Blinded by the Lights: Texas High School Football and the Myth of Integration

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Are student-athletes of color better off now than they were prior to the United States Supreme Court 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education? Don E. Albrecht, a longtime faculty member at Texas A&M University and recruiter for the school's football program, posits this question in his most recent book: Blinded by the Lights: Texas High School Football and the Myth of Integration. Using thirty years’ worth of interviews and research, Albrecht makes the case that many things have changed—and not all for the better. He does this by using the unofficial religion of the Lone Star State (high school football) to examine systemic inequality in the United States and how discriminatory policies have adapted since Brown. Albrecht's approach is uncommon, but the result is a fascinating and sobering narrative. He offers a history of football and the rigging of educational policy, using Texas high school football as the setting.Albrecht outlines the major events that set the stage for integrating schools in the United States. To provide context, Albrecht provides abbreviated histories of racial issues in the United States; of the state of Texas (especially useful for readers who were not raised or educated in the state); and of the status of public schools prior to World War II. The process of integrating schools followed the Supreme Court's Brown decision, which overturned the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson precedent of “separate but equal,” which essentially legalized racial segregation. In practice, “equal” often meant performing logical jumps over goalposts.While discussing the development of high school football and the notable teams of each decade, Albrecht also highlights the geographic and demographic identities of several Texas communities, grounding the narrative in specific places. These locations—Beaumont, Brownwood, Dallas, Houston, and Odessa—serve as constants for the reader. Albrecht examines how each responded to the process of integration in their schools and communities, initially and over time. In large part, towns and schools took the least expensive approach to this issue. Communities in South and West Texas, where there were fewer Black residents and where the prospect of building new facilities for only a handful of students was costly, opted to integrate. East Texas communities (which had more Black students) often chose to slow-walk integrating schools and maintain their current systems. Throughout, the stories of the people involved are told through the setting of football and the teams impacted by these changes. As integration moved forward, the players and their parents adapted to the changes in their towns, teams, and daily lives.Albrecht makes the case that as the pace of integration slowed in the 1980s, a less visible but more systemic form of segregation began to emerge. Those who could afford to move proceeded to seek better schools for their children. As middle- and upper-income families moved away from the cities to newer suburbs, their property taxes followed suit, resulting in wealthier schools with more means to seek success in classrooms and on the gridiron. This exodus of income from communities and their teams became a new means of resegregating schools. After presenting data to highlight the extreme disparities in high school football in the twenty-first century, Albrecht reaffirms his central argument. Black student-athletes remain just as “separate” as they were before the Brown decision—and arguably even less equal.There are many books on high school football and educational inequality, but those that focus on one subject will occasionally mention the other only in passing, as a contributing factor rather than a central theme. Blinded by the Lights takes both topics and handles them with a balance that offensive coordinators at any level of the game would envy. The author often paints the story of integration, especially from the 1950s through the 1970s, not in terms of whether towns wanted to integrate but rather whether they could afford not to. Towns without substantial Black populations, or with larger Hispanic populations, often integrated more quickly, as maintaining segregation by building new schools or funding student travel to other towns proved more costly.Once schools began desegregating and all-white teams encountered integrated teams on their schedules, the cost shifted. Refusing to play now meant forfeiting the game. Parental pride came at the expense of the players, who lost one game—one week—from the few autumns they had to compete and make history. Their missed games could mean sacrificed seasons and would be tragic were they not completely self-inflicted. Ultimately, it was the players who lost the most from decisions made by childish adults.Appropriately, this book provides a compelling narrative that should appeal to fans and coaches of amateur sport as well as academic audiences. For avid enthusiasts of high school football, who follow Dave Campbell's Texas Football and Fox News in equal measure, the book offers a chance to explore the history of how young men and their neighbors from towns like Odessa (from Friday Night Lights fame) built legends and brotherhoods on the gridiron. They'll also explore a subject—racism and inequality—that they might otherwise overlook or dismiss. Along similar lines, academics will find Albrecht's work refreshing and insightful despite the topic's severity.Albrecht neither pulls punches nor coddles his audience. He tells a compelling account based on facts, interviews, and research that engages the reader. Each chapter sets up the next with pacing and tempo that has been honed over three decades. And once each chapter has said enough, the narrative moves forward.