>I am surprised noone here has commented on the media treatment of black
>US women soccer goalie, Briana Scurry. She is by far the best player on
>the team, much, much better than Mia Hamm, a fairly run-of-the-mill
>forward who runs up the score against punching bag teams but sort of
>disappears against stronger rivals (at least based on her World-Cup
>performance). Scurry is singlehandedly responsible for the US victory,
>which came on the back of a mediocre semifinal and awful final game by
>the (white) forwards that are getting all the attention. In spite of
>that, she has received very little attention, and during the medal
>ceremony, while she was receiving hers, ABC cameras switched to yet
>another shot of Hamm.
Enrique,
Your premise--a media preference for whites--is of course true, but I disagree with practically everything you say here.
No question, the media, and more to the point the advertisers who drive the media, prefer white heroes to black ones (though they don't entirely ignore a Ken Griffey). During the medal ceremoney to which you refer, however, my TV showed more crowd shots, instead of Scurry getting her medal. Though, if you continued to watch, they soon after showed her on the stand with the medal. I remember this because I noticed the slight, or what appeared to be one, to Scurry. It was almost as if someone in the control room, or the director himself, realized what had been done and anticipated your criticism. More to the point, I think that incident was mainly the result of, not some clear racism (beyond the underlying intitututional kind), but rather just part of the same media coverage that showed crowd shots and Clinton in his box while there was action on the filed. To the media, the game is a TV show to sell to advertisers (by getting the most audience of the right age profile they can), much more than a sporting event to be covered as it happens.
Mia Hamm has nothing left to prove to you or me. China designed its defense to stop her, she still made some terrific passes that weren't finished off, and she has a long history of great performances in big games. You don't judge a soccer player's performance primarily on some individual stats. Let the media, which is interested mainly in making individual stars so thay can sell them back to us, do that.
The US team's (read white players) performance was not awful. In fact both defenses were superb. The US team's performance did not deteriorate noticeably as the tournement went on, the competition got better. The US team actually played better in the final than in the semi-final. BTW, Enrique, have you ever played a big game in front of 90,000 people, with millions more watching on TV?
Scurry didn't win the game by herself. She was beaten in the second half for what would have been the game winner for China, only to be saved by one of those white girls making a brilliant header save in front of the goal. She did come up big in the penalty kicks, which are idiotic and settle nothing (I bet you agree with me there).
Having said all that, we can assume Scurry will not get a big share of the post-game endorsements, certainly compared to Hamm and some others. More importantly, at the moment soccer is a suburban, white sport for both men and women. But the World Cup was a watershed for women's athletics in the US, however, and I suspect some little black girls noticed. Soccer can and should be a sport of the cities (as it is in other parts of the world) It's much cheaper than other major sports. All you really need is a ball and a field.