Black Coaches Sidelined in Texas

When the University of Texas won college football's national championship, much was made of the school's 1969 team, whose every member, from coaches to waterboys, was white. Today in the suburbs of Dallas, notes a piece in the Dallas Morning News, the percentage of African-Americans on high school football teams often outstrips the percentage of African-Americans among students. But on the sidelines, blacks are underrepresented. Of 72 top suburban high schools, the DMN points out, only three have black head coaches. A kind of secondary racial separation, not discrimination, is to blame, according to the article. One coach, says the article, supposes there are "potentially good coaches, minority and otherwise, whom he hasn't hired because he doesn't know them that well."