Ta-Nehisi Coates at The Atlantic does a rare and beautiful thing by making a sports to politics comparison without cliché.
Today, black fighters are taken for granted, but in Joe Louis’s era the skin game had yet to switch, and it was still common and respectable to assert that blacks lacked the physical courage and discipline to compete with whites in the manly sport of boxing. In short, the manner of Joe Louis’s loss — to an emissary of Hitler no less — demoralized his people, and by that same factor emboldened their enemies.
It’s a twofer. Hitler and sports used in a post about politics and the writing is still insightful.
Barack Obama has spent a life breaking barriers, and should he lose, in any part, because he neglected to prepare — to work hard — he will break the seal on a shame which few can fathom.
