The Cutting Edge of History

Yeah, my kids can ice skate. And their best sports just might be swimming and soccer. Oh, my son wants to play football when he's older and he practices his little heart out on our backyard rim, but Daddy's not holding his breath for a college ride in either of those sports.

Does that make them any less black than the kids ballin' at the local Boys & Girls Club? Time was when many of y'all might have answered, "Yes." Swayed by someone's pompous notion of the criteria that define blackness, y'all would have dismissed a black kid on skates as "trying to act white."

Thankfully, we're not that self-limiting any longer. We're not enabling the stereotypes by placing our children in certain game-boxes -- steering them towards sports that offer cred, if nothing else.

Thankfully, we're allowing them to explore the full range of games, encouraging them in new directions rather than steering them to the same old courts, tracks and fields.

Call it the Debi Thomas Effect.

The sister with the broad smile - and healthy legs – won the first medal ever by an African American, capturing the bronze in the 1988 Games in Calgary. We all rooted for her, like we root for Tiger now. But while she performed admirably and boldly, the weight of a people was just too much. She stumbled at the beginning of her final routine.

Ever since, I've actually tried to watch more than a couple of minutes of the Winter Olympics, searching, usually in vain, for a lone black face amidst the snow.

Four years ago, Vonetta Flowers, an Alabama girl and former sprinter, won the first gold medal by an African American when she and a partner took the women's bobsled in Salt Lake City. Flowers became a star, the kids of "overcoming odds" tale the Olympics loce to feature in their up-close-and-personals.

She hopes to defend her medal in Turin, but already the not-new face of the 2006 Winter Olympics is a young brother with an engaging smile and legs of lightening.

Shani Davis made news last week simply by showing up in Marquette, Michigan for the short-track speed skating trials. And not simply because he's black. But because he'd already qualified for the Olympic team in long-track skating and was trying to be the first skater ever to qualify for both skating disciplines.

Davis didn't make it. He lost a critical race Friday evening when his skates slid out from under him. He needed to finish second in the 1,000-meter sprint in order to make the team. Instead he went sprawling across the ice during the semifinals. (Imagine, a brother who's better at long distance races, not sprinting!)

Davis left the ice waving and smiling to the crowd, knowing the day's loss was minor relative to tomorrow's opportunity. "I was not my best this week, but I went down fighting," he told reporters at the end of the race. "They say when one door closes another opens, and it's up to me to find that open door."

That door should be wide open. He's hired an agent to explore his marketing potential, which should be huge. At 6-foot-2 and only 23, he'll definitely bring the sisters to their television screens. He's a Chicago native, raised by a single mom, but not one who allows herself to be diminished by that stereotype.

She's battled the U.S. Speedskating honchos over her son's marketing rights and dare's anyone to slight her son in any way.

Davis was an alternate in Salt Lake City and never raced. He was also embroiled in a bit of controversy when a hater-rival accused a couple of Davis' teammates – including star skater Apolo Ohno –of intentionally allowing their friend to win a race at the trials in order to make the team. An arbitrator absolved the skaters of any wrong doing, but Davis felt the accusation dampened his Olympic experience.

This time, Davis will be the team's bright face. He won the long-track all-around title at the worlds last February and seems poised to bear even the weight of a people.