the cyber security act was assigned in late december, passed as part of the omnibus budget bill, the $1.5 trillion bill to the idea is that it is the first step in allowing people to understand more about the hacking threat that the country faces. >> there has been a lot of give-and-take between telecom communities and the defense community to find a medium where people can get the spectrum they need without sacrificing defense. are arguing, why is it ok for us to be regulated on this issue when other companies that also collect a lot of data like facebook or google do similar things? he would not just controlling where people go, you are controlling how they get there. at 8:00r: monday night eastern on c-span2.

announcer: matthew andrews of the university of north carolina talks about how the racial tensions of the 1980's were reflected in the sports of the era, particularly when white and black athletes faced off in boxing and basketball. he argues that athletes became around which conversations and disagreements over racial issues took place. this class is about one hour in 10 minutes. matthew andrews: we have been exploring the question of gender and women's rights and sports. we will return our focus to race relations. we're going to explore what i like to call the return of the great white hope in the 1980's. you know all about the original great white hope. you did research on it.

jim jefferies in 1910. he comes out of retirement's and tries to redeem the white race and defeat jack johnson. was unsuccessful. he failed. in the 1980's there were a few white athletes who are thought of in the same way. these were white athletes that white americans hoped would score symbolic victories in sports and the attitudes towards these athletes suggested that perhaps the nation had not come as far as many people like to think. the united states may have entered what commentators were calling a post-civil rights era. the 1970's and the 1980's. clearly race was still meaningful. racial anxiety still existed.

to illustrate these anxieties we are going to explore these anxieties in a few minutes. he will explain where they come from. you all know how much i liked boxing and prize fighting. it is the last one all semester. savor the experience. i'm going to tell you about the 1982 fight between larry holmes and gerry cooney. for the heavyweight champion ship of the world. this was boxing's last great fight between a white fighter and a black fighter. it left the murderous racial hysterics of the johnson jefferies fight behind. but like that fight, it was both a sporting event and it was a

racial drama. a serious and intense racial drama. larry holmes was the champion. he was a tremendous heavyweight champion. but he was the victim of bad timing. he is the first great champion right after mohammed ali. you all know about mohammed ali. in fact he defeated an older and out of shape mohammed ali in 1980. but he never got the credit he deserved because he was not as charismatic as ali. he was a skilled boxer, he had very fast hands, he was a very big man with a hard heavy punch. he had serious knockout blows. what he fought cooney he was undefeated.

he was 39-0. cooney was an irish american from new york. he rises through the ranks. he becomes famous for two main reasons. like holmes, such amend tremendous puncher. he has very very hard. he ended many of his fight with early knockouts. but second, and there are no two ways about it, he is popular because he is white. that has a lot to do with his popularity. after decades of heavyweight boxing being dominated by black fighters and black champions. floyd patterson, sonny liston, mohammed ali, and now larry holmes.

here was a white possibility. a great white hope. a white american who might reclaim the heavyweight title. this fight takes place in june of 1982. there is an interesting coincidence going on. a big blockbuster movie in the theaters, rocky iii. let's talk about rocky. any rocky fans out there? ok. the first two rocky movies are films in which a white italian-american boxer fights a cocky flashy brash black heavyweight champion, apollo creed. i'm going to ruin the ending for

you. rocky is a heavy underdog in the first film 19 loses of the first film. he loses in a split decision. no one thinks he's going to do well. he does remarkably well but he does not win. in the next movie he knocks out apollo creed in the most implausible boxing scene ever filmed. rocky wins. these were both very popular movies. these are movies about race and american history. though fictional characters, rocky balboa and apollo creed are meant to signify and represent real fighters. apollo creed is muhamed ali. there is no doubt about it. he is brash and cocky and the heavyweight champion.

he is black. creed is ali. rocky balboa is accommodation of a couple fighters. he is rocky marciano from the perspective of the 1980's marciano was the last white heavyweight champion. he was 49-0 over his career. he was champion from 1952 to 1956. never lost about. the only heavyweight who can say that. when mohammed ali was dominating boxing in the 60's and 70's there are always those who said yeah, but he can't beat rocky marciano. we get that fight in these movies. the other fighter that balboa is is joe frazier.

you know a lot about joe frazier. we watched a documentary about him. he's from philadelphia as is joe frazier. rocky trains by punching slabs of beef as does joe frazier. we watched the frazier documentary and got a sense of how badly white americans wanted frazier to be ali. frazier was there hope against ali. one way of reading the rocky movies, the first two is to say that rocky is white americans revenge fantasy against mohammed ali. they couldn't beat them in the ranks with fictional characters going to do it for us. here is rocky taking it to

apollo. these rocky movies exist. the holmes cooney fight takes place at the same time as the third rocky movie. in that movie rocky fights a black fighter played by mr. t. the promoters trying to link cooone with rocky. here's the cover of time magazine with gerry cooney and to rocky balboa sharing the cover of the nation's most important news.

even though larry holmes was the champion this fight was all about cooney. their promoter of the fight, john king, a man about as subtle as his hair, said this is a black and white fight. this is about race. cooney was very clear, he said it has nothing to do with race. promoters talked about race every chance they got and they knew this would sell tickets and spur interest in the fight. larry holmes got so tired of all the talk about race and he snapped and said jerry cooney is the great white hoax. the fight takes place in las vegas, june 11, 1982.

32,000 spectators. millions more watching on pay-per-view. here's an interesting facts. the las vegas police department employed their swat team and surrounded the arena. snipers were pointing their guns at the crowd as they went in

because they were death threats revolving around this fight. members of the ku klux klan had said that they would assassinate larry holmes if he won the fight. black militant organizations said they would be arms and if any harm comes to larry holmes we are going to do something to jerry cooney. cooney's dressing room was equipped with a phone line so that president ronald reagan could call and congratulate him on the victory. there was no phone line in larry holmes's dressing room. the president was not interested in congratulating larry holmes if you want. once both fighters were in the ring, the ring announcer introduced larry holmes first. it was a long-standing tradition

in boxing that the champion was introduced second. the champion was always introduced the last. it was a position of honor. for some reason gerry cooney was given that honor. i cannot remember it happening at any other bout. holmes was disrespected in the ring. larry holmes says the gerry cooney, let's have a good fight. ira member hearing that and that was the exact moment that i became a larry holmes fan. this course is not about me. i hope not. at the beginning of 1982 i was

13 years old and i was a huge sports fan. we've been looking at the sports illustrated covers. my bedroom walls were covered with sports posters. i was very excited about sports. and this fight. i remember as this fight got closer very badly wanting jerry cody to beat larry holmes. i grew up in a mostly white neighborhood and went to mostly white schools. all of my friends were white.

i was reading the sports page. i was reading sports illustrated. i was reading time magazine. the messages that i was getting from these publications was that white people want gerry cooney to win and black people want to larry holmes to win. i was neither smart enough to know what was going on nor did i have enough self-confidence to be able to break away from that. i bought it. i took the bait. i started thinking that cooney somehow represented me. this is the way ideas about race are created in this country. this is how racism operates in this country. you unthinkingly align yourselves with someone because they happen to share the same pigmentation that you have. when larry holmes said have a good fight, i felt like a heel. i felt like a dope. a great white dope.

you read a book about mohammed ali. he said americans have been bamboozled to think in terms of an us against them mentality. a black versus white mentality. i bought it. i like to think i don't do that now. this is the way ideas about race are transmitted in sports. very interesting moment i think. it was a very good fight. he came out and was fighting hard. he knocked gerry cooney in the second round. somehow we managed to get back up. gerry cooney for what many people consider to be the greatest fight of his career.

he went to show detail with larry holmes into the late rounds. larry holmes was just better. he was a skilled boxer and a slugger. gerry cooney was really just a slugger. by the 12th around jerry cooney was so tired he couldn't get his punches up anymore. he hit larry holmes right in the groin. larry holmes was doubled over in pain. he had points deducted from his score. there was a break in the action so larry holmes could recover. his trainer reached into his pants and started massaging his genitals.

i became a man that night. [laughter] in the 13th round, larry holmes knocks gerry cooney down. his trainer throw in the towel and larry holmes remains the champion. he was not a complete hoax but so much of his popularity and so much of the reason for his fame was because of white hope and white hype. larry holmes was right when he said that. this is the opening story to get us into the 1980's. any questions?

>> did cooney lose popularity after the fight? matthew: cooney went into obscurity after this fight larry holmes and jerry cody became friends after the fight. he never gets a chance to fight for the title again. >> did anything significant happened the night of fight? matthew: no it is not like 19 10. we are have scores of people getting hurt and dying.

but just the fact that it is 1982 and there is still anxieties about a race right happening, it got a lot of people questioning just how far has this country really, with regard to race. yes we've had a civil rights movement and the black power movement but have we really moved beyond racial anxieties? >> was the public opinion of larry holmes? matthew: i wouldn't put them in the good negro integrationist camp of floyd patterson or sonny liston. people weren't terribly interested in him and that was because he was not mohammed ali. he couldn't talk the way ali could. but who can? the nation wasn't terribly interested larry holmes. it was about gerry cooney. larry holmes goes on and that is fighting michael spinks and he lost.

so he was 48-1. at the press conference everybody said see, you are no rocky marciano. and he said rocky marciano could not carry my jockstrap. he was tired of all that talk. other questions? let's put this fight into larger historical context. what is going on in the united states at this time? a white backlash to the civil rights and black power

movements. for two decades the civil rights and black power movements have been gaining steam. black americans start scoring major civil rights victories through the courts and legislation in the room protests. black americans were dramatically protesting racism, in the late 60's they are dramatically protesting lingering racism in the united states. by the 1970's many white americans began to feel as if they had become the victims of the civil rights and black are movements. they were being victimized by all the changes. there was a growing belief among many white americans that the nation and specifically the government, the federal

government, were overly fixated on the problems facing black americans. and they were not fairly considering the problems facing white americans. there was a very interesting and unfortunate coincidence in timing. the gains made by the civil rights and black power movements occurred right at the same time as a steep economic downturn in the united states. after three decades of the american economy steadily rising. at the start of the 1970's the economy slows and the economy begins to regress. this was due to a number of factors. complicated global factors. the cost of the vietnam war. the rising price of oil. the fact that american companies were now sending jobs overseas.

this begins in the early 1970's. many white americans like all americans were feeling the pinch. they were feeling and economic pinch. wages were falling in the 1970's and job opportunities were drying up. times were not as good as they have been. rather than look at their declining economic status and blaming these complex global and economic factors. what many white americans did was they blame to people of color. it was almost as if people thought about race as a scale. as white status seem to be going down they noticed that black americans were going up because of the civil rights movement. so it must be their fault.

in the 1970's race became seen as a zero sum calculus. any gains by blacks were seen as losses by whites and vice versa. we could just as easily bring gender into it. make it a white man's story. the status of american male workers was falling. the status of american women was rising. title ix and other legislation. many white american men were on the defensive. this is a great example. affirmative action. it begins in the united states in 1965.

they begin implementing affirmative action policies. the idea is that in order to combat lingering effects of racism different aspects of american society must take affirmative action to let applicants of color in. try to desegregate schools. the government needed to take affirmative action to hand out contracts to businesses owned by black americans. something aggressive needed to be done to even out the racial scales of the quality.

this is the idea behind affirmative action. many white americans saw affirmative action as a total negative. they saw it suddenly they were being victimized by the government's policies. they were the victims of racism. reverse racism. this placard says i am a victim of a hate crime, affirmative action there was a real growing sense of resentment. a sense that they were under siege and that black rights were not fronting white rights. and that is the rallying cry of the backlash movement whites have rights too. don't forget about us. we are being treated unfairly. i will relate this to sports.

any questions? >> did this can occur in any specific location? matthew: it is a national phenomenon. i will be talking about boston. we think perhaps unfairly that it is a southern phenomenon. it is deathly a national phenomenon. boston would be the place we will focus on just a second. let's relate this to sports. just as black americans had latched onto black athletes as

symbols of power and deliverance and deliverance in a time of anxiety and a time of unfairness, white americans begin latching on to white athletes for exactly the same reasons. in some ways it makes perfect sense that this would happen in the world of sports. sports were one of the arenas where black gains were most obvious. the world of sport was becoming blacker as the 1970's progressed. african-americans were doing very well in the world of sports. there is one sport particular where this is true. basketball. you know about this moment. 1966. the symbolic moments in basketball. the ncaa title game. texas western has an all-black starting five defeated the

university of kentucky which was an all-white team. there was a reaction. there was a backlash. some try to undercut the significance of this moment. they try to explain away and make it very very ugly. there was a great west virginia player who played for the lakers and in 1966 he was an announcer for the phoenix suns, he said that team can do everything with a basketball except autograph

it. undercutting their accomplishments. the game of college basketball itself changes would texas western wins. their rule changes that are implemented. the coach of kentucky the all-white kentucky team, his team had been dumped on repeatedly in that 1966 title game. he used his influence to get the ncaa to ban dunking in college basketball. beginning in 1967 dunking was against the rules. it was abolished and made a technical foul. rupp was one of the reasons why this happened. the amazing center at ucl a, lew alcindor.

they saw him as unstoppable, he is ruining the game, so let's get rid of the dunk. you know him as outspoken. he believed there was a racial motivation to that change. he said the dunk is one of basketball's great crowdpleasers and there is no good reason to give up except that this and other niggers are running away with the sport. this is an anti-black change. they did not reinstate the dunk

until 1976. we have discussed college basketball a lot. we have not discussed pro basketball. the nba was established in 1946. an all-white league. it was desegregated in 1950. by 1970's the nba was totally integrated. in fact the nba was

predominantly black. basketball is an urban sport. it was created to fill the sporting needs suburban americans and people living in cities. beginning with the great migration during world war i the northern urban cities were becoming more and more black. an increasingly profited with african-american families. their children played basketball. most of the players were black. this caused a major public relations problem for the nba. people like seeing representations of themselves on the field of play. for many white americans, they no longer felt like they were being represented in the nba. they lost interest in the

national basketball association. here is the indisputable truths about the nba. in my car to imagine now because the nba is so popular. in the 1970's the nba was not popular. there was a historian who calls that the dark ages of the league. it is unpopular and also as a play on race. it was perceived as being too black. it had a blackness problem. here's a chart. as the percentage of black players goes up, there is a corresponding dip in tv viewership.

an interesting blip in 1977. bill walton, that was a year dominated by the portland trail blazers and their fabulous when healthy white center bill walton. people are tuning in when bill walton is out there. they are not tuning in what is black players.

another factor that helps explain the unpopularity of the nba was fighting. there was a ton of fighting. this has a racial angle as well. the nba has really cracked down hard on fighting. it is forbidden. not so in the 1970's. nba games in the 1970's were like hockey games. there were fistfights all the time. every team had an enforcer. they had a guy like maurice lucas a big tough strong guy. his job was to physically intimidate the other team. physically punish the other team's top scorer.

to use his fists whenever necessary. we are going to have a fight. every team had a guy like maurice lucas. in some ways the defining moment was in 1977 with what is known as the punch. the houston rockets were playing at the los angeles lakers in 1977 and there was a fight. the rockets forward rudy comes on the pitch who is white and it was unclear if you've is coming to join in the fight or if he was coming to break the fight up.

a member of the lakers permit washington who is black saw him coming and turned around and through a right cross right into his face. rudy splashed to the ground and there was blood everywhere. washington had shattered his jaw and his nose. both of his cheekbones. he couldn't breathe. spinal fluid began dripping into his brain. it really looked like he was going to die right there on the court. he did not die.

he returned five months later but he was never the same player. he went on to be a coach. this picture in some ways was the defining image of the 1970's. the image of a black man obliterating the face of a white man. it was being criticized on a number of levels. people thought it was a selfish kind of play. but they were clearly turning away from the nba because it had a violence problem and have a blackness problem. and many people saw those things is the same thing. a moment that sealed the deal. any questions? joe: was in 1980 magic johnson's first nba finals? matthew: i will explain why. it is going to change. you are right to talk about magic johnson. there someone else we need to talk about. the nba is in the depths of unpopularity in the 70's. the saviors arrived. larry bird and magic johnson.

the standard line with talking about bird and magic is to say that the nba was going to die had it not been for bird and magic. the nba would eventually figured it out. it was going to be ok. what is so remarkable is that magic and bird entered the league in 1980 and they almost instantly transform the image of the league in the american mind.

the nba goes from the de depth of unpopularity into the sporting mainstream by 1984. it really has to do with magic johnson and larry bird. they are the ones he turns the league around.

magic johnson was a brilliant immensely charismatic basketball player. larry bird a brilliant uncharismatic but white basketball player. magic's charisma and birds whiteness matter. this was the winning combination is going to help the nba over, it's blackness problem there is a paradox here. a sport or a league that is too black is seen as a problem. a league that can be fueled by black versus white competition and antagonism, that sells in american sports. we have seen again and again how racial tension sells sports. give me an example.

>> johnson versus jefferies. matthew: 1940 seven, jackie robinson's first year in major league baseball is the year that more people went to evidence field than any year and that history. this one black player in this white dominated sport. joe lewis and max schmeling but nationalism is also a factor.

isaac murphy and snapper garrison. they were the biggest show in town in the 1890's. major taylor. cycling was very exciting when it was taylor against the white cyclists. then he was segregated out of the sport. race-based rivalries in sports intrigue and excite the social stakes of the event are just raised. it becomes much more than a sporting event. magic and bird come into the nba. it is because of skin color that people think of them as being polar opposites. let me make a case for their remarkable similarities. the similarities far outweigh their differences. they were both 6'8". larry bird played small forward

and magic johnson played point guard. neither bird nor magic were especially athletic. no incredible speed or explosive jumping ability. but they were two of the smartest most creative and most competitive players the nba has ever seen. they demanded everything from their teammates. tremendous leaders both of them. they made everyone around them better. bird and magic were basketball geniuses. both had a great awareness that i've never seen, the ability to anticipate what was going to happen next for anyone else on the court could do it. they were mirror images of each other. this is interesting. bird and magic first went head-to-head in 1979 in the ncaa

championship game. magic johnson's michigan state spartans defeated larry birds undefeated indiana state sycamores. magic beat them. to this day this is the highest rated college basketball game ever. more people watched this game than any other. it is because of bird and magic, these two great players. when people talk about the renaissance of college basketball, a sport that is also becoming more unpopular, they point to this game. magic johnson and larry bird three popular rising college basketball. they go their separate ways and they go to the nba. magic goes to los angeles. larry bird goes to boston. opposite coasts. this also helps ensure national interest. larry bird was ashley drafted in

1979. he made it very clear that he would not go into the nba. the celtics wanted larry bird so badly that they drafted him in 1979. they said that is fine, you consider set up the whole year. you can't do that anymore. you can't draft someone and claim their rights later. it is actually known as the larry bird rule. the boston celtics badly wanted larry bird. a lot of people thought it was no coincidence that boston would use a draft pick for great white player and wait a whole year.

it just seemed to fit with the racial outlook of the city in the 1970's. now we need to talk about boston. the red sox were the last baseball team to sign a black player. a lot of people thought this was indicative of the racial climate in the city. they were not surprised that boston was last. in the 1970's boston was the center of the anti-busing movement. busing was the single most disruptive social policy of the 1970's. affirmative action was controversy over busing was more controversial. the federal courts were trying to desegregate schools.

schools were still segregated in places like boston. they were not say by law. they were segregated because of neighborhood segregation. charlotte was another center of controversy. the federal courts ordered that black students beat bused from black neighborhoods into white neighborhoods. black students beat bused from black schools into white schools. in order to engineer integration. these policies sparked intense opposition. particularly in south boston neighborhoods filled with white irish catholic bostonians. they objected to the appearance of black students in their schools.

this is what it looks like. the buses had police escorts. the people in south boston lined the streets and gather at the school as these buses came into their neighborhoods they threw a rock so the buses and they threw bananas at the buses. they yelled racial slurs at the black students. they did not want these black children coming into their neighborhoods. the opposition to busing and deceiving racial hatred in boston at this time was memorialized in this pulitzer prize winning photograph in 1976. he called it the soiling of old glory. a black civil rights lawyer happened to walk right in the

middle of the white anti-busing rally. this white high school student who was upset that black students were coming to school. he took the american flag he used it as a weapon. to try to hurt the civil rights attorney. this is boston in the 1970's. racial anxieties are high. racial tensions are very high. a white backlash. into these anxieties comes larry bird.

larry bird immediately turns the celtics into winners. he is the great white hope. he lives up to the hype. the year before bird was on the celtics they won 29 games. one of the worst teams in the league. next year with the same roster except now they have larry bird a 161 games. from 29 wins to 61. larry bird wins the rookie of the year award. they almost made it to the finals. who was there meeting the 76ers in the final but magic johnson of the los angeles lakers. the lakers were up three games to two. game six was in philadelphia.

i game everyone assumed the 76ers were going to win because kareem abdul-jabbar was injured. magic johnson steps into a phone booth comes out a superman and goes out on the court and he jumps center he takes kareem's place. he plays power forward and he plays small forward and he plays shooting guard and the place point guard. he is a 20-year-old rookie and he plays all five positions in game six. the greatest single game in nba history i would argue. if you look at the steaks and you look at what magic johnson did.

he carried the lakers to the nba championship. if you wanted to watch this game live you're out of luck. these games were tape delayed and shown at 11:30 p.m. that is how unpopular the nba was. but now it is about to get popular. we're going to dig a little deeper. any questions? >> people in south boston were sent there because the english did want them in boston. matthew: there's no rule that says that if you've been subject to discrimination that you can't discriminate against others.

part of the anxiety is that in south boston these are working-class people who are clinging to their homes and to their neighborhoods desperately. there have a lot of money. they are anxious about the appearance of black students in their schools. their neighborhoods and their schools are going to go down in value. that helps to explain the anti-busing reaction. it doesn't excuse it does explain it. there's a great book about this photograph. the high school student is riding the subway the next day and he sees this photograph of the newspaper and he says who is that guy with the flag? and he says it's me. he didn't recognize himself. he was traumatized by this.

he becomes the face of racism in the united states. he becomes the face of bigotry. a devastating effect on his life. >> how they choose which students would be bused? matthew: i'm not exactly sure. >> it was largely based on parents choice. matthew: we believe in integration and desegregation. there were quotas. some white students were blessed into the black areas. >> the neighborhood adjacent to south boston was roxbury and they were really rough afghan

american neighborhoods. matthew: it was a white island to this increasingly black city. we are going to aggressively hold onto what we have. here's what happens. this game is not shown on national tv. but the nba is about to get incredibly popular. now the nba has magic johnson and larry bird. two incredible creative players, one white and one black.

for added drama they are on opposite coasts. los angeles and boston. two cities that seem to be worlds apart.