The other night I caught part of a fascinating PBS documentary about a boxing match that took place in 1938 between the American heavyweight Joe Louis and a German named Max Schmeling. Now, I normally have about as much interest in boxing as I do in watching dust collect on the window ledges, but this particular bout represented much more than a mere sporting event. It was a battle of ideas and symbolism in which the racist philosophies of Hitler’s Third Reich (symbolized by Schmeling) confronted the reality of the so-called lesser races (Louis was black).
Feb042005
