Biden Says ‘Don’t Jump’ While Taking Picture With Wheelchair Bound Athletes
'She's our photographer, look at her'
The Olympic Games are a reminder that America produces the strongest, most accomplished, and skilled women in the world.
With a gold-medal victory over Brazil on Saturday, the U.S. women's volleyball team pushed America past China in the race for gold. We won 39-38. We won the overall medal count 113-88 over China.
Our women led us to victory. Sixty-six of our 113 medals were won by women. The dominance of American women is not new. Our women have been outperforming our men since the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The performance gap is now widening.
It's an indication that no country on the planet has invested more resources toward the physical development of women than the United States. It's proof of the popular idiom, "you get what you pay for."
I am not complaining about the investment. Participation in sports is a great tool in promoting good health and strong leadership. The landmark 1972 Title IX legislation changed sports for women in a good way. Before Title IX, American women rarely participated in sports at the high school or collegiate level. Less than 2% of college athletic budgets were directed toward women.
Title IX changed that. The legislation — signed by former President Richard Nixon and co-authored by congresswoman Patsy Mink (D-Hawaii) and Sen. Birch Bayh (D-Ind.) — prohibited any school receiving federal funds from discriminating based on sex. The law caused a dramatic pivot in the way athletic departments spent their money. It did far more than open doors for women in athletics. It provoked financial investment.
Which brings me to my point.
Title IX is an outgrowth from the civil rights movement. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 inspired Title IX. The 1964 law prohibited sex-based discrimination in the workplace. The feminist movement quickly capitalized on the law's passage and sought equalize financial funding between girls and boys, men and women.
Women realized that access was great, but investment was better. Black people settled for access to white schools, neighborhoods, and businesses. We were uninterested in self-sufficiency.
Again, I'm not criticizing tennis star Billie Jean King and the other feminists who led the charge for Title IX. They were smart, strategic, and pragmatic.
Black people had the exact same opportunity in the aftermath of the Civil Rights Act. As I mentioned in a previous column, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, working as an Assistant Secretary of Labor in President Lyndon Johnson's administration, called for investment in the negro family in 1965. He wrote what would be called the "Moynihan Report," a five-chapter analysis of issues impacting black Americans. His report was titled, "The Negro Family: The Case for National Action."
Liberals, of course, labeled his work racist. The mainstream media smeared Moynihan and his assertion that America should invest in the black family in general and the black man in particular. After initially supporting Moynihan's report, President Johnson disavowed it after the media backlash.
Almost immediately, white female liberals started making their case for national action to promote women. That call for national action led to Title IX.
Let me repeat, I am not criticizing women for fighting for equal treatment. I'm simply pointing out that one group calls for strategic investment and another group calls for access (and reparations).
Fifty years of investment in women's athletics has produced remarkable results. Our women are the best in the world, and it's not really close. Strategic investment works. It prepares you for new opportunities. Unprepared people do not maximize opportunities.
Let's suppose women athletes had demanded access to participate in men's sports rather than the resources to get their sports up to standards. Where would they be today if they had begged for integration rather than independence? Would they be the most dominant athletes on the planet?
Moynihan observed that America needed to invest in the black family to get it up to standard. Once the family was up to standard, he correctly assumed the neighborhoods and schools would get up to standard.
With a shove from corporate media, black elites chose dependence and integration.
I'm not remotely pro-segregation. I just realize the worthlessness of integration without independence, self-sufficiency, and shared cultural values.
The most infuriating aspect of America's fall from grace are the causes: neglect, arrogance, and irresponsibility.
In a little less than 10 seconds Sunday morning, Lamont Marcell Jacobs spotlighted the characteristics knocking the United States off its world perch.
Jacobs blitzed the field, winning the 100-meter dash final at the Tokyo Olympics, claiming the title of world's fastest man for his home country of Italy. Jacobs' victory in the Summer Games' premier event extended America's 100-meter drought to a 17th year, the longest absence for USA in Olympics history.
American Thomas Burke won the inaugural 1896 Olympics 100-meter final. All the way through 1968, Americans won 12 of the 16 gold medals awarded in the men's 100-meter dash. Our longest previous drought lasted three olympiads — '72, '76, and U.S.-boycotted 1980 Games. American Stanley Floyd would've been the favorite to win gold in 1980.
Carl Lewis restored order in 1984 and 1988. Maurice Greene and Justin Gatlin held the title until Jamaica unveiled a 6-foot-5 freak of nature, Usain Bolt, the greatest sprinter of all time. No one in America could complain from 2008 to 2016 as Bolt redefined what humans could do in 100 meters. Bolt was different. Bolt was special.
Lamont Marcell Jacobs? Who is he?
Four years ago, he was a long jumper. He didn't compete in the sprints.
What's worse is Jacobs was born in El Paso, Texas. His black father was a member of the U.S. Army. His white mother was Italian. A month after Jacobs was born, the Army deployed his dad to South Korea. Jacobs' mom returned to Italy. Father and son never reconnected until a year ago, when Jacobs made the Olympic team and got tired of being asked about a father he did not know.
"I lived all my life without a dad," Jacobs told reporters Sunday after winning the gold medal.
America exported the fastest man in the world to Italy. We didn't protect, value, and nurture our seed, our resource.
The combination of arrogance and irresponsibility is killing America. We arrogantly take for granted the Judeo-Christian values and nuclear family culture that made us the greatest nation in the history of the world. And we've irresponsibly allowed the people who don't respect our values and culture to reshape our society.
I don't know the details of what transpired between Jacobs' parents. Maybe the mom fled America and hid her child in Italy. That is a possibility. There are vindictive mothers/parents who use their children as weapons. I don't want to vilify the dad without knowing the facts.
What we do know is the seed of an American man just slayed the world for another country. It reminds me of how businessmen such as Nike's Phil Knight or Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg build great American innovations and then allow them to be used to harm our culture.
We take America for granted. We don't appreciate the gift of being born here. We shirk our responsibility to protect the American way.
The American seed is freedom. We're neglecting it. It's running away from us as fast as Lamont Marcell Jacobs ran away from the American sprinter who finished in second place.