Banning Black Boxers

NZ Truth, Issue 889, 9 December 1922, Page 1

Banning Black Boxers

Whilst our black brotho):s are on the lower rungs of the pugilistic ladder, their "inalienable right"/ to a belting from a white man is conceded freely. It's different when black beats; white. Then there are against "brutality," "unseetely, spectacles," and so forth. THere/ .would be reason behind a general movement to bar white men from boxing black men; but no suggestion of this kind has ever been made until the black has fought himself to the top, or near top. Then he 1 must be banned; When Slki was matched against , Carpentier, everyone thought the fight would be a cakewalk for the Frenchman, and there was. hot a murmur against the danger of arousing racial animosities by a fight between white and ' black. But what a change of tune there was, when the nigger knocked the wh.lte man out! Siki may have all the shortcoming:, of the negroid race; but there is the feeling that -it is because of the color of his skin, and riot because of .conduct, that ho has been barred. In England,, the ban on the Beckett-Siki. match was ostensibly placed on high moral grounds.. Yet Peter' Jackson, the "Coffee Cooler," George Dbcon, "The Dixie Kid," Jack Johnson, and, many others have fought whites far too successfully. In America, Harry Wills, •who is now recognised as a orackerjack, could obtain scores of matches when the white men were abje to hit him good and plenty. Now that Wills is generally dispenser-general instead of receiver- gonero], it has suddenly been T discovered that Harry is a sunburnt coon, and up goes the bar.