FNL: Black Eyes and Broken Hearts

Is blatant racism dead?  Is it a topic to be avoided at all costs?  Not according to the hit TV series starting in 2006 Friday Night Lights, which featured an episode that addressed this topic entitled “Black Eyes and Broken Hearts.”  For those of you who have not heard of the show, FNL is about a small-town Texas football team (the Dillon Panthers) with plenty of teenage angst and drama.  Having previously hinted at the theme of racism, this episode brings the topic out into the open when one of the assistant coaches is construed by a newspaper as saying black players are meant to run the ball and tackle because they are animalistic, while white players make better quarterbacks because they are more strategic.

In response to the comments, the African American players all quit the team and threaten to do so until the coach who said the remarks was fired.  This caused a major town controversy (not because of the racism factor) because the needed to win the next came to qualify for State.  Many of the citizens of Dillon felt that though the comments of the coach were wrong, the black players were betraying the town by ruining their chances at State for the first time in many years.  The episode does not go quite the way I thought it would.  The head coach – after much internal debate decides that he will not fire the assistant coach because he believes that the assistant coach did not mean his words.  The assistant coach is old – old enough to have been around during the times of segregation and who did not know how to respond to the comment on how the panthers had not had an African American quarterback ever in a politically correct fashion.  The head coach believed that he would be firing someone very good at his job for making a stupid mistake. 

After hearing the head coach’s decision, the black players choose to rejoin the team at the last minute making it to the bus before it leaves for the game.  The game itself is filled with racism, as it appears the Panther’s opponents use unnecessary roughness against the African American players with the referees doing nothing about it.  With a close call, the Panthers are able to cinch the victory, much to the rage of their opponent.  In fact, the other town is so upset that their Sheriffs follow the Panther’s bus and pull it over late at night on their way home.  The officers say they are looking for Smash (the African American captain on the team), saying he committed some bogus charge.  The Sheriffs will not let them pass and insist that if Smash does not leave the bus they will go inside it and drag him out.  It is the assistant coach (the one who previously made the racist comments) makes a stand, blocking the bus door saying that if they did not have a warrant there would be no way that they would be getting on the bus or that Smash would be getting off of it.

I thought this story had a lot to due with current issues of racism.  What is intentional and unintentional racism, and what are the ethics for policing it?  Should what the assistant coach have been forgiven as he truly did care for the boys he coached? What other issues does this episode bring up?

and on a side note: should football really be this big in Texas?