A loyal EMUTalk.org reader sent me this from the Freep.com, “Eastern Michigan coach Ron English sells single moms short,” which is a column by Mick McCabe where he (obviously) takes issue with English’s less than brilliant observation. Here’s a quote:
In a July 31 story in the Detroit News, English said: “We wanted guys that had a father in their background. A guy that’s raised by his mom all the time, and please don’t take me wrong, but the reality is that you’ve got to teach that guy how to be taught by a man.”
Don’t take him wrong? How do we take him right?
English was given ample opportunity to explain his seemingly moronic and sexist comments, but declined to return several phone messages.
McCabe then goes on to point out the many examples of prominent men in sports who were raised by single moms.
Besides being demonstrably incorrect– even a casual sports person like me can come up with the names of extremely successful professional athletes raised by single moms– I find English’s comments disturbing and stupid on at least two other levels. First, it’s racist– and yes, I am aware that Ron English is himself African-American. That doesn’t mean he can’t say something that’s racist. Quite frankly, had Ron English been white, I think this would have already become a much bigger deal.
Second, I would really like Ron English (and anyone who thinks he is even remotely correct about the single mom crack) to read something. Someone I know quite well recently posted this article from the Huffington Post to Facebook, “What it Says About Us When a 17-Month-Old Boy Is Beaten to Death for “Acting Like a Girl, by Michael Rowe.” That tragic story was about how a 20 year old named Pedro Jones who beat a 17 month old child to death because the child (which was Jones’ live-in girlfriend’s) was not acting “manly” enough. Here is a long quote from Rowe I found particularly chilling in light of English’s comments:
A nominally civilized society such as ours can only recoil in horror at any news of a child’s death at the abusive hands of an adult. Infanticide is the ultimate forfeiture of our humanity, rightly seen as a perversion of the very essence of the natural order and the circle of life. The act is a declaration of such abject monstrosity that is very nearly beyond forgiveness. But it happens every day, and we guiltily avert our eyes to these stories when we read them because, on some level, we realize that the children could easily be our own and the pain is too much to bear. In 2008, in the U.S. alone, the Department of Health and Human Services reported 772,000 cases of child abuse, resulting 1,740 fatalities–a sharp rise from 1,330 in 2000.
But there is an added and significant dimension to the tragedy. The reason given for the beating is that, even at 17 months, the toddler was perceived by his killer to be effeminate. Madhouse logic indeed, but to Pedro Jones there was a way that little boys should act and a way little girls should act.
While Jones is a tragic example of the paradigm taken to deadly lengths, society’s discomfort with gender variance permeates nearly every part of the national dialogue and runs through every part of the culture.
Rowe goes on with a long list of examples of how messed up views of “being manly” go wrong. I really do hope English reads this and is actually “man enough” to recognize the stupidness of what he said.
I strongly disagree with the opinion about the Ron English article. Mick McCabe’s article is a pathetic waste of Freep space and singling out English’ remarks are just a way to sell more papers. Apparently the EMUtalk Ed has jumped on the bandwagon by shaking his finger and citing harsh words like “disturbing and stupid”, without clear explanation and somehow relating a tragic story about a toddler’s death to English. Ed-you got it all wrong with this one. English is not talking about “acting like a girl”, it’s about children growing up being taught by both a father and a mother.
Had you considered that maybe English is trying to be part of the solution? Instead of focusing on the silly title of Mick’s article, an intelligent person would see that this is more about the advantages of having two parents active in the upbringing. I won’t take the time to dig up statistics, but can anyone disagree that children with two parents have a higher percentage chance of doing better academically, socially, emotionally….?
Finally, Ed’s comment about English’ comments being racist? How can you make this claim without any justification or explanation?
Advice for Coach: when looking for recruits with high GPAs, don’t tell the Freep or EMUtalk because you will be criticized for being racist and not giving students with lower GPAs a chance to succeed.
I don’t think what English said was that big of an issue in and of itself, though he certainly could have chosen his words more carefully, but it’s become an issue thanks to Mick McCabe’s article.
English has a hard enough job ahead of him at EMU, and he doesn’t need to do anything, however slight, to make that job harder.
Almost Alum, actually English is pretty straightforward in his comments that he wants recruits who can take instruction from a man. He doesn’t say anything about “a father and a mother,” does he? Now I’m not entirely on board with taking the comments out of context or in associating his remarks with bigger issues. But neither the comments nor the values they portray are anything are anything to be proud of.
I want to see English do well, and I want to see the program improve. Two points concern me here. The first is that English is already narrowing down his recruiting prospects when he says something like this. And he cannot afford to narrow down his recruiting prospects until he has established a more formidable program (even then it comes off as an ungainly gesture). The athletic department probably has a public relations director who coaches student-athletes on how to talk to the press without coming off badly. Coaches may need refreshers along these lines too.
The second point is that according the Free Press column English didn’t return phone calls seeking to follow up. Bad sign. English should be owning up, accepting a little bit of foot-in-mouth, and acknowledging that his comments don’t do a very good job of representing how he thinks about prospective recruits. Recruiting brings student-athletes and their families on board, and it is silly to think EMU football would be better off attracting only student-athletes who have had fathers play a significant role in their lives. English will be forgiven much more swiftly if he says as much himself.
Would you care for fries with that foot, Mr. English?
By the way, here’s a link to the July 31 Detroit News article. Unless the news misquoted him (and that’s always possible), I think English pretty clearly says he wants to recruit players with fathers in their backgrounds because those players are better at taking instruction from a man. Which when I look at the original quote puzzles me more because when you think about it for a second, it’s kind of a bizarre thing to say. Besides being offensive, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Quote: Season ticket holder:
“Recruiting brings student-athletes and their families on board, and it is silly to think EMU football would be better off attracting only student-athletes who have had fathers play a significant role in their lives.”
Sorry, I still disagree. Although I’ve never coached football, I can imagine that there needs to be a certain amount of focus, respect and discipline throughout the organization. Since we (media and back-benchers) blame the coaches when a player gets into trouble off the field, it makes perfect sense to me that Coach wants to recruit students that “love football” and have strong family backgrounds.” If you want to win, you have to recruit players that are high quality… off and on the field.
I have been frustrated with the lack of success of this football team, but in the past we’ve recruited great players (basketball too) that were seemingly great for the team, but didn’t have those off-field skills that are needed for championship type players. I’m not sure if those students came from single-parent families or not, and I really don’t care. It sucks that not all families are created equal, but that’s life. It’s not the EMU football coach’s responsibility to fix societal problems. They need to create a winning team, and if it means recruiting specific students from specific backgrounds to create esprit de corps and synergy, so be it.
And quit bashing Coach for not answering calls and responding to such a silly [non] news article. Sure, first time head coaches are bound to say things that aren’t entirely appropriate, but seriously, doesn’t FREEP have something else more relevant to southeast Michigan to write about?? No wonder I’m not a subscriber.
GO EAGLES!
I am not a football coach, either, Almost Alum. I just don’t see “strong family backgrounds” and “fathers” as one and the same. Student-athletes with character can come from all variety of families. Typecasting in this case is reckless and quite uncommon. Sure, many coaches want student-athletes from strong families. Still many “championship type players” have come from broken homes. I just don’t see a correlation between being raised by a firm father figure and gridiron impact (or classroom success for that matter). English is the first person I’ve ever heard say such a thing, privately or publicly.
Season ticket holder,
You seem intelligent, although you defend your stance based on political correctness and provide opinion to support your position. While I agree to a small degree that Coach’s comments weren’t appropriate, they are uncommon because no one likes to admit the facts; there are negative effects of living in a single-parent family. Sorry, but the truth hurts. Just one source:
# Educational Attainment of Children From Single-Parent Families: Differences by Exposure, Gender, and Race
# Sheila Fitzgerald Krein, Andrea H. Beller
# Demography, Vol. 25, No. 2 (May, 1988), pp. 221-234
# Published by: Population Association of America
# Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2061290
English has an explanation/apology of sorts, as posted on a Detroit News blog (curiously, not the Freep):
http://apps.detnews.com/apps/blogs/terryfosterblog/index.php?blogid=1926
It’s not exactly an apology and not completely satisfying to me because I would assume this is not the reason why he sacked the players and coaches that he sacked. But I guess it’s better than nothing, which is what there was before.
We’re differing on forests and trees, Almost Alum. Your drawing on demographic trends makes me think you are focused the forest (ie, groups). When you say the “facts” are that there are negative impacts to growing up with a single parent, doesn’t the study you cite (even if it is more than 20 years old) argue that those negative impacts are not all the same? That they differ from case to case? Some single-parent families are, no doubt, stressed. Many may be struggling. English acknowledges this in the Terry Foster column. However slight these differences are from case to case, they are what makes it nonsensical for a DI coach in any sport to deliberately exclude a broad subset of prospective recruits.
I can see both sides of this argument. IMHO what English said is true in some cases but he comes off stereotyping all sinlge mother households. It’s really not a newsworthy issue but at the same time he needs to clear it up (an apology would be good) and move on. He certainly doesn’t deserve to lose his job over it as I have heard some suggest. I hope this doesn’t turn into a pc witch hunt.
When you look at the entirety of what English said, I think Mick McCabe took a part of the comment badly out of context. McCabe is guilty at least of very sloppy journalism.
The whole quote, as given by AnnArbor.com:
“You know what the real focus was? We wanted to recruit football players that love football. I felt like we had a lot of guys who really didn’t love football. They maybe were playing football so that they could go to school or whatever, but not for the love of playing football. So when we went out, we wanted to do two things. We wanted players who love football, who have the physical ability to play football and then the other thing we wanted was guys that could be coached. We wanted guys that had a father in their background because if you don’t, the hard part is, some guy like me coming in and corrects you. So you’re working – that’s a whole another dynamic. A guy that’s raised by his mom – and please don’t take me wrong – but the reality is, you have to teach that guy how to be taught by a man. That’s part of it.”
“We wanted guys that had a father in their background,” English said. “A guy that’s raised by his mom all the time, and please don’t take me wrong, but the reality is that you’ve got to teach that guy how to be taught by a man.” — From The Detroit News
Perhaps Mr. English has forgotten that all his football players have attended high school and graduated. Surely they all had some male teachers at some point in their 12 years of schooling prior to going to college. is he really just blaming his players for problems that stem perhaps more from the coaching or from the impossible predictable facing EMU football?
Mr. English’s statements on single mothers and their sons’ alleged difficulty in learning from males is a grand over-generalization, and an embarrassment to EMU. He’s an university official, and while speaking to the press about university matters, he denigrated two large groups of people — single mothers and their sons — in a way that is sexist and racist. To blame all single mothers for the alleged failure of ALL their sons to be able to take instruction from men is clearly a sexist statement. And to blame the football players who don’t “love football” enough for having failed to learn from their mothers how to take instruction from men is racist: Clearly he’s talking here about Black sons of Black mothers who raised their families without a father present. (Oh, if you doubt me, FOIA the names of the players the coach has put off the team….).
Mr English’s comment reflects biases rather than careful study. Family structure and its impact are complex subjects, even among the experts who study it and related questions; Mr. English has just offered up a flip, easy to utter but utterly ignorant, rationalization for his dismissing of many of his players. But it is not a sustainable, professional reason: he’s admitted that he dismissed players because of the make-up of their family. He has admitted publicly that he doesn’t believe that sons of families without fathers present can do as well as those from father present families. I’m not a lawyer, but as an historian of civil rights, I find this admission to be most remarkable, as do, I imagine, the families of players fired from the team. (Did they also lose scholarships?)
What is especially notable is that Mr. English’s plain words allow for no exceptions to his claim that sons raised by mothers without present fathers all suffer an inability to learn from male figures. He’s making sweeping judgments about all males in that category, and finding them all ineligible to play ball on the EMU team.
Clearly there are some disadvantages in being raised without a present father (greater chance of living in poverty, for one!). That however is not what Mr. English said, is it? He made sweeping statements, and apparently did so to justify why he dismissed a bunch of players from his team. Saying, as certain kinds of political opportunists have been doing for ages, and as Mr. English has now said, that single parent homes convey across the board, inescapable disadvantages to all their children, is at best ignorant and at worst hate-mongering. Beliefs such as those expressed by Mr English in order to justify important decisions may also be the basis for legal action by affected persons. How much exactly is a full ride EMU football scholarship worth? Is that enough to litigate over? DId the coach invite such litigation? Gotta wonder. One student today asked me about just this question.
Mr. English may be a fine coach. But he needs coaching in communication, and in how to better represent the University. On campus today, nearly half the people I talked to brought up his ignorant remarks; I didn’t bring it up once.
And his comments will NOT aid his effort to recruit good players for EMU. He’s insulted lots of high school coaches and lots of other people involved in h.s. football, and many h.s. players. If you have a choice between signing with a coach who’s insulted your mother, and one who hasn’t, who do you sign with? Easy call. And don’t naively think that these statements won’t be made known to talented players: their mothers often do research on the teams expressing interest in them.
Others may name great athletes who came from homes without fathers. Please do! Let me just name one notable American figure who was raised by his mother and whose father abandoned the family: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, 1868-1963. As a youth, Willie Du Bois impressed all his teachers, and they arranged for this young Black man to get university scholarships. He became the first African American to earn a PhD at Harvard. Dr. Du Bois then became a great scholar and a great champion of civil rights, a founder of the NAACP. He blasted ignorant remarks about race, class, and gender, where ever those remarks came from. I recommend the works of W.E.B. Du Bois to Coach English.
And obviously, Coach English should apologize to all concerned, and quick.
Here’s another op-ed sort of piece about English’s statements. Not really sure I know much about the source or the writer, but thought I’d share anyway.
I’ve been thinking about why this comment got English in such trouble, and I think it’s because it is the only specific thing he actually said in that article– or at least that he was quoted as saying. I mean, the rest of it is sports cliché, really. What football player wants to recruit players who don’t “love the game?” If he had stuck with saying he wanted players with “strong family backgrounds” and who were “coachable,” that’s enough of a cliché that it would probably not have gotten him into any trouble. And the “not liking the philosophy of the defense” is about as vague as “we need to play hard.”
But it’s that sentence that he doesn’t want to have taken wrong that is so specific: “A guy that’s raised by his mom all the time, and please don’t take me wrong, but the reality is that you’ve got to teach that guy how to be taught by a man.” Besides being a bad sentiment for all kinds of reasons, it’s also one of those things he probably should have left unsaid.
I don’t know if English should be fired for these misstatements or not. But I do hope that this teaches him that he’s in a position now where he needs to be a little more careful about what he says and I also hope he does apologize a bit more clearly.
I agree with you, Sitedad. The offensive language is the only specific and meaningful, non-cliche, part of his whole quoted statement. Significantly, there’s no indication that, from the time he was quoted until early this week, he objected to the quotation: hence he accepted it.
And I don’t think Coach English should have to resign for this major, costly foot in his mouth episode. But his “apology” shows no comprehension of the problem in what he said….and thus it has added fuel to the fire.
I’ve heard from alumni, current students, Ypsi residents, and other members of the broad EMU community about this controversy.