The discrimination question

The National Council for Women’s Organizations, a powerful aggrupation all over the United States, is dropping the hammer on golf’s most prestigious tournament, the Masters. The NCWO is incensed that Augusta National, home club of the Masters, does not have any female members. Just a few years ago, it caused quite a stir when Tiger Woods entered the Masters, playing at a club that had, to that date, no African-American members.

NCWO chairwoman Martha Burk has written to the PGA Tour to take the Masters off the Tour and scratch players’ earnings from it off their money list, a move which made many members of the golfing community scoff. This is a new political test for players of one of sport’s most formal and dignified games. Of course, the players would rather keep mum about it, since this affects their livelihood, and improperly addressing the issue would negatively impact their popularity and endorsement contracts.

"I think they’re doing what they can to avoid having a woman member," Burk said. "They’re paying a lot of money to discriminate."

Big names on the Tour like Tiger Woods and John Daly have expressed sympathy, but are unwilling to boycott the Masters. CBS, which owns the rights to the Masters television coverage, has dropped its sponsors in an effort to shield them from the controversy.

On one hand, the Masters is a public affair, and has brought excitement and delight to millions around the world. On the other, the PGA, Masters and Augusta National are all privately owned, and, particularly under the US Constitution, are free to do whatever they want. There is an LPGA and other events for lady golfers, but there is no Masters for them. Is that enough reason for them to create controversy for a state of affairs that has always been so?

In the Philippines, where we don’t voice similar questions as strongly, there are similar questions. More and more, the issue of whether or not we discriminate surfaces in sports. For example, should we bring in foreign coaches to train our players? Why not send our coaches abroad for them to transfer the technology here? The proliferation of Fil-American athletes, not just in basketball, has inadvertently squeezed out some locally born players from their slots on the national and commercial teams.

Then again, commercial teams, like those in the PBA, are free to do whatever they want. It’s their money, and their team. Bill Bayno is now looking at some relief and vindication for taking Talk ‘N Text to the PBA Commissioner’s Cup Finals, as Tim Cone and Norman Black and Ron Jacobs have done in the past.

A lot of times, it boils down to a question of attitude. There are, definitely, some Fil-Am athletes, and not just basketball players, who openly talk trash to local-bred players. Some of these same people vehemently denied their Filipino lineage when they were living abroad, and suddenly embraced it because of the financial gain it bestowed upon them. But no matter how we feel about that, there’s still nothing illegal about it. That’s the gray area between legality and morality.

But soon, however, government regulation may come into play, if not for the national team, for commercial leagues like the PBA. Why? Simply, many Filipinos are starting to lose jobs in a time of crisis. Further, the disproportionate ratio of Fil-Ams on our basketball team not just exposes our inadequacies in developing players, it pricks our egos. To paraphrase president Manuel Quezon, many of us would rather see a basketball team play like hell but made of Filipinos than one play like heaven but be composed of Americans. If Cebuanos would prefer an entirely Cebuano line-up in any team that represents them - even a professional one - what more about nationalistic Filipinos?

The bigger issue really is one of standards. What are ours in terms of who we want to perform for us in the arenas of our lives? The United States was one of the first to start recruiting Korean-Americans for taekwondo, Japanese-Americans for judo, and so on. They also flung their doors wide open to the masses who sought citizenship and freedom in their land. Then, when Asian students started outperforming American students, they cut the number of scholarships available to first- and second-generation immigrant students.

There have always been rumblings about a real, live PBA Players’ Association, for example. But this is a hamstrung affair, since the players are employed by the team owners, and the team owners run the league. At the end of the day, which player would step forward and complain about recruitment policies of his own team and league in defense of a fellow employee who has been eased out by a Fil-Am? Honestly, nobody has the balls to risk that. It would upset the system, which is much bigger than any one player who may be left out in the cold.

Discrimination is always a difficult issue to address, because, for discrimination to exist, we must all be a part of it somehow, consciously or unconsciously. And we like things the way they are. We like being able to make snide remarks about whoever makes us uncomfortable. Discrimination is very real, for or against women, foreigners, children, athletes, politicians, media, and other institutions.

We have to ask ourselves, do we really want to change?

You may reach this writer for comments and suggestions at [email protected].