Four Generations of Color

With all that has been said andwritten about the way African Americans have altered the landscape in sports,it has still only scratched the surface. The true, lasting effect of thediscrimination they have faced is finally unveiled by a man who is not inbaseball's Hall of Fame, but who has played with, coached, scouted andrepresented athletes of all colors at every level of the national pastime formore than half a century.Dr. Miles McAfee sheds light notonly on the generations of whites that have kept the power structure tothemselves, but on the generations of African Americans (and blacks, Negroes,back to the days when they were called colored) who have absorbed the prejudicesof the majority and turned it upon themselves. African Americans have long hadopportunities to work collectively toward increasing their power in an industrythey dominate -yet their own self-hatred and distrust has held them back justas much as racism from others. More than amemoir, a sports biography, a self-empowerment volume or aconsciousness-raiser, Dr. McAfee's story blend them all in a cautionarytale about the ingrained behavior of two races that can, and must, change.

Miles McAfee, Ph.D., is presidentand chief executive officer of Golden Gate sportsManagement firm in Oakland, California,the company he formed in 1980. He played baseball in the Pittsburgh Piratesorganization and was a part-time scout and manager in the Pirates system for 12years. He coached baseball at St. Mary's College in Morga, California,for eight years and compiled the most wins in school history. He is also amember of the Tuskegee University Sports Hall of Fame. A native of Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. McAfee liveswith his wife Lynn in Berkeley, California.David Steele is a sportscolumnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. A graduate of the University of Maryland at College Park, he has written sports previously for the St. Petersburg (Florida)Times, the New York Post, the National Sports Daily, the Stamford(Conn.) Advocate and Newsday in New York. He has won journalism awards from theAssociated Press Sports Editors, the Florida Sportswriters Association, theSociety of Professional Journalists and the California News PublishersAssociation. A native of Washington, D.C.,Steele lived in Hayward, California.