Le Scandal  The French soccer team's disaster in South Africa
has exposed the superficiality of European racial integration --
and now only Germany can save France from tearing itself apart.
In August 1936, shortly after African-American track star Jesse
Owens won a sensational four gold medals at the Berlin Olympic
Games, the editor of France's leading sports magazine L'Auto
called upon French colonial authorities to find and recruit
athletically talented black Africans who would be able to
"represent the French race in a dignified manner" at
international competitions. French runners and throwers had cut
a poor figure in Berlin, and their failures before the eyes of
the world were regarded as a national humiliation for France.
Accordingly, on Dec. 3, 1937, a search party sponsored by the
magazine sailed from Bordeaux on a mission to study the athletic
potential of the inhabitants of French West Africa. These sports
missionaries eventually arrived in Senegal and were received by
the highest colonial offici