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Kenneth ClarkKenneth Clark
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And even in athletics, I think America -- my wife got angry with me, because I kept reacting to the nationalism, and she said, “Kenneth, stop this, stop this. Think of it in terms of young people who are excellent in particular sports, without regard to their nation.”

Well, that's nonsense. The fact is, the nationalism was there so that you couldn't escape it, you know. The fact of the matter is that the Canadians were cheering for Canadian athletes. The -- Just in front of us were sitting three or four young men from West Germany, and they were all excited about any West German who -- youngster -- and the East Germans, oh my God, they --

All right. And somebody made the crack, which I didn't hear but which was reported to me, how could American black athletes compete for America, and Americans in general accept their victories as American, when American blacks are treated so poorly in America?

You know, I understood what this person was trying to say, but I swear, just as if I were in Europe, I was American when I was in Montreal. You know, I was proud of the fact that Americans, who happened to be black, were winning medals that would be considered American victories.

But even as I was caught up in that infantile nationalism, my racism contaminated that, you see. I was saying, “My God -- this nation has a tremendous amount of talent that has been unexploited because of race.”

And fortunately, it's beyond South Africa, in development, you know -- I could feel proud of that, that the South Africans are





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