ideal man for Texas and the fact he’s not black is just the way it is.

Even if Texas wanted to replace Strong with a black coach, it would have a difficult time doing so. Texas won’t hire a FCS coach or an assistant who hasn’t been a successful head coach. Texas can’t and won’t try luring Kevin Sumlin from Texas A & M, its estranged in-state rival.  David Shaw isn’t leaving Stanford for Texas. Vanderbilt’s Derek Mason might find himself on the hot seat there. James Franklin hasn’t had the sustained success at Penn State he’d need to justify Texas trying to hire him now.  Dino Babers just got to Syracuse.

We no doubt missed a coaching prospect or two, but the point remains.  A microscopic supply of black coaches exists for a place like Texas.  The reasons begin with institutional racism and the good ol’ boy system that dictates who gets hired for the coordinator positions that lead to head coaching jobs.  That’s such a big topic we’ll have to take it up another time.

Your thoughts?       

                 

                         

So, How Did The First Debate Go?

Unless you were on some other planet, you know there was a presidential debate Monday, September 26.  Some predicted one hundred million people would watch or listen.  We won’t know for a little while whether that happened or not, but we know the debate pushed everything else off the top of the news.

 So, what happened?  Who won and why?  Everyone in the political world asks such questions in the aftermath of a presidential debate, so we’ll weigh in.

We prefer to evaluate this debate in terms of what each candidate needed to accomplish in the larger context of the race, now hurtling toward its November 8 finish. A clear narrative emerged in the pre-debate build-up about what both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump needed to do in that 90 minutes before that expected huge audience.  A consensus developed that Trump had to show himself “presidential,” making him attractive to white college educated suburbanites, especially women, and that Clinton had a more complex task – first, to build enthusiasm among those inclined by party, demography, or history to vote for her and, second to convince a small, but influential, swath of Republican-leaning voters skeptical of Trump that supporting her was acceptable.

Clinton. HRC’s effort to reach her base centered on economic proposals related to jobs and infrastructure and her rejection of Trump’s tax policies. Clinton reminded Bernie Sanders supporting millennials that she wants to take on income inequality and get the wealthy to pay more in taxes, a goal Trump has never embraced. His tax proposals, in fact, point in the other direction.  She attacked Trump’s proposed tax cut as “trickle down” economics, and accused him of trying to make things better for rich people, like Donald Trump. On social issues, Clinton also was willing to suggest that police shootings of young black men resulted, in some instances, from structural or institutionalized racism, a position clearly designed to appeal to young and minority voters who have been lukewarm about her. Trump did little to counteract these statements except to launch a harsh, broad brush characterization of life in black America that, for many at least, bears little connection to reality. Clinton generally seemed to have free reign in her efforts to appeal to elements of the Obama coalition that have been skeptical about her.

Clinton tried to carry out her second objective, convincing college educated white voters that their reservations about Trump are legitimate and justify a vote for the Democratic nominee, by highlighting Trump’s business practices and failings and by challenging him on his refusal to release his tax returns. Clinton pointed to an architect in the audience Trump allegedly stiffed on a golf clubhouse project to highlight the dark side of Trump’s business success.  She also made much of his business bankruptcies. The tax return point, especially that the IRS itself says an audit does not prevent Trump from releasing his returns, has been made over and over, but Clinton’s willingness to confront him with it before 100 million people may have had a more devastating effect than her television ads ever could.                        

               

Trump.  The question of Trump’s ability to appear “presidential” has been foremost on the minds of voters and pundits since his emergence last spring as the likely Republican nominee. His long line of controversial and sometimes insulting statements and behaviors needs no restatement here.  Early on, observers spot lighted the general election debates as a key place to look for whether Trump could reign in his natural proclivities and project a presidential image.

The question has always had verbal and nonverbal dimensions.  The verbal part related to whether Trump could handle policy nuance and detail, showing a grasp of issues a president must face and address with the nation. The nonverbal part concerned Trump’s demeanor.  Could he demonstrate the requisite calm that gives the country and the world confidence he would not do something irrational?  Relatedly, how would he behave on stage juxtaposed against the first female nominee of a major political party, especially given some of his more uncharitable statements about women in other contexts?

Trump’s debate performance does not seem to have achieved the objective of making him look “presidential.”  On the verbal front, his failure to present cogent answers on foreign policy and national security questions undermined any suggestion that he grasps the details of policy in those areas. Only the most partisan Trump supporter could argue that the last forty minutes or so of the debate represented anything except a meltdown for the business magnate. One veteran Republican strategist labeled his performance in that part of the debate “incoherent.”                              

Evaluating Trump nonverbally, of course, represents a highly subjective exercise.  Beauty rests in the eye of the beholder.  Some of Trump’s supporters, no doubt, found attractive the constant interruptions of his opponent and his extensive facial and hand gestures. Other observers viewed those aspects of his presentation as offensive and inappropriate.  The fact that the distinction can even get drawn, however, suggests Trump’s failure.  Trump needed to make sure no doubt existed as to whether he had behaved “presidentially.”  The fact that no consensus emerged means that the issue remains alive. That is not good news for Trump.

A fair, honest appraisal of Trump’s performance requires an acknowledgement that he connected on one issue.  Early in the debate, he put Clinton on the defensive on trade issues. Leaving aside the policy question of whether trade deals cost American jobs or otherwise damage the economy, trade deals like NAFTA are politically unpopular with large segments of the electorate and Trump took advantage of that.  The fact that he apparently found no other verbal or nonverbal nuggets suggests he did not achieve his overall objective.

One debate, like one football game, does not a season make.  Trump has two more chances and his running mate has one to change this picture. Clinton didn’t win the White House Monday, but she appears to have done little that would lose it.

Are we right?  Wrong? Somewhere in between?  Weigh in below.

Donald Trump: How We Got Here

How did Donald Trump win the Republican presidential nomination?  A combination of personal and political factors permitted his ascension. The personal relates to Trump’s unique status in the public consciousness. He began with universal name recognition because of his real estate career, his bestselling book, The Art of the Deal, and his time as a reality television show host. Everyone knew Donald Trump.

Beginnings  Politically, Trump took advantage of a fertile field of resentment plowed by years of Republican-generated anger aimed at particular groups and at unnerving social and economic developments. Name recognition, and his unrepentant spouting of positions and ideas that appealed to voters frustrated with those trends, quickly put Trump at the top of the GOP primary polls.

Trump laid the groundwork for his rise well before he started running by becoming birther-in-chief. He led the chorus challenging President Obama’s legitimacy, intimating that the President had been born in Kenya and, therefore, wasn’t constitutionally eligible to hold the office he won in 2008 by nine and a half million votes (and an electoral-college majority of 365-173).  Trump’s pursuit of the baseless birther claim gave him instant credibility among nativist voters who disliked Obama, first and foremost, because of his color.  This represented race baiting without directly going after the black electorate.

Primaries  Trump otherwise premised his candidacy on attacks on disfavored groups and on individuals who, for one reason or another, didn’t appeal to him. When he announced for President, he proposed building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to keep out “rapists,” “drug traffickers,” and “criminals.” The wall idea, astounding in scope, ambition, and outrageousness, became Trump’s calling card. He even claimed he would make Mexico pay for it.  Before long, he targeted Muslims, proposing a ban on their entry into the United States, regardless of national origin.

Trump offered disparaging remarks about women’s looks, including one of his primary rivals, and made tasteless comments about a female news anchor and where she might be dripping blood.  He attacked U.S. Senator and 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain for having been shot down and captured in Vietnam. Political analysts assumed at least one of these statements transgressed political possibility and that Trump would fade. It didn’t happen.

Now that Trump has the nomination, previously hostile Republicans have coalesced around him because he’s the GOP standard bearer.  Many traditional, establishment Republicans have little use for Trump, but can’t bring themselves to support Democrat Hillary Clinton.  Those people may make Trump President, but they didn’t get him nominated.  The people who thrust Trump into his current role occupy a unique position in American politics and bear study because of the power they’ve shown to influence one of the major parties.

Trump Voters  The people who nominated Trump are overwhelmingly white, predominately male, resent changing demographics (which the Obama presidency brought home to them as nothing else could), and believe themselves left out of an economic landscape shifting under their feet. They feel betrayed by politicians they have reflexively supported for years.  As Thomas Frank’s brilliant book What’s the Matter with Kansas?  made so clear, corporate Republicans have long used the social grievances of the white working class in enticing them to vote against their economic interests in service of their bias against minorities and cultural change (think, gay marriage).  Now, the global, service-based, technology- dominated economy doesn’t produce the manufacturing jobs on which the white working class has long relied. Trump rallied these disaffected souls to his cause in the primaries and the corporate GOP donor class paid the price. Trump won by promising to undo the trade deals many blame for their economic woes and by saying he wouldn’t succumb to “political correctness,” code for dispensing with the demands of women and minority groups for greater sensitivity in public discourse and for greater inclusiveness in the national political and social calculus.  Trump would make it okay for angry white men to be crude again.

Make no mistake, race-based nativism lay at the center of Trump’s appeal in the primaries. His campaign aimed straight at disaffected white people who see the country’s economic and social situation as a zero sum game. If minority group members advance, whites lose.

Trump also capitalized on the low information level many Americans have about politics. Relying on conservative talk radio, FOX news, and internet-inspired conspiracy theories, many Trump supporters knew almost nothing of his extensive business failures, his hiring of illegal immigrants in his enterprises, or the falsehood of his claim to self-funding his campaign.  They cared little about the emptiness of his policy proposals.  It was enough that he promised to make America great again, bludgeon China into submission in trade talks, and restore manufacturing jobs.  The details didn’t matter.

In the general election, Trump will get the votes of those who supported him in the primaries and those of other Republicans who don’t like him much, but still see Democrats as the party of the “others” from whom they believe they must protect themselves and the country. Little likelihood exists of persuading members of either group to change their minds. They will prevail only if the larger group of Americans who don’t share their fears stay home.       

Have a different take or why Trump is where he is?  Let us hear from you.                          

Blacks Have Plenty to Lose with Donald Trump

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has asked African-Americans what they have to lose by voting for him instead of giving Hillary Clinton the overwhelming support Democratic nominees typically receive from black voters. Many in the pundit class believe Trump isn’t serious about courting blacks, but that he really seeks to convince suburban whites, especially women, he’s not a racist, making them more comfortable with voting for him.  The fact that Trump has made this so-called outreach to minority voters before virtually all white audiences lends credence to that conclusion.  Whatever Trump’s objective, we’d like to respond to his question because we believe the answer is “A lot!”

In the broadest sense, the way in which Trump frames the question raises the most troublesome risk to the black community of a Trump presidency. Trump “otherizes” blacks by failing to question the failures of past government and private sector polices that created the problems that afflict some African-Americans.  Trump has nothing to say about the role of past discrimination in jobs, employment, housing, and education in causing the maladies he now so readily lays at the feet of black Americans.  By spewing his parade of horribles (shootings, failing schools, high youth unemployment), without acknowledging the historical, discriminatory underpinnings of the problems, Trump allows the listener to conclude that blacks caused these problems themselves. Trump does nothing to promote the idea of shared responsibility in and among an enlightened, compassionate society whose members commit to working together to solve problems that affect the entire American family.

Trump’s question also reveals a disturbing ignorance about the nature of black America.  He fails to recognize it as diverse and complex, instead thinking and speaking of it as a monolithic community in which everyone has the same problems, flowing from some common sore, and in need of a savior who can cure all its ills. Beyond Trump’s ignorance of the nuance in the black American experience also lies a crass inhumanity that should sicken all Americans.  He revealed this with his tweet after the shooting death of NyKea Aldridge, the cousin of basketball star Dwyane Wade, in which he sought to use that tragedy to troll for black votes. Only his most myopic supporters should now fail to see his debilitating flaws.         

At a policy level, we see at least three major detriments to black political, economic, legal, and social progress resulting from a Trump presidency (there are more, but limits on time and space counsel leaving it at that for the moment). These three specific policy areas go to the heart of the agenda that has fueled the gains blacks have made in America during the last 75 or so years – legal protections though the courts, better job opportunities, and a fairer shake in the criminal justice system.  Trump’s policy proposals, skimpy and ambiguous as they are, could turn back the clock on that progress.

Legal Protections.  Trump has offered a list of prospective United States Supreme Court nominees that reads like a who’s who of conservative legal thinkers.  While we can’t know the racial attitudes of these prospective nominees, we do know that Trump advertises them as worthy heirs of the late Antonin Scalia. Scalia’s hostility to civil rights does not require repeating here; his comment at an oral argument about blacks and “slower schools” suffices to demonstrate his views. Then, there were his written opinions and votes in employment discrimination litigation, affirmative action cases, and on voting rights.  If Scalia represents Trump’s model for judicial nominees, leave us out right now. A Trump dominated Supreme Court could threaten roll back of many precious legal rights won through court fights and legislative battles.

The judiciary hardly constitutes the only legal danger zone for blacks in a Trump administration. Does anyone believe a Trump Justice Department would aggressively support civil rights enforcement?  While the Obama Justice Department has frequently sided with civil rights plaintiffs in discrimination and voting rights cases, Trump’s business history, which includes suits against him for race discrimination in housing, suggests his Justice Department would much more readily side with corporate and business interests.

Tax Policy.  Given Trump’s frequent missteps on the campaign trail, his actual policy proposals have received scant attention. That’s unfortunate,   because his August 8 speech in Detroit laid out tax ideas blacks interested in a robust federal response to the nation’s inner city problems should find troubling. Trump proposed tax cuts, most of which would benefit business and the wealthy, that would dramatically decrease federal revenue.  Many experts aren’t willing yet to say exactly how much he’d cost the federal treasury because Trump has given so few specifics.  His first plan might have increased the deficit by 10 billion dollars over a decade; the current plan would do less damage, but we don’t know how much yet.   Whatever one might conclude about the ability of his proposal to promote long-term economic growth, the short term increase in the federal deficit would make unlikely new programs that create inner city jobs.  As important, Trump’s tax policies would make more difficult following through on his pledge to improve infrastructure, thereby creating hundreds of thousands of construction jobs, many of which presumably would go to black workers.  Trump can promise to repair bridges and roads and build airports all he wants, but doing so requires money. With his tax cuts, Trump can’t fund those infrastructure improvements. We aren’t going to have a massive increase in infrastructure spending without sufficient federal tax revenue or lots of deficit-increasing borrowing that ultimately produces inflation and starves capital markets, limiting economic growth.

Criminal Justice.  Trump has taken to attacking Hillary Clinton for her husband’s criminal justice program that everyone now admits resulted in over incarcerating black men. Both Clintons have acknowledged the unintended consequences of that legislation and Hillary Clinton herself began her campaign with a speech proposing changes. Trump’s current attacks on that issue make little sense in light of his acceptance speech casting himself as the “law and order” candidate. Again, Trump hasn’t been specific about what that means, but history indicates it’s unlikely to bode well for black relations with law enforcement. Trump’s rhetoric suggests he wants to give police more discretion in encounters with community members, not less, and that his “support” for law enforcement would likely translate into increased tension between police and the black community.  Blacks have every reason for wariness about Trump’s “law and order” plans, whatever they are.

We could go on, but we’ve made the point.  A Trump presidency will not benefit African-Americans. It’s likely, in fact, to do significant harm. Trump should stop asking the question about what blacks have to lose by voting for him. The answer does not help his cause. 

Do you agree with our answers?  Do you have different answers? Let us know!                                    

Three Reasons Why Black Coaches are Doomed to Fail – Part Three

For the past two weeks, we’ve discussed three reasons why American institutions and organizations may follow a one-and-done rule with high profile minority hires namely Presumed Incompetence and White Entitlement.

So what role might minority occupants of prominent positions – however unwittingly – play in making that practice more likely?

That brings us to the Role Model Theory. Even though Charles Barkley doesn’t think sports figures qualify as role models, some are. The nation’s racial history sometimes compels blacks, especially in sports, to take on the burden of associating their presence in a high profile position with racial progress. Not long after he became general manager of the Texans, Rick Smith said publicly he hoped his appointment had blazed a trail, would serve as an example to young black people, and show that blacks can perform in such roles.

On its face, this Role Model Theory seems harmless, admirable even. But, like The Force in Star Wars, it has a dark side. When blacks cast their advancement in racial rather than individual terms, they invite the rest of society to evaluate them, and all blacks, through the prism of race. If a Rick Smith or Charlie Strong success might show that blacks can perform in such jobs, some people can use their failure to make the case blacks can’t perform.

This is illogical, of course. Anyone schooled in formal logic (or even informal logic) could demonstrate that the fact one person with a particular characteristic wasn’t successful in an endeavor doesn’t prove another person with that same characteristic will also fail in the endeavor. This is especially true when the characteristic – skin color – hasn’t been shown to determine capacity to do the job. Beyond that, hardly anyone would say a white coach’s failure as the football coach at Texas should mean that no other white person ought to get the position in the future. But, the converse may not hold. If Texas fires Strong, some people will think that Texas can’t make the mistake of hiring another black coach.

The potential availability of other competent black football coaches demonstrates the short-sightedness of a one-black-is-enough rule. This year, Syracuse University hired as its head coach a black man named Dino Babers. Babers took on a tough task in trying to bring the Orange back to prominence. Syracuse plays in the Atlantic Coast Conference’s Atlantic Division where two 800 – pound gorillas – Clemson and Florida State – rampage. But, suppose Babers achieves a measure of success at Syracuse, perhaps winning 8 to 10 games in each of his first few seasons there. That might make him an attractive prospect for a job at a truly big time, traditional football power – a place like Texas.

It turns out that Babers possesses qualities and experience Texas would likely want if it pulls the plug on Strong. Before the head coaching success at Eastern Illinois and Bowling Green that got him the Syracuse job, Babers coached and recruited in Texas. He served as offensive coordinator at Texas A&M for two years and as an assistant for four seasons at Baylor. There he learned from Art Briles, about the hottest offensive mind in the game today. While other black coaches certainly would qualify, if Dino Babers succeeds at Syracuse, the idea Texas would not consider him seems ludicrous, unless Strong’s failure pre-ordains no more blacks for a while. The Role Model Theory could provide a convenient excuse for a reluctance to hire another black since the theory casts the occupant of the position in racial terms, not individual strengths and weaknesses.

The three of us have each been "firsts" in something. One was the first black in our home state named to a number of high profile political and civic positions, one was the first black United States Magistrate Judge in the South, the other the first black partner in his large, mostly white law firm. Each of us had to decide how to deal with the Role Model Theory. How much did we want to take on being an example for other black people?

We decided differently, based on our individual attitudes and orientations about race and racial issues. One of us embraced the Role Model Theory, another disdained it, and one took a practical, philosophical approach, putting emphasis on the history of race discrimination in America which makes it impossible to ignore that blacks haven’t held certain positions, while acknowledging that someone had to be first. Despite the wisdom in this approach, the Role Model Theory still leaves individual blacks, and other historically disadvantaged ethnic and gender groups, vulnerable to the possibility the public will see an individual failure as a group failure.

None of our theories – Presumed Incompetence, White Entitlement, or Role Model − address whether Smith or Strong should keep their jobs. An honest evaluation suggests each has a good case for staying where he is, but neither has been perfect. Despite the fan complaints, Smith appears to have the confidence of Texans owner Bob McNair. For an NFL general manager, nothing else matters. Anyone evaluating Smith should take note of the ambiguity about how much authority he’s had on player personnel matters. Did he really make the draft decisions fans like the talk show caller railed against? The public often gets conflicting information about such matters, and the principals prefer to leave outsiders guessing about who really calls the shots. Whatever the process, Smith gets much of the blame for the Texans lack of a franchise quarterback and their lengthy list of failed draft picks.

Strong made mistakes, especially with his offensive coaching staff, but seems to have recognized those errors and corrected them. The 2016 season will determine whether he’s done enough soon enough. Anybody who understands college football knows two years, or even three, seldom suffice to turn around a program, particularly if the job required dismissing a large number of players who habitually violated the fundamental rules (like not assaulting women) the rest of us must live by.

The talk show caller’s claim that Rick Smith is "holding back my race" and the resulting conversation highlight yet another dynamic in America’s race conversation. Reasonable people can disagree about whether either Rick Smith or Charlie Strong should remain in their positions. The cases for and against each rest on nuances impatient football fans often don’t consider. But, the question of whether a black should succeed either upon his being fired confronts the country with yet another racial dilemma. If their superiors decide to go in a different direction, a decision to rule out another black person because of the race of the position’s previous occupant indicates acceptance of presumptions and assumptions that spring from the same racial animus that kept people like Smith and Strong out of their jobs in the first place.

Do you agree or disagree with our three theories? Sound off in the comments below.

Three Reasons Why Black Coaches are Doomed to Fail – Part Two

Last week we told the story of a radio talk show caller who suggested that a certain black NFL executive is “holding back my race” with his mediocre performance as the team’s general manager (Read about it here).

The comment led the talk show hosts to predict that if Houston Texans General Manager Rick Smith gets fired, the team won’t hire another black g.m.  The hosts also forecast that if the University of Texas cuts the cord on embattled head football coach Charlie Strong, the Longhorns won’t hire another black head coach.

We suggested America may operate on a one-and-done rule and Presumed Incompetence represents one reason.  Today, we explore a related reason for the possible reluctance of professional sports franchises and major college football programs to replace a black with a black − White Entitlement.

Reason No. 2 why Black Coaches are Doomed to Fail?

White Entitlement, which flows from “White Privilege” − the idea that being white in the United States produces engrained advantages many white people don’t recognize they have. White privilege means, for example, race never becomes an issue in encounters between whites and law enforcement, when a white person runs for office, nobody asks what it’ll mean to become the first white person to hold the office, and being white puts individuals on the road to economic and social success with race never being mentioned in connection with that success. 

For years, whites held the jobs Rick Smith and Charlie Strong now have. For much of our lives (all three of us were born before 1952), it was difficult, almost impossible, to imagine those jobs being filled by anyone but a white person. Indeed, on the hot August night in 2014 of Strong’s first game at the helm of the UT football team, one of us wondered what some 1964 Texas fan who had been in a coma for 50 years but awoke in his 40 yard line seat at Darrell K. Royal Texas Memorial Stadium would think upon seeing a black man lead the Longhorns onto the field.  The idea was mindboggling and acknowledged the power of White Entitlement.  After all, the head football coach at the University of Texas is “supposed” to be white.  If the coach at Texas is “supposed” to be white but, for whatever reason, a black person got the job and didn’t do it well, the natural order of things requires returning the position to a white person entitled to it.

We’ve seen the White Entitlement theory up close and personal.  Soon after the appointment of one of as a United States Magistrate (title later changed to Magistrate Judge), a white lawyer acquaintance said on several occasions, “Henry, you got my job.”  In theory at least, federal magistrate positions are promised to no one.  Appointments result from a rigorous review process involving the bar, the public, and the President-nominated, Senate-confirmed federal judges in the district.  Since the lawyer had no personal assurance of getting a magistrate’s position, it’s reasonable to wonder if race underpinned his statement.  The lawyer might not have been personally entitled to the job, but he could have felt racially entitled.

Join us next week for Part Three of Why Black Coaches are Doomed to Fail. Hint - Blacks, women, and other historically disadvantaged groups could be the reason.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments below.