Published: October 28, 2009 09:15 pm      

Players penalized for being good

Editor:

Recently I observed and was appalled at the treatment of the Carver Bears, a team of football players consisting of young African-American males. As a grandmother of two of the players, it hurt my heart to listen to the different player’s comments and see these children denied the opportunity to play their championship game because of a group of discriminate board members of the Champaign League.

For the last three years, the Carver Bears have proved to be an outstanding and strong football team and, worked very hard to reach the day of the

championship game. Whatever has been written or reported is “window dressing” for the truth. If the accusations against the team were valid, why did they wait until a few days before the championship game to remove it from the league?

Our young African-American men, the Carver Bears were victimized because of their ability to outplay and out score their white opponents. Now mind you, this is a child’s game and yet the adults were

the perpetrators of the worst form of poor sportsmanship.

These are young children and the impressions we make while they are young, either positive or negative, will remain with them all of their lives. I believe it takes someone who has very low self-esteem and evil in their heart to hurt any child but, to hurt a group of children is as low as anyone can go. I look forward to the day when we look not at the color of skin and instead look at the qualities, characteristics and individuality we share in our homes, within our communities and throughout our nation.

Karen Jones-McKissack

Danville