With all of the struggles, battles and obstacles African-Americans and non-white persons overcame through the years, an accusation of “bojangling” packs a lot of punch.

So when Kansas City Star and AOL Sports columnist Jason Whitlock took the first swing and said former ESPN.com Page2 colleague Scoop Jackson was bojangling for “The World Wide Leader” dollars, I was sure they would go to actual physical blows. I’ve never seen either in person, but having seen them on TV, I’d assume Whitlock would come out on top — literally.

Here is the timeline:

- Whitlock gave a very tell-all interview with a sports blog site, thebiglead.com a month ago attacking Scoop, Mike Lupica and those in the African-American community he calls the New Klu Klux Klan.
- Scoop responds by way of his ESPN Page2 column.
- Jason reiterates his side in an interview on BlackSportsNetwork.com.
- Scoop follows suit, interviewing with BlackSporstNetwork.com days later.

The fallout from Jason’s candidness came from the very top of ESPN, “The World Wide Leader.” They cancelled all of his ESPN appearances (he had guest appearances on PTI, Rome Is Burning, and was a regular on The Sports Reporters) and had he not already left his columnist post at ESPN.com Page2 for AOL Sports, surely he would’ve been cancelled there as well.

Say what you want to say about America’s stand for our freedom of speech, but in the business professional world speaking out will get you fired. You’ll get canned especially quick if you do so in a manner raising racial tensions, which have a tendency to make everyone – corporate heads, nationally televised audiences of various colors and sponsors especially – uncomfortable.

So for not biting his tongue, or curbing his criticism, Whitlock paid the free speech tax. But I can’t say I am completely opposed to his criticism as much as I am the way in which he brought it out.

Scoop was named lead writer of ESPN Page2 a year ago while Whitlock was already a member of the team. Scoop took over a main section of the front page, while Whitlock found himself in a less prominent role but remained on the same national stage.

Eventually Whitlock couldn’t take any more comparisons of his work with Scoop’s, so he let thebiglead.com know how he felt in the best way he knows it: candidly. And in doing so, it appeared that Whitlock succumbed to jealousy, rather than appear to have reached a point where he needed to assist a fellow African-American colleague on issues he holds in high regard.

And the bigger issue Whitlock alludes to in each of his interviews has plenty of substance. He talks about hating how African-Americans who yield the attention and power of the world fail to take full advantage of their stage. He says that only 20% of black athletes are setting bad examples that the media feeds on, which inevitably contribute to the defamation of black culture started years ago, before segregation. And that hip-hop music is guilty of the same, degrading women, promoting materialism and violence, which are counterproductive to bringing equality to America.

In his ESPN.com article response, Scoop was tame, civil, sugar, spice and everything nice. He said all of the right things, it seemed. He played the “bigger man” card, refraining from a response to Whitlock’s implications of he and some other black writers as “buffoonish,” “assimilated,” “unskilled,” and “untrained.” He says Whitlock misinterpreted his message in the blood-boiling article that appeared to have sparked the fire that has ensued. But even after he refuted each point in which he felt Whitlock was in the wrong, he came to an agreement in the end.

He agrees with Whitlock’s call for a new Civil Rights Movement. But, as he ends his article, he so eloquently writes that “the first step in creating a Civil Rights Movement is being civil.”

Words can be no truer. As much as Whitlock is opposed to Scoop’s tactic of dropping cold, hard statistics on students as a form of motivation (the “scare tactic”), that is his style. And it works sometimes. Probably just as much as Whitlock’s method of telling kids that they can be anything they want to be if they put in the proper work. Two different persons, personalities, teaching styles, but where are the cold, hard statistics to show which would work better?

I’d suggest pitting them in two separate classrooms and teaching the young minds of America in a study stemming from the Central Florida Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sports (A study which did not gain as much attention when it came from a white journalist, Norman Chad at The Washington Post). Have the two teach kids their diverse ways of achieving their professional dreams and then follow-up through interviews and progress reports to find out what works and doesn’t. There have been studies similar to this, but not on as large a stage as that of “The World Wide Leader.”

But without that we’re simply left with two talented African-American journalists possessing the potential to spin their disagreement into a large-scale movement.

And that movement could be achieved using the study and time tested, yet to be refuted, greatest social unifier in the world – sports.