By Curly Morris
A few years back William C. Rhoden wrote a book titled "40 Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise Fall and Redemption of the Black Athlete". Why I have not read the book yet is a very good question. I like Mr. Rhoden and I think that he offers very poignant and insightful commentary on today's sporting world.
I think the main reason I didn't rush out to get the book was because I'm sure I already knew what the ebb and flow of the book would be without even having to read it. I spent several years as a sportswriter and sports editor at newspapers in North Carolina and like most other blacks who covered sports for a living, there are perspectives and unwritten nuances of sports that we understand even when we don't speak about them.
As U.S. Presidential candidate Barak Obama has our nation on the precipice of a possible historic milestone in the history of our republic, issues of race and racism have been thrust back into the public psyche.
This week there have been dozens of articles and probably thousands of blogs written about NBA commissioner David Stern's inference that he would like to see the NBA's age limit raised to 20 years old. This news, of course, has brought on a slew of opinions and arguments as to whether or not the age limit issue in professional basketball has motivations that include discrimination toward young black males, who make up the majority of the players in the league.
While it's true that NBA players make more money than any ten current readers of my blog combined, Rhoden was insinuating that just because you have money doesn't mean that you've escaped the plantation mentality and you may be forced even more to recognize the pecking order of society than the guy working at McDonald's who can at least up and leave for Burger King if he wants to. Of course the majority of the comments I'll receive will be some variation of 'puh-lease those guys are multimillionaires', but understand this, if your boss is paying you 10 dollars an hour, it's because he's making 20 dollars an hour off of your labor.
While most of white America doesn't view Stern's aspirations as having any bigoted merit, many blacks (quiet as kept) would strongly disagree.
Let me be clear on something, I have no reason at all to believe that David Stern or any one else in the NBA is a racist. In fact, I don't believe that most white Americans are racists. That being said, there are still quite a few extremely bigoted people in the world and they come in all colors.
Racism, many times, is used the same way past infidelity is used in an argument between married couples. It'll never come up unless someone gets pissed me off and then they'll drag up an affair from ten years ago just to let their partner know that they haven't forgotten how much of a sleaze-bag they're married to.
It's used mostly as a self defense mechanism to inflict pain on someone who has inflicted pain on us. Still, the vast chasm between the cultures of of today's black youth and the majority of corporate America could not be any wider. The paradox is that corporate America not only profits from the dynamic of black culture, most of the time it is responsible for the shaping of that culture to begin with.
I understand the NBA being conscious about the image of it's players while it is trying to secure corporate sponsorship and expand it's product to a global audience. I strongly applauded the league's decision to implement a dress code among athletes on the bench at games. I was also a staunch supporter of Proposition 48 when it was first introduced and I was actually disappointed when the NCAA decided to repeal the initiative a few years back.
Prop. 48 forced student athletes to devote more of their energy to excelling on standardized exams and maintaining a decent grade point average if they wanted to play collegiate sports. The result was less Dexter Manleys and more Ray Allens.
The reason so many blacks smell a rat when Stern made his latest assertion was that there appears to be no justification for this new age limit and for that matter there was no justification for the last increase. The player's union caved in last time because they had their own financial considerations to deal with. This time Stern, who has partnered with the NCAA to build a coalition of support, has come out of the clear blue with his comments and to most blacks who cover and/or enjoy watching the NBA we don't get it.
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban gave his take on the justification of Stern's proposal on his very popular blog site. But after reading Cuban's explanation I walked away even more bewildered by his logic.
I won't waste any time offering statistics of players who came to the NBA from high school versus the collegiate counterparts, there are enough of those blogs already, but two things happened today that caused me to have a moment of clarity concerning how far we have to go in this country dealing with cultural differences.
The first thing that happened was at a physician's office in Greenville, NC. My wife was having an ultrasound done (we're expecting a boy in early July), and afterward we met with the doctor to discuss some of what he saw and upcoming appointments and such. As we were leaving I went to shake the doctor's hand and instead of him offering me a normal handshake, for some reason he felt compelled to give me the 'homeboy' shake'. You know what I mean...meet hands at the palms...grip fingers...give the pat on the back.
He caught me so off guard, I'm sure that I was the one who screwed up the shake leading to the awkward pause by the two of us when we were done. (Imagine Mark Madsen and Steve Williams trying to do the Souljah Boy dance).
I wasn't offended at all, I try not to be that petty. In fact I thought it was amusing. Still, I had to wonder why he felt the need to do that. Was it just because I'm black? Keep in mind the physician had to be at least 55 years old and I was wearing a suit. I like to think he was trying to show me that he was 'down' (lol)...but why couldn't he have just shook my hand normally? That would've been fine with me. Would he have offered that same shake to Senator Obama? Colin Powell? Al Sharpton?
The second epiphany came to me while reading Hoffman's blog. I had commented on Stern's comments and made the reference of the decision being a 'black backlash'. B Hoff said that he didn't think it was a race issue, but more of a 'hip-hop' issue. That's when the light bulb went off. Hoff was right, it is a hip-hop issue, but that wasn't the epiphany.
What Hoff made me realize was that in corporate America and in the homes of many white Americans, the term 'hip-hop' has replaced the 'n word'.
This, of course, is not a slant on Hoff (Hoff is my man fosho) but the realization that in today's politically correct media world terms like alternative lifestyle and hip-hop are being used to replace #### and ####. The implications are not as passionate as they were say 40 years ago, but still they harbor connotations that serve as a wink-wink to like minded people who don't want to get thrown under the bus for making the wrong statement.
Hoff is correct to state that Stern and his cronies have a concern about the image of the league being synonymous with gansterism and thug life. The hypocrisy for the NBA is that this is not only a monster they created but a dynamic that has lined to the pockets of NBA owners for over two decades now. ESPN's Todd Boyd was all over that one years ago.
If you don't believe me then go try to find a pair of Steve Nash's or Dirk Nowitski's on the shelf at footlocker beside the Iversons and Jordan's. Better yet, pick up the latest NBA video game and check out the music soundtrack. That's what confused me about Cuban's blog. He was speaking as if he wasn't an NBA owner who had drafted kids straight out of high school and made a ton of money along the way.
Sometimes we (black people) take the race thing a little too far, as Jason Whitlock explained in his column about LeBron's recent Vogue Magazine cover. Many white writers who cover the NBA have had front row seats to the evolution of the black basketball player as a commodity and as such have a much deeper insight into the minds of the kids from the #### who have millions of dollars thrust upon them and have to figure out how to balance their ability to keep credibility on the courts where many of them honed their skills and still be marketable enough to get their own shoe line. It's a balancing act that some master and others don't. True Hoops' Henry Abbott showed that even Jordan himself had to be cognizant of the compromise.
So why now have Stern's comments brought all of this back to the forefront? Because again there doesn't appear to be any social or financial merit to his thought process. Another FOX blogger, Tophatal made the point in Hoff's piece that the NBA supposedly created the D-League for just this purpose, to develop the youngsters who might not be ready physically or mentally for the varsity. It is developments like these that cause black sports fans to pause and dig a little deeper into the story.
So when your black friends and co-workers tell you they smell a rat, don't just discount their comments as playing the race card, stick your nose into the air and see if for once you can smell what they smell.
Posted By: Curly Morris
Wednesday, August 6th 2008 at 10:10PM
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