The more things change...

White girls from suburban Boston should keep their mouths shut when the topic turns to race, so I’ll let ESPN’s Howard Bryant do the talking for me. He’s written an interesting piece on the racial component of the Michael Vick case.

I remember thinking when this case first broke that it probably wouldn’t have racial overtones, since even though Vick is black, the evidence was pretty clear. More importantly, he hurt animals. Everyone loves puppies, right? As is so often the case, I was wrong.

Bryant gives several examples of reader emails that show just how disparate opinions were on this matter, and they were nearly always divided on racial lines. (One thing he only brushes on that I wish he’d get into a bit more is the class issue. I think a lot – not all, but a lot - of America’s racial problems are really class problems). There are so many black pro-athletes now that it’s easy to think sports are one area where people can come together and forget about stuff like race, but these emails prove how much its still not.