‘One and done’ sprawls past sports

Nelson Graves
Published: August 6, 2008

There’s a cliché frequently heard during athletic tournaments. It’s “one and done.” The meaning is apparent – lose one game or match and the person or team, as the case may be, is eliminated from succeeding games or matches. Not surprisingly, “one and done” is spreading, I’m afraid, to elected offices and professions.
In 1989, L. Douglas Wilder became America’s black elected governor. To be factual, America’s first black governor was appointed not elected. Pinckney B.S. Pinchback served as Republican governor of Louisiana for 35 days starting in December 1872 after the previous governor was impeached.
Black Americans and I’m sure many whites thought that Wilder’s election was the beginning of a new day in America. We thought his election would be the first of many blacks being elected as the heads of states. It was the first “one and done” in modern American politics. It would be 17 years before the second black governor, Deval Patrick, of Massachusetts, was elected.
In sports, particularly at the coaching level, it’s rare when a black coach is replaced by another black. Basketball at all levels, percentage wise, have more blacks following black coaches. College football, divisions I and II have the least.
At the college level, football is the most underrepresented. Even in high-profile situations, “one and done” is the rule. Notre Dame University is a prime example. Ty Willingham, a successful college head coach at Stanford, was selected as head coach of the Fighting Irish. After multiple losing seasons, he was fired. A white head coach replaced him.
A local example is the case of Augusta County’s Fort Defiance High School. Its winning wrestling coach, Terry Waters, was fired for reasons still unclear. A white coach replaced him.
In the business world, “one and done” is standard operating procedure. Locally, many of you have worked in factories and many more of you still do. How frequently has a black supervisor been replaced by another black? At higher levels, the times that a black replaces a black worker is even rarer. Amazingly, blacks don’t replace blacks at entry and hourly levels these days either.
Now we find out that America’s Armed Forces don’t have enough high-ranking black officers. Could it be to the perception of top military leaders that the number of African Americans serving is down, therefore there’s no need to promote blacks?
If one believed media coverage of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the perception is that fewer blacks are serving in the military. But when presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama visited those two countries recently, most of the troops in the audience were black. Until his visit, most of us thought that only a handful of people of color are U.S. soldiers fighting there.
If Obama is elected president and the practice of “one and done” continues, will it be 50 years before another minority is elected to that office?
Nelson Graves writes a weekly column for The News Virginian and he is Western Virginia director of the Virginia Minority Supplier Development Council. E-mail him at .