There’s at least one person in the sports media sphere wishing to defend Sergio Garcia’s recent comments about Tiger Woods and fried chicken. Of course, he’s already apologized. The Detroit Free Press’ David Jesse considers University Of Michigan football announcer Frank Beckmann’s strident demand that fried chicken references are in fact, a huge compliment to the persons being stereotyped.
Beckmann’s column ran in the Detroit News last Friday and drew fire from some people who found it racially insensitive. In it, Beckmann wrote, among other things: “To the politically correct, the mention of fried chicken is an immediate endorsement of slavery rather than a testament to the innovative determination of the American slave population to improve its own physical well being by creating a readily available dish which improved their diet.
“Making fried chicken and popularizing it could thus be viewed as an accomplishment that should serve as a testament to the determination of a group of people who found an inventive way to subsist while enduring unimaginable and deplorable living conditions.
“But that would remove the opportunity of the political elite to capitalize by creating an atmosphere of victimization.”
On Wednesday, Beckmann backtracked.
“In my effort to emphasize my disdain for political correctness, I conflated it with the Sergio Garcia/Tiger Woods situation and that was a mistake on my part. I failed to properly consider the sensitivity of racial comments which stereotype people and the pain that causes.”