Black and Brown Athletes, Boycott UC : DECK If minority students aren’t welcome in academics, they shouldn’t participatein entertainment.

In the wake of Proposition 209 and the dramatic drop in minority enrollment at the University of California, a radical idea is beginning to take root: black and brown athletes boycotting UCLA and UC Berkeley. In my view, it’s the right idea and the right time.

Athletes are sheltered from the anxiety and pressures that other applicants to UC face. Athletes are treated as a preferred group, exempt from the mania about high test scores and 4.0 grade point averages. Officials privately project that 30% or more of the new black students enrolling next fall will be scholarship athletes. The university, with no protest from citizens, has carefully protected admissions preferences when it comes to revenue-generating activities and the entertainment sector of the campus. The moral and political connections surrounding race, athletics and policy have been ignored, both by a faculty embarrassed by the idea and cynical about success against such powerful cultural interests and by minority communities ambivalent about criticizing the visibility of media figures like Jason Kidd, Tony Gonzalez and J.J. Stokes. But I have a sense that most in the black and brown communities resent unfairness and hypocrisy more than they love UC sports.

The idea is simple, efficient and makes explicit the link between minority athletes and the economic interests served by their presence on major campuses that have made opportunity less available to capable minority students while keeping the door wide open for black and brown student athletes. The Chicana daughter of a poor first-generation immigrant family who earns a 3.8 high school GPA, yet scores “only” 1100 on the Scholastic Assessment Test, has little chance of getting into Berkeley or UCLA. But the black 6-foot-9-inch basketball forward need only take and pass the minimum number of core courses and score 700 on the SAT, and he is recruited as a student athlete. One person is likely to contribute to the academic life of the campus, the other only to the entertainment/economic dimension.

Affirmative action critics often write about the burden of stigma shouldered by minority students on elite campuses. Imagine the burden of a black athlete, knowing that her or his classmates recognize that a third of the black students they will see on campus are recruited athletes. If critics believe that the Chicana woman would be “over her head” in classrooms at UCLA or Berkeley, how would they describe the predicament of the black basketball star?

Thomas Sowell, a conservative scholar at the Hoover Institution, argues that most academically talented brown and black students would be better off at less competitive institutions. But can one imagine UCLA or Berkeley dropping out of the recruiting battle for a high school superstar and conceding her or him to San Jose State, UC Irvine or the University of Tennessee because the student had only a B average and scored 1000 on the SAT?

The dialogue among students recognizes the absolute right of student athletes and their families to make decisions about colleges. There may be understandable reasons for a particular student athlete to sign with UCLA or UC Berkeley. Such reasons should be respected. But for the high school stars, it is not a matter of these schools or no college at all. Any player recruited by UCLA or UC Berkeley will have other enrollment options. Even those who anticipate movement from college into professional sports should understand that Stanford’s Tyrone Willingham and Penn State’s Joe Paterno send more than their share of athletes into the professional leagues, but most will have earned degrees, unlike the case at many other predominantly white schools. Coaches at UC Berkeley and UCLA cannot say the same.

By getting behind the boycott effort, minority communities can signal that they are unwilling to accept the entertainment niche for their sons and daughters on campuses, especially campuses that have made matters difficult for talented students who can’t run, jump or shoot baskets. A boycott would signal that the message of Caesar Chavez, Rosa Parks and Malcolm X--that it is sometimes necessary to go beyond grumbling and act--has sunk in.

Maybe Ward Connerly will endorse the boycott. After all, the absence of black and brown athletes would open up varsity slots for the high test-scoring students he so admires and claims to speak for. Let’s let the able young coaches at UCLA and UC Berkeley fill up Pauley Pavilion and Memorial Coliseum with such student athletes and let the black and brown athletes go where the hypocrisy is not so dramatic.

With Proposition 209-like measures showing up in the Texas legislature and others, the boycott may draw attention to the continuing exploitation of black and brown athletes.