Buffalo makes history at local university
Turner Gill, 43, once a Heisman Trophy candidate at Nebraska, was named UB football coach in December.
Athletics director Warde Manuel, 37, was hired in July.
They joined Reggie Witherspoon, 45, who’s in his seventh season as men’s basketball coach.
< ...>
“If you’re the first at something, people are going to be watching you closer,” Manuel says. “So now you’ve got to work harder, and you’ve got to show some results. It’s not that I feel the weight of the African-American community on my shoulders. I don’t. But what I feel is that in order for this trend to continue  or to start, if you will, for the opportunities to grow  we have to have successes when we take over these programs.”
Manuel says to understand how he feels it helps to have some understanding of what African-American activist and author W.E.B. DuBois called “double consciousness” a century ago.
“Once you have an opportunity as an African-American to take a job, it’s not just you,” Manuel says. “Your race comes with you. You can’t turn away from the fact that people are going to see the decisions you make not just as an athletics director but as an African-American athletics director.
“That’s how it works in this society. That is the dualism that exists  the consciousness of knowing that people are looking at you not just as a man but as an African-American.” (more…)
Question: Doesn’t the black communty make the same generalizations of whites when a white police officer crosses the line? I agree with his comment, but this perception goes both ways—unfortunately.
Otherwise, congrats to these brothas!
