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Dysfunction Run Amuck
Part V: ‘Jets vs. Sharks’ Mentality & Racial Tensions Fracture USATF Board

Posted November 30th, 2008 at 2:00 PM by Adam Jacobs

Section: News & Results, Track & Field, Olympics

Below is Part V of TheFinalSprint.com’s seven-part series entitled “Dysfunction Run Amuck: USA Track & Field and the Need for Change”. To catch up on the preceding installments and/or to view the publication timeline for the final parts in the series, please scroll to the bottom of this article.

Polarization and the “Jets v. Sharks” Dynamic

USA Track & Field (USATF) is a non-profit organization that, along with a small but effective national staff, is primarily made up of dedicated volunteers who work long, thankless and tireless hours without financial compensation. Among these volunteers are the USATF Board of Directors.

The Board is a microcosm of the larger track & field and running communities; groups of racially and culturally diverse individuals from all walks of life who take pride in being able to largely set aside their differences. They come together with a shared love for the sport and are passionate about making contributions to the community at-large. As a whole, the culture throughout the American and international track & field communities is known to be strong, cohesive and tolerant.

As is the case in most communities, there are times when the differences among its members, whether real or perceived, become thrown into the spotlight, overshadowing their mutual passions and common interests. Moreover, when such conflicts involve factions that are fiercely competitive by nature, such as athletes and coaches in the case of USATF, they have the potential to significantly derail the progress of an organization and create fractures in an otherwise trusting relationship.

This has been the case in recent years within the USATF Board of Directors. With wounds left unhealed and confrontations unresolved, the level of polarization between the Board’s strongest factions has become serious cause for concern and created an atmosphere that is too often devoid of civility and respect.

A board that tolerates hostility, aggressiveness, or disrespect among its members continually weakens itself and leads to inefficiency. Although sometimes able to will its way to moments of effectiveness, the USATF Board has fallen into this downward spiral. Operating in a state of dysfunction, and often to the detriment of its members, the board has allowed mistrust and disdain to become ingratiated into its modus operandi and prevented progress on a number of fronts.

One USATF board member used a Westside Story analogy to characterize the tensions within the Board, calling it a turf battle between “the Jets” and “the Sharks.” A high-level staff member with intimate knowledge of the Board’s inner workings agreed with that analogy, adding, “When you’re a Jet, you’re a Jet all the way.”

Multiple sources on the Board confirmed that the faction most commonly entrenched in confrontation features a clique that is mainly comprised of leaders within the High Performance Division. This includes women’s Track & Field Chair (and current presidential candidate) Stephanie Hightower, Men’s Track & Field Chair John Chaplin, High Performance Division Chair Brooks Johnson and AAC Chair Sandra Farmer-Patrick. Allegedly, they are joined by Long Distance Running Chair Glen Latimer and Youth Athletics Chair Lionel Leach, among others.

More often than not, the opposition includes most of the Board’s national officers, such as Vice President Dee Jensen, Secretary Lynn Cannon and Treasurer Ed Koch. They often receive the support of a variety of other board members, President Bill Roe and, until his resignation earlier this year, CEO Craig Masback.

Such hostility, especially among an organization’s most prominent and powerful leaders, tends to breed an “us” vs. “them” mentality. Although not all of the members are involved and at times the Board has been able to unite behind a single purpose, dysfunction has taken root and serves as a tremendous hurdle to effective governance.

Racial Tensions and Bridging the Divides for the Common Good of the Sport

When President-Elect Barack Obama delivered his historic speech on racism in Philadelphia and stated that “race is an issue that I believe this nation cannot afford to ignore right now,” few in the running community would have thought that USA Track & Field had such an issue to deal with as well. After all, the national governing body of track and field in the United States had long ago embraced and celebrated its rich diversity. Surely an organization that created a diversity program for its members that is widely regarded as the model for Olympic NGB’s, that can hire a Hispanic-American CEO (Doug Logan grew up in Cuba and Spanish is his native language) and select African-American Presidents Dr. Evie G. Dennis, LeRoy T. Walker and Larry Ellis, has moved well beyond this issue.

Unfortunately, that is not the case. Racial tensions remain an issue, albeit one with significant differences from what faces the nation at-large, even in an organization as diverse and as forward-thinking as USATF. Specifically, questions of racism have surfaced within the USATF Board of Directors; leading to dysfunction that its constituents, in the words of President Obama, “cannot afford to ignore right now.”

Following her speech last August that included accusations of financial mismanagement and other misdeeds by four board members (Hightower, Chaplin, Johnson and Farmer-Patrick), Cannon claims that she was immediately accused of being racist.

“Lionel Leach stands up and said that those statements by me were a personal attack… and were racist,” Cannon recounts. “But I fail to see anything in any of the allegations, when I did not even name names, which in any way had anything to do with race.”

Asked by TheFinalSprint.com to clarify his comments, Leach said, “I stand by my words … [the allegations] were ‘borderline racist.’”

Leach went on to say that other committees had exceeded their budgets, so “Why is [Cannon] taking on these three individuals, [saying] their budgets are over, they’re spending, they’re stealing? It was [un]founded and the three of them just happen to be African-American? There’s a problem with that.”

Although reminded that Cannon’s allegations focused on four individuals, including prominent references to Men’s Track & Field Chair John Chaplin (who happens to be Caucasian) Leach maintained that Cannon’s remarks were still racially motivated.

LDR chair Glenn Latimer, added, “If you listen to Lynn Cannon’s speech, [it’s] very easy to see that the targets of her speech were black people. So why would she do that?”

However, most board members contacted by TheFinalSprint.com disagreed with the characterization by Leach and Latimer.

Although there is no love lost between them personally and despite denying Cannon’s claims, AAC Chair Sandra Farmer-Patrick said that the allegations “were not –in any way– fueled by racism.”

Unfortunately, questions of racism are not independent to Cannon’s statements and have been raised by board members on a multitude of occasions in recent years. While some of the organization’s leaders –largely those considered to be in the first of the two factions mentioned in the previous section– claim the existence of true racism, the large majority of board members and USATF insiders report that such claims are used as a weapon to butt otherwise legitimate criticisms.

Over the last two months, TheFinalSprint.com conducted more than thirty interviews with a racially-diverse group of high-level USATF sources, including members of the Board of Directors, past and present executives from the National Office, elite athletes and prominent committee members. Each of them was asked to recount any moments when they believed actual racism to be present. However, other than the before-mentioned comments about Cannon’s allegations, only one person, recently-departed High Performance Division Chair Brooks Johnson, recounted such an instance.

Conversely, nearly all of the interviewees confirmed that the race-card was a tool that had been employed on several occasions in just the last year or two alone by select members on the Board. On each of these occasions, sources explained, there was no evidence of any discrimination or prejudice. Instead, the “race card” had been invoked in order to intimidate and/or shut down their critics.

Breaking ranks with his most ardent supporters and strongest allies on the Board, a central figure in the High Performance Division who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said, “When people on the board have used race, they [have] thrown it the face of [anyone] that says anything they don’t like. And [this is being done] by more than one person on the board.”

USATF presidential candidate Bob Bowman stated that “the only racism I ever saw came from just a couple of people and one of them was Brooks Johnson.

“Brooks and a couple of others have played the race card a lot. In fact, he jokes about it. I’ve known Brooks for a long time. We are friends, but I don’t condone what he does and I’ve mentioned it to him. I don’t know. He just feels that that is a technique he wants to use at times. It’s a horrible technique. It doesn’t serve any-body’s purpose. It doesn’t help anybody.”

Although Johnson is most often cited as the board member who uses racism to threaten others and knock-down potential criticism, other USATF leaders have also employed the same polarizing and self-defeating strategy.

Unfortunately, TheFinalSprint.com had to experience this first-hand.

Following a press conference for the 2008 Chicago Marathon, a member of the USATF Board of Directors approached Adam Jacobs, Editor-in-Chief of TheFinalSprint.com, and demanded that he cease his research on the topics examined in this article. Concerned with the possibility of having his own wrongdoings made public and the effect they may have on Stephanie Hightower, the candidate he actively supports for USATF President, the Board Member told Jacobs to, “Back off [the story] and remember that someone like you could end up finding yourself on the outside looking in.”

The USATF Board Member then levied a threat that speaks volumes about his own character and judgment. He told Jacobs to, “Be careful and stop digging into my friends and I on the Board because we can very easily make you out to be a racist … We’ve done it before and to people with many times your level of influence.”

Sadly, the select few among USATF’s leadership that have employed such methods are, as President Obama said about the controversial comments of Reverend Jeremiah Wright: “Not only wrong, but divisive — divisive at a time when we need unity, racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems.”

When Hightower was later informed of the outrageous threats made by the Board Member, who serves as a major figure in her campaign committee, she criticized the threats and said that they were “Poor political tactics that shouldn’t be used.”

These threats aside, Hightower doesn’t believe that racism is a pervasive problem within USATF but that the squabbling on the Board, at least, has more to do with the different factions within the organization fighting for their share of a limited amount of funds. Hightower explained, “I would use the [term] classism.’ We’re fighting amongst each other because of our different disciplines. I observed that about three years ago and said ‘let me start going to these other events. If you don’t know what the other people are doing, it puts you in the position of being pitted against one another and that’s what this has been about. If we can get a board that looks at the big picture, that holds the CEO accountable for going to raise more money, it’ll take out the perception of [racism].”

“Brooks comes from a different era when racism was very prevalent and he has watched things in this country and had experiences that many of us have had,” said Hightower when asked about the consistent reports of Johnson’s track record of playing the “race-card” inappropriately and being a catalyst for the racial tensions on the Board.”

“Has the issue of race been brought up in meetings by Brooks on numerous occasions? Absolutely. [But] have I jumped up and down and said, ‘he’s absolutely correct!’? No. Here’s what I think happens: when one black person uses that and plays the race card whether it’s legitimate or not… then everybody who is sitting at the table automatically assumes that every black person sitting at the table agrees with Brooks.”

The instance offered by Johnson as “an example of egregious racism” was the selection of the newly-created High Performance Audit Panel in the aftermath of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, China.

“They show a disregard for the whole concept of diversity, which is something that’s involved in a very strong way in the Amateur Sports Act,” said Johnson. “There are instances where diversity was called for and it was ignored.”

Johnson is specifically referring to Section 220522(a) of the Amateur Sports Act. Among many other requirements, this section states that in order for an amateur sports organization to be recognized as a national governing body, it must demonstrate that it:

(8) provides an equal opportunity to amateur athletes, coaches, trainers, managers, administrators, and officials to participate in amateur athletic competition, without discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, age, or national origin, and with notice and opportunity for a hearing to any amateur athlete, coach, trainer, manager, administrator, or official before declaring the individual ineligible to participate;
(9) is governed by a board of directors or other governing board whose members are selected without regard to race, color, religion, national origin, or sex, except that, in sports where there are separate male and female programs, it provides for reasonable representation of both males and females on the board of directors or other governing board;

Johnson claims that Doug Logan’s selections for the High Performance Audit panel did not live up to what the USATF CEO had promised to be ‘dispassionate and objective.”

Although most would argue that the composition of the High Performance Panel fulfills the Amateur Sports Act requirement of “reasonable representation” for minorities, Johnson says that the CEO should have ensured that the appointments fulfilled certain diversity “quotas”:

“If 80-90% of the medals [in Beijing were] won by blacks, then why on a panel of seven would you only have two blacks? If the team is comprised of an almost equal number of women to men, then why would you only have one woman on that panel? … In the breakdown of the medal count in [the 2008 Olympics], the women got nine medals and the men got fourteen. So clearly women as a participatory element were underrepresented. So my issue is not exclusively with race; it also has to do with diversity as it relates to gender.”

“[The selection of Logan’s high-performance panel is] an amalgam of total disregard, disrespect and disrepute for what’s part of the mosaic of all the language of the NGB’s and demands diversity … Logan’s so-called carte blanche range of action is limited by that language [in the by-laws and Sports Act]. He doesn’t have a total freedom of choice.”

When informed of Johnson’s claims and his allegations of racism and discrimination, Logan issued the following statement:

“My top priority in forming this panel was to find people who were outside of any special interest group or influence, who could look objectively at our organization and sport regardless of their race or gender. That said, USATF and I, personally, take diversity extremely seriously. Of the four Panel members selected by USATF, two are African American former athletes who between them won Olympic gold in sprints, hurdles, jumps and relays. One of those two individuals is female. A third panel member works in sprints and hurdles (events that are dominated by minorities) and the fourth USATF-nominated panelist was head coach of a men’s Olympic Team that won 20 medals. This group is joined by three USOC employees who are at the highest levels of the Olympic movement. I would have liked to ensure every event group was represented on the panel, including throws, vertical jumps and distance events, but it was important to keep it a manageable size. The people on this panel understand that looking outside of their own experience or personal demographic groups, and taking the broader view, is something that everyone in USA Track & Field must do to move the sport forward.”

It should also be noted that in several landmark cases the United States Supreme Court has rejected the idea of “quotas” as it applies to affirmative action. For example, in the landmark decision of 1978 in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Court barred quota systems in college admissions but “affirmed the constitutionality of affirmative action programs giving equal access to minorities.” The concept of using “quotas” was similarly rejected by the Court in the 2003 decisions of Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger.

Regardless of where one falls on the arguments about whether or not racism actually exists within the USATF Board of Directors and/or the tactics of countering criticisms with unfounded claims of discrimination, an undeniable truth exists: the hostility, infighting, factionalism and racial tensions that have become prevalent in recent years are threatening the future of USATF.

As President Obama declared in that powerful speech in Philadelphia, “I have never been so naive as to believe that we can get beyond our divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidacy… But I have asserted a firm conviction — a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people — that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice, we have no choice if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.”

Although the organization has been able to overcome many self-imposed hurdles, it is time to face the internal demons and to right the ship. The dysfunction and atmosphere of mistrust can not be allowed to continue. Before USATF can move forward on the path to prosperity – it can, and in fact it must – find a way to bridge the current divides and elect leaders capable of navigating the often-trying seas of change.

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NOTE: Publication of the next installment, Part VI, in TheFinalSprint.com’s seven-part series, “Dysfuncton Run Amuck,” has been postponed until Tuesday evening, December 2, 2008.

The topics that have already or will be covered and the updated publication dates for each segment are as follows:

11/20 - Introduction

11/21 - How Did We Get Here?

11/25 - USOC Mandates / A Question of Authority

11/28 - Cannon’s Allegations / Financial Mismanagement

11/29 - ‘Jets vs. Sharks’ Dynamic / Racial Tensions

12/02 - Overstepping / Conflicts of Interest

12/03 - Pres. Election / Logan / Restructuring

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CREDITS:

Segment Title:
“Part V: ‘Jets vs. Sharks’ Mentality & Racial Tensions Fracture USATF Board”

Series Title:
Dysfunction Run Amuck:
USA Track & Field and the Need for Change

Author:
Adam Jacobs, Editor-in-Chief of TheFinalSprint.com and CEO/President of the TFS Media Network. Jacobs also serves on the Board of Advisers for Giving Athletics, Inc and is a co-founder and the current Executive Producer of the Running Film Festival (RFF).

Additional reporting by:
Jimmie R. Markham, associate editor and podcast co-host at TheFinalSprint.com. Markham is also the founder of 400meteroval.com.

Special Thanks To:
James Dunaway: A senior editor at Track & Field News for four decades, Dunaway writes for the International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF) and is the editor of American Track & Field and Athletes Only! He has covered fourteen consecutive Summer Olympic Games, twice served as president of the Track and Field Writers of America (TAFWA), and written stories for newspapers around the country, including The New York Times and Austin American-Statesman.

— — —

Please direct all inquiries, including requests to reproduce or republish this article, to Adam Jacobs: adam(at)thefinalsprint(dot)com