Real Role Models

"Just like with sports..."

2010-05-30T23:31:00.000-04:00

Real Role Models profiled in UT blog

2010-03-03T16:05:00.000-05:00

“Real Role Models”: The lesser known celebrities
by Marjorie Simoens
Published: March 1

NBA Hall of Famer Charles Barkley said it blatantly: “I am not a role model.”

But how is that so?

Barkley had a successful career in basketball, had the fame to follow, and the money to show for it. How do these things not equate to a role model?

According to the book “Real Role Models: Successful African Americans Beyond Pop Culture” by Joah Spearman, alumnus of the university, and Dr. Louis Harrison Jr., associate professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, young African Americans need positive and real role models beyond famous celebrities and athletes

Read the rest here.

Real Role Models in the NY Times

2010-03-03T16:03:00.001-05:00

Searching for Role Models
By JOAH SPEARMAN
Feb. 8, 2010

When Alabama’s Mark Ingram won the Heisman Trophy he made sure to mention his father, Mark Ingram Sr., a former N.F.L. receiver who was an important member of the Giants’ 1991 Super Bowl victory and a role model to him.

However, Mark Ingram Sr. spent his son’s Heisman year in prison after being sentenced to seven years for bank fraud and money laundering charges. Even still, the elder Ingram tries to remain a positive force in his son’s life (the two speak on the phone regularly) by telling him not to make the same mistakes he did. Is that what a role model should encourage?

February is Black History Month, which leads me to an important question: what kind of role models should student-athletes have? I once heard a professor say, “while striving to achieve hoop dreams, many young black children are having academic nightmares.” Dr. Louis Harrison Jr., an African-American studies professor at the University of Texas, is the man behind that line and this month, “Real Role Models,” a book I co-authored with him, addresses this important issue.

Read the rest here @ NYTimes.com.

Joah Spearman Inteview on KUT (Austin's NPR affiliate)

2010-02-09T09:50:00.001-05:00

"Many young people – perhaps many young African Americans – may have looked to him as a role model. It’s not unusual to single out the rich, famous, and talented as role models. But that can leave out a lot of qualities. Austin authors Joah Spearman and Louis Harrison, Jr. have written a book profiling the not-so-rich-and-famous. But African Americans who they say make good role models by virtue of their character, hard work, and emphasis on education – not necessarily their fame. Joah Spearman and Louis Harrison, Jr. are the authors of Real Role Models: Successful African Americans Beyond Pop Culture." Listen to the segment here.

Examiner says...

2010-02-08T20:56:00.003-05:00

"In this day and age, with absurd role models like Paris Hilton and ultimately disappointing role models like Tiger Woods, young people need to have real role models in their lives..."

Read on here.

Real Role Models in The Advocate

2010-01-20T18:56:00.001-05:00

Keeping It Real
Jan. 16, 2010
Pro athletes have influence on youngsters

* By JOHNNY BROOKS
* Advocate Opinion page staff
* Published: Jan 16, 2010 - Page: 9B

Former NBA and former Auburn star Charles Barkley was quoted several years ago as saying, “I am not a role model.” He has been called many things over the years, but role model is not one of them.

Barkley has admitted having trouble with alcohol, gambling and his weight, while also being outspoken and critical about politics, sports and other topics that interest him.

I admire Barkley for his candor and his ability to laugh at himself. But being a role model to children — as many professional athletes, coaches, teachers, law enforcement authorities, celebrities (actors and artists) and politicians are — is no laughing matter.

However, holding up professional athletes as role models is particularly problematic as revelations surface about steroid use among former MLB players (Mark McGwire), former NFL players (Dana Stubblefield) and former track athletes (Marion Jones).

The public’s patience, confidence and willingness to forgive and forget transgressions and give athletes another chance also are eroded amid reports of infidelity among golfers (Tiger Woods); NBA (Gilbert Arenas) and NFL players (Plaxico Burress) packing weapons “for protection” and players in both leagues continuing to violate the leagues’ substance abuse and personal conduct policies.

Children see the games and commercials on TV and the Internet and/or listen to them on the radio. They urge their parents to buy the $100-plus jerseys, uniforms, shoes and equipment. They spend countless hours on the playgrounds, fields and courts and in the weight room trying to get “faster, higher and stronger” so they can “be like Mike” (Michael Jordan) and so many others.

Professional athletes have influence. I would not call it power. That means many young people will do almost anything to mimic athletes and have the “bling, bling” (jewelry), the women and the men, the parties, the entourage, the clothing, the cars, the houses, the notoriety and perceived glory that athletes have.

But at what price?

That’s not to say all professional athletes are bad people. Many, if not most, athletes are good people.

Take Baton Rouge’s own Seimone Augustus, a former Capitol High School and former LSU star, who plays in the WNBA. Take Warrick Dunn, a former Catholic High and former Florida State star, who retired from the NFL after playing for the Atlanta Falcons and Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

As of May 6, Dunn had helped 85 single parents buy homes through Homes for the Holidays, a program his foundation began in 1997 in Tampa, Fla. His mother, police Cpl. Betty Smothers, was murdered in January 1993 while working an off-duty security job in Baton Rouge. She was supporting six children.

In addition to those efforts, Dunn recognizes outstanding high school football players in the Baton Rouge area with the annual Warrick Dunn award.

He is a true role model.

A friend, Louis Harrison Jr., an associate professor in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin who works with student-athletes, recently e-mailed me about reviewing a book, “Real Role Models,” that he co-authored. Can’t wait.

Johnny Brooks is an assistant metro editor for The Advocate. His e-mail address is jbrooks@theadvocate.com.

This Kid is an Up-and-Comer

2010-01-03T13:18:00.001-05:00

Still searching for real role models...

2009-12-11T19:05:00.002-05:00

I just read Tiger Woods' statement that he will be taking a leave of absence from golf in light of his ongoing media storm stemming from his infidelity. This proves to all of us that athletes and celebrities are not beyond human and must not be put on pedestals of kings.

It's tough to write this because I have long been an avid fan of Tiger's. He's the best sports figure we've had since Michael Jordan left the Chicago Bulls. He's built a worthwhile foundation and has inspired millions of kids to play the game of golf. But this news is tough to take in stride.

That's surely why Tiger is taking a break and it's definitely why we must continue to search for and identify real role models beyond fame and riches.

Real Role Models available for pre-order on Amazon

2009-11-06T11:14:00.002-05:00

Real Role Models: Successful African Americans Beyond Pop Culture (University of Texas Press) is now available on Amazon for pre-order. The paperback version ($19.95) and the hardback edition ($45.00) of the book will be available online and in stores throughout Black History Month 2010.

When Dr. Louis Harrison, Jr., and I set out to write this book our primary focus was on interviewing people whose stories of success could truly impact and inspire young people, with a particular emphasis on young African Americans. With those profiled in this book - including Melody Barnes, Domestic Policy Adviser to President Obama, Bev Kearney, women's track and field coach at Univ. of Texas, and Leonard Pitts, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist - we believe we have captured a unique, well-rounded and first-of-its-kind collection of role models, even beyond the Black community.

On behalf of Louis and myself, we thank you for supporting our efforts to inspire young African Americans through this book and please let us know if there are any particular individuals, organizations or schools that would be particularly interested in hearing more about Real Role Models.

Best regards,

Joah Spearman

Real Role Models of the future @ I4RC

2009-11-02T17:59:00.004-05:00

The Institute for Responsible Citizenship is an organization based in Washington, D.C., that I am extremely proud to support. One of the participants was the first person in his family to attend college and now he's a Rhodes Scholar, another is Truman Scholar.

NY Times: Ravens’ Foxworth Is Building Home Museum to the Civil Rights Movement

2009-09-17T20:19:00.001-04:00

September 15, 2009

Ravens’ Foxworth Is Building Home Museum to the Civil Rights Movement

By ALAN SCHWARZ

PIKESVILLE, Md. — With each step down his basement stairs, Domonique Foxworth descends into his own private bomb shelter. Above ground, he earns millions covering the N.F.L.’s top receivers for the Baltimore Ravens. Below it in his cellar, he seeks different company.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. has a dream in the cover of an autographed memoir. Malcolm X defies a detractor in a typed letter from 1963. Rosa Parks sits, Tommie Smith clenches and Thurgood Marshall reasons in framed and signed artifacts that form Foxworth’s growing museum of the civil rights movement.

“Other players around the league, their basements are all jerseys of themselves and their friends in the N.F.L. and the N.B.A.,” Foxworth said. “I feel more comfortable with these people around me.”

Later, looking at the collection, he said: “Not often, but on occasion I feel guilty. I have all this because I run real fast and I tackle people. I recognize why I’ve been able to do this. It’s not all because of me or my family or my teammates or my coaches. It’s more because of the faces on the walls in my basement.”

Foxworth’s face would not fit on the N.F.L.’s current Mount Blushmore of Michael Vick, Donte’ Stallworth, Pacman Jones and others. At 26, he has never started a full season. He swallows books whole, is weighing potential business schools and plans to “gobble up degrees” before he retires.

Not just a hobby, Foxworth’s passion for civil rights will inform his handling of the league’s coming labor negotiations, in which he will participate as a member of the union’s executive committee. He candidly, some would say audaciously, vows to speak for forgotten fans and stadium workers “who would be hurt by a lockout more than the players,” he said.

Foxworth has watched the occasional interviewer stop cold when he acknowledges growing up outside Baltimore decidedly middle class. (“They’re like, ‘Where’s the strife?’, and the story mysteriously never runs,” he said.) As he tries to live his N.F.L. life far differently from the public’s image of it, speaking to middle schools and starting nonprofit charities, every now and then he grounds himself. Underground.

“This is the Little Rock Nine,” Foxworth said, pointing to an autographed print of the black students who in 1957 were blocked from attending a segregated school in Arkansas. “All this stuff is really powerful to me. It motivates me. Football and community work and just day to day. To not waste.”

Foxworth’s father, Lorinzo, attended an all-black elementary school in Charlotte, N.C., before joining the Army and raising two sons with his wife, Karen. In bouncing from post to post, the family made sure to tour the local university — Indiana, North Carolina, Pittsburgh, West Point. Perhaps that is why Lorinzo Foxworth, now retired and pursuing a doctorate in business training and development, speaks of his younger son’s “matriculation through life.”

Lorinzo Foxworth said: “But he has a sixth sense we couldn’t impact. He always had a knack for asking the question of why? How does it work? How did it start? And it all ends with something he wants to impact, to manifest in things that matter to him.”

Domonique left high school near Baltimore midway through his senior year in 2001 so he could begin classes early at the University of Maryland. He entered with an interest in computer engineering but was turned on to history and earned a degree in American studies three years later. He did so despite starring on the football team; he was then drafted by the Denver Broncos in the third round in 2005.

Blocked by the Pro Bowl cornerbacks Champ Bailey and Dre’ Bly, Foxworth never developed a consistent role in Denver and was traded to the Atlanta Falcons before last season. He was so quick on man-to-man coverage that the Ravens bought him away as a free agent with a four-year contract worth a guaranteed $16.5 million, and potentially $27.2 million, to tighten what was already one of the N.F.L.’s stingiest defenses.

Foxworth did not splurge on a Lamborghini. He still drives the Range Rover from his draft year. He did call Mark Mitchell, a collector and dealer of African-American memorabilia based in Fairfax, Va., to do his own kind of splurging.

“Professional athletes really have an interest in African-American history, not just for themselves but to pass it along to their families,” said Mitchell, whose clients include the former Washington Redskins Art Monk and Charles Mann and the basketball player Chris Webber. “I find them very intelligent, curious. They’re almost stunned — honored, in a way, to hold in their hands a letter from Frederick Douglass. They have respect for the people who helped bring about the world they live in. You think of athletes as privileged, in a corner by themselves, but they have a curiosity that would surprise people.”

Foxworth’s curiosity will help guide his own playbook for the union-league negotiations; he will be the youngest member of the players’ 11-man executive committee. He said he understood his responsibility to secure the best collective bargaining agreement for his fellow players. Yet he refuses to forget the thousands of strangers — parking attendants, restaurant owners, souvenir hawkers and more — who would be financially devastated by a prolonged lockout.

“It’s not us against the league, who gets the most money — that’s pretty juvenile,” Foxworth said. “We don’t get hurt, we hurt people around us. Obviously it’ll hurt the billionaire owners a bit. It’ll hurt some players who may not get their chance for a life-changing payday. But by and large, the people that we hurt most are just regular people. I just want to introduce that there’s a third party that doesn’t have a voice. Someone needs to remind both of us that this isn’t a game.”

Few people would recognize Foxworth anywhere but his native Baltimore, if there. He is only 5 feet 11 inches and 180 pounds. He avoids telling people he meets what he does for a living because of what he called “the default image that people have of football players, the default story of the life.”

He added, “If I can have a regular conversation on a plane about life and general things, I would much rather do that than have him ask me what it’s like to cover Randy Moss.”

Foxworth says he has no specific plans for retirement, his body tapped but his mind just reaching stride. Get a doctorate or two, he said. Maybe build recreation centers with academic bents. Keep adding to his museum, which he considers less hobby than homage. He wants a Medgar Evers piece. Bobby Kennedy.

Too bad the walls will never include one long-lost item that Foxworth’s father still recalls. When Domonique was 8, just starting Pop Warner football, he walked into his parents’ bedroom with a shockingly good picture he had drawn. It wasn’t Junior Seau or Jerry Rice. It was a parachute.

Obama: "Our kids can't all aspire to be the next Lebron or Lil' Wayne"

2009-08-11T16:32:00.002-04:00

Excerpt: "They might think they've got a pretty good jump shot or a pretty good flow, but our kids can't all aspire to be the next LeBron or Lil Wayne. I want them aspiring to be scientists and engineers, doctors and teachers, not just ballers and rappers. I want them aspiring to be a Supreme Court justice. I want them aspiring to be president of the United States."

Can You Help Us Help African-American Students?

2009-07-07T15:34:00.005-04:00

Friends and Colleagues,

Real Role Models is set to be published next January. Neither Louis nor myself have written this book to make an impact on our wallets, instead believing the biggest impact of this book will be in transforming the lives of Black students around the country, particularly those in impoverished and inner-city settings.

That said, I am asking you to read the note below from Ian Smith, a colleague of mine who runs a foundation that helps underprivileged Black students get a college education, and consider helping us reach our target audience.

***

Joah,

This is an excellent book. I started reading it and could not put it down, seriously. The message this book tells is exceptional. The testimonies from the selected role models will relate to whoever reads this book. The way you used modern people like Charles Barkley and Jay-Z to Kirk Franklin to make certain points will engage younger people to keep reading. Not only that, but there is a need for REAL ROLE MODELS in today's society. Recently, I conducted a leadership workshop and I asked two groups of 13-18 year old students who they thought were leaders. All except maybe 1 or 2 students mentioned athletes and entertainers as leaders instead of themselves, their parents or some of the more influential people in the world like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Our youth today, many value the works of Lebron James and Kobe Bryant more than the works of Dr. King, Malcolm X, Madame C.J. Walker and even Barack Obama. The young people don't understand there is more to life than sports, until it's too late. The huge amount of crime being committed today is unbelievable. I believe this book comes in good timing and hopefully will find some of these young people who is in dire need of some positive influence. Mr. Joah Spearman, thanks for co-authoring this book, its wonderful. I commend you and your colleague for the works of this book, I just hope it reaches the youth before its too late.

Ian Smith

***

If, after reading this note, you think of anyone whom you think would consider recommending the book Ian describes above to a school principal, after-school program leader, nonprofit organization director, business executive, church pastor, coach or community leader...please LET ME KNOW!

My best email is Joah_Spearman@yahoo.com.

Thank you so much.

Joah

Congratulations Louis!

2009-05-03T15:31:00.002-04:00

(He's not a self-promoter, but I'll do it for him!)

Harrison Honored for Outreach to Underserved Populations

Dr. Louis Harrison, Jr., was honored with the 2009 E.B. Henderson Award at the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance’s (AAHPERD) National Convention and Exposition on April 4.

The prestigious award is presented annually by the AAHPERD Social Justice and Diversity Committee to one member in higher education who, through numerous years of proven service, dedication, scholarship and mentorship has increased involvement of ethnic minorities and underserved populations in AAHPERD.

Harrison is an associate professor in the College of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction at The University of Texas at Austin. His research has focused on the influences of race related self-schemata and African American racial identity on physical activity choices and performance. The purpose of this line of research has been to investigate factors that influence sport and physical activity participation, as well as identity development patterns of African Americans. Due to his work, physical activity scholars and health professionals have gained a deeper understanding of the racial labels ascribed to particular sports and physical activities and to how these labels affect participation, persistence, effort and performance. Scholars now have a guide that allows them to help underserved minorities develop a physically active.

The award commemorates Edwin Bancroft Henderson (1883-1977), an athlete, basketball pioneer, physical educator, civil rights advocate and author who for three quarters of a century preached racial unity through sports. Henderson is widely recognized by sports scholars and basketball historians as the first person to introduce the game of basketball to African Americans on a large-scale basis. One of his major scholarly contributions was “The Negro in Sports,” written in 1939. It was from this work that sports legend Arthur Ashe built his three volume series on the African American athlete.

NFL Players Being Led By Successful Black Lawyer

2009-03-25T19:00:00.004-04:00

DeMaurice Smith, a partner with powerful Washington law firm Patton Boggs, was recently named Executive Director of the NFL Players Association, the union representing all players in the most-lucrative league in professional sports. Smith is a Washington, D.C., native and spent many years in the D.C. legal system after graduating from the University of Virginia's law school in 1989. He has close ties to Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama and is expected to bring a fresh perspective and grounded leadership to the union during a potentially tumultuous time as the NFL's owners and players have yet to reach a contract agreement past 2009, known as a Collective Bargaining Agreement. Aside from his legal work, Smith is also on the Board of Directors for the Good Samaritan Foundation, a D.C.-based organization co-founded by former Washington Redskins player and Hall of Famer Art Monk to assist in fulfilling the educational and social needs of inner city youth.

A Role Model for Young Men and Women Alike

2009-03-05T16:25:00.003-05:00

When CNN's Jack Cafferty is raving about you, you know something must be going right for you. That's Michelle Obama these days. Sure, her husband, Barack, became the first Black man to become President of the United States with a awe-inspiring mix of composure, charisma and political savvy, but it's his wife who has wowed Washington with everything from her hospitality to her fashion sense. This is a real role model if I've ever seen one.

A woman who knows her strengths as an individual and professional - she was a senior official at the University of Chicago before going on hiatus to campaign for her husband - and, more importantly, knows the power that comes from her current job as First Lady. Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Reagan each had her own areas of focus and pet projects, but from Michelle we get the sense that the role of First Lady has never been so broad and inspiring. She's a mother of two young daughters, but she's also an adviser to her husband, not far removed from being a state senator in Illinois.

Real Role Models doesn't profile the First Lady, nor any other famous Black professionals, but it goes without saying that she is amongst a select group of nationally-captivating people, the kind of person who not only inspires young black girls, but also black women and not only black women, but women in general. And, I know I'm not the only man who watches her in admiration and awe. Wondering how Barack ever got so lucky. Being her husband, not the president, has to be the most important job in his life.

Secret to Steelers Coach Tomlin's Success: Take Notes

2009-02-11T10:54:00.001-05:00

Secret to Steelers Coach Tomlin's Success: Take Notes
By JUDY BATTISTA
The New York Times
January 26, 2009

TAMPA, Fla. — Sometimes in the off-season, he creeps down to the basement in the middle of the night and pulls an old Franklin Planner from the stacks. Pittsburgh Steelers Coach Mike Tomlin — reluctant intellectual — goes back to school then, flipping through the meticulous notes he has kept since he was a youngster, line after line bringing back the memories of what he did in a practice, of how a coach handled a wayward player, of the goals he hoped to accomplish that season.

For years, Tomlin tried to shield his smarts from view. When the “My Child is an Honor Roll Student” bumper stickers arrived in the mail, Tomlin threw them in the garbage before his mother could put them on the car. It was weird, he thought, when his friends first realized in 11th grade that he had gotten straight A’s. Even at William and Mary, an elite college just a few dozen miles from his home in Newport News, Va., he playfully mocked one of his best friends as Poem Boy, only to quote Robert Frost in his news conference after the Steelers won the American Football Conference championship last week.

But those notes in the basement serve as a road map of Tomlin’s meteoric career rise and inform his decisions still. The 1996 volume is a particular favorite because Tomlin was a graduate assistant at the University of Memphis, with the ideal fly-on-the-wall vantage point to observe coaches while bearing few responsibilities. Nobody, save perhaps Tomlin himself, could have imagined that a dozen years later — only two years after he met much of the N.F.L. while pushing his baby’s stroller through the league’s annual meeting — Tomlin would become the youngest Super Bowl head coach in league history.

“Shocked is not a word that I would use,” Tomlin, 36, said of landing the Steelers job in the first place. “I’ve always been extremely competitive. I’m a big dreamer, I guess. I’ve been known to be pushy.”

Tomlin has never lacked for self-assurance. When he told his mother he was forsaking law school to take his first $12,000-a-year coaching job — a decision she thought was insane — he told her coolly that he had a plan. Tomlin’s father, Ed, played in the Canadian Football League, but Tomlin had little relationship with him after his parents separated when he was a baby.

The lure of football came, instead, from neighborhood coaches. Athletics were viewed as a way out of a sometimes difficult neighborhood, Tomlin said, so the coaches became the disciplinarians, the guidance counselors. He wanted to be among them, even if he didn’t need sports to escape. He was a wisp of a high school wide receiver, but he was also quietly stowing recruiting letters from Ivy League programs.

Tomlin wanted to be known as a jock then, not a smart kid, something he knows sounds silly now. But perhaps that was why he could always command a room, able to make the biology students and the offensive linemen equally comfortable.

“He would walk through the door at 10 o’clock at night and light up the room,” said Pete Tsipas, the owner of Paul’s Deli, a student hangout at William and Mary where Tomlin worked the door. “Fifteen years later, he still knows everybody’s name.”

At William and Mary, Tomlin bulked up and became a downfield receiving threat, establishing a team record by averaging 20.2 yards a catch. But football also provided Tomlin an opportunity for the perfect melding of the academic and athletic, and perhaps the underpinnings of his coaching style: he memorized his opponents’ biographies, the better to trash-talk them. Tomlin calls himself a flatliner now, projecting only cool dressed in black on the Steelers’ sideline. But back then, he was emotional — even a little cocky.

“Confidence was never a problem with Mike,” said Minnesota Vikings safety Darren Sharper, a college teammate who was later coached by Tomlin when he was the Vikings’ defensive coordinator. “He would talk trash not only to players, but to coaches. It was a comedy every day. He is always ready to go, trying to get guys to compete.”

Tomlin and his friend and fellow receiver Terry Hammons were fans of NFL Films, and in one they noticed that the great Cleveland running back Jim Brown behaved oddly near the sidelines before games, to unnerve opponents.

“We had such delusions of our own grandeur, we would do these weird drills, we’d get dressed up to our waist, go out with our shirts off, do some push-ups and then start doing ball drills,” said Hammons, who was Poem Boy and is now a lawyer in London.

Hammons calls Tomlin socially intelligent, possessing a knack for knowing what spurs others on. He was the guy singing “It’s a Beautiful Morning” in the bitter cold of an off-season workout. And years later, after Steelers running back Willie Parker complained about play-calling, Tomlin noted in a news conference that Parker wasn’t complaining last season, when he led the league in rushing for most of the year. The zinger delivered, Tomlin made Parker a game captain a few days later.

In college, Tomlin became a voracious student of the voluminous William and Mary playbook and game film, and he offered his suggestions to Coach Jimmye Laycock. For all his chattiness on the field, Tomlin was a deliberate thinker, given, a sociology professor said, to hanging back in an argument so he could analyze data — the thoughtful approach he takes today when talking to reporters.

From his first coaching job, with the wide receivers at Virginia Military Institute, the notebooks filled up quickly, Tomlin’s career buoyed by his amalgamation of smarts and swagger. At the University of Cincinnati — his fifth career stop in five years — the secondary he took over went from being ranked 111th in the nation in pass defense to 61st in his first season. Tony Dungy and Monte Kiffin, then coaching in Tampa Bay, heard about him while they were looking for a defensive backs coach.

After putting Tomlin through a 15-hour interview, Kiffin called the veteran safety John Lynch to tell him about Tomlin’s preparedness and poise, about Tomlin’s attention to technique and his plans for motivation. “Monte said, ‘I have good news and bad news,’ ” Lynch recalled. “He said, ‘I got a heck of a secondary coach.’ I said, ‘What’s the bad news?’ ‘You’re a year older than him.’ ”

Tomlin, then 28, was used to the uneasiness his youth created. When the Buccaneers held a brief minicamp early in Tomlin’s tenure, he had known the players for two weeks. But he presented Lynch, a perennial All-Pro, a tape of 75 plays he thought he could improve on from the year before.

“At first, I thought, What’s up with this guy?” Lynch said. “But then I started reading the detail. He’d show a play, then have a long paragraph about what he thought I could do better. I learned a lot from him right away. That sold me on him.”

The Steelers were a veteran team one season removed from a Super Bowl title when Tomlin got the job Jan. 22, 2007, at age 34. The players were watching him closely. Tomlin ran an intentionally savage training camp to make the point that he was in charge and to help him determine the hardest workers.

Now the Steelers credit him for delegating authority to his assistants, rather than interfering with play-calling, and for easing up on some players as he has grown more comfortable with them.

“I like the head-scratching,” Tomlin said. “I go out of my way to not put them at ease. There’s nothing wrong with being in a permanent state of arousal and not finding a comfort zone.”

That wisdom is undoubtedly jotted in one of his notebooks, which will stretch a little longer for this season. There is no hiding how smart Tomlin is now, but that was never the whole book on him.

A few weeks after he became the Steelers’ coach, Tomlin invited Hammons, a Pittsburgh native and lifelong Steelers fan, to his first minicamp. Tomlin showed him the five Lombardi Trophies. He introduced him to the team’s chairman, Dan Rooney. Hammons was overwhelmed.

“We get out on the practice field, and he’d come over to me and say: ‘You know what, Terry? I could blow this whistle and all of the Pittsburgh Steelers would come running over. Do you want me to blow this whistle, Terry?’ ” Hammons said. “And he just laughs and walks away.”

Obama: A New Kind of Role Model

2008-11-18T18:16:00.005-05:00

For the last forty years, since the untimely death of Dr. King, Black America has lacked a true national role model.

Sure, we have shared in the successes of athletes and musicians from Muhammad Ali and Michael Jordan to Michael Jackson and Jay-Z, not to mention TV and movie stars like Oprah and Will Smith. But those people, I hate to say, would best be described as celebrity figures then idols then role models.

Not since Dr. King has a Black man been charged with leading all of his kinfolk at once. Young and old, college-educated and non-degree holder, rural and urban, rich and poor. All of these segments of the Black community, and others, were once held within the reach of Dr. King's voice.

On November 4, 2008, a man who has so much (smart, educated) yet so little (politician, half-white) in common with Dr. King made his voice heard. And Black America, albeit a generation removed, stood up and watched Barack Obama pick up the baton that Dr. King had taken from W.E.B. Dubois, his sparring partner Booker T. Washington and their predecessors Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman.

Typically relays are run by four individuals, but - as we have learned for the last few centuries - Black America is often required to do more to achieve the same end.

So, running what amounts to the fifth leg, Chicago's favorite son Barack Obama has taken the baton and carried it further than any person of color ever has in this country.

Whether you agree with his policies or not, we can all agree that this moment will forever be remembered as having substantial significance for all Americans with Black Americans, not just African-Americans, at the fore front of that achievement.

With a Kenyan father, Barack Obama is not the traditional Black man in America. He did not live through the segregation that many of our parents and grandparents lived through for his entire life. He did not rise through the political ranks of Chicago and Illinois by being a loud proponent of affirmative action and a staunch opponent of police brutality.

If anything, Barack Obama represents the future of Black America more than most of us ever will. Namely because he represents all of America, which is exactly what Dr. King and those before him struggled so hard to accomplish.

Black America will always admire its athletes, entertainers and musicians, but we are a people best represented by those who seek to serve the public. The best of us are often those chosen to represent all Americans, not just Black Americans. The names Thurgood Marshall and Colin Powell should come to mind.

Like Marshall, Barack Obama used his knowledge of the law to leverage his way up America's ladder to success. And like Powell, he used his skill in Washington to lobby his way up the hearts and minds of Americans.

Now, a generation and some removed from Dr. King's death, we have a real role model who reminds Black Americans that everything feels so much better with a real role model in our lives. Even before we experience the benefits ourselves.

Because for the next 40 years, much like what we saw with Dr. King's emulators, Black boys and girls will strive to be more like Barack Obama. And we'll all be better off because of it.

Chicago Tribune: Election sends right message to young athletes

2008-11-07T07:43:00.000-05:00

Election sends right message to young athletes
Chicago Tribune
Rick Morrissey

Over the last few days, black athletes and coaches have lined up to say that Barack Obama's victory in the presidential election proves to young African-Americans that anything is possible.

They should have taken it a step further.

What they should have said, in so many words, was:

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"To the kids who are dreaming of fame and fortune in sports: You have almost no chance of making it to the pros, and your odds of getting a college athletic scholarship are incredibly slim. Don't delude yourself. You're not the exception. You're most likely the rule.

"Play sports for the lessons they teach you about teamwork and effort and life. All those things are transferable to the real world. But there's only one LeBron James, and you're not him. Put down the ball once in a while and pick up a book, the way Obama did. You'll go far."

Deflating? Probably. Unfair? Maybe a little.

But absolutely real.

For too long, too many blacks have looked upon sports and entertainment as the only avenues to achieve huge success. Aided and abetted by coaches, parents and other relatives, they cling to the fantasy of impending wealth and stardom.

In a way, it makes sense. What worked for someone who looks like me and comes from a similar background as me will therefore work for me.

But it doesn't make it any less heartbreaking to watch.

What an opportunity there is now, with Obama preparing to move into the White House. Will kids look up from their pickup games long enough to notice? Will they start to reach higher than a basketball rim?

"What I like about Obama is that, even though his situation might be different from theirs, he did come from humble beginnings," said Louis Harrison Jr., a University of Texas professor who does research on race and athletics. "He wasn't born with a silver spoon. Hopefully, kids will connect with that and see that, hey, here's an opportunity to do something really great, and you don't necessarily have to run fast or jump high to do it."

If a kid comes up short of his goal of becoming a college athlete, his choices might be limited, especially if he hasn't paid attention to school.

If he comes up short of his goal of becoming president of the United States, lots of good can come from the pursuit. Maybe he becomes a doctor, lawyer or businessman. Maybe he makes a nice life for himself and his family.

All of this is coming from your resident white guy, and as such should be taken in that context. I can't begin to understand what it's like to grow up poor with the incredibly difficult challenges many blacks face.

But having just been through the college selection business with one of my children, I know that universities desperately want to increase the number of minority students in their institutions. Scholarships and aid abound for African-Americans.

The problem is that, for many of those kids, the only model they have for going to college is the sports-scholarship model.

Now we have a basketball-playing, soon-to-be leader of the free world who is of mixed racial heritage. The fact he's not like most politicians—the fact he can dribble a basketball without tripping over his feet—has led to all sorts of prose about the president-elect's hoops abilities. But if you have seen his jump shot, you know a basketball career was never in the cards for him.

The important thing is that, somewhere along the way, either he recognized his athletic shortcomings or someone convinced him of them. He went on to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, and the rest is world history.

Sports are not a dead end. They offer us an education of their own. One lesson is that you can't always get what you want. What you do with your life once that lesson sinks in is what really matters. The sooner that lesson arrives for most of us, the better.

Sometimes I hear college coaches talk to children about the importance of academics, and it rings hollow. One look at the graduation rates of college basketball and football programs tells you all you need to know. According to one study, 33 schools in last year's NCAA men's basketball tournament graduated at least 70 percent of their white players. Only 19 schools graduated that many black players.

Lots of kids have been too busy dribbling a basketball or running a football to realize that anything in life is possible. They didn't need Obama's election to tell them that. But it helps. Now all they need to do is look up.

Do You Need an Obama to Believe?

2008-11-06T23:13:00.001-05:00

Do You Need an Obama to Believe?
Real Clear Politics
By Larry Elder

"Does Obama's victory, as a black man, make you feel that you can do anything?" Someone asked me that on election night.

It is a caricature of America that, pre-Obama, major obstacles blocked achievement. It is equally a caricature that Obama's win suddenly creates opportunity that did not exist before.

Hard work wins, my dad always told me. My Republican father, who disdained Democrats who "give people something for nothing," taught my brothers and me to work hard, stay focused, live within our means, and at all times avoid self-pity. My mom and dad always said, "Ninety percent of the people don't care about your problems. And the 10 percent are glad it's you."

Born in Athens, Ga., and eventually raised in Chattanooga, Tenn., my dad never knew his biological father. The only father figure in his life was harsh, distant and cold. His mother, because he made "too much noise" for her then-boyfriend, threw him out of the house at age 13.

So this penniless boy, living in the Jim Crow South as the Great Depression loomed, started knocking on doors. He finally got a job running errands and tending the yard for a white family. One day, the family's cook failed to show up. But my dad, having watched her in the kitchen, whipped up a passable meal. The family let the other helper go, and a cook was born.

Seeking more money, my dad applied for and got a job on the railroads as a Pullman porter -- then the country's largest private employer of blacks. He traveled all over the country, making a mental note of California because, he says, its beauty and warm weather seemed open and inviting, and the people seemed more fair.

World War II broke out. My dad enlisted as a Marine. He served as a cook and became a sergeant. The military ultimately stationed him on Guam as we prepared to invade the islands of Japan, an invasion that never took place because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

My dad returned to Chattanooga, where he went to an employment office. The lady at the desk told him he walked through the wrong door, directed him back out to the hall, and told him to enter through the "colored only" door.

"That's it," he angrily told my mom, whom he had just married. "I'm going to California, and in a few days, I will send for you."

My father arrived in Los Angeles and went from restaurant to restaurant to find work. "Sorry," he was told, "you have no references." "Sorry, you have no credentials." "Sorry ..." He, of course, knew why.

He went to an employment office. The woman said, "We have no openings." My dad said, "I'll sit until you do." He sat in that office from opening until closing for a day and a half. Finally, the woman called him to the desk and said: "I have a job. It's for a janitor. Do you want it?"

My dad worked at that job for nearly 10 years, while working a second full-time job for nearly as long and cooking for a white family on the weekends. He somehow managed to go to night school to get his GED and save enough money, while in his 40s, to start a small cafe near downtown Los Angeles.

He ran the cafe, which provided my brothers and me weekend and summer jobs, until he was in his 80s. One day, my dad and I decided to clean out the garage. We found a letter he wrote to my older brother, then 2 years old. My dad said he feared that if something happened to him, my brother would need guidance:

May 4, 1951

Kirk, my Son, you are now starting out in life -- a life that Mother and I cannot live for you.

So as you journey through life, remember it's yours, so make it a good one. Always try to cheer up the other fellow.

Learn to think straight, analyze things, be sure you have all the facts before concluding, and always spend less than you earn.

Make friends, work hard, and play hard. Most important of all remember this -- the best of friends wear out if you use them.

This may sound silly, Son, but no matter where you are on the 29th of September (Kirk's birthday), see that Mother gets a little gift, if possible, along with a big kiss and a broad smile.

When you are out on your own, listen and take advice but do your own thinking and concluding, set up a reasonable goal, then be determined to reach it. You can and will, it's up to you, Son.

Your Father,

Randolph Elder

Dad is now 93 and, thankfully, still with us.

So, yes, Obama's historic victory makes a statement about the long, hard, bloody journey. Obama makes people believe. Some of us always did.

Good read in the NYT

2008-10-02T12:45:00.000-04:00

Letter to a Rookie
New York Times
By DOUG GLANVILLE
Published: September 29, 2008

Will Venable
PETCO Park
100 Park Blvd
San Diego, CA. 92101
Skip to next paragraph

The latest installment in an occasional series of guest columns by Doug Glanville, running throughout the 2008 baseball season.

Dear Will,

The other day I received an e-mail from a writer who had interviewed me a couple of years ago for Black History Month. We’d kept in touch, and he was writing to inform me of your promotion to the major leagues.

He also told me that you are the second African-American Ivy Leaguer to make it to that level. And he confirmed something I had suspected but had never fully explored: I was the first.

Putting aside our nasty Penn-Princeton rivalry, I want to congratulate you on your big-league call-up. I remember my first game, in 1996 with the Cubs. It is something you never forget.

I hope you don’t mind me sharing with you a little of what this experience has meant to me.

For the whole of my career, I knew that being an Ivy League graduate in major league baseball made me something of an anomaly. Certainly there have only been a handful of Ivy League baseball players of any culture or race. In the minor leagues, that pedigree wasn’t considered a badge of honor, or even much of an asset. Quite the opposite. The fact that I’d gone to a school like Penn caused question marks to swirl about my “focus” and my “commitment” to the game. After all, I was seen as someone who could walk away at any time (as one of my teammates who’d gone to Stanford did after a demotion).

I had critics say in print that I was “too smart for my own good” or that I “spent more time philosophizing than working.” I recognized that I often asked a lot of questions to get a deeper understanding of some techniques, but I always found it curious that I was accused of thinking I had all the answers and asking too many questions at the same time. I suspect that your path wasn’t a rose-petaled stroll in the park, either. A writer friend of mine, describing how my Ivy league degree was perceived in my minor league experience, referred to my experience coming up in minor league baseball as “Poison Ivy.”

But, unlike the minors, the major leagues can be a great equalizer. Unique backgrounds are seen as points of interest and color that stand out from the usual package. In marketing-friendly America, unique can be a great selling point. I don’t know much about your road to San Diego, but if you carry any resentment at all about being isolated in the minor leagues because of the simple reality of who you are, I hope you can keep that in mind. It got a lot better for me as time went on.

When I was in the thick of feeling alone, I focused on the common path of what we all as players were trying to achieve: loving to play this game and a dream of the major leagues. And despite everything, there was a lot more that brought us together as players than not. I also needed to believe that performing well can trump everything.

Somehow, the bookend of your achievement makes my own experience more tangible. I no longer feel like this phantom of impossibility, as I did from the day I was drafted and signed as a junior in June of 1991. (I did go back to school to get my degree, much to the consternation of some of the powers that be.) What seemed at times to be the equivalent of lightning striking twice has finally happened.

In some ways, embarking on a baseball career is a lonely walk for all players — young men who are often leaving home for the first time — but I knew from the moment I showed up for my first professional game, in Niagara Falls, N.Y., that there weren’t a lot of people who shared my particular experience. I was fortunate to have been raised in a town (Teaneck, N.J.) that embraced ethnic, religious and economic diversity. Otherwise it would have been much more challenging for me to find common ground with my teammates and coaches outside of that ball with the red stitches.

My minor league outfield instructor was the retired major leaguer Jimmy Piersall, and it took the two of us years to figure out how to deal with each other. He would tout his “painter’s son” background while referring to college graduates like me with a word I’d rather not put in this letter. But we found a space where we could connect: in the work ethic required to make it to the top of the profession we both loved. In the end, he became my number-one advocate, despite our diametrically opposed experiences.

I also spent a lot of my minor league career shaking off the exhausted “black athlete” labels of laziness, natural talent and nonchalance. I could only turn to mentors, my family and history to find my path, because there was no one else around who had my specific kind of challenge: bridging diversity, race . . . and academia. So I tapped the same source of strength that helped get my mother and father out of bed every day: they expected a degree of unfairness but knew that the people who had paved the way carried bigger burdens in much more difficult circumstances, enduring challenges just to find a job or to be able to vote.

It was a lot to juggle, but the saving grace was that, in the end, we all had to try to hit that baseball. We all had to perform. In some ways, that is what makes our game so great, it begs people to look beyond certain things because when they don’t, they miss some of its beauty.

I cannot close this letter without emphasizing that we must remember that our Negro League predecessors set the stage, turned on the lights and paid the bill, and now we were able to enjoy performing in the theater they constructed. We need to always keep alive their precious story — which is about baseball, for sure, but also about sacrifice and humility, patience and faith, forgiveness and perseverance. They represent everything baseball should want to be. Everything America should want to be. We are part of their legacy.

Sincerely,

Doug Glanville

A book worth buying

2008-09-24T15:52:00.001-04:00

Area African-American role models abound
New book profiles 126 professionals; hopes to inspire local youths
By DAVE HANEYOF THE PEORIA JOURNAL STAR
September 19, 2008

PEORIA — "Value your education; volunteer, mentor advocate and participate. Be fair, be open to diverse ideas, and maintain good humor and a sense of integrity. Don't sell yourself short - but don't take yourself too seriously. Above all: do well, no matter what."

Certainly words to live by or to follow.

They belong to Lorene King, an academic skills specialist at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria, just one of 126 local African-American professionals living in Peoria and who are profiled in a book to be released next week, published by Illinois Central College.

Called "Role Models: Profiles of Successful African-American Professionals in Peoria, Illinois," the work is the brainchild of Rita Ali, ICC's executive director of diversity, who started a similar venture several years ago wanting to learn success stories of those she admired in the community.

"The book has changed me, inspired me more than ever, learning from other people's experiences," said Ali, who gave credit for the inspiration to one of her own role models, Romeo B. Garrett, Bradley University's first black professor, a key civil rights figure locally and author of "The History of the Negro in Peoria" and "Famous First Facts About Negroes."

The 268-page book highlights several who work for Caterpillar Inc., the city of Peoria, four judges, lots of doctors, an artist, several in the medical field, teachers and professors. Each individual shares a little about his occupation, personal life, his influences or inspiration, accomplishments and community involvement. The subjects also offer a bit of career advice.

There's executive directors, vice presidents of companies, department heads, managers and coaches. Combined, their annual salaries total more than $12 million. There's many names that are recognizable among the community and several that are not.

But more important than who is in the book is the inspiration to be shared with Peoria's youth.

Among the common links most of the 126 contributors share is having some sort of mentor, a caring adult, "someone who they looked up to," Ali said.

As one profiled in the book put it, "there's kids who say they don't have a positive role model in their home, in their neighborhood or in their life; their role models are those in (professional sports) - the untouchables," Ali recalled, "but these people - these role models - live right here in the community."

"The people in this book are real, they are accessible . . . These outstanding Americans are a true reflection of the depth and breadth of incredible talent within the city of Peoria," Ali writes in the book's introduction.

What's more, many of those profiled in the book have offered to serve as a role model in some way, either for the short-term or long-term, Ali said. "The book is serving as the hook-up," a vehicle to bridge the gap of need of the children and what the mentors can provide.

As to why 126 profiles: "There was no magic number, it was going to be 100 but we just kept getting such a good response that we kept going." Plans already are in the works for a sequel as well as a similar book that will profile African-American para-professionals, those in the skilled trades, and another highlighting entrepreneurs, which Ali hopes to have released this spring.

Real Role Models - An Update

2008-09-02T16:45:00.005-04:00

Friends and Colleagues,

As promised, here's an update on Real Role Models.

We finished a draft version of the manuscript in April.
The early reviews were both flattering and overwhelmingly favorable.
We're putting final touches on the manuscript.
The book should be out early in '09.

That's pretty much it. But the long of it is that we've been working hard to continue thinking of how we can make RRM speak to and for those young Black students that we are so desperately trying to reach. I posted the video by John Hope Bryant below to help paint the picture of exactly what we're up against in terms of the lack of motivation and inspiration that has hindered so many young Blacks, males in particular, from reaching their potential and how many of us, not at all just Louis and I, are striving for the same thing.

We can make a difference. We can help others reach their potential. We can all be real role models.

Reaching out to Reading is Fundamental, Big Brothers and Big Sisters, Teach for America, the Boys and Girls Club, and other organizations that look out for young Black students is just one way we're hoping to get RRM into the hands of those who can be impacted the most. Of course, one way would've been to have Sen. Barack Obama plug the book during his speech last Thursday...

Speaking of that speech, when Obama accepted the Democratic nomination for president it was an incredibly moving and powerful night. I am not ashamed to admit I teared up. I, too, was one of those kids that dreamed of being the president when I was five or six years old.

But, I found myself thinking, what about those Black kids growing up without such ambition or aspirations? What about kids who don't have a mom waking them up at 4:30 a.m. to work on their schoolwork? What about the kids who don't have grandparents to care for and help raise them? What about the kids who think that drug dealer, basketball player or rapper are their only options?

Part of me is worried that Obama's "celebrity" treatment makes him more like Jay-Z than Thomas Jefferson, but his career path and education stifle that thought. Still, part of me worries that having a Black man as president may mean one more profession to add to that list of drug dealer, NBA player, rapper, instead of doing what RRM intends to do: inspire and motivate young Black students to realize the opportunities before them and work hard to reach their potential. I hope Obama's candidacy reaches far beyond the New York Times headline of "first Black president" and into the heart and minds of millions of Black boys and girls who need hope and inspiration.

Some of us are not going to become Jay-Z or Barack Obama or Kobe Bryant. Some of us will be accountants and engineers and small business owners and teachers.

This is not to say that we can not all be rich and famous. This is simply to say that all of us have to realize true success is not measured by money or time on TV or, Obama would probably admit, votes. We can all be successful in our own right if we work hard, set goals and strive to make a positive impact, especially in our communities, as a certain Senator did in Chicago several years ago.

So, when I say we're working hard to make sure RRM speaks to and for young Black students, I mean we are striving to make sure that when a 15-year-old high school sophomore in Fifth Ward, Houston or an 18-year-old senior in Anacostia, D.C. picks up this book, they see more than some words about two dozen or so Black people who made a lot of money or got a lot of degrees or won a lot of awards. Or got a lot of votes.

We're hoping they see their own potential through this book. We're hoping they see themselves, through the paths made by those before them, as real role models. We're hoping.

Relevant Information, Timely Effort and Strong Leadership

2008-09-02T16:42:00.003-04:00

A friend of mine works for Operation HOPE and I find this video message by the organization's founder, John Hope Bryant, to be extremely relevant, timely and sound.

Black boys 'need role models not rappers'

2008-07-30T22:43:00.000-04:00

Black boys 'need role models not rappers'
By Sarah Womack, Social Affairs Correspondent
10 Aug 2007

Black youngsters need a new generation of role models, drawn from the legal profession, business and education, to counter under-achievement and involvement in crime, a Government-funded report has said.

Too often the role models for young black men are celebrities and rappers who glamorise crime, guns or gangs, the independent Reach report said.

It came as a charity boss claimed that Britain's inner cities were starting to resemble American ghettos and that a lack of money was to blame.

"We need to create a society which does not leave our young people behind as the few become richer," said Chuka Umunna, a trustee of the 409 Project in Lambeth, south London, which helps youths aged 10-17 involved in crime or at risk of offending.

Involvement by black youths in gang-and-gun crime has taken centre stage in the wake of several high profile murders of black children, including 15-year-old Jessie James, who was gunned down while he cycled through a park in Manchester last year.

His mother, Barbara Reid, told the inquest into his death that her son had been murdered for "disrespecting" local gun gangs by his refusal to join them.

In London, 17 teenagers have been murdered this year alone.

An estimated four in 10 young people in gangs are reluctant members, joining under peer pressure or because of fears for their safety or the safety of their families.

Figures in yesterday's report, which was written by 20 experts from the fields of education, youth justice, the voluntary and community sector, law enforcement and business, set out the future economic costs of failure to promote equality of opportunity for black boys.

It estimated that tackling under-achievement among black boys and young men could benefit the economy by £24 billion over the next 50 years.

The figure includes the costs of the impact of lower educational achievement on labour market outcomes, schools exclusions and involvement in the criminal justice system.

Clive Lewis, the director of The Men's Room, a charity working with black young men, and the chairman of Reach, said that organisations tackling under-achievement needed support in applying for Government funding and that schools must be more consistent in closing the academic gap between white pupils and black pupils, especially boys.

He also said that black youths need better role models: "Black boys and young men desperately need a greater diversity of images and portrayals, showing that black men can be, and are, successful in a wide range of careers including business, teaching, the law and health care."

Uanu Seshmi, of the From Boyhood to Manhood Foundation, said boys need self-confidence to reject gangs.

"A lot of young boys have been brought up in a toxic environment … where they're being taught to become victims," he said.

"And I believe in order for us to solve it, peer mentoring is a good one, business is a good one, but essentially, we need to teach young people to have a positive relationship with people."

Tim Campbell, the winner of the first Apprentice TV series and the founder of The Bright Ideas Trust, which aims to support entrepreneurs, said he would like to see money spent on education and business opportunities for young black males.

"The emphasis on role models is just a small aspect of addressing some of the issues, particularly with black boys in the community," he said.

The Government will give its official response to the report in three months.

• Two men have been arrested on suspicion of the murder of 15-year-old schoolboy Jessie James. The men, aged 20 and 21, are both in jail.

They were named as suspects after a witness came forward during the inquest into Jessie's death yesterday.

Police described the development as a possible breakthrough in helping to solve the murder inquiry.

Key recommendations:

* Calls for a structured National Role Model programme for black boys and young black men.

* Creation of a national umbrella body to provide support to voluntary groups that face "significant barriers" to Government funding.

* Stronger relationship and engagement between parents of black boys and teachers and schools to promote educational aspiration.

* Communities and Local Government Department should appoint a task force that will drive forward the Reach recommendations, reporting to a Minister for Race.

* Ofsted must provide greater consistency in the way schools are inspected to ensure schools close the academic gap between black and white pupils.

Black youths to get top role models

2008-07-30T22:42:00.000-04:00

Black youths to get top role models
Alison Benjamin
The Guardian
Wednesday July 30 2008

Geoff Thompson, a writer, teacher and self defence instructor, who is being cited as a black role model

Geoff Thompson, a writer, teacher and self defence instructor, who is being cited as a black role model. Photograph: Christopher Thomond

Geoff Thompson, former karate champion and founder of Manchester-based Youth Charter for Sport, Turning Point chief executive Lord [Victor] Adebowale, and head of the Housing Corporation, Steve Douglas, would all be welcome members of the first Black Boys' National Role Model programme.

Concerned that too often black boys aspire to role models that can glamorise crime, drugs and gangs, the government has launched a programme to find black male achievers to motivate black boys to achieve and succeed.

At least 20 national role models, from a diverse range of backgrounds and professions, will be selected by an independent panel, including Apprentice winner Tim Campbell and fashion designer Ozwald Boateng, to share their stories of success in schools, youth clubs and young offender institutes across England. Applicants will have the chance to mentor in their local area. Improving the visibility of positive black role models was one of the recommendations to the government by Reach, an independent group drawn from public services and academia with in-depth understanding of the barriers facing black boys.

Launching the programme, communities secretary Hazel Blears said: "There are thousands of role models out there who offer great examples for black boys to follow. This is about harnessing their potential, making them more visible and getting more young people on the right track." The recruitment campaign will run until September 2.

· To apply to be a black boys' national role model go to direct.gov.uk/reach

Raising Hopes by E.J. Dionne Jr.

2008-06-17T11:30:00.001-04:00

Raising Hopes

By E.J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008; 12:00 AM

Will everyone dismiss Barack Obama's Father's Day call to responsible parenting as a simple political ploy?

After all, the man who would be our first African-American president is struggling for support from white working-class voters, many of whom have traditional views of family life and some of whom harbor deep suspicions about black men.

What could be more reassuring to them than his flat statement that "too many fathers ... have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men"?

"You and I know how true this is in the African-American community,"

Obama said, speaking at a Chicago church more theologically conservative than the Trinity United Church of Christ he recently left. "We know that more than half of all black children live in single-parent households, a number that has doubled -- doubled -- since we were children."

For a campaign that wants to fight Republican claims that Obama is a down-the-line liberal, here is a theme he has been talking about for a long time that simply doesn't fit into anyone's parody of liberalism.

Yes, his speech spoke of what government could do to meet responsible fathers "halfway." But Obama's emphasis was not on programs but on the personal responsibility of fathers to "be there for their children, and set high expectations for them, and instill in them a sense of excellence and empathy."
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Moreover, Obama told his own story as the son of a single mother. She "struggled at times to pay the bills; to give us the things that other kids had; to play all the roles that both parents are supposed to play." Yet he was devoid of self-pity. "I was luckier than most," Obama acknowledged.

For a guy accused of being an elitist, he didn't sound like one in this sermon, a perfect volley in that phase of the campaign when his imperative is to reintroduce himself to an electorate that still doesn't know much about him

This is all true. But it would be unfortunate if Obama's words were read only as an attempt to win white votes. It actually matters that a presidential candidate is taking the costs of fatherlessness seriously.

Every social problem is made much, much worse by the abandonment of children by their fathers. Yes, social justice depends upon what government does. Yes, government should do far more to relieve the burdens on those who struggle economically and work hard for little pay. And, yes, racism is a damaging reality that explains many of the problems faced by African-Americans -- including family breakdown itself.

But government simply cannot replace absent fathers. Government cannot do all the things that parents ought to do. The reason Obama's speech is important beyond all of the short-term political calculations and analysis is that it reflects a hard-won consensus that family structure matters.

When Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote about "the weakness of the Negro family" in 1965, he was denounced for "blaming the victim." This was a misreading of what Moynihan was saying, and also of the purpose of his words. Moynihan's view was vindicated years later when many of the most important African-American advocates of equality came to see strengthening the black family as essential to the civil rights agenda.

All politicians should be required to read Moynihan's 1986 book "Family and Nation." It makes his essential point that "no government, however firm might be its wish, can avoid having policies that profoundly influence family relationships." He continued: "The only option is whether these will be purposeful, intended policies or whether they will be residual, derivative, in a sense, concealed ones." It augurs well that Obama clearly stands with Moynihan.

---

Another of Moynihan's good deeds was to discover the talents of a young man from Buffalo, N.Y., named Tim Russert, who died Friday at 58. Not enough can be said about Tim's many random acts of kindness (which our family experienced) or his down-to-the-precinct-level love of politics.

There are two things about Tim I particularly admired: his devotion to his roots in Buffalo's working class, which included a loyalty to his religious faith, and his devotion to fatherhood, as both a dad and a son.

It made perfect sense that someone who took fatherhood so seriously got his first big break working for Pat Moynihan. It is an accident of timing that Tim's passing received so much attention on a Father's Day. That is a great sadness because he should have been granted so many more of them. But the honor was wholly right and just.

E.J. Dionne's e-mail address is postchat@aol.com.

Fathers often, but not always, best role models

2008-06-16T12:43:00.001-04:00

The late Earl Woods, father of Tiger Woods, definitely fits into the category of a real role model.

Real Role Models - An Excerpt

2008-04-29T09:06:00.000-04:00

Real Role Models - An Excerpt

I know I've mentioned Real Role Models, the book I've spent the last 12 or so months writing, to many of you. I wanted to let you know that the manuscript has been written and handed to my publisher and is currently being reviewed. I'll try to keep you posted on its progress as we approach our anticipated release date in early 2009. To hold you over, here's a snippet that has even more relevance given the most exciting sporting event happening right now is the NBA Playoffs:

*****

Before we can truly understand the concept of a real role model, we must acknowledge there is no simple definition for the term role model. It’s one of those terms that is frequently over used or misused because no one has ever told us exactly who or what a role model is. Often times, people like to think about role models the way they think about people they’re attracted to: I’ll know one when I see one.

However, we owe much of our common thinking on the term role model to Dr. Robert Merton, a longtime Columbia University professor and award-winning sociologist who died a few months before his 93rd birthday in 2003. Dr. Merton received honorary degrees from several prestigious colleges and universities not for his terming of role models but after having coined some other well-known academic terms such as "self-fulfilling prophecy” and “unintended consequences.”

Still, one could only wonder if Dr. Merton had any intended consequences when he came up with the term role model. It was Dr. Merton who initially stated his belief that every man compared himself with other men within a certain social (and professional) role that just so happened to be the role we aspired to attain. In other words, if you’re a young Black student interested in having a career in the military, every adult will probably talk to you about retired Four-Star General and former Secretary of State Colin Powell. In him, you’ll be told, you have yourself a real role model.

But today more than ever, profession should not dictate who someone views as a role model. For example, although I never aspired to be a rapper, I’ve been inspired by Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter for years as he has accumulated fame and fortune while maturing, both personally and professionally. From this example, and the interviews conducted for this book, I established my own personal definition of a real role model.

A real role model is someone you admire who possesses and projects positive qualities that have helped them develop and grow, personally and professionally, and inspire others to follow in his or her footsteps toward success.

It’s a mouth-full, but everything necessary is included. For starters, your real role models should be people you admire. This is perhaps one reason why so many famous Black people cite their own mothers as their main sources of inspiration or best role model when receiving Grammy Awards or MVP trophies.

In the definition, there is an early emphasis on positive qualities because real role models should double as good people. While it is unreasonable to think being a real role model makes someone perfect (no one is), it is justifiable to expect them to be good people, at least by general standards. This, after all, is one of the reasons why Americans, and popular media, are so fascinated when celebrities have major character flaws that lead to things like drug addiction and infidelity. We are not only fascinated because of their celebrity status, but also because popular media has convinced us that these people are worthy of the highest praise and they have earned every bit of recognition (and money) they get. We are too often disappointed.

That said, when I say “good people” I speak to the nature of deserving one’s rewards such as honors and wealth. For a quick example, think about this: while winning the lottery then buying cars for your family members does not necessarily make you a role model, starting a community center with that money and working for 20 years to make a difference in the lives of others, outside of your family, may.

Also, the mention of personal and professional development indicates a real role model understands the important role personal success plays in helping one achieve success professionally, and vice versa. For proof of this, look no further than television shows like The Cosby Show or The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air where the main characters’ personal lives were depicted more frequently than their professional lives. We hardly ever saw Dr. Huxtable (Cosby Show) or Uncle Banks (Fresh Prince) - the role models of their respective shows - at the office. Even the TV writers realize that working all day and night and living without family or enjoyment may be the quickest or most expected route to professional success, but it doesn’t make someone worthy of role model consideration.

Lastly, the word “inspire” is included in order to acknowledge the often understated, but real influence one’s success has on those around them. One of the main differences between simple role models and real role models is the acknowledgment of their influence on others. For an example of this look to chapter 23 where we interview children’s surgeon Dr. Tim George, who proves having an understanding of your role and influence on a young person’s life makes you more of a real role model than being a successful doctor alone.

In all honesty, though, this definition of a real role model only goes as far as this book takes it. As you read these pages, you should tweak it and develop your own definition of a real role model, which helps you create your own vision of what kind of role model you want to be. Regardless of definition, I think there will remain some shared concepts and principles.

Amongst those shared concepts and principles of a real role model was the importance of personal responsibility. Each and every person we interviewed indicated that a real role model doesn’t run from the duty that is entailed in being someone’s role model. There are no Charles Barkleys here. Each one of them considers it an honor and privilege to be a positive influence in the lives of others, especially for young Blacks.

In acknowledging their duty, honor and privilege, these real role models are representations of the kind of people that exist throughout the Black community, albeit in hiding it seems, who can be a positive influence for others. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of others who could have been interviewed and included in these pages. It will be your task to take the lessons from this book and find some real role models of your own.

Also, I must clarify that I do not believe real role models have to be people you know personally nor must they be famous. While it makes for a much stronger connection to have that role model in your life on a regular basis, this is not a necessity. I have been equally inspired and motivated by some people I’ve read about in magazines just as much as people I have met before. However, you don’t need to look to a magazine or TV to find one because - as this book demonstrates - there are real role models all over the country.

That’s what makes it so beneficial to identify real role models of our own. Through role models, it becomes easier to see what opportunities are available both in your community and in your future, learn by example, and understand how one person’s path to success can be used as a roadmap for your own.

In many regards, that is exactly what a real role model is, a personal and professional road map. Sure, they may not all be as rich and famous as Jay-Z or as accomplished and dignified as General Colin Powell, but they can all represent a roadmap to success and fulfillment for someone.

Personally speaking, my mother, who never graduated from college or made more than $40,000-a-year, is my best example of a real role model when I think about the kind of work ethic I want to have and what kind of parent I want to be someday. Similarly, I don’t know what kind of parent Jay-Z would be (I do not believe he has children), but I know he’s been a role model to millions of Blacks because of the doors he’s helped to open for an entire generation of fans.

That said, it’s important that we not see real role models as having to be all things to all people nor should they be expected to be perfect (unless a certain Nazareth native is your role model). Instead, a real role model can be someone who represents the kind of parent, person or professional you admire and intend to be one day.

In other words, maybe you consider someone your real role model because of their work ethic or passion for what they do professionally or maybe it’s simply because they made it out of the rough neighborhood and went to college. Or maybe they raised you and your siblings on a shoestring budget and never complained about how much it seemed the system was built against them.

Definition aside, there’s no single image of a real role model, but there are many ways to identify one. That said, let’s briefly discuss one of my favorite movies, Above the Rim. Its story, although indirectly, is one about identifying yourself through a real role model in order to reach your own potential.

The main character, played by Duane Martin, had all the basketball skills he needed to get himself a college scholarship. Still, even as a point guard, he lacked the full understanding to be a top-notch leader on the court. That is, until he met Leon’s character, a former basketball star himself who learned the hard way and had a few lessons to share with Martin’s character. Although initially reluctant, both men were able to put aside their differences and work together - Martin’s character as the student and Leon’s character as the silent teacher - to win it all.

Sure, the movie didn’t win any Academy Awards or make either of the main characters mega movie stars. But that movie stands out more than thousands of others I have seen in my lifetime. Like Martin, Black youth (like others) must understand that there are many lessons about life to learn from others and that there are people ready and willing to help. This is the way to realizing your full potential. The way to rising above the rim.

So in going back to the creator of the term role model, let's assume Dr. Merton would be fine with my using another one of his terms by saying this book's intended consequence is to help young Black people, and not just the characters in movies and TV shows, get above the rim.

Best mentors give challenging advice, criticism - Chicago Tribune

2008-03-25T10:01:00.000-04:00

Best mentors give challenging advice, criticism
Trusted individual can bring areas to your attention that you might not have noticed

Barbara Rose, Chicago Tribune | YOUR SPACE
March 24, 2008

The best mentors offer advice we don't always like to hear. They chide us, goad us, challenge us. Some even have the gall to tell us to straighten our frizzy hair.

Sometimes we reach out to them, but just as often they attach themselves to us. They can be annoyingly opinionated, and it can be hard to remember they have our best interests at heart.

Consider the experiences of Cook County Circuit Court Associate Judge Patricia Mendoza. She never planned to go to law school until a family friend and lawyer got on her case.

"I was very shy," recalls Mendoza, who talked about her friend at a recent "speed mentoring" event sponsored by Chicago's Alliance of Latinos and Jews, a 14-year-old non-profit group that builds bridges between the two communities.

"You would look at me and I would blush. My mother's friend insisted I apply to law school. I kept saying no. I told her, 'That's you, that's not me.' I just couldn't imagine being her."

When the older woman brought her an application to DePaul University College of Law and insisted she fill it out, Mendoza consoled herself with the thought she would never get in—but she did.

When she tried to drop out before her first set of finals, a professor refused to sign her withdrawal forms.

When she passed the bar and settled into a satisfying public-service practice, her mentor—by then a judge herself—prodded her again.

"You really should think about becoming a judge," she recalls Circuit Court Associate Judge Consuelo Bedoya-Witt telling her.

"No, that's not me, that's you, again," Mendoza told her.

But the seed was planted, and once again it took.

"One piece of advice I give to people now is, if someone you trust encourages you to do something and you're thinking, 'It's just not me,' don't just dismiss it. Sometimes people see something in us we don't see in ourselves."

Unspoken codes
Angelique Power, director of marketing at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, was a graduate student at the School of the Art Institute in the early 1990s when she took a part-time job working for an executive at a large corporation.

Oblivious to the company's unspoken codes, she dressed like an art student—rhinestone-studded cat-eye glasses, untamed hair—while taking a keen interest in her boss' work.

"I made sure I understood what was happening and, whether I was asked or not, I would talk to her about my opinion," Power recalls. "I think she was kind of taken aback and amused so she started to build a relationship, ask me questions, hand me challenges and allow me to rise to the occasion.

"She would invite me along to watch meetings, hand me projects to run, and when I graduated she offered me a full-time job" and later promoted her to run the department.

But not before setting her young protege straight. For starters, she told Power to straighten her hair—a potentially sensitive directive to a multiracial woman.

"She said, 'Here's the uniform, take it or leave it.' I took it,' " Power says. "There's always an unseen map. There was a cultural code you had to follow to be taken seriously. It's not anything you would find in any handbook, but it was critical for me."

The mentoring relationship deepened into a mutually beneficial friendship.

"This was a woman who was a high-ranking executive, but in my role I could always be very honest," Power says. "Others might be sycophantic. I became sort of the beacon of honesty."

It was hard to break away, Power recalls. But when she left the company and her mentor for the MCA, "I was ready to take everything I learned, all this business savvy, and bring it back to the art world, which is really what I wanted to do all along, and not brush my hair if I don't want to."

Thinking big picture
Aon Corp.'s chief diversity officer, Corbette Doyle, a champion of corporate mentoring, counts among her early influences a college professor who persuaded her to change her major from mathematics to economics.

"He gave me a world view of global business and made me think big picture in a way that I hadn't," says the Tennessee-based executive. "First I was going to be a lawyer, then a math professor, then an actuary. They were all fairly narrow disciplines. He really pushed me to take a lot of liberal arts classes and to think broadly about the array of opportunities."

When she was offered a fellowship to get her doctorate in economics he convinced her to turn it down.

"Go to work and get somebody to pay for your MBA," he told her. And that's what she did.

"He was the epitome of a great mentor," she says. "The best mentors help you think twice about paths or steps you shouldn't take, and that takes a lot of insight into the person you're helping."

My Failure by Jam Donaldson

2008-03-06T11:55:00.001-05:00

We’ve all had our share of failures in life. Lord knows I’ve had mine. The porno letter-writing business, my Tax class in law school, the cashless ATM scheme, dating that married guy. But there’s one particular failure that I can’t seem to get out of my mind. This is a failure of a different kind. I failed my cousin.

I have a cousin. He’s bright, handsome, and sweet but unfortunately he is on his way to becoming depressingly average.

Let me explain. My cousin grew up in a working class suburb. He was surrounded by a family who loved him, he was an average student, he was part of a local band and an all-around good kid. He got into college on a band scholarship and I could not have been prouder. His mom, dad and grandmother never went to college so it was a great achievement for him to be attending a local university on scholarship.

Growing up in an area where very few black men go on to pursue higher education, I was thrilled that he seemed to be on the right path to better himself and most importantly act as an example to his two younger brothers.

But, as you probably guessed by the title of this post, things didn’t quite go as planned. In the summer before his junior year, I got the news from my mom that my cousin wasn’t going back to college. I immediately called him to ask what the deal was. He told me that he had lost his band scholarship (his story changed several times as to exactly why this happened) and he could no longer afford to attend the school. He was going to work for the next semester and save money and go back to school in the spring or the following year. Well, we all know what that means, most folks who leave college never go back and I was determined that he get his college degree. SO, I offered to pay his tuition. I didn’t care what I had to do—whether it was taking out loans or selling ass on 12th Street, I was making sure that boy graduated from college.
See, I am blessed to have come from a family where education was stressed, C’s were not acceptable and college was not optional. So I tried to convince him of the importance of him staying in school and getting his college degree. And even with my offer to pay his entire tuition… he refused. He wanted to work, and by working he could save for school and also get a car. After trying and trying to persuade him, it became clear that the desire for a car was far stronger than his desire to get his college degree.
So long story short (I know I know, too late) he ends up working at some dead end random job, he never goes back to college and now has two kids by two different women. He’s not even 24. I feel like somehow I failed him, the family failed him. I know there is nothing we could have physically done, but I cant shake the feeling that our family and community let a vibrant life full of potential slowly descend into mediocrity, and did nothing.

See, for too long we have defined failure by its extreme manifestations: ending up in jail, becoming a drug addict, being a teenage mother. But, in my opinion, when we don’t see a young person all the way through to realizing his or her potential, its just as big a failure. In our community, mediocrity, doing enough to get by, is becoming an epidemic. And that realization hit me really close to home. I wonder what will become of these young people? In a world and an economy where there is little use for the ordinary, what happens to this generation? Where are the dreamers? Who are the innovators? Where are the parents who don’t allow failure, who read to their children, who tell them in the dark of night as they put them to bed: “you can be anything you want to in this world and the possibilities for your life are endless”?

Its like our bar of standards has dropped so low that as long as someone graduates from high school, we say they’re doing fine. As long as they aren’t in the system, we say they’re doing fine. Excellence is scarce. Vision is non-existent. You have a 62 inch flat screen and your kid doesn’t have a computer in the home. We aren’t taking foreign languages, we aren’t going into technology fields.

I want to go back to the mentality of our predecessors and embrace a philosophy of goals and success and striving to be the best and reaching the highest of heights. In this global economy, we cannot afford average. This is no longer a world where you can graduate from high school, join a union and work in a factory for thirty years and still be able to raise a family. By not challenging each other to be the best in whatever we do, we are doing ourselves a disservice and more importantly we are setting our young people up to be members of a self-imposed underclass.

With access to more opportunities than ever, our young people seem perfectly content settling for less. And I cant help but think that its our fault. Have we told them that there’s more, have we shown them what more looks like? Have we reinforced in them every waking moment that they can dream big and achieve their goals through education and hard work?
I don’t know. I just felt so impotent. Me and my smart mouth were no match against “easy”, against “quick” against “right now.” I love my cousin but it hurts my soul whenever I see potential squandered. Especially when someone is handing you an opportunity on a platter. I mean, if you’re not willing to accept and opportunity when someone is GIVING it to you, what happens if you actually one day have to work for it?

I keep looking back at what I could have done, what I could have said to change his path. But how do you convince a young man to finish college when he’s been raised in a world that tells him he should be happy just getting out of high school. My voice was lost among his friends and teachers and media who told him that good enough was enough. Those who told him that passing is passing, even its with a “D.”
Now don't get me wrong, in no way am I saying that if you aren't wildly successful, then you have failed-- the failure is in not even trying.

I love my cousin and it’s the people we love that we should be hardest on. Why do you think Im so hard on black folk? I just want us to get there and it just frustrates me when it seems the only thing standing in our way is ourselves. Sure, my cousin will be fine. But Im so sick of "fine," I want amazing.

Meanwhile, Im gonna figure out a game plan for his little brothers right now. Wish me luck. Maybe there's someone in your life you can start working on. Before its too late.

Peace people.

'Don't try to duplicate' says MJ

2008-02-17T21:45:00.000-05:00

"DON'T TRY TO DUPLICATE"
Nearly seven in 10 sports fans say Michael Jordan is still the man. So who better than His Airness to ask if the league is headed in the right direction?
by Michael Jordan (as told to Ric Bucher)

The NBA doesn't have an image problem.

It has young guys who have young ideas. Maturity comes later, and sometimes too late to realize you should've done this or you should've done that. Kids shouldn't come out of school as early as they do. A year in college isn't enough. They shouldn't be allowed to come out until they are adults—21 years old.

Now, why shouldn't a black kid who isn't wealthy have a chance to provide for his family? That is an issue; I'm not walking away from that. The problem is some kids are mature and ready to deal with the whole NBA atmosphere, but many more kids are not.

I was a mature guy coming out of North Carolina, so when a negative thing happened—someone misinterprets what gambling means to me—it didn't stick. I stepped forward and said, "This is what I did, this is not jeopardizing anything, this is not an addiction," and the public listened. But I was a lot more mature when it happened. If I'd been in that position and had been asked that question at 18 or 19, I may have had a very different way of handling it.

When I turned pro, the league was looking for a change. I had the personality and the game and a style of play, and all that came together at the same time. All the stars lined up and catapulted everything that came after—23 different shoes, Jordan Brand, everything. It's a phenomenon. How do you explain a phenomenon? You can't. The only advice I can give to someone in the league now is to be original. The consumer isn't dumb. He or she can sense things being knocked off. Originality is what lasts.

David Stern hates when I say this, but in some ways he created his own problem. Look at the way the league markets its players. When I came in, they marketed the athletes themselves, how they performed, what they accomplished. To reinvent someone is very difficult. When you say a player is today's Michael Jordan or today's Magic Johnson, the first thing the public will do is compare him to the real Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson. When the public doesn't see the same degree of success, you've just dug yourself a deeper hole.

You have to show the consumers something they haven't seen before, someone about whom they can say, "Hey, that guy is pretty cool." Magic, Larry Bird, Charles Barkley, myself—we didn't start out as the league's partners. We evolved, then the league made us its partners. That's what the league has to do now—find guys who can grow up to be partners. Don't take guys and force them into our mold.

One thing to learn from me is that everything I've ever done has been me, not something that someone calculated me to be. It goes to my upbringing, my parents. I didn't grow up in the inner city. I grew up in a rural area, where values were magnified. You were taught how to operate in society, to be articulate, honest. Kids growing up in the city, they're more materialistic. My kids are going through that now.

I can wear a suit today and jeans with holes tomorrow, and yet people know they are seeing the real me in either outfit. I had cornrows when I was a kid, but it was before anyone knew who I was; would the public or corporate America accept me if I had them today? If I was willing to say, "This is who I am, I'm not trying to be so-and-so," maybe, but even then I'm not sure. When you see Michael Jordan today, you see Michael Jordan as a totally honest person, and when I say honest I mean real, genuine. I am who I am, and that's comprehensible to the masses and in many languages.

It's a tough task for the league to create a similar image for itself. It has to find the right mix between corporate and street, believe in what it's doing and live with whatever the response may be. Too many of the league's decisions are made based on the bottom line. People pick up on that. You can't be afraid to fail. The stars you have now might not live up to the icon of a Michael Jordan or Magic Johnson, but maybe they will create an image that delivers an impact for you 10, 15 years from now.

All I know is—for the league and its players—don't try to duplicate something that has been done before. Do it your own way, and see where it goes. It might not hit the way you want it to. You may not make as much money as you want to. But there's value in remaining true to yourself.

Now is time for Tiger to fulfill father's prophecy

2008-01-11T13:57:00.000-05:00

By Scoop Jackson
ESPN.com, Page 2
Updated: January 11, 2008, 11:18 AM ET

In the words of his late father, he was put here to change the world.

"He will transcend this game ... and bring to the world ... a humanitarianism ... which has never been known before. The world will be a better place to live in ... by virtue of his existence ... and his presence."

What Earl Woods foretold for his son in that Sports Illustrated article in December 1996, most of us have been privileged to witness. Not just on the golf course, but also in the way Tiger Woods handles life. Not only his, but life in general. He has been, if you look beyond the apparent, the perfect "Cablinasian" of Jordan, Oprah and Obama. Not only in skill, but in character, and in having the almost innate ability to make race -- specifically his race -- a nonissue. As Greg Garber once wrote on ESPN.com, "In the end, Woods has served as an example of racial harmony simply by being himself."

Now comes the hard part.

When the Golf Channel's Kelly Tilghman used the phrase "lynch him in a back alley" to describe how young players on the PGA Tour should overcome Tiger's dominance, it was the latest in a long line of inconsiderate and inappropriate comments that have been made about people of color (especially African-Americans) in the world of sports.

Tiger and his agent Mark Steinberg have called the comment "a nonissue," stating that Tilghman is a friend of Tiger's and that "regardless of the choice of words used, we know unequivocally that there was no ill intent in her comments." True. And with the Golf Channel suspending Tilghman for two weeks because of her gaffe, everything is now supposedly cool. All's forgiven. No harm, no foul.

Not so. The situation is foul. Not in what Tilghman said, but in the fact that she didn't consider the history of African-Americans in this country before speaking, and she felt, to a certain degree, "comfortable" enough to let that reference slip out of her mouth during a broadcast. And after everything that went down with Don Imus just nine months ago, you would think that we -- all of us -- would have learned something. But apparently not all of us have. And this is where the "existence" of Tiger Woods comes in.

Because of who he is, Tiger Woods has the power to make people listen. Not just hear his words -- but embrace what he has to say. His commercials speak to us. His educational facilities are changing the way schools around the country view education. It is understood that his friendship with Tilghman prevents him from reacting strongly to what was said or throwing her under a bus by using her as an example. He's too classy to do that. Surely, he has learned from his own verbal misstep as a young man -- that inappropriate joke he told a GQ reporter in 1997. Tiger probably believes Tilghman's comment was about him and no one else. And things like that don't affect Tiger Woods. Again, "nonissue."

But a nonissue does not translate to a "nonstory." Because in actuality, the comment wasn't about Tiger Woods at all. The context is much larger; Tiger just happened to be the victim. But being a victim of something like this (especially when you have reached the global icon status he has attained) does not mean that "ignorant forms of phraseology" about you are actually about you. You might be the target, but a lot of others can and will get hurt in the process. No man is an island. Which is why Tiger needs to say something. Not loud, but clearly.

If he looks at the recent history of broadcast insensitivity -- especially involving figures in sports -- he'll realize isolated incidents can't continue to happen "on occasion" for 25 years. Not at this pace. He'll see the connection to insensitive remarks from Howard Cosell, Al Campanis, Marge Schott, John Rocker, Imus and countless others.

He'll realize -- regardless of what we'd like to think -- not a damn thing has changed.

He'd realize a friend invoking the word "lynch" -- even when there is no ill intent or ill will behind it -- is bigger than him. He'd realize this is a problem bordering on an epidemic, and no one has really done anything to stop it. (Apparently taking someone's job away or publicly humiliating them isn't working.) He'd realize by saying something about the nature of how we express ourselves without taking into consideration -- or showing respect for -- others' ethnicity, gender, lifestyle, size, handicap, disability, etc. is just as important to his "existence" as winning 19 majors. He'd realize this -- this moment -- is what his father was talking about.

It's an opportunity that theoretically can't be missed. Not if he is to fulfill his prophecy.

Imagine if Tiger said something like this: "People, think. Think about what you say before you open your mouths. Consider other human beings, consider their pasts, consider their color, gender and culture. What was said recently about me was insensitive, but I can excuse that. Kelly's my friend. But the time has come for all of us to begin to respect one another to a degree that we won't allow incidents like this to happen again. This verbal insensitivity in sports has been going on too long, and we must all do our part to stop it. And that begins with us respecting other people's races and cultures before we speak. Listen, I'm not perfect. Even I have said some things in the past that were inconsiderate of others. But that has changed. Now, especially now, it's time for all of us to look at the roles we've played in letting insensitivity become an accepted form of racism. I'm Tiger Woods. It's time to change." Like I said, theoretically. Imagine the power of that.

It's a stand he needs to take because people who change the world eventually have to take stands. Whether strong or silent, good or evil, they take stands not to prove their beliefs, but to rectify a situation or condition. The entire nature of being able to change the world or using your "powers" to do it, means you acknowledge the world is not perfect. Hence, the word change. And with one simple statement, Tiger Woods has the power to do that. He can speak to a generation. Just one statement. The question is: Will Tiger Woods say something now that he's the victim?

The father said his son will do "more than any man in history to change the course of humanity." More than Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Gandhi, Buddha and Nelson Mandela. Said, "He will have the power to impact nations." Said, "He's qualified through his ethnicity to accomplish miracles." Said, "The world is just getting a taste of his power."

I believe Earl Woods was right about his son. Now is the time for the son to make the father a prophet.

Scoop Jackson is a columnist for Page 2. Sound off to him here.

A Person, Not A Plot Device

2007-11-30T12:13:00.000-05:00

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, November 30, 2007; Page A23

Why do you suppose so many people were so quick to blame Sean Taylor for his own murder?

Relax, that's a rhetorical question. There's no need for self-exculpatory huffing and puffing, no need to point out that the verdict of suicide-by-bad-attitude -- pronounced so often this week, and so coldly -- was usually couched in broad hints or softened by the nebulous fog of the conditional mood. Everyone knew what was really being said, and everyone knew why.

Taylor instantly became not a person but a character, one whose purpose was to advance a narrative about young black men and their manifold failings. Taylor, a gifted defensive back for the Washington Redskins, had been in trouble with the law. Despite the millions he earned playing football, he never managed to escape the quicksand lure of the mean streets -- parasitic friends, envious haters, a culture of casual violence. It was his decision to swim in this cesspool of dysfunction, the narrative said. And, like so many other young black men who have made the same wrong choice, he paid for it with his life.

At least that was the story before Wednesday, when Robert Parker, director of the Miami-Dade police, announced that investigators had "no reason" to believe Taylor was targeted by his killer or even knew the man who shot him. Police were operating on the theory that the crime was a botched burglary, Parker said, essentially a random act.

I realize that Parker may eventually be proved wrong. But what fascinates me is how eager people were to believe the worst about Taylor -- how ready to stuff a young man's death into a box labeled "pathology" and call it a day -- in the absence of supporting evidence. Apparently, "innocent until proved guilty" doesn't apply to young black men even when they're the victims of violent crime.

The few facts we have tell a story that's very different from the chosen narrative. Sean Taylor is hardly a typical product of those fabled "mean streets" -- he grew up with his father, a suburban police chief, in a middle-class neighborhood. He did spend weekends with his mother in a tougher area and acquired some sketchy friends. But at the same time he was attending an exclusive private high school, where he met his girlfriend, Jackie Garcia, a niece of the actor Andy Garcia.

Taylor's home, with its expansive yard and big swimming pool, is in an upper-middle-class suburb. There's nothing remotely "mean" about the street.

Jackie Garcia hid under the covers with the couple's 18-month-old daughter early Monday while Taylor faced the intruder who mortally wounded him. Andy Garcia released a statement Wednesday praising Taylor for his "heroic" sacrifice that saved Jackie's life.
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Much has been made of the fact that Taylor grabbed a machete from under his bed before confronting the intruder. In New York or St. Louis or Seattle, if you saw a machete, you'd think: deadly weapon. But I spent years covering Latin America for The Post, so when I see a machete in a place like Miami I'm more likely to think: garden implement. Tropical vegetation is a lot easier to trim with a machete than with hedge clippers, and Taylor's father said Sean used the blade in his yard. No, machetes are not usually kept under the bed. But if my house had been broken into recently -- as Taylor's was, barely a week before his slaying -- I might have wanted the thing a little closer to hand.

My purpose here isn't to make a hero out of Sean Taylor, though he may well have died a hero's death. He made some serious mistakes in his life, and he didn't always have the proper regard for authority and discipline. Nor am I trying to sell the "he was finally turning his life around" narrative, as if taking a few GPS readings were enough to show someone the way to responsible manhood.

Life isn't so linear -- and people aren't so one-dimensional.

The next time you encounter a young black man like Sean Taylor -- a man who can be headstrong and rebellious, who listens to rap music and sometimes wears his hair in a wild-man 'fro that's meant to intimidate, who scowls when we want him to smile and makes a bad mistake or two and doesn't choose the friends we would want him to choose -- know that there is possibility within him, and contradiction, and the capacity for love. Know that he's more than a plot device.

eugenerobinson@washpost.com

The Road to Bad Newz - Sports Illustrated must read

2007-11-28T17:59:00.000-05:00

Through his rise and fall, Michael Vick stayed loyal to a tight circle of friends -- homeboys who used him and ultimately sold him out. He's not the first pro athlete to be swallowed up by his old neighborhood

Posted: Tuesday November 20, 2007

Influential Atlantans urged Vick to embrace his new community, but at heart he remained

By George Dohrmann and Farrell Evans

In August 2002, Andrew Young, a former ambassador to the United Nations and onetime aide to Martin Luther King Jr., met with Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick. The meeting was not scheduled or scripted, and it lasted only a few minutes. Vick was coming off the field after a training-camp practice at Furman University in Greenville, S.C., and Young pulled him aside.

Like most Atlanta residents that summer, Young, the city's former mayor, was excited about Vick's athletic gifts. During the eight games Vick played as a rookie in 2001, he had electrified the league and a sagging franchise, raising high hopes for '02, which Vick would validate by leading the Falcons to their first playoff win in four years and making the Pro Bowl. A popular Powerade commercial broadcast at the time showed Vick throwing a ball out of a stadium and knocking players off their feet with the velocity of his passes. Live on Sundays and in fantastical advertisements, Vick appeared to be an otherworldly talent.

But Young, as a black member of the Falcons' board of directors and an ordained minister, noticed things about Vick that fans and advertisers probably missed. He hadn't joined a local church. He didn't show any interest in socializing with prominent African-Americans from Atlanta who could provide advice on handling life in the public spotlight. He was "young and country," Young recalls, and he hung out almost exclusively with friends from his hometown of Newport News, Va. When Vick's rookie season ended, Young noted, he immediately "jumped on a plane back to Virginia."

In their brief talk, Young told Vick that being a star is a burden and that he needed to surround himself with smart, trustworthy people. He gave Vick his number and urged him to call. Over the next five years Young attempted to steer him toward a church near Newport News that he hoped Vick would attend.

It is easy now -- with Vick having surrendered on Monday to federal authorities in Richmond to begin his incarceration ahead of his Dec. 10 sentencing, when he faces as much as 18 months for conspiracy to operate a dogfighting enterprise -- to view Young's intervention with Vick as unsuccessful. Young reached out to Vick at a pivotal moment in Vick's maturation, but "everything I tried failed," Young says. Vick never embraced the Atlanta community. He didn't visit the church Young recommended, and he continued to socialize almost exclusively with friends connected to the old neighborhood, some of whom would later be complicit in his crimes. It's also easy to settle on the root cause of Vick's problems: He remained "young and country" even as he became one of the biggest and richest brands in sports.

But shortly after Vick pleaded guilty last August, Young, in an interview with SI, introduced a more complex explanation for Vick's downfall. He was victimized by "ghetto loyalty," Young said, taken down by an obligation he felt to his friends from home. "It's a heady life, being a pro athlete, but it's also a lonely life," Young said. "And often the only people athletes feel comfortable with are the guys they grew up with on the streets." Many athletes are trapped in that situation, according to Young, and it's not entirely their fault.

It's a difficult premise to embrace. It suggests that athletes -- primarily black athletes from poor backgrounds -- are held captive by a code that requires them to help neighborhood friends, even to their own detriment, and that therefore they are not always responsible for their actions. Still, it's a theory gaining traction among those who study and work with athletes; they point to several high-profile cases, none bigger than Vick's, to illustrate the problem.

"Sometimes the cultural influences athletes face aren't being offset by their advisers, their team, the league they play in," says David Cornwell, an Atlanta-based attorney who has represented Reggie Bush and Gilbert Arenas. "What's left, as we saw with Vick, is a Molotov cocktail."

There's a story from Michael Vick's childhood that seems almost mythical.

Shortly after Vick was born, on June 26, 1980, his father, Michael Boddie, took him into his arms and carried him outside their apartment. Standing in the yard, he raised the naked baby to the starry night sky and told him, "Behold the only thing greater than yourself." It was a line from Roots, uttered by Omoro upon the birth of his son Kunta Kinte. Boddie said later that he did it because he wanted Michael to lead a special life.

When Vick exploded upon the college scene at Virginia Tech in the late 1990s, that tale and others from Vick's childhood flowed from sportswriters' laptops as they chronicled his rise from a rough-and-tumble neighborhood to stardom. Readers learned that Vick had played in the same dirt yard that his father had as a boy, and lived in the same downtrodden Ridley Circle Projects in Newport News. They learned that his father, who worked 12 hours a day to support the family, gave him his first football at age three. They learned that Michael found shelter from gangs and drugs at the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Hampton Roads. When Vick announced that he was leaving Virginia Tech two years early for the NFL, he did so at the Boys & Girls Club, a nod to the haven and the people who had protected him.

Vick's rise from Newport News's east end to the NFL made for great copy, but his downfall was an even more compelling story, full of drama, moral questions and a cast of largely unknown characters. There were C. J. Reamon, the nephew of Vick's high school football coach, and Quanis Phillips, a high school teammate and Vick's closest friend. There was Davon Boddie, Vick's first cousin. There were also two older guys from the neighborhood, Tony Taylor and his cousin Adam (Wink) Harris, and Purnell Peace, another Newport News acquaintance. Boddie would inadvertently get the dogfighting investigation rolling when -- after his arrest last April for possession of marijuana with intent to sell -- he gave, as his home address, the Surry County house where the kennels were located. And Phillips, Taylor and Peace would all plead guilty in the dogfighting case and agree to testify against Vick, thus all but forcing their friend to enter his own guilty plea.

Experts say that ghetto loyalty also led Ray Lewis (above), Traylor and Jamal Lewis to become entangled in friends' crimes.

"In his struggling, formative years, Michael formed a bond with these guys," says James (Poo) Johnson, the assistant CEO of the Boys & Girls Club, who has known Vick since he was seven. "They grew up together wearing the same clothes, sharing bologna sandwiches and franks, doing everything together."

Vick often talked about wanting to get his family out of Bad Newz, the nickname he gave his hometown (and, later, his kennel and dogfighting ring), but for someone who talked of escape, he returned often to the old neighborhood. As a student at Virginia Tech, he drove home monthly, lured by the company of his friends. "Some of them weren't bad guys," Johnson says, "but they were opportunists."

Their big opportunity came when Vick was selected with the No. 1 pick in the 2001 NFL draft and given a contract worth $62 million over six years. (In 2004 he signed a 10-year, $130 million deal that briefly made him the highest-paid player in league history.) According to a Vick acquaintance, at times eight or more neighborhood friends would be at Vick's mansion near the Sugarloaf Country Club in Duluth, Ga., or at the home in Surry County. Not all lived with him, but a few became such regulars that they assumed a wide range of semiofficial jobs and roles. Harris, 35, was Vick's contact person for Nike and his driver in Atlanta, responsible for getting him to appointments and practice on time. Reamon, 33, handled Vick's endorsement deal with Atlanta-based airline AirTran and chauffeured Vick whenever he was in Virginia. Taylor, 34, oversaw the dog kennel and dogfighting operation in Virginia until 2004, when he was succeeded by Peace, 35. Phillips, 28, accompanied his close friend almost everywhere. He had free use of Vick's luxury cars -- a Maybach, a Bentley, an Escalade, a Mercedes -- and often sported the same jewelry as Vick and similar clothes.

"What people need to understand is that in a low-income community, you are going to always have people looking to get a break by latching onto someone with money," says Aaron Brooks, the former New Orleans Saints and Oakland Raiders quarterback, who is Vick's second cousin and grew up one row of apartments over in the Ridley Circle projects.

A typical day for Vick, according to several acquaintances, included being shuttled by Harris to and from the Falcons' practice facility in Flowery Branch. After practice Vick would engage his friends in marathon sessions of Madden NFL on PlayStation, some lasting five hours or more. It was a routine followed not just in Vick's rookie season, when he was 21, but also up through last season, his sixth in the league. "Brenda [Vick, Michael's mother] used to tell me every time she would go to Atlanta: He's got this big mansion down there in Atlanta, and [Michael] ain't no cook or housekeeper," James Boddie, Vick's grandfather, told The Washington Post last August. "So he's got a bunch of guys hanging around all the time, the girls running in and out. So [Brenda] went down there and cleaned house: 'Everybody just get out! Get out! Get out! You guys are just sucking up my son's money. You're really not doing nothing for him.' "

But when Brenda Vick left, the friends quickly returned. Vick became known around the NFL for his sizable entourage, which accompanied him everywhere. They could be seen spilling out of a massive limo before him or surrounding him as he moved through a club, his own Ridley Circle of protection.

Some members of Vick's entourage had checkered pasts. Davon Boddie had his drug arrest, for which he received a five-year suspended sentence. Reamon was arrested in 2006 for carrying a Glock through security at Newport News Airport. (The case is pending.) Taylor was arrested in 1996 for cocaine possession. (It was dismissed after a year of good behavior and the completion of a substance-abuse program.)

Harris was the only member of Vick's inner circle willing to talk to SI about his relationship with the ex-Falcons star. "I'm here to make a dollar for Mike and a dollar for me," he said. "I've always been a friend first. Business came second. My friendship with him has made me take more interest in his affairs."

Vick's friendships, however, also seemed to keep him from connecting with teammates. Dan Reeves, Vick's coach in Atlanta during his first three seasons, took note that Vick didn't bond with other players and warned him about his neighborhood associates after two friends were arrested for drug trafficking in Newport News in 2004 while driving a car registered to Vick. Karon Riley, a Falcons defensive end in 2003 and '04, noticed the same and says teammates often found it difficult to approach Vick. "I remember one day, we were hanging out and he was real friendly, asking me how I was doing," says Riley. "But then the next day, Mike walked past me and didn't even look at me."

Johnson, Vick's mentor at the Boys & Girls Club, watched Vick surround himself with buddies from his old neighborhood and grew worried. "I don't think Michael thought about the ramifications of what he was doing."

I can go through the NFL and show you thugs. I can go through the NBA and show you thugs," says Todd Boyd, a professor of race and popular culture at USC and the author of Young, Black, Rich & Famous. "Michael Vick is not a thug. And the majority of black athletes who are lucky enough to make it out of the ghetto are not thugs."

Why then do Vick and other athletes surround themselves with neighborhood associates -- even convicted criminals -- whose activities might threaten their careers? Why did Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis obstruct a murder investigation in 2000 in which his friends were the primary suspects? Why did Browns running back Jamal Lewis participate that same year in a drug deal spearheaded by one of his neighborhood chums? And why did former NBA player Robert Traylor launder money in 2004 for a drug-dealing cousin? Boyd and other experts who have studied the plight of black athletes say there are four primary reasons, all falling under the umbrella of ghetto loyalty.

• Indebtedness. "A lot of times if you grew up in a gang-infested area and you are a good athlete, you will get a pass [on participating in criminal activity] whereas others won't," says Jonathan (Spoon) Chaney, a former gang member in Long Beach, Calif., and onetime player in Snoop Dogg's entourage who now coaches youth basketball in Los Angeles. "But that comes with a price. Athletes, when they make it [to the pros], people say, 'We gave you a pass and now you owe us.' "

• Childhood Bonds. Michael Thompson, an offensive lineman for the Falcons in 2000 and '01, grew up in a poor neighborhood in Savannah. He and his mother were physically abused by his stepfather, and they ended up in a shelter for battered mothers and children. At times the only people he felt he could trust were his friends. "When I was hungry, I ate at their houses, or I would take a shower in their bathrooms. We were brothers and we shared everything," Thompson wrote in a letter to SI. "The fact that they were there before the college scholarship and the pro contract.... I felt I owed it to them."

Shortly after Thompson was drafted, a friend was murdered in Savannah. "[My friends] wanted me to come home and ride for some get-back, but I couldn't," Thompson wrote. "Because of that, they fell out with me for a long time, even to the point of threatening me with violence. But I still considered them brothers."

• Communal Pressure. "Don't forget where you came from" is a term every athlete to emerge from the ghetto has heard many times. "When my grandmother tells me that, she means to be humble, to remember when you didn't have anything and remember that all that you have could be gone at any time," says Golden State Warriors guard Baron Davis, who grew up in the Watts section of Los Angeles. "But other people who say it mean, 'Hey, don't forget to take care of me.' "

"In the black community," says Boyd, "when someone succeeds, there is an assumption that they are going to go off and forget where they came from. Look at O.J. Simpson, the poster child for this. You have money, you are on television, and now you've forgotten us. America is a country based on individuals, but black people were brought to this country as a group. Thus, athletes are constantly in this position where they are moving between the group dynamic and the individual dynamic."

• Fear. Sent to a college where they are unlike all but a small fraction of the population, athletes seek refuge with friends back home, often returning to their old neighborhood or bringing friends to campus. Drafted into the pros and transplanted to a new city, they take neighborhood friends along. Possessing money for the first time, they fear being taken advantage of.

"When you're talking about pro athletes, you're talking about people who land in a place that is the extreme opposite of where they grew up," says Boyd. "To be safe, they surround themselves with what they know. Very qualified people might be trying to help them, but they say, 'I don't know you, but I've known this guy from my old neighborhood since I was five.' Athletes figure that they're better off with the devil they know than the devils they don't know."

Those who know Vick say that he felt a need to help longtime friends like Phillips, whom he bonded with as a child. He also wanted to give opportunities to men like Taylor and Peace, who had shared his childhood interests (video games, dogs, fishing, music) and would remind him not to forget where he came from. Putting them in charge of Bad Newz Kennels was one way (albeit a poorly chosen one) to do that. Most of all, those who know Vick say, the newness of Atlanta and his sudden riches scared him. When Andrew Young reached out to Vick in 2002, it was probably too late. "[Vick] helped build the Atlanta Falcons," Young says, "but he never had a chance to build his own intellectual and moral reserves."

There is much debate among officials from the NBA and the NFL, the leagues with the highest proportion of black players, over how to help athletes from the inner city acclimate to the world of professional sports. All agree that athletes often spend their high school and college years -- the time when most adults make great leaps socially and mentally -- in an athletic cocoon and end up ill-suited to combat the pressures that lead to ghetto loyalty.

One prominent NFL agent, who asked not to be named, said navigating through athletes' neighborhood friends now takes up so much of his time that he turns away clients he feels will be too tied to them. And even if an agent gives a client good advice, it is often ignored because it comes from someone who is not from the client's neighborhood. "I once had Warrick Dunn question some legal advice I gave him," says Cornwell. "I told him, 'I don't tell you how to tote the rock.' But very few people will talk to athletes that way for fear that they will get cut off."

The NFL has guidance programs for its athletes, and issues like the dangers of ghetto loyalty arise in the annual rookie symposiums held shortly after the draft. (After a player's rookie season, however, the responsibility falls to the team.) Thompson, the former Falcons lineman, played a key role in the NFL's rookie symposium in 2002. He spoke about his troubles navigating the wants of his neighborhood friends. Three years later he was in a Georgia prison, sentenced to seven years for attempted robbery. In the letter mailed from the Wheeler Correctional Facility in Alamo, Ga., Thompson was responding to a number of questions, among them, What advice would you give to young athletes from similar backgrounds as yours? He answered, "Please don't allow your neighborhood to swallow you."

Baron Davis knows exactly how he avoided being swallowed by his neighborhood. In the seventh grade, on the recommendation on an AAU basketball coach, he was recruited to the Crossroads School for Arts & Sciences in Santa Monica, where his schoolmates included actress Kate Hudson and other children of privilege. "I was this kid begging other kids for 50 cents, but I was also learning what it was like to be around different people and was exposed to new things," Davis says. "I learned the world was bigger than where I grew up, that there were these people I could trust, people at Crossroads and then at UCLA who wanted to see me do well."

It changed how he viewed friendship and his responsibility to the people of Watts, and how he could best help them.

"I'll give them an opportunity," Davis says. "I'll invest in education for them, or if they are looking to get into some trade, I'll help them. If they keep showing improvement, I'll keep helping them. Money is a way to help, but opportunity is better than money."

Davis's inner circle consists of two childhood friends, Tremaine (Terminator) Ross and Kevin (Bean) Bradley; two friends from Crossroads, Chad Gordon and Cash Warren; and Rico Hines, a former teammate from UCLA. Bradley plays professional basketball in Iran; Gordon and Warren work for Davis's production company, Verso Entertainment; and Hines is an athletic-development assistant with the Warriors, a job that Davis helped him get.

Ross is the only one of the friends who could be an example of Davis's showing ghetto loyalty. Ross moved to Charlotte when Davis was drafted by the Hornets in 1999 and lived with him there. "It was his rookie year, and he needed that person he could trust," says Ross. "I kept him organized and focused, but we were not kids down there. I was showing him loyalty, but this was a grown-up relationship."

The difference in his relationship with Ross, Davis says, and that of many athletes and their neighborhood friends is that "Term never asked for one penny."

Davis had always encouraged Ross to get into music production, and they had a recording studio built in New Orleans after the Hornets moved there in 2002. When Davis was traded to Golden State, in '05, Ross moved back to Los Angeles, and Davis introduced him to several music industry executives. He now has a stable of young artists such as YaBoy, a Bay Area rapper. "Term moved over to the Westside [of Los Angeles], and it was hard for him. He was skeptical of everyone. Even Rico and Cash, he didn't trust them," Davis says. "But I encouraged him, and he took this leap and he ran with it. Now he has developed his own relationships and is making a living in the music business."

"I'm two years older than Baron," Ross says, "but he teaches me. He goes out and learns the business side from people, and then I learn it from him. I never thought I would be involved in the corporate side of anything. He gave me the power, the opportunity, to run a record label."

Davis still returns to his neighborhood, but only to visit his grandmother. He has people he keeps in touch with -- the manager of a Boys & Girls Club, an elementary school teacher -- and he donates to organizations he feels are doing good work in the area, but he gives no handouts.

"I feel obligated to my grandmother, and I feel obligated to empower people who are trying to impact the neighborhood in a positive way, but I don't feel obligated to individuals," Davis says. "[Athletes] who are always back in the hood, trying to keep it real, they are wasting time."

Davis's long-term plan for his friends is a bit quixotic -- hokey, even. He envisions them all owning homes in the same gated community, raising their kids together. His friends would all have their own jobs; whether he helped them get those jobs or not wouldn't matter. "They might not all be millionaires, but there is nothing wrong with making $70,000 or $80,000 a year."

It is not hard to imagine that Vick wanted something similar for his friends. But either he didn't know how to get them to that end or they weren't willing to settle for the opportunities that he afforded them. If and when Vick returns to football, it seems likely that his dilemma will remain the same. Adam (Wink) Harris, the neighborhood friend who used to drive Vick around Atlanta, suggests as much in response to a question about what he and the rest of Vick's Newport News pals will do now that Vick is no longer drawing an NFL paycheck and may be spending time in jail.

"We're not going anywhere," Harris says. "When it's time for Mike to sign again, we'll be there. It's not like there are a lot of great players coming out of college to replace Mike."

Copyright © 2007 CNN/Sports Illustrated.

The Stats Speak for Themselves

2007-11-09T18:58:00.000-05:00

Culture and race affect job opportunities

By: Furrah Qureshi
Posted: 11/9/07

I can't tell you how many people told me not to write about what I am about to write about. And so I just smiled at them; they had no idea they had all just given me an opening statement. But therein lies the exact problem with the problem, nobody will talk about it. I guess to some extent most of us try to ignore the problem, because it reflects on the ugliest part of the human condition, us.

American culture of today promulgates inequality. Racial roles weightily ascribe life choices to minorities.

Today, there is a notion that the only way for an African American to be successful is to become either a rapper or a sports star. Here's an example where the facts contradict the cultural perception. According to sociologist Jay Coakley there are "less than 3,500 African Americans…living as professional athletes" and "at the same time (1996) there are about 30,015 black physicians and 30,800 black lawyers." Of course, it is significantly easier to become a lawyer than a professional athlete, but that is the exact problem.

If the culture forces black students to believe they are better suited to be athletes than lawyers or doctors, doesn't that set them up for failure? Perpetuating the notion that an entire race of people should occupy one select field is ridiculous as well as detrimental because the chances for success are less likely, meaning failure is more likely, meaning, the culture is setting them up to fail.

In "Upward Mobility Through Sport?" D. Stanley Eitzen cites a survey conducted by The Study of Sport in Society showing that "two-thirds of African American males between the ages of 13 and 18 believe they can earn a living playing professional sports" (which is more than double that of white males in that age group). Furthermore, Eitzen points out that in the NFL in 1997, two-thirds of the players were black while only three head coaches were African American.

I read these facts and was deeply perturbed. There are two mediums to break down, the cycle of poverty, and the racial relation to the cycle of poverty.

With these disproportional statistics, the task seems so much more difficult. We're not just combating an economic issue; we have to combat a cultural issue.

Eitzen's point about the lack of African Americans in authoritative positions in sports is a potent one.

It reminds me of a friend of mine who's currently in high school and is an African American male with eyes for Cornell and Harvard, he totes a report card of strictly A's and frequents theater classes and all anyone ever says to him is, "way to act white." I of course know, that this is a joke, but what sort of message is this joke sending? That being intelligent and well rounded is a "white" thing? If being white is supposed to mean being smart that what does being black mean?

Here's my problem: I care about humans so much that I hate them.

I want to change things so much that I feel there is nothing I can do. I'm confronted with uselessness and futility and immense scorn of the two. None of which deters me though, I just keep writing articles, and keep hoping somebody is reading them.

I write this all thinking of one specific instance in my life. It was the first time my mind was plagued with the weight of socioeconomic inequality and the first time someone expected me to expect of them.

Last year, I was late for registering for the SATs and had to take them at another high school. I had to go to Norristown High School which has a substantial African American population and I was one of the two non-black people in the room, the other being the instructor. I felt a tap on my shoulder during the first break as a student asked me "What are you aiming for?"

"2300 I suppose."

"I'm going for a 2400" he said.

I smiled.

"Surprised?" he asked smirking.

"No, just impressed."

© Copyright 2007 The Triangle

It's long, but it's worth the read

2007-10-31T17:33:00.000-04:00

Taking on Dr. James Watson: My Duty to Black People Everywhere
Feature Article - Wed, 31 Oct 2007

James Watson (Photo by Stephen Chernin/Getty Images)
Dr. James Watson, the disgraced septuagenarian U.S. scientist and DNA pioneer, insulted black people everywhere when he said earlier this month that Black people were inferior to White people in all facets of human physiology and endeavor. While Dr. Watson’s blunt pillorying came as a surprise to many, I was not shocked at all: Black people deal with hundreds of Watsons on a daily basis, and whites, unquestionably because of the “advantage” of their skin color, especially in Europe, Australia and North America, have always had an easier life wherever they find themselves, purporting that such societal benefits translated to superior intelligence, capabilities and ingeniousness, as compared to black people.

I am constantly reminded by what the highly respected Tom Brokaw, the ex-anchor of NBC Nightly News, a nationally televised news broadcast in the U.S.A., said his last day as host of the show. His voice laden with emotion, Mr. Brokaw uttered some very somber words, iterating that for the 21 years that he served as anchor, not a day went by that he did not consider the fact that had the shade of his skin been a tad darker, he may not have gotten the job as anchor of NBC Nightly News!

A few years ago, a professor told my colleagues and me in an Ethics and Diversity class that he knew a white military officer who once asked a fellow white officer how the latter felt serving under Colin Powell, the celebrated black former military general and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the U.S. Armed Forces. That Colin Powell was qualified to head all branches of the U.S. Armed Forces was not the point of contention between the two white officers, but the color of the general’s skin! This perverse and bigoted attitude by many white people is nothing new to blacks in the U.S.A. I shudder to even discuss the percentage of able-bodied black men regularly thrown into U.S. jails, some for whom justice was never served!

Now that Dr. Watson has shared with the rest of the world his spurious and scientifically bereft ideas about black people ― Dr. Watson must be lucky the “great burden” has not landed him in a sanitarium up to now ― I consider it my duty to remind/inform black people everywhere that the forays into the sciences and other disciplines by their progenitors, even amidst limited opportunities due to the color of their skin, resulted in some of the greatest technological breakthroughs known to man ― not only inventions chalked in the 19th and 20th centuries, but also the ones achieved in contemporary times. All black people everywhere thus owe it a duty to the next generation of black children to make sure black achievements in science, technology, medicine, among other fields of human endeavor, are espoused accurately, to counter the misinformation and stereotyping about blacks that have become pervasive in the white-controlled media outlets in the last several decades.

James Kessler, in his highly acclaimed book, “Distinguished African American Scientists of the 20th Century,” in illuminating the achievements of many notable blacks, enjoins black parents and leaders to instill in young blacks the essence of achievement, not only in sports, music and movies, but also “in such diverse fields as anthropology and physics, mathematics and endocrinology.” Kessler continues: “Young children, both Black and White, should remember that many of the people mentioned in this book grew up under very difficult economic constraints, social injustices and racial prejudices, with very little encouragement from the outside. But they were individuals with enormous determination, sterling character, and sense of self-worth who struggled under intolerable conditions. These men and women devoted themselves to serious study and intellectual pursuits. They knew there was racism and prejudice in the society in which they lived, but they did not use this as an excuse for keeping away from books or building their own grammar and vocabulary.” I wish to discuss a few black men and women, who, through their relentless efforts in the midst of the worst prejudices of their time, jettisoned every horrific label and made it to the top of their professions.

George Washington Carver: Born in 1864 in Missouri toward the end of the U.S. Civil War, Carver and his mother were kidnapped by Confederate soldiers while he was just an infant. Although he was later found by his father, the young Carver would never see his mother again. Carver started formal education at 12, but since all schools were segregated at the time, he was forced to move to Newton County, Missouri, where he supported his education by working as a farm hand. At 30, Carver enrolled as the only black student at Simpson College in Iowa. Determined to study science, Carver transferred to Iowa Agricultural College (now Iowa State University) in 1891, where he earned a B.S. in 1894 and an M.S. in Bacterial Botany and Agriculture in 1897. Carver later became the first black professor at Iowa Agricultural College. Carver moved to Alabama in 1897, becoming the Director of Tuskegee Normal and Industrial College. It was at Tuskegee that Carver discovered more than three hundred uses for peanuts, and several hundred more uses for soybeans, pecans and sweet potatoes. Single-handedly, Carver’s ideas transformed southern United States from a region that depended on a single crop (cotton) to one that embraced many different crops, leading to the revival of the South’s economy after the Civil War. In 1939, Carver fittingly received the Roosevelt medal for transforming agriculture in the South. And in 1943, Carver was honored with a national monument, the first such designation for a black man in the U.S.A.

Charles Drew: Because Drew was an exceptional athlete, most people assumed he would grow up to pursue a career in sports. Although Drew attended Amherst College on a sports scholarship, he was unable to raise enough money to go to medical school upon graduation in 1926. He therefore had to take up teaching at Morgan State University, Maryland, to raise enough money to enroll at the University Medical School in Canada. After medical school, Drew developed an interest in blood transfusions. While on a two-year Rockefeller Fellowship at Columbia University Presbyterian Hospital in New York, Drew made a remarkable discovery! At the time, blood could be stored for no more than 7 days, but Drew discovered that using plasma (blood from which cells have been removed) could prolong the viability of blood. Both revolutionary and timely, Drew’s innovation would help save the lives of thousands of Allied soldiers during the Second World War.

Lloyd Noel Ferguson: Born in 1918, Ferguson showed signs he was a gifted boy when, while in high school, he developed handy products such as moth repellent, silver polish and spot remover, products that he sold for cash. He later enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, earning a B.S. in Chemistry in 1940 and a Ph.D. in 1943. While at Berkeley, he worked with a team to develop a hemoglobin type of compound that could both gain and lose oxygen. Ferguson’s research eventually led to the refining of this compound, which is now commonly used as a source of oxygen in submarines.

The Tuskegee Airmen: Because of prejudice and discrimination from their white counterparts, an all-Black aviation squadron was formed to fight the Germans during World War II. It was an all-volunteer group that thrived on discipline and dedication. The Tuskegee Airmen’s fighting force, named the 332nd Fighter Group, distinguished itself by not losing a single bomber during more than 200 combat missions and air raids over enemy territory, a record that still stands today! I hope you are reading this, Dr. Watson!! As a result of the bravery, dedication and adroitness of the Tuskegee Airmen, President Truman had no choice but to issue an executive order directing equal treatment for all in the U.S. military, which in time led to the end of racial bias in the U.S. Armed Forces. Today, there is a historic site dedicated to the valor of these black aviators.

George Carruthers: Born in Ohio in 1939, Carruthers grew up in Chicago, and by age 10 had built a telescope. Carruthers obtained a B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Illinois in 1961, going on to earn an M.S. in Nuclear Engineering in 1962 and a Ph.D. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering in 1964. Carruthers is recognized for his work on ultraviolet light: He led a team that invented the far ultraviolet camera spectrograph. Carruthers also developed the first moon-based space observatory, an ultraviolet camera flown to the moon in 1972 by the Apollo 16 crew. He has further served as a principal investigator for many NASA- and U.S. Dept. of Defense-sponsored space equipment, which includes a 1986 equipment that captured a special image of Comet Halley.

Patricia Bath: Born in New York in 1942, Bath excelled academically, winning several awards while still in high school. At the tender age of 16, Bath was chosen to participate in a summer program offered by the National Science Foundation at Yeshiva University. And while at Yeshiva, the young Bath developed a mathematical formula for predicting cancer cell growth! Bath finished medical school at Howard University, Washington, D.C., in 1968 and served as an Ophthalmology Fellow at Columbia University in 1969 and 1970. Finding that blacks had twice as many ophthalmic problems as whites due to lack of access to good eye care, Bath established a new discipline called Community Ophthalmology, a field now practiced worldwide. In 1976, Bath co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, an organization that focuses on protecting, preserving and restoring the eyesight of all Americans, irrespective of personal circumstances. In 1981, Bath invented the revolutionary Laserphaco Probe, a device that uses a laser to destroy cataracts, as compared to the traditional but riskier method that had existed before the advent of the Laserphaco Probe.

Mark Dean: A vice-president of IBM Systems, Mark Dean earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1992 from Stanford University. Dean holds about 30 patents in the field of computers. One of Dean’s recent accomplishments was the development of the 1-Gigahertz chip, which holds a million transistors, revolutionizing the field of computer processors as a result. Important technologies Dean and his team are developing at IBM “include cellular systems structures (Blue Gene), digital visualization, DA tools, Linus optimizations for Pervasive, SMPs & Clusters, Settop Box integration, MXT, S/390 & PowerPC processors, super dense servers, formal verification methods and high speed low power circuits” (IBM Web site, 2007). Mark Dean has been inducted as a member of the National Academy of Engineering; has received the Black Engineer of the year Award; and has been inducted into the National Inventors’ Hall of Fame.

Mae C. Jemison: Born in 1956 in Alabama, Jemison earned a doctorate in medicine from Cornell University in 1981. She has worked in several fields, including “computer programming, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, computer magnetic disc production, and reproductive biology” (NASA Web site, 2007). Dr. Jemison once volunteered with the Peace Corps, serving in places such as Sierra Leone and Liberia. Selected for astronaut training by NASA in 1987, Dr. Jemison indeed became the first black woman to travel in a space shuttle to the International Space Station in 1992. “The eight-day mission was accomplished in 127 orbits of the Earth, and included 44 Japanese and U.S. life science and materials processing experiments. Dr. Jemison was a co-investigator on the bone cell research experiment flown on the mission. In completing her first space flight, Dr. Jemison logged 190 hours, 30 minutes, 23 seconds in space” (NASA Web site, 2007).

Philip Emeagwali: Called the “Bill Gates of Africa,” Emeagwali was born in Nigeria in 1957. By age 14, he was capable of performing 100 math exercises in 1 hour. He enrolled at Oregon State University at age 17, going on to earn a B.S. in Mathematics, two M.S. degrees from George Washington University, and a Ph.D. in Scientific Computing from the University of Michigan. Learning from the smartness exhibited by bees, Emeagwali would go on to design the world’s fastest computer, using 65,000 processors. This supercomputer has the capacity to perform computations at an astonishing 3.1 billion calculations per second! Additionally, Emeagwali discovered a process that makes oil fields more efficient, an innovation that has saved the U.S. millions of dollars each year. As a result of his inventions, Emeagwali was awarded the Gordon Bell Prize ― the Nobel Prize for computation! His computers are now being used to predict the fallouts from future global warming.

Francis Ampenyin Allotey: Born in Saltpond, Ghana, in 1932, Francis Allotey would later establish the Computer Science Dept. at the University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. He also served as the head of the Mathematics Dept. of the same university, after completing master’s and Ph.D. degrees at Princeton University in 1966. Dr. Allotey later achieved worldwide fame for his work on Soft X-Ray Spectroscopy, a process that became known as “Allotey Formalism,” earning him the Prince Phillip Gold Medal in 1973.

While this list of eminent black scientists and inventors is by no means exhaustive, considering the fact that there are many distinguished African and African-American scientists serving in important positions worldwide, I have chosen these few deceased and living scientists to accentuate the accomplishments of black people over time. It is now our duty as black people to instill the tenets of hard work, perseverance, dedication and fortitude in the next generation, which will go a long way to debunk the notion that blacks can only be successful in music, movie and sports careers. Dr. Watson has thrown down the gauntlet, and blacks everywhere need to pick it up and show Dr. Watson and his ilk that their pseudo-scientific observations about black people have no merit and therefore belong in the dustbin of history. On a lighter note, please join me in wishing Dr. Watson a happy retirement!

The writer, Daniel K. Pryce, in addition to two undergraduate degrees, holds a master’s degree in public administration from George Mason University, U.S.A. He is a member of the national honor society for public affairs and administration in the U.S.A. He can be reached at dpryce@cox.net.

What happens when you open the door...

2007-10-30T16:38:00.000-04:00

Wall St.'s Expanding Universe

By Eugene Robinson
Tuesday, October 30, 2007; A15

The real story on Wall Street isn't that E. Stanley O'Neal, whose grandfather was born a slave, is being shoved out of the top job at Merrill Lynch, the gargantuan investment bank. More important is the fact that . . . well, Tom Wolfe said it best in "The Bonfire of the Vanities," his romp through the world of hubris and high finance, with this description of the novel's protagonist:

"On Wall Street he and a few others -- how many? -- three hundred, four hundred, five hundred? -- had become precisely that . . . Masters of the Universe."

Actually, O'Neal rose to such heights that the number of his professional peers was nowhere near 300 -- more like three or four. That a black man who picked cotton as a child in Alabama could have spent the past five years as an Uber-Master of the Universe, running one of the world's leading financial institutions, is more significant than his downfall.

Granted, the downfall has been pretty spectacular. Merrill Lynch had to disclose last week that the company took a loss of $8.4 billion in the subprime mortgage meltdown -- much greater than the damage suffered by other huge investment firms such as Goldman Sachs.

Merrill's board of directors -- most of whose members were chosen by O'Neal -- has to share responsibility for that debacle; it's not as if the board was unaware of how O'Neal was investing the firm's money. Apparently, though, there was one thing that O'Neal failed to tell the board: that he had approached the chief executive of Wachovia Corp. about a possible merger of the two companies.

That's not the sort of thing you want your board to hear through the grapevine.

Yesterday, O'Neal was reportedly negotiating the terms of his departure. If you're worried he'll be destitute, dry your eyes. O'Neal has been one of the best-paid executives on Wall Street -- he took home around $48 million last year -- and the New York Times reports that he may get a severance package of at least $159 million.

That's crazy money, and most people don't get crazy money unless they're worth it. What I find striking about O'Neal's story is that it so thoroughly demolishes the racist assumption that some people will make: that the job was somehow handed to him because of some feel-good commitment to diversity.

Puh-leeze. Diversity is about leveling the playing field, opening doors and giving people a chance. By all accounts, O'Neal rose to the top the old-fashioned way -- fighting, scraping, biting, scratching.

He was hired as chief executive in 2002 to shake up what was seen as a complacent, slow-moving corporate culture. He did just that, cutting nearly 24,000 jobs, eliminating corporate perks and taking the company -- once known as "Mother Merrill" for its comfortable ambiance and its settled predictability -- into riskier and more lucrative arenas. Such as the subprime mortgage market.

O'Neal produced huge profits for the firm; last year, net income was a record $7.5 billion. On the job, at least, he made no attempt to be a nice guy. The Wall Street Journal reports that O'Neal would rake his executives over the coals if quarterly earnings reports showed that Goldman Sachs was outperforming Merrill in some area.

Now that O'Neal is on his way out, of course, people who worked for him are saying things to reporters -- he was aloof, he was brusque, he didn't tolerate strong-willed subordinates -- that they wouldn't have said to his face.

It's the classic high-flying modern Wall Street story -- you claw your way to the top, make a lot of money for your stockholders, make a lot of money for yourself, hold on as long as you can. O'Neal lasted five years in the top job at Merrill, which is about the average tenure of an American chief executive.

What's really significant is that there is a Stan O'Neal. And a Dick Parsons, the African American chief executive of Time Warner, rumored to be on his way out, too, after a long and profitable run. And a Ken Chenault, the African American CEO of American Express, who is staying put, far as I know. And a Bob Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television, widely acknowledged as the first African American billionaire.

Just two or three generations removed from slavery, they rose to control big chunks of the American economy. They attained Master of the Universe status by being smarter and tougher than their peers -- and now a much bigger cohort of black corporate executives is coming up behind them.

It just goes to show what happens when you open a door.

A Brief Update

2007-10-21T14:04:00.001-04:00

My apologies for not being able to put more time and thought into this site. The manuscript is fast approaching its deadline and I'm busy on that. However, I want to leave you with a question to ponder, it's a two-parter: 1) Do you think having real role models in the black community is more important today than past generations? If so, why? And if not, do you think the term 'role model' is losing its standing in the black community?

A Modest Effort to Find Role Models

2007-10-08T12:34:00.001-04:00

Nearly every time the discussion of African American role models comes up, the people who are mentioned are athletes, entertainers, hip hop and rap artist or they are dead. It is important for all children to see that African Americans are present, and hold leadership positions in, every profession. It is absolutely necessary that African American children see people who look like them being successful in something other than sports and entertainment.

A new website ( www.africanamericanrolemodels.com ) site was started by Trish Millines Dziko to help solve the issue of the dearth of visible African American role models. There are many schools and community organizations that struggle to find African Americans to talk to student groups, mentor students, or just volunteer.This site is one woman's effort to do something about it.

Are you a Role Model? We’re looking for college students, professionals, people in leadership positions, and entrepreneurs to step up and show African American children that they can be somebody. It will take 10 minutes of your time. Only 10 minutes to take the first step towards having an impact on a child’s future. Only 10 minutes. Don’t miss the opportunity to change a life!

About Trish Millines Dziko:
Trish Millines Dziko is the co-founding Executive Director of the Technology Access Foundation ( TAF ) and the CEO of a small startup Nonprofit Information Systems ( NPIS ).

About the Technology Access Foundation:
The Technology Access Foundation ( www.techaccess.org ) has a mission to prepare underserved children of color for higher education and professional success by providing a rigorous and relevant K-12 curriculum.

About Nonprofit Information Systems:
Nonprofit Information Systems ( www.nonprofitis.com ) is a mission driven organization with a desire to provide affordable information technology tools and services that enable small and medium nonprofits to maximize their potential and build capacity. Started in 2006, Nonprofit Information Systems will release its first set of tools in January 2008.

No Price for Passion

2007-10-01T14:33:00.000-04:00

I'm sure you've heard stories of NBA or NFL stars refusing to play until they were offered a more lucrative contract. In 2004, former NBA All-Star Latrell Sprewell refused a three-year, $21-million contract offer because he "had a family to feed."

I'm sure Sprewell could have ever imagined making $7 million per year playing the game he loved as a child, but once he made it to the NBA he, like others before and after him, became a different person altogether. A money-driven person.

Real Role Models isn't about becoming rich and famous. We're not profiling the 40 wealthiest African-American professionals and we're not interviewing anyone who has made it to the executive suite or limelight. Instead, we're reaching out to passion-driven people. It is my full belief that one's passion for what he or she does, not how much money is made doing it, makes that person more of a real role model.

In saying that, it has been a great pleasure to meet and speak with people like Lynn Tyson, who turned her passion for information into a career as one of the nation's top investor relations executives, and Leonard Pitts, who has written professionally for close to 30 years and still dreams of writing a fiction novel, and Je'Caryous Johnson, who turned his own zest for theatre into one of the top black-owned theatre production companies in the country.

From our conversations with these passionate individuals, we have learned that real role models can often reach the upper-echelons of wages in the business world, both corporate and entrepreneurial, but more importantly they have reached the upper-echelons of their respective professions, often times putting them in dream-like jobs.

There are likely millions of young children, black and non-black alike, who dream of being professional athletes. I can only hope they grow to become real role models, unlike Sprewell and a few other pro athletes who lost their childhood passion.

Book Update

2007-09-19T15:47:00.000-04:00

Just a quick update...

I went to Austin for a week and met with our publisher/editor and had a very beneficial/worthwhile meeting. It's an honor and pleasure to have such a great person/publisher behind us (Texas Press).

I also spoke with some very interesting and successful individuals including Lynn Tyson, vp of investor relations for Dell, and Leonard Pitts, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Miami Herald. These two have the very characteristics, experiences, and track records that indicate they are real role models.

Now, Louis and I are back on the grind and working to complete the manuscript and put together a one-of-a-kind book that profiles people all Americans, not just African-Americans,
would be proud to consider as role models for their children.

Best,

Joah

2007-09-13T13:47:00.001-04:00

Does an athlete need to be a role model?

ERIC DUHATSCHEK

Globe and Mail Update

September 12, 2007 at 3:31 PM EDT

That NHL commissioner Gary Bettman finally got around to suspending Toronto Maple Leafs forward Mark Bell on Wednesday came as little surprise. That development was more a matter of when, not if.

The only real questions revolved around the timing of the suspension (now as opposed to earlier in the summer) and the terms (15 games, to be served as soon as Bell is cleared to play again, after completing his stay in Stage 2 of the NHL-NHLPA Substance Abuse and Behavioral Health program.

Bettman waited until now to hand down his ruling to let the process take its course — from the judicial dispensation of the case to the report from the doctors administering the substance abuse program. Bettman then met with Bell in New York on Monday to hear his side of the story, before suspending him under NHL by-law 17, which governs conduct deemed to be "dishonorable, prejudicial to or against the welfare of the league or the game of hockey."

Nor did Bettman mince words when assessing what would have to be considered a fairly modest penalty under the circumstances — and would have been much higher had he not been convinced that Bell is both contrite about his actions and legitimately on the road to recovery.

"Playing in the National Hockey League is a privilege, and with that privilege comes a corresponding responsibility for exemplary conduct off the ice as well as on it," thundered Bettman, in a prepared statement. "Mark Bell will serve jail time following the 2007-08 season after pleading to felony and misdemeanor charges stemming from an alcohol-related automobile accident that caused an injury. He also left the scene of the accident. Such conduct is a violation of our covenant with our fans, and to the game, and is prejudicial to the welfare of the league."

Bettman's phrasing is eerily reminiscent of the wording of commissioner Roger Goodell's statement when he suspended a couple of NFL miscreants (Pacman Jones and Chris Henry) last May. Goodell talked about the "integrity" of his league; how it was a "privilege to represent the NFL" and that its members must meet "the highest standards of conduct."

All of which sends a clear signal to professional athletes everywhere — that whatever standard of behavior was tolerated in the recent past by the NHL, NBA, NFL and major-league baseball, the rules are starting to change and that part of the "covenant" with their fans that Bettman alluded to is becoming good role models again.

Many decades ago, before the Internet became ubiquitous, before 24-hour sports talk radio came along, before endless highlight shows dominated the airwaves, athletes were put on a pedestal by an adoring public. It wasn't so much that they were necessarily better behaved than the current generation of athletes; it's just that their various foibles and missteps didn't make their way into the public eye nearly as often.

All that changed over time, as the nature of reporting evolved and the desire to sweep discretions under the rug disappeared. Simultaneously, more and more athletes were blunt about how they saw their responsibilities to the paying public — and that in their minds, being a role model wasn't part of the bargain. Charles Barkley, a smart and educated man, once famously said: "I don't believe professional athletes should be role models. I believe parents should be role models."

Given the way athletes behaved in Barkley's era and on into today, that wasn't bad advice. Nowadays, the sports pages are filled with accounts of transgressions large and small — for drugs, for cheating, for drunk driving, for domestic abuse and sometimes even for murder. Now that he can't play football, Jones is involved in professional wrestling. On Monday night's NFL telecast of the Cincinnati Bengals-Baltimore Ravens' game, there were numerous references to Henry's eight-game suspension, assessed for his multiple violations the NFL's personal conduct code as well.

It isn't hard to detect the pattern here. These commissioners have collectively decided that enough was enough. They were deathly sick of the black mark that so many of their players were leaving on their respective sports - and were determined to see the code-of-conduct pendulum swing back from the current extreme into a more moderate middle position.

A cynic might also add that these commissioners were businessmen first and thus must surely fear that a backlash could come from their all-important backers - television networks and million-dollar sponsors - if they couldn't do a better job of reining in their athletes, the so-called ambassadors of their sports.

Not only is their behaviour wrong it's also bad for business. That's a double whammy all the bad boys playing a child's game for big dollars better get their heads around and soon. These suspensions are a warning shot across the bow of the industry — and the penalties are only going to get stricter from here on in.

My mother is my real role model

2007-09-04T16:50:00.001-04:00

I’ve always believed God places certain people in your life at certain times. I have been blessed with a great number of influential people throughout my life - from high school friends who let me be myself to mentors who have helped me make the most of myself. Throughout, there has been one person who has always been in my life. My mother.

Without insufficiently stating her impact and influence on the person I am and aspire to become, I must say my mother is the only role model I’ve ever had.

Often times, black youths, or for that matter any youths in disadvantaged or low-income environments, lack true role models. Instead, these children and young adults idolize professional athletes, entertainers and musicians. Not to denigrate these individuals and their contributions in the community, particularly in black and inner-city communities, but I was blessed with a truly one-of-a-kind role model in my own home and my life each and everyday.

My mother was always there to make sure her three boys would grow to become three successful men. As the youngest of that trio, I am proud to let her know I whole-heartedly believe she couldn’t have done a better job.

And this is not to say she is the only single mother of three (boys, especially). Nor is she the only woman to raise herself and her family out of welfare. However, my mother is the only mother I’ve ever had and has doubled as the most dedicated and hardworking person I have ever known.

Now I bring this up not to profile my mother, the setbacks she overcame, and the feats she accomplished, but more so to share the great many lessons she taught me. Among them are prioritizing, patience, and planning. Above all, these three Ps are the most important lessons my mother shared with me.

By priorities, I’m referring to the ability to set them and follow through with them. The significance of this life lesson cannot be understated. While my father was absent and halfway across the country doing God knows what, my mother made sure my brothers and I were being provided for. She went on the occasional date, had fun and made sure to spend time with friends, but mostly, my mom was either working overtime, putting a meal on the dinner table or shopping for bargains at the local Goodwill or K-Mart.

From this, I learned that only through efficient and careful prioritizing can one achieve anything worth being proud of.

Not because my mother pushed me, but because she encouraged me was I able to make education a priority in my life from a young age. Though no one in my family had a college degree, I always knew I’d graduate from a top-tier university. It was my priority.

Ten years after jotting down The University of Texas at Austin as one of my top-tier college prospects, albeit as a 7th grader, I was able to walk across the stage as a graduate of that same institution. With my mother watching, eyes watering and gleaming all at once.

Today, I continue setting goals and prioritizing my life to achieve them, but like prioritizing, one cannot achieve anything without a great amount of patience. Thankfully, again, I learned from the best.

For nearly 25 years, my mother strived to purchase her own home. She went from minimum wage to her currently salary, all the while with the same goal in mind. As many single mothers can attest to, she spent many of those years repairing credit mishaps of younger years passed and getting income stability. Still, many more of those years were spent waiting. Being patient.

Finally, at the youthful age of 45, the mother of three adult sons, has accomplished her greatest feat. She became a homeowner.

Following in the footsteps of my mother, I have learned the importance of being patient. Just recently, I contemplated a move back to Austin after just 12 months away before convincing myself to stay put in D.C. where, perhaps, bigger things await. If I only wait and find out. So here I am, being patient.

Will I be rewarded for my patience? So far all evidence points to yes. However, all the prioritizing and patience in the world can’t offset no or insufficient planning.

More times than I care to remember, I’ve seen capable members of the black community fail because of poor planning. The ambition, drive and talent may all be there, but the planning is weak. Where Tiger Woods had his father Earl to help him master his skills and reach his lofty goals, many other young men in the black community live without fathers to usher them from ambition to accomplishment. And many young black women lack the know-how to avoid the social ills that force them into all-too-familiar positions as child bearers instead of college students.

I, too, missed many of the lessons and comforts availed to those with fathers, but my mother never let me think I’d achieve anything without planning. Whether it was how I’d spend my grass-cutting money on or what I’d do with my after-school time, I did my best to keep my mother’s practices in mind.

Setting priorities, being patient and making a plan. My mother never said those words precisely, but she put them in practice every single day. As I continue growing and goal-setting, the examples and lessons she provided continue to serve as my life’s compass.

Creating a path, providing life lessons, and leading by example are the true qualities of a role model. We do not all have mothers and fathers. Some of us may even go without either. Still, as I mentioned earlier, God finds a way to put someone in your life who may be able to fill this role.

I’m sure a great many of you, like myself, owe your lives to your role models.

(As written for Diatribes by Joah on March 8, 2007)

Book Progress Report

2007-08-28T12:21:00.000-04:00

Friends and Colleagues (and Strangers),

Just writing in to tell you that the book is coming along nicely. Both Louis and I continue to be fully motivated and excited about what this book is becoming, slowly but surely. We truly believe this is a book that will help inspire young African Americans and it will move the needle forward for encouraging young students to pursue careers in the wide range of industries and avenues available to them, regardless of what popular culture and convention limits them to.

So far, Louis and I have interviewed esteemed professors, respected business executives, successful entrepreneurs, award-winning consultants and organization leaders. We look forward to continuing our progress and meeting other 'Real Role Models' in the process. Please feel free to email me and suggest any individuals you believe fit the profile of a real African-American role model.

Please continue to check in to the blog where I'll keep you updated and informed on what has inspired Louis and I to write this book.

Best,

Joah

P.S. Please keep the blog comments coming.

Parents are still the real heroes

2007-08-21T11:48:00.001-04:00

Poll: Young People's Heroes Are Parents

Sunday August 19, 2007 7:31 PM

By ALAN FRAM and TREVOR TOMPSON

Associated Press Writers

WASHINGTON (AP) - When it comes to those they most admire, young people do not look chiefly to the worlds of music, today's wars or history. Instead, they turn to their own families.

Asked to name their heroes, young Americans surveyed by The Associated Press and MTV make their parents the collective top pick. Twenty-nine percent choose their mothers, 21 percent name their fathers and 16 percent pick their parents without specifying which one. Allowed to choose as many heroes as they'd like, nearly half mention at least one of their folks.

``They're really hard workers, and they've done everything in their power to make sure my siblings and I have everything we've needed,'' said Stacy Runne, 21, of New Bern, N.C., now a student at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, N.J. ``They're just good people.''

Next in line as the poll's top heroes: 11 percent choose friends, 10 percent God, 8 percent their grandmother, 7 percent their brother and 5 percent a teacher or professor.

Jacquelynne Eccles, a University of Michigan psychology professor who has studied young people, says surveys she has helped conduct since 1980 have consistently found that parents are youths' most oft-named heroes.

``They're gradually moving out of the family, which is what they should be doing, but that doesn't mean that they feel less close to their family,'' Eccles said. ``Parents often take it personally and believe it's a rejection of the family, when in fact it's really a broadening out.''

Also getting frequent mentions as heroes are members of the U.S. military, firefighters and police officers, as well as boyfriends, sisters, grandfathers and coaches. Two percent choose themselves.

Martin Luther King is named by 4 percent, making the late civil rights leader the most frequently mentioned historical figure or celebrity. Winning 1 percent each are former Vice President Al Gore, television personality Oprah Winfrey, President Bush, golfer Tiger Woods, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and the late Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter.

For his heroes, Daniel Voss, 16, of Atkins, Iowa, included Jesus Christ, author J.K. Rowling, Thomas Jefferson and retired basketball star David Robinson.

``All those people have been very successful in their fields, but will engage in helping their communities and not letting fame get to their heads,'' Voss said.

Even comic book characters make the grade, with Superman and Spiderman each named by 1 percent and Batman close behind.

``Spiderman fights for the innocent, fights for justice and has moral quandaries,'' said Rick Montalvo, 14, soon to be a high school freshman in Chicago. ``He reflects the feelings we as human beings have ourselves.''

---

The AP-MTV poll was conducted by Knowledge Networks Inc. from April 16 to 23, and involved online interviews with 1,280 people aged 13 to 24. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

Role Model? Not so much.

2007-08-20T15:30:00.001-04:00

Too much, too fast for Michael Vick

By Jeffri Chadiha
ESPN.com
(Archive)

Updated: August 20, 2007, 2:58 PM ET

There really isn't much left to say about Michael Vick now that he has accepted a plea agreement in the wake of his indictment on federal dogfighting charges. It will be interesting to see how harshly he is punished for his transgressions. It also will be intriguing to see if Vick has any semblance of an NFL career left once he finishes serving time in prison. What I'm wondering today, however, is if the next athlete with superstardom foisted upon them can learn anything from what happened to the Atlanta Falcons' two-time Pro Bowler.

The one aspect of Vick's story that hasn't received nearly enough attention is his celebrity. The man simply became too big too quickly, and that is one reason that he is in his current predicament. Keep in mind that this isn't just about money, posses and extremely poor decision-making. It's about a big-time talent with way too much hype and an inability to realize the responsibility that comes with that combination.

I have no interest in making excuses for Vick. He broke the law; he pays the price. But there's also a part of me that believes he would've been better off if so many people hadn't fallen in love with his potential. Even when the Atlanta Falcons handed him a 10-year, $130 million contract in December 2004, that money was based as much on his value as a marketing megastar as it was on his mesmerizing ability. That also happened to be the first serious mistake Falcons owner Arthur Blank made: He believed his star was mature enough to deliver on that kind of promise.

As it turned out, that commitment only gave Vick more reason to carry himself like an untouchable icon. He clearly had an air of invincibility because so many of his problems were downright silly. Whether he was drawing unneeded attention to himself for carrying a suspicious water bottle through Miami Airport or hanging out with sketchy friends who had the potential to ruin his name, he handled himself as if trouble was something he could elude with a timely juke and his trademark speed. Let's face it: The dogfighting charges were just one more example of how Vick believed he could do practically anything he wanted.

This situation can serve to educate other athletes -- and owners -- because there is an obvious danger in validating a player too early in their career. Some pro athletes can handle the responsibility of carrying themselves as professionals once they have financial security and instant celebrity. However, others allow that easy money and the accompanying fame to cloud their decision-making and jeopardize their opportunities. Vick clearly fell into the latter category.

Now it's apparent that more pro football players will have to learn how to package themselves as their careers take off. Though the NFL constantly tries to market teams over individuals, there is simply a greater likelihood that more young stars will draw more hype before their talent justifies it. Look at New Orleans Saints running back Reggie Bush. Even though he faced a scandal at the start of his career -- there were allegations that his family received improper benefits from sports marketers while he was at USC -- he's handled his fame well.

Bush managed to keep that controversy from damaging his reputation because he was prepared to handle the hype that surrounded him.

"Reggie was caught up in a scandal of his own, but he was a very polished young man," said David Carter, who serves as executive director of the USC Sports Business Institute. "You could see it from the way he handled himself in New Orleans and in the media. Unfortunately, the way we judge athletes sometimes is by how well they can manage controversy."

Carter already sees a trend: More athletes will look to develop the polish of a Bush while avoiding the ignorance of Vick. Carter said today's athletes must be more concerned with packaging themselves so they can better handle the trappings that come with fame.

"You see kids picking schools now based on what program can best prepare them for being in the limelight," Carter said. "In fact, it's pretty evident now that athletes don't start packaging themselves and building their brands on draft day anymore. It starts when they sign their letters of intent."

Of course, there are plenty of examples of current stars who can handle their fame, including quarterbacks Peyton Manning of the Colts, Donovan McNabb of the Eagles and Tom Brady of the Patriots. But there are very few men who have had to deal with what Vick created. Unlike those other three players, Vick wasn't a polished player when he became the wealthiest man in football. He was an exceptionally gifted athlete who benefited greatly from the coddling supplied by an organization unwilling to address his flaws until it was too late.

See, what players like Manning, Brady and McNabb understand is that the bigger you become, the more cautious you must be. This lesson clearly never reached Vick and it cost him. Now that he's facing prison time, we can only wonder if he can fathom why his life tumbled out of control. The sad thing is that I doubt he can even apply that type of perspective at such a disturbing time.

But there will come a day when he'll try to make sense of this and I'd imagine his thoughts will drift to some of the points made here. The bottom line is that his career could have been different if he hadn't been given so much so soon. Vick is paying a hefty price for that now. Let's hope that somebody else with his kind of potential can learn something from his story.

Jeffri Chadiha is a senior writer for ESPN.com.

Politicians or Rappers? Which are better role models?

2007-08-20T09:26:00.000-04:00

First it was a New Zealand mayoral candidate, Len Brown, trying to stop Ice Cube from performing in the country because, "We don't need a gangsta rapper working against the future interests of our young. It's time to freeze out the Ice Cube. We don't want him. We don't need him. He is not welcome here." The Ice Cube concert went on as scheduled.

Then it was a Baltimore City Council candidate, Donald Dewar III, trying to stop a Lil' Wayne and Juelz Santana concert from happening in that city because, "with all the crime and drugs, having anything like that that promotes it seems inappropriate." The concert went on as scheduled.

Thankfully, on both occasions both the law - contractually and free speech - prevailed. My concern is that the rappers (and their attorneys) seem to understand the law more than the men seeking official positions of public service. This is problematic.

We saw the same thing in the early '90s and in recent years with continued attacks on free speech. It amazes me how often politicians look, not to parents and teachers and government and big business, for answers to all of our societal problems, be it Columbine or Don Imus' rant, by attacking popular music.

It's popular for a reason. Perhaps the suburban kid in Montgomery County, Maryland, can't relate to what Lil' Wayne is rapping about, but I'm sure there's a kid in Baltimore that can. That's a reality. Rap music, or heavy metal for that reason, doesn't glamorize criminal lifestyles and street life anymore than movies like Scarface or the upcoming Denzel-Crowe flick, American Gangster. Why don't these politicians attack the movie stars?

Anyway, what I'm really trying to say is that these politicians, especially the aspiring ones, should think about why they really want to run for office. Is it to find something and someone to blame for problems in the community or is it to fix the problems in the community?

Lyrics aside, Ice Cube, Lil' Wayne, and Juelz Santana are making an honest living - just like any other musician - when they otherwise might be on the street truly hurting the community.

By pulling themselves up from nothing to having millions of fans, many of whom will be inspired - not necessarily by their lyrics, but by their accomplishments - I don't think it's a far stretch to say evidence indicates these rappers may be just as much worthy of role model consideration as these aspiring politicians who don't know the law.

Recess: Kindergarten to Capitol Hill

2007-08-16T17:27:00.000-04:00

Recess is such a great concept. Most of us think of kindergarten or elementary school when we were allotted an hour or so a day, in between studies, to be kids. Well you're in luck if you were ever the kid who said your favorite part of the school day was recess.

As I walk around Washington, D.C. this month, I can't help but notice how much less traffic there is, on the sidewalks, on the Metro and on the roads. You know why? Because Congress, and just about everyone in D.C. that has a job that is closely linked to Capitol Hill, goes on vacation or leaves D.C. during the month. It's kind of like the American version of what the Greeks do every August.

I'm not sure if Sen. Barack Obama of Chicago or Rep. John Lewis of Atlanta are out playing in sandboxes or jumping rope, but you can be sure they're enjoying their time away from Washington. Washington is one of those cities where if you want to "be somebody" you have to "go, go, go" all the time, nonstop. Very much like Wall Street in New York.

That said, if you're looking for a role model that enjoys recess just as much as you do, look no further than Congress, where even the most-tenured public officials and staffers cherish their breaks. Only we're not talking about 2+2=4 and ABCs, but the U.S. Constitution and tax policy.

Untold tales of achievement

2007-08-09T18:34:00.000-04:00

Commentary

Untold tales of achievement

Too many African Americans have been left out of history books. Their deeds could be examples.

By Claude Lewis

Too bad African Americans are so often judged by their weakest representatives. It's especially tragic because the history of Americans of African descent is a fabulous one, steeped in stunning achievement.

You wouldn't know that from the way American culture represents American history. It is a travesty and a tragedy that African American successes largely have been left out of history books, while their failures have been prominently displayed on the nightly news and in bold headlines.

Undeniably, many young black males contribute to the grim statistics. Too many black men are associated with crime, drug trafficking, shootings and other antisocial behavior. But in spite of all the bad press, and no matter what the people who write history books and run the media want to write, African Americans have a long history of making a difference, a good difference.

The history of their accomplishments has too often been hidden, untold, or ignored. Often, people speak of black history as "the other side of the story," but no, it's not. It's part of The Story, the story of all of us. To speak of black history as somehow "alternative" is to insult achievers and innovators of all colors.

My bet is that the only aspect of black achievement most Americans know about is the sports-and-entertainment part. But in fact there is scarcely a discipline in America at which blacks have not excelled.

The black legacy in sports and entertainment is, of course, justly celebrated. From Jackie Robinson to Jim Brown to LeBron James, despite resistance, despite controversy, blacks have excelled. We hardly have to list the greats in each sport, they are so well-known.

In all the major sports, only the collusion of white owners and players kept blacks from competing and achieving. That includes boxing (Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Muhammad Ali and George Foreman) and, more recently, the once-white enclaves of tennis (Serena and Venus Williams) and golf (Tiger Woods).

The world of music and dance is crowded with names like Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughn, Diana Ross, B.B. King, Sammy Davis Jr., Jennifer Hudson, and countless others.

But let's get beyond the obvious. The list of black inventions is nothing short of astonishing, particularly when posed against the black American experience, which has been shaped, in part, by a steady stream of deliberate disadvantage. Somehow, millions of blacks managed to succeed in spite of all that.

Blacks quietly excelled - one almost wants to write "quietly," but it wasn't quiet, it was simply not acknowledged - in the sciences, architecture, inventions, art, and many other fields.

Garrett A. Morgan created many indispensable devices, including a type of traffic signal and a type of hooded respirator similar to the gas masks used by firefighters and rescue teams like those who arrived at ground zero after the 9/11 catastrophe.

Elijah McCoy was a prolific inventor who obtained more than 50 patents. He is joined by Granville T. Woods, known as the "Black Edison." He was among those who developed the "third rail" used in the world's electric railroads. He held more than 60 patents; after his death in 1910, AT&T, General Electric and Westinghouse Brakes purchased the rights to many of his discoveries.

Jan Matzeliger was to shoes what Henry Ford was to cars. Matzeliger discovered a method of mass-producing shoes. His lasting machine made it possible to create footwear for people around the world.

Daniel Hale Williams performed one of the earliest recorded open-heart surgeries July 9, 1893. Work such as his has, in years since, helped save millions of lives. Solomon Fuller was a pioneering neuropathologist and psychiatrist who improved the lives of many suffering from dementia or Alzheimer's disease. Samuel L. Kountz was a pioneer in medicine who specialized in kidney transplants.

I cite the achievements in science just to make a point, but I could cite long lists in a lot of fields. Do you like ice cream? How about letting yourself speculate that an American of African descent helped invent it? How about Augustus Jackson, an African American often mentioned among the possible inventors of that frozen confection?

The simple point is that all people really need is opportunity. Once the doors open for them, they can excel, and it has nothing to do with color.

Claude Lewis (clewis97@ptd.net) is a longtime Philadelphia journalist.

Why America May Never Fall in Love With Soccer

2007-08-08T11:30:00.000-04:00

David Beckham comes to America to help make soccer the "next big thing", but then something like this happens to one of our country's best soccer players while in a country that supposedly loves its soccer. Is this how they treat the players for the away team in Montenegro? Europe?

Updated: Aug. 8, 2007

UEFA will look into reports of 'monkey' chants

Associated Press

NYON, Switzerland -- European soccer's governing body is looking into reports of alleged racist taunting of American midfielder DaMarcus Beasley by fans in Montenegro during a Champions League qualifier.

The taunts occurred during Tuesday night's game, when he scored his first goal for Glasgow Rangers in a 1-0 victory over FK Zeta in Bijelo Polje, Montenegro. A small section of fans made "monkey chants'' aimed at Beasley and teammate Jean-Claude Darcheville, according to Rangers' Web site.

"We are aware of the case, and now we will first wait for several reports to come in,'' Robert Faulkner, a spokesman for the Union of European Football Associations, said Wednesday.

UEFA will examine reports from the referee, the match delegates and possibly the security officer.

"It happened to me a few years ago when PSV played Red Star in Belgrade, and I can't believe racist abuse is still in football,'' Beasley was quoted as saying on Rangers' Web site. "People can come to a match and jeer, but the racist thing just has to get out of football.''

The 25-year-old Beasley, who was loaned from PSV Eindhoven to Manchester City last season, joined Rangers in June.

Beasley, who made his competitive debut for Rangers in a Scottish Premier League game last weekend, scored on a 20-yard shot in the 81st minute. Rangers advanced 3-0 in the home-and-home, total-goals series and plays Red Star Belgrade or Estonia's Levadia Tallinn for a berth in the Champions League.

All-Stars Not All Good

2007-07-31T19:25:00.000-04:00

Michael Vick and Barry Bonds. If you've been paying any attention to the sports scene this summer, you're very familiar with those names. Vick, the Pro Bowl quarterback for the Atlanta Falcons, and Bonds, the Hall-of-Fame-worthy leftfielder for the San Francisco Giants, have completely different reasons for being in the headlines, but the end result for both could be similar.

Vick is accused of being involved in a dogfighting scheme. One of his associates has already pleaded guilty and indicated he will provide evidence that could prove detrimental to Vick, both legally and professionally since the NFL's new commissioner Roger Goodell is determined to rid the NFL of criminal activity after years of legal woes. Goodell has already banned Vick from training camp for the indictment alone (nevermind that if Vick is found not-guilty he could sue the league).

Bonds is accused of using steroids to expedite (if not make possible altogether) his rise to baseball's greatest home run hitter ever. Ahead of fellow African-American sports great Hank Aaron who received death threats throughout 1973 and '74 while he was approaching Babe Ruth's record of 713 home runs. It's also important to note that Bonds, too, has a friend who has already been positively linked to his accusation; thankfully for Bonds, his friend has remained tight-lipped in prison (and most believe will remain so for a friendly payoff upon his release).

Regardless of what the reasons for Vick's alleged dogfighting "hobby" and Bonds' alleged steroid use (and perjury under a federal grand jury), it's unfortunate that these men are now more known for their legal troubles than their contributions to their respective teams' success.

I don't have the information necessary to predict the outcomes of each sports figure's legal circumstances, but I can say with all certainty that these stars have already begun the downward spiral from the galaxy's mountaintop they were once lifted into for nothing more than athletic prowess.

Too often, we elevate sports figures and other celebrities to role model status without justification outside of their talent on the hardwood or Astroturf. It's troubling that we can't give the same prestige to doctors, engineers, police officers, and other professionals who use their talents and abilities to improve their lives and the lives of others.

That said, I'm not surprised when a star athlete is negatively influenced by hanger-on friends that don't have his best interest in mind? And I don't act surprised when a sports star finds a way to work around the system to improve his chances for success on the field?

Instead, I think Vick and Bonds are prime examples of why it's so important to recognize the real role models in the African-American community. The people that earn the "role model" designation because of their hard work and commitment to a profession without expecting signing bonuses, MVP awards, and endorsement deals.

There are plenty of examples of real role models in professional sports, but part of me thinks the jury has already found Vick and Bonds guilty of false impersonation.

Helping Build a Business and Save Lives

2007-07-30T12:35:00.000-04:00

Please help my friend Christien Oliver with his special business opportunity.

From Christien:

"I hope all is well. I am sending you this message because I dont have many friends and allies, and I need all 16 of them--including you--to help me with something big.

Two summers ago my Dad and I started an Internet company: H2bid.com. What does the website do? We're basically the Ikea of water and wastewater contract opportunities. When a city/country needs a new drainage system they request quotes; usually from the 5 vendors they know of. We provide 24/7 access to water and wastewater contract opportunities from around the world to make the process a little more competitive. When your car needs new brake pads you usually get as many estimates as you can. H2bid.com applies the same thinking to the water and wastewater industries.

Aside from not selling furniture, we're different from Ikea in one other major way -- we are not a billion (or even a million) dollar company.

We want to grow our business, and help address the world water crisis in the process. So we entered into the Forbes.com "Boost Your Business" contest, where the grand prize winner will receive a cash prize to invest in their company.

(For more information about the contest please visit: http://boost.perfectprize.com/)

Over 900 small businesses entered the contest. Two weeks ago we were named one of the 20 semi-finalists.

Here's where you come in. The finalists will be selected via online voting starting this Wednesday, August 1st and ending Friday, August 31st.

Forbes.com gets 15 million visitors a day, so I am not just asking you to vote. I am asking you to do four things:

1) Vote at Forbes.com for H2bid.com in the "Boost Your Business" Contest starting August 1 (Wednesday) early and often

2) Ask everyone you know to vote

3) Ask everyone you know to ask everyone they know to vote

AND

4) Get the word out...

(e.g., mention the contest in your blog, post a link on your myspace page, join the forthcoming facebook group, endorse us in the signature of your emails, give H2bid.com a "shout out" at karaoke night)

For more information about H2bid.com, please visit: http://h2bid.com/aboutus.aspx

Thanks in advance for your support. If you have any questions please contact me.

Regards,

--
Christien D. Oliver
H2bid.com, Executive Vice President
-Providing access to water and wastewater contract opportunities from around the world."

More Good Info from Don Cheadle

2007-07-29T18:49:00.000-04:00

Cheadle uses fame to promote social causes

Kemp Powers

Reuters

Thursday, July 26, 2007

CREDIT:

Don Cheadle accepts the Humanitarian Award at the 2007 BET Awards in Los Angeles, California June 26, 2007 file photo. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Don Cheadle has become known as one of Hollywood's more socially active stars since his Oscar-nominated role in 2004's "Hotel Rwanda."

His new film, "Talk to Me," about a 1960s radio disc jockey and social activist, debuted in major U.S. cities on July 13 and expands nationwide in coming weeks.

Cheadle, 42, spoke to Reuters about being an African American actor in Hollywood and using his stardom to promote social causes:

Q: Along with stars like George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, you're viewed as one of the more socially active actors in Hollywood. What drives you to be involved in social and charitable endeavors?

A: "I think I was pulled into the stream of activism after "Hotel Rwanda." We filmed the movie in South Africa, and a lot of the South African actors said they didn't know what was happening in Rwanda, which for all intents and purposes was up the street from them. And then Darfur (in Sudan) happened, and people found out about it, but still nothing was happening."

Q: So how did you end up involved?

A: "I went on a trip with several congressmen and women, Democrat and Republican, and saw with my own eyes what had happened. Talking with people, breaking bread with them, laughing and playing with their kids. Those manufactured walls between who we are melted away really fast. One of the few worthy ancillary benefits of fame and celebrity is to take the focus, when it's put on you, and throw it onto other things."

Q: It seems there are only a few African American actors who can get a film made including you. Is that accurate?

A: "There's probably 10 actors of any ethnicity who can really write their own ticket. And probably 8 of the 10 don't really feel that way about themselves. So I don't feel like I've made it but I know that I can get a movie greenlit at a certain budget."

Q: Do you feel that black actors of your stature have any kind of artistic obligation to do certain types of films?

A: "No. I would never presume to tell someone else what they need to be doing. It would be great to do a role where you got $19 million, or however many million dollars you need to help you coast through life. But in order to take care of all the things I need to take care of ... I'd have to make four or five movies a year, which starts to show diminishing returns. You're doing all of this for (your family), but you never get to see them because you're never there. I think a lot of that went into my decision to produce, because the five stages of an actor's career are real."

Q: What are those five stages?

A: "Who is Don Cheadle? Get me Don Cheadle. Get me a Don Cheadle type. Get me a young Don Cheadle. Who is Don Cheadle? By the time it gets back to the second "who is Don Cheadle?" I want to know enough about this business that I can continue to be a creative and hopefully productive, lucrative part of this business."

Q: With international box office becoming an increasing part of the Hollywood financial equation, are you worried that it will negatively affect black actors who, some say, cannot be relied upon to draw people to box offices overseas?

A: I don't necessarily believe that black films and black actors don't travel. There's sometimes a lack of (marketing) on those films. It can be a self-fulfilling prophecy if you don't spend 'Spidey' money on a movie like "Talk to Me" and then say "oh, it doesn't work." When I do international press, people approach me all the time and say "we love you in Europe, in Asia, in South America," and so on. There's definitely an audience there."

Hip-Hop History

2007-07-24T15:31:00.000-04:00

Hip hop culture has influenced American lifestyle since it was "introduced" in the mid-70s in New York. It has changed our music, our fashion, our vocabulary, our idea of success, and our way of life...especially for African-American children, myself included, growing up fully during the hip-hop explosion during the '80s, '90s and now '00s.

That said, I've written a lengthy, if not comprehensive, history of hip hop. Regardless of your liking or disliking of current rap music, this is a must-read if you don't know who DJ Kool Herc, Big Daddy Kane or Lupe Fiasco are.

A Hip-Hop History Lesson

DJ Kool Herc is considered the “pioneer of hip hop” because he brought the dancehall influences of his Jamaican childhood to Bronx, New York in the mid-1970s. As early as 1973, Herc would throw parking lot parties playing music with huge speakers in the backseat of his car. Eventually others caught on and by the late ‘70s and turn of the decade, Grandmaster Flash and The Sugarhill Gang, of “Rapper’s Delight” fame were notable hip hop artists in New York.

Based on the success of “Rapper’s Delight” and following Blondie’s “Rapture” and Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust”, hip hop was starting to catch mainstream attention. By this point in the early 1980s, hip hop was well established in New York and had expanded to the streets of Los Angeles. Break dancing, rapping, graffiti (and to a lesser degree beatboxing) were the major tenets of the hip hop culture at this time. Fashion followed suit with jumpsuits, Kangol hats, Shell top adidas, and other trends that have influenced fashion for years since.

Just around the time MTV and BET were working out their early-year kinks, hip hop was getting ready for primetime and a young entrepreneur and his Jewish friend were ready to capitalize on the opportunity. With the creation of Def Jam Records by Russell Simmons and producer Rick Rubin, Run-DMC quickly rose to pop fame. The group consisting of Joseph “Run” Simmons who was Russell’s younger brother, his best friend Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, and later the addition of DJ Jason Mizell, a.k.a. Jam Master Jay), released three albums from 1984 to 1986, including the smash hit album ‘Raisin’ Hell’ which featured the hit single and remix of Aerosmith’s “Walk this Way”. The album sold over 3 million copies and cemented hip hop’s place in popular music.

Further bolstering Def Jam’s success were the rise of hip hop’s first white rappers, a group called Beastie Boys. Their 1986 album “License to Ill” went five time platinum after being the first-ever hip hop album to go #1 on the Billboard chart and earned them a touring gig with Madonna before going on their own world tour with tracks like “Fight For Your Right to Party”.

Ladies Love Cool James, or LL Cool J, was another Def Jam artist to usher in hip hop to the mainstream. The young Queens native was Def Jam’s first official signing and he didn’t disappoint. His 1985 album ‘Radio’ launched a career with Def Jam that remains today, 12 albums later (his 13th album, tentatively titled ‘Exit 13’ will be out this winter). His female-geared tracks “I Need Love” and “’Round the Way Girl” weren’t popular amongst the hardcore rap fans who expected songs like “I’m Bad” and “Mama Said Knock You Out”, but rapping to the women has always been LL’s bread and butter.

By this time, another young rapper from Philadelphia called the Fresh Prince was bringing a pop feel to hip hop. Will Smith, who turned down the opportunity to attend M.I.T., and his DJ friend “Jazzy Jeff” Townes rose to fame on the pop strength of songs like “Girls Ain’t Nothin’ But Trouble” and “Parents Just Don’t Understand”, which also earned the duo a Grammy, making Will Smith the first Grammy-winning rap artist.

Grammys, platinum albums, and MTV’s Yo! MTV Raps and BET’s Rap City were popular programs showcase hip hop music. Just when it seemed hip hop was making the full transition into pop phenomenon, a few lyrical masters hit the scene to help make sure hip hop had some artistic stature as well.

KRS-One’s 1987 debut ‘Criminal Minded’ introduced the voice of the rapper commonly known as “the teacher” because of his education-themed songs. His song “South Bronx” was the battle track directed at Queens-natives Marley Marl and MC Shan who led the Juice Crew, which also featured notable rappers Big Daddy Kane, Biz Markie, and Kool G Rap. Kane would later go on to solo success in 1998 with his debut album ‘Long Live the Kane’ featuring the classic track “Ain’t No Half-Steppin”.

Also in the later ‘80s, Rakim’s ‘Paid in Full’ album with DJ Eric B. received critical acclaim when it was released that same year and many continue to consider Rakim to be the greatest rap lyricist of all time. Also in ’87, Public Enemy - led by politically-charged rapper Chuck D and hypeman Flavor Flav - released ‘Yo! The Bum Rush Show’ to critic’s delight.

However, the emergence of several artistically gifted and critically acclaimed hip hop artists was met with the full emergence of “gangsta rap” with a South Central Los Angeles group called N.W.A., short for Niggaz With Attitude. The combination of Easy-E, Dr. Dre, DJ Yella, MC Ren, D.O.C., Ice Cube, and Arabian Prince and Krazy Dee (both would leave before NWA’s peak) would go on to record ‘Straight Outta Compton’ which went three times platinum and introduced America to street-life and anger like never before.

Counter-balancing the anger-infused songs of groups like NWA were the hip hop party and melodic tracks by New York’s newest hip hop innovators, known as the Native Tongues crew. Led by the 1988 debut success of Long Island-based trio De La Soul (‘3 Feet High and Rising’) and the 1989 follow-up by another trio called A Tribe Called Quest (‘People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm’), hip hop had new voices. Queen Latifah also came out of this hip hop crew and her debut, ‘All Hail the Queen’, was commercially successful as well. The success of these artists coincided with the growing success of Source magazine, started by Harvard students David Mays and Jon Schecter in 1988. Source quickly became the go-to hip hop publication and it’s “5 Mic” designation certified an album as a classic. Many of the aforementioned albums by Run-DMC, LL Cool J, Beastie Boys, LL Cool J, Big Daddy Kane, Eric B. and Rakim, KRS-One, N.W.A. and both De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest earned this designation.

However, with the decline of New York-based rappers like Rakim, Kane, Run-DMC, and KRS-One, NWA jumpstarted the West Coast takeover of rap music. The only concern was that hip hop was left in New York and gangsta rap would become the new norm. By the early ‘90s, Ice Cube had launched a successful solo career, Dr. Dre finagled his way out of his contract with NWA and Easy E to move to Death Row Records and join newly-signed rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg.

With the commercial success of artists like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, West Coast rappers felt the need to continue showing America that rap music wasn’t all dance and gimmick. Just around this time, Ice Cube’s solo career was flourishing and rappers like Will Smith were crossing over into TV and film, landing Cube a role in the John Singleton 1991 film ‘Boyz in Da Hood’ which would jumpstart a new era in black cinematography by displaying ghetto life in places like Compton and Long Beach.

The following year, Dr. Dre’s masterpiece ‘Chronic’ hit stores and instantly became a rap classic with songs like “Nuthin’ But a G Thang” and “Let Me Ride” rising up the charts and helping the album sell millions of copies. In 1993, Snoop’s ‘Doggystyle’ nearly matched ‘Chronic’ with its album sales with chart-topping songs like “Gin and Juice”. The East Coast, especially New York, resented the high profile of West Coast rap and envied the millions they were seeing Dr. Dre, Snoop and Ice Cube making on a music form they felt they owned and built.

The East Coast retaliated with a slew of classic, critically if not all commercially successful, albums. From 1993 to 1996, several new New York artists gained notoriety for vivid street tales and a mixing the jazz-influenced style of Rakim with the syncopated flow of Big Daddy Kane. First it was Raekwon and Ghostface Killah, two members of the newly-formed Wu-Tang Clan, which featured nine rappers. With their 1993, debut ‘Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)’ Rae and Ghostface, along with Method Man, established lengthy careers in rap and influenced an entire generation of up-and-coming rappers.

Among those influenced were Jay-Z, a former student of Big Daddy Kane’s, Nas, a friend of A Tribe Called Quest’s frontman Q-Tip, Notorious B.I.G., who was signed to Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs’ Bad Boy label, Mobb Deep, also from Queens natives like Nas, and Busta Rhymes, who was a part of Leaders of the New School and featured on the A Tribe Called Quest party-track “Scenario”.

Immediately following the success of Wu-Tang, was the success of Nas who was seen as the “next great thing from New York”. With Rakim-like poetic delivery, Nas elevated any beat he rapped on, even when they were produced by the best producers of the time including Q-Tip, Heavy D, MC Serch, Pete Rock (“The World is Yours”) and DJ Premier. His debut, ‘Illmatic’, was an instant classic but failed to do well commercially. Mobb Deep’s ‘The Infamous’ album was also designated a classic album, with its hit song “Shook Ones Part II” which is long-considered the mid-90s rap anthem.

Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace., started rapping just years earlier, and met Sean Combs, a young executive from Uptown Records (which had success with R&B acts such as Mary J. Blige) was looking for a young talent to start a new label on his own. Combs convinced B.I.G. to quit the drug game just in time to capitalize on his talents and record ‘Ready to Die’, which went on to multi-platinum and “5 Mic” status with hits like “Big Poppa” and “One More Chance”. Many considered B.I.G. the best rapper ever from that point on. Last of this New York group was the energetic Busta Rhymes whose “Woo-Hah! Got You All in Check” rose up the charts in 1996 and launched a still-going career of chart success.

Although some regional groups such as Houston-based Geto Boys, Bay Area rapper E-40 and Miami-based 2 Live Crew gained popularity amongst rap fans, it wasn’t the early-to-mid ‘90s that rap fully began spreading its tentacles beyond the Coasts. In 1994, Chicago’s Common experienced both success and resentment (from Ice Cube) for his single “I Used to Love Her (H.I.P.H.O.P.)” which talks about the history of hip hop and its artistic and creative downfall due to gangsta rap. Also in 1994, Outkast’s debut ‘Southernplayalisticadillacmusik” was dropped and earned recognition from true hip hop fans around the country, although it wasn’t until their follow-up ‘ATLiens’ dropped in ’96 that the group started getting wider national attention. Along with Jermaine Dupri, who produced Kriss Kross and Da Brat, Outkast - backed by Organized Noise and Goodie Mob - helped put Atlanta on the music map.

With hip hop’s arms spreading through the budding success of rappers all around the country, the overall success and growth of the music form still came down to the traditional battle of East Coast vs. West Coast. Unfortunately, these battles materialized themselves into the voices and lyrics of two popular rappers: B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur, who had previously befriended the Brooklyn rapper.

Tupac had already experienced success from his first three studio albums ‘2Pacalypse Now’, ‘Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z’ and ‘Thug Life Volume 1’. Songs like “Brenda’s Got a Baby” and “I Get Around” demonstrated the contradictory themes that would highlight Tupac’s career. Also, Tupac was a budding actor, having starred in captivating roles in the 1992 film ‘Juice’ and the 1994 film ‘Above the Rim’. Tupac, however, still focused on his fast-rising rap career, at least until he was shot five times in 1994. After several legal run-ins, Tupac began serving a prison stint, and from jail his ‘Me Against the World’ album hit #1 on the Billboard chart. Fueled with conspiracy theories about his shooting, both in his head and in the media, and the continued star status of B.I.G. and Puff Daddy, Tupac was released from prison and joined Death Row Records where label owner Suge Knight was already made famous for hanging Vanilla Ice out of a balcony to force a pay-off for his “Ice Ice Baby” success.

With label owners Suge Knight and Puff Daddy taking jabs at each other, their respective rapper friends joined the fray. Tupac’s ‘All Eyez on Me’ and B.I.G.’s ‘Ready to Die’ took shots at each other’s credentials, consummating in an industry-wide East vs. West battle for rap music’s supremacy. The battle was short lived, but it survived long enough to lead to the shooting deaths of both Tupac (Sept. 7, 1996 in Las Vegas) and B.I.G. (March 9, 1997 in L.A.). Hip hop, from that point on officially died according to some critics, while others contend the music form had already been lost and rap music had formally taken over with the murders of two rap legends.

With hip hop music on the decline, highlighted by the breakup of A Tribe Called Quest, and the end of an era with West Coast rap, New York was back on top. Only this time, there were no guns involved in the battle for the throne. Instead, two friends - Jay-Z and DMX - put the music form on their backs and shared the load in the latter part of the ‘90s. Jay-Z’s 1998 “Hard Knock Life” and 1999 “Big Pimpin” were pop chart successes and DMX’s debut album ‘It’s Dark and Hell is Hot’ went on to sell four million copies on the strength of his single “Get at Me Dog”. The two would later co-headline the Hard Knock Life Tour, which was the first major rap tour since the Def Jam heyday in the late ‘80s.

While Jay-Z and DMX brought unique talents to the lyrical platform, it was their beatmakers - lead by Timbaland, Swizz Beats - who followed Dr. Dre and legendary Nas and Notorious B.I.G.-producer DJ Premier by raising the profile of the producer in making a hit album. Perhaps, more than anyone else, Puff Daddy benefited from this new transition since he was credited with having produced albums for dozens of artists even when it was not him, but one of his dozen or so “hit makers” who actually did the work. Puff Daddy’s ‘No Way Out’ album made the most of this producer-friendly environment, along with the death of his best friend, B.I.G.

Jay-Z and DMX were the kings of rap, but they weren’t alone at the top of the charts. New Orleans crashed the coastal party with the success of Juvenile ‘400 Degreez’ and Cash Money group Hot Boyz, which featured a young Lil’ Wayne who has since gone on to a mildly-successful solo career. Master P’s No Limit Records were also part of the onslaught of New Orleans-based hit records. And back in New York, the Latin rap scene exploded with the success of Fat Joe protégé Big Pun’s debut ‘Capital Punishment’.

Not to be forgotten, Dr. Dre returned to the production throne with his third album ‘Chronic 2001’ which featured his renewed collaboration with Snoop Dogg and more work from his most recent chart-topping artists protégé, Emimen. A white rapper from Detroit, Eminem stormed the scene with his debut ‘The Slim Shady LP’ taking jabs at Britney Spears, N*Sync and other pop acts of the day. “My Name Is” quickly rose up the charts of Total Request Live, the latest video show on MTV that helped push rap even further into the mainstream.

Following the continued success of Dr. Dre, several producers continued raising their profiles. The 2000s can be considered the “producer era” in rap music history with Timbaland, Swizz Beats, Pharrell and the Neptunes, Lil' Jon, and Kanye West all dropping solo albums after years of success as producers for popular rappers including Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, St. Louis-based Nelly and Atlanta-based Ludacris, who both became chart-topping regulars in the decade with their respective 2000 debuts, ‘Country Grammar’ and ‘Southern Hospitality’.

Another development of the early 2000s was the rapper-singer collaboration, which is not new to hip hop (LL Cool J did a song with Boyz II Men in the mid-90s), but greatly expanded in recent years. Ja Rule rose to fame on the strength of his songs with singers Jennifer Lopez, Ashanti and Christina Milian. His fancy for rapper-singer collaborations also drew the ire of fans and other rappers, including the up-and-coming rapper 50 Cent, who was shot nine times and nearly died in 2000. Regardless, rap-sung collaborations have grown to the point of requiring the Grammys create a new award category, and nearly every rap album features a song of this sort. Jay-Z’s relationship with Beyonce is but an example of the growing relationship between rap and R&B music.

With producers having little to no obligation to produce for one particular artist, the 2000s have seen the enhanced role of collaboration and fostering of “camps” of rapper friends. As for the collaboration, this is most notable with production albums by the likes of Atlanta’s Lil’ Jon, Virginia natives the Neptunes led by Pharrell, and Timbaland (also from Virginia) whom have all showcased their production skills on albums featuring all the popular rappers of the last decade. The “camps” concept is evident with the launching of rap’s current stars, 50 Cent, Kanye West, and T.I.

50 Cent, discovered by Run-DMC’s Jam Master Jay, which is a strange circle-of-life type of story when one considers 50’s near-death experience in 2000 mirroring Tupac’s story and Jay’s 2002 death which came just months before 50’s debut album ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’ went on to sell over 10 million copies in 2003 through Dr. Dre and Eminem’s joint-venture to sign the Queens rapper and create an offshoot label, G-Unit Records. The Game, Young Buck, and Lloyd Banks are other artists whom have experienced success while signed to G-Unit. The Game has since left G-Unit after the multi-platinum success of his 2005 debut ‘The Documentary’ led to a feud between himself and 50; the departure is discussed in “Doctor’s Advocate” on his 2006 follow-up of the same name.

Chicago-based producer Kanye, influenced by the Native Tongues crew and New York producers like DJ Premier, was able to raise his profile by aligning himself with Jay-Z, and hip hop acts such as fellow Chicago native Common, whom he would later help to gain his first major taste of commercial success with ‘Be’ in 2005. Singer-songwriter John Legend of “Ordinary People” Grammy-fame has also joined Common on Kanye’s label, G.O.O.D. Music, while Kanye himself remains on Jay-Z’s Rocafella Records. Recently, Pharrell, Kanye, and fellow Chicagoan Lupe Fiasco, whose 2006 ‘Food & Liquor’ won over critics, if not millions of fans, have joined to form a group that will feature their collaborative efforts.

In closing, the ‘80s saw the introduction of hip hop to the nation, the ‘90s saw the expansion of hip hop’s step-brother rap, and the 2000s have been about the enhanced role of the rapper-executive, regional allegiance (and collaboration) and the importance of the producer. Hip hop and rap are permanently married, but one can only hope they are the type of couple that grows more similar with each passing year. There are plenty of skeptics.

Noteworthy events of the still-unfinished decade include the battle and reconciliation of Jay-Z and Nas, Jay-Z’s ascension to CEO of Def Jam Records, a aforementioned battle between 50 Cent and The Game, the continued success of Atlanta, and other Southern rappers, and the “scratch my back” collaborative environment of rap and R&B these days.

Perhaps intentionally I saved my mention of Atlanta-rapper T.I. for last because his career demonstrates the current trend and trajectory of rap music. He started out on the mixtape circuit rapping tales of drug trade and life on the streets that also made 50 Cent popular in the early part of the decade, then earned himself a label deal only to end up in jail during its peak (‘Trap Musik’) much like Tupac before him.

After his release from jail, T.I. quickly aligned himself with the top producers, rappers, and singers of the day on his platinum albums ‘Urban Legend’ and ‘King’ which featured The Neptunes, Mannie Fresh, Just Blaze, Nelly, and Jamie Foxx. He had a notable battle with Houston rapper Lil’ Flip and has had lyrical run-ins with both Lil’ Wayne and Ludacris. He’s been featured on hit songs with Destiny’s Child (“Soldier”) and Justin Timberlake (“My Love”), won Grammys, started himself a movie career (‘ATL’ and the upcoming Denzel-Crowe flick ‘American Gangster’), and befriended Will Smith and Jay-Z along the way.

Now, you can see T.I. in Chevy commercials with Dale Earnhardt, Jr., his songs are featured on ESPN (“Big Things Poppin”), his friends are having success (Young Dro’s “Shoulder Lean”), and he’s earned himself the “King of the South” title he proudly boast on his records. It’s only proper that his latest album has a track called “Help is Coming” which states “I got the game on lock, it ain’t gonna stop/say hello to the man that could save hip hop”.

Not bad for a guy that grew up in the ghetto, tried to make it 'up' as a drug dealer, ended up serving prison time, and has since become one of the most notable artist today.

Hip hop and rap music, like the yin/yang concept of T.I.’s current chart-topping album T.I. vs. T.I.P., is constantly at odds with itself, but at the end of the day they still need each other.

Musically Gifted, Educationally Sound

2007-07-18T00:30:00.000-04:00

Earlier this evening, I went to a recital hosted by the National Endowment of the Arts and the Institute for Responsible Citizenship. The recital featured four talented young men, each with powerful and wondrous voices, and two of whom also played instruments.

Having played in the concert and marching band for several years in middle and high school, I fully appreciate the skill and practice that goes into preparing for a recital. When the National Endowment of the Arts are willing to put their stamp of approval on young talents, you should know you're in for a real treat.

Now, having previously discussed the important role of music - albeit in pop culture - I found it quite fitting that at this juncture I would find myself in the company of such gifted young musicians. It should go without saying that I am a big fan of music. Jazz, hip-hop, rock, symphony, you-name-it.

And this brings me to the oft-discussed notion that says learning about music can help a student perform better in school. I haven't read all the research and studies, but I'm in full agreement. Not simply because of the way certain musical scales and notes allow a student to better understand mathematics, or the way interpretations of song and poetry can enable a student to better grasp literature.

Instead, I think learning about music is simply a good way to connect to people. And by connecting to new people, one broadens his or her horizons.

At this particular event, just five blocks down the street from the White House and in the middle of a city filled with political aspirants, it was delighting to be in a room of musicians and the ensuing conversation about the role and impact of music in our lives.

It sure beats talking about politics everyday.

Connecting Good Causes With Good People

2007-07-12T16:31:00.000-04:00

Project links Black professionals, groups looking to diversify leadership ranks

Sara Murray
The Arizona Republic
Jul. 12, 2007 12:00 AM

Carol Henry sits on the boards of the Phoenix Birthing Project and the Arizona Humanities Council, but those opportunities may not have happened if she hadn't first joined another Valley group.

She became involved in the Black Board of Directors Project last year.

The Phoenix-based organization, which counts more than 700 members, connected her with groups looking to add African-Americans to their leadership ranks.

"I feel like I'm bringing a different set of perspectives, and it's not only because I'm an African-American," said Henry, a director of marketing for Harrah's Entertainment.

While important strides have been made since the group was founded in 1984, leaders say they still must work to increase the number of African-American professionals, particularly within the ranks of local companies and non-profits.

"We want people to be involved in the total fabric of the community . . . not just be involved in the Black community," founder Marvin Perry said.

"Whether you're talking about art and culture, we want to be there. Whether you're talking about law and jurisprudence, we want to be there."

Perry founded the project when he noticed that companies wanted to diversify their boards but didn't know where to find suitable candidates.

"The problem was they all knew the same four or five individuals," he said.

He has helped place members on boards of non-profit organizations, corporations, and municipal, county, state and federal operations.

It can be a challenge. African-Americans make up a mere 3.1 percent of Arizona's population.

In 2000 for example, they comprised 2.3 percent of Arizona's workforce in management, business and financial, according to that year's U.S. census, the most recent data available.

They made up 2.3 percent of health care professionals and 2.6 percent of science, engineering and computer professionals.

Theressa Jackson, a member for about 20 years, was recently appointed chair of the Phoenix Women's Commission.

"When I go and tell folks I'm a member of the Black Board of Directors, I can't say enough for what that has meant for people I've tried to mentor," she said. "It can give you that support you need when you're trying to make upward mobility kind of steps."

More to do

Perry said one of his goals is to see an African-American on the Arizona Board of Regents and the board that heads the Arizona Department of Transportation.

Additionally, few Black Board members serve on corporate boards.

While Perry did not have an exact count of members on corporate boards, he said it was minimal.

The Black Board of Directors has been criticized for not putting enough African-Americans on the boards of the largest companies in the Valley.

"Any person of color, if you're going to make a major change in the corporate structure, you need to be where you can affect their policy," said Wilbert Nelson, president of the Arizona state chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

"I don't see the companies and corporate structure actually recruiting African-Americans for paid board positions. When it comes to really putting them in a position to impact policy, there's still a way to go."

George Dean, president and CEO of the Greater Phoenix Urban league, said corporate boards are significant because they hold a sense of prestige and influence that is unmatched by public and non-profit boards.

"They're . . . the policy makers for corporations, and corporations drive the economic engine that serves the economy," he said.

The challenge with placing African-Americans on corporate boards is that most board members are former company CEOs, Perry said.

African-Americans are not very prevalent in that pool.

Arizona counted 17,230 people serving as chief executives in 2000, according to census data. Only 105 of those were African-American, about 0.6 percent.

Those affiliated with Black Board aren't shying away from the task.

"To affect change, you have to be on the inside," Jackson said. "We tried it on the outside perspective when we were doing the marches and things in the civil rights era,and that only took us so far."

Jackson said she was a student at Van Buren Elementary School, one of the seven original test schools in Topeka, Kan., following the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling.

"It may be a slower process, but it took us all these years to get where we are, so it's not like we're going to be able to shoot a cannon and change things overnight," she said.

New Album, New Inspiration

2007-07-09T14:47:00.000-04:00

We all know who Cliff Huxtable is, but did you know Clifford Harris is the name of a "gangsta rapper"? Atlanta-based rapper T.I. a.k.a. Clifford "Tip" Harris recently released his fifth studio album, T.I. vs. T.I.P. For the last five days, I've done nothing but listen to this album and write. Music is a major source of inspiration for me.

Some may wonder how a rap album can inspire me to write, especially when I'm working on a book that sets out to inspire African-American youths to pursue careers outside of the glam and fame they see on TV (and music videos). Let me say this: T.I. is more inspiring to me than the Huxtables.

Now don't get me wrong, T.I. was a drug dealer for many years before he found fame as a rapper and now actor (he starred in last year's ATL). However, what his story - and his predecessor Jay-Z's story - demonstrates is that opportunities are there to be had by historically and socio-economically disadvantaged youths.

Where the Huxtables and their stories were fictional (although perhaps based on happenings in real, affluent African-American households), T.I.'s story is very real. This is not to say that his lyrics aren't controversial nor are they worthy of a Pulitzer, but I don't think I'm the only under-25 African-American male who looks at T.I. and sees progress. And inspiration.

He rose from the streets through crime, but has now turned his focus to (legal) fields that utilize all of his talents. He's a highly-skilled rapper (been called "Jay-Z of the South"), a budding actor (next appears in American Gangster with Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe), a businessman (he is co-CEO of his label, Grand Hustle, and owns a real estate company), philanthropist (has helped rebuild dilapidated homes in his hometown), and pitchman (Chevy ads with NASCAR star Dale Earnhardt, Jr.).

T.I.'s story isn't quite Oprah Winfrey's story, but you can believe there are thousands - if not hundreds of thousands - of young black students across the country who connect more with his adolescent experiences. Just look at his Billboard ranking come Wednesday vs. Oprah's ratings (and who her target audience is) this week.

And this brings me to his new album, T.I. vs. T.I.P. It's his fifth album, and each of his previous albums have brought him more money and fame, but this is his first concept album. The concept behind the album is that "T.I." is the camera-ready, professional side of his personality and "T.I.P." is the street-taught, hustler-inspired side of him.

The inspiration in this is simple: you can be both. Too often, young black children see rappers as "real" and professionals as "sellouts". T.I.'s album is about the inner-struggle between those two. In that, I realize the fine line Louis and I must achieve with this book in order to connect with our target audience, which is young African-American students.

These students, especially those in inner-cities and impoverished areas, know more about T.I.'s experiences than those of the Huxtables. But through it all, we must showcase how people from T.I.'s neighborhood can succeed like people living like Cliff and Claire.

T.I. is still struggling to toe that line, but I am inspired by his attempt.

Michael Eric Dyson's new book on hip-hop

2007-07-06T14:15:00.001-04:00

Michael Eric Dyson's new book, Know What I Mean: Reflections on Hip-Hop, hit stores this week. Buy a copy. If his reputation as the "hip-hop intellectual" or subject matter "hip-hop" don't intrigue you enough. How about you read the book's foreword by the best rapper alive: Jay-Z.

INTRO by Jay-Z

Michael Eric Dyson came up in the tough streets of Detroit. He didn’t grow up with silver spoons at the family table. His table didn’t have fine china and his path from then to now wasn’t clear of trouble and strife. He came up through the church and the world of academia in spite of his experience. Dyson confronted the same disadvantages that afflicted the folks in his neighborhood and that held so many brothers and sisters back. But these circumstances opened his mind to learning, and to a sense of justice that has driven him to succeed. Dyson could have been someone’s older brother on my block when I was coming up in the Marcy projects in Bed-Stuy. He could have been the teacher at a Baltimore high school who showed Tupac that there was power in knowledge and your people’s history.

Although he wasn’t there for either of us then, his preaching and his intellectual actions are there today for countless brothers and sisters, regardless of skin color, and regardless of who they pray to at night. He is there telling everyone who was born into a life that seems destitute and destined for failure that there is a way out. He is there reminding us all not to let our situation be an excuse when it can be a resource. Just as important, he is telling all of those countless people whose minds are closed by bigotry or contempt that hip hop is American. Blackness is American. I am American.

At this point it might seem hollow to repeat what has been widely said about Michael Eric Dyson: this gifted man is the “hip hop intellectual,” a world-class scholar, and the most brilliant interpreter of hip hop culture we have. But plain and simple that is what he is. He has shown those doubters and critics that hip hop is a vital arts movement created by young working-class men and women of color. Yes, our rhymes can contain violence and hatred. Yes, our songs can detail the drug business and our choruses can bounce with lustful intent. However, those things did not spring from inferior imaginations or deficient morals; these things came from our lives. They came from America.

The folks from the suburbs and the private schools so concerned with putting warning labels on my records missed the point. They never stopped to worry about the realities in this country that spread poverty and racism and gun violence and hatred of women and drug use and unemployment. People can act like rappers spread these things, but that is not true. Our lives are not rotten or worthless just because that’s what people say about the real estate that we were raised on. In fact, our lives may be even more worthy of study because we succeeded despite the promises of failure seeping out from behind the peeling paint on the walls of every apartment in every project.

Dyson came up from the bottom and told those on top what was up. He turned a light on our situation in this country and then he threw down a rope to lift us out. He started out translating between “us” and “them” and now he’s helping put together a world where there is only “us.” How many folk out there can talk about pimping in terms laid out by Hegel? Or use Kant to explain the way that prison fashion moved from the cellblock to the city block? Dyson drops the names of philosophers and scholars as easily as he does the names of artists on the latest mixtape moving dance floors in the clubs. Michael Eric Dyson has taken modern urban life seriously and brought the tools of so-called legitimate society to bear on a place that too many dismissed as unworthy of attention. Just by mentioning these cats in the same breath he levels a playing field that has always been tilted. He tore down the last “whites only” sign in the university and let all of us rush in to hear what the ancient teachers and scientists had to say.

Dyson stands up for poor folks and for street culture when other African Americans treat us with the same disdain that white society used to have for all of us. He continues to show us what the past can teach us about our present. It’s one thing for young people to see rappers making appearances on TRL or to see their records fly up the charts. But it is another thing for a young boy from the hood to go into the library at his school and check out a book on why his culture matters. Quite literally, Dyson has written that book. Money comes and goes, but respect can last for generations. Neither the IRS nor the changing taste of the public can take away what Michael Eric Dyson has given to hip hop: respect and a better way to understand ourselves.

We need more from you, Mike

2007-07-03T10:06:00.000-04:00

LZ Granderson is one of my favorite sports columnist. Here's his latest offering on ESPN.com's Page 2.

I was walking down a busy Manhattan street the other day when I came across a large window display that caused me to do a double take.

It featured a dark-skinned brother promoting a new shoe for which a portion of its proceeds went to Project Red.

I paused because I thought the guy was Michael Jordan.

It wasn't.

The shoe was Converse, not Nike. But more importantly -- and more sadly -- I remembered that lending his face to something like Project Red, which addresses the AIDS epidemic in Africa, is not something Jordan is likely to do.

His Airness has always held a precarious place in my heart. My admiration for his passionate play is constantly at battle with my frustration for his apparent lack of passion for anything that doesn't benefit him.

When I think of the large cultural space he occupies -- even in retirement -- and the fact "Republicans buy sneakers too" remains his most memorable contribution to the political landscape, I am truly baffled that he can rest peacefully at night. I don't care if he's a Republican, Democrat or Libertarian. But while his iconic Nike labelmate, Lance Armstrong, has become synonymous with yellow wristbands and the cancer fight, MJ, who is far more influential, continues to steadfastly sidestep using his image for social change, even as it relates to issues of the global black community.

Silence about AIDS in Africa.

Silence during the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.

Silence in the fight against, well, just about anything.

Except slumping shoe sales.

Now some of you are thinking, "Haven't I read this criticism of Jordan before?" to which I say, "Yes, you probably have." Others are wondering, "Why does he have to do anything?" Let me answer that one too: He doesn't.

Nevertheless I bring this challenge up today because, one, the NBA is welcoming a new collection of young men with the potential to do great things, and two, I feel the black community needs a powerful voice such as Michael Jordan's now more than ever.

The U.S. Justice Department estimated six years ago that one in six black men were either in prison or ex-cons. Today the trend is approaching one in three. There are more black men in prison than there are in college, and those who are not in prison are having a significantly more difficult time finding employment than their white and Latino counterparts.

Growing up, people wanted to be like Mike, especially young black men. We shaved our heads, stuck our tongues out on the court and supported his apparel unconditionally. That's why three years into retirement he's still able to sell $250 shoes. Now that he's done playing, how about using those large hands to reach back as opposed to climbing up? How about some comparable reciprocity? I'm not suggesting coming out against the war in Iraq. But something as Q-rating safe as aggressively addressing the woes of inner-city education could go a long way to help the people who never hesitated to be there for him.

Before going any further, I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge that Jordan has done, and continues to do, a great deal of philanthropic work. I know that his mother, Deloris, is a tireless worker who has taken up such causes as helping to build a Boys and Girls Club in Chicago and providing aid to villages in Africa. I know these things because I looked it up. Of course finding the Jumpman logo took a lot less effort.

And that's why my love for Jordan is at odds with my disappointment. Hell, as far as I know, he might have been instrumental in getting Chuck Taylors involved with Project Red behind closed doors, seeing how Nike owns Converse. But the black community persevered through years of oppression by relying on the sacrifices of the nameless and the talents and resources of our mythical figures. We may not be facing the same civil rights obstacles that prompted Muhammad Ali and Harry Belafonte to speak out, but the community is in no less need of a visible rallying voice.

One with enough clout and respect that he could call up a Pacman Jones or Tank Johnson and tell him to stop acting like a fool. And maybe he has. I don't know. But what I do know is that 20 years ago we were not afraid to look after each other's children, share food, or, if need be, check each other for the sake of the community. But now that the fire hoses have been turned off, we've grown content to look after self. And that's what MJ appears to be doing -- looking after self. I don't know if he shares my political views, but black-on-black crime isn't just action. Sometimes it's inaction, and to paraphrase Dr. King, one day we're going to have to repent for it.

And I'm just as guilty as anyone else. Sometimes I feel so overwhelmed by the ills that plague our society in general, and my community specifically, I become paralyzed by the enormity of it all -- opting to send a faceless check to some organization rather than roll my sleeves up to fight a war that I'm not sure can be won.

Maybe that's why MJ, the man who hates to lose, is unwilling to get his name more involved. He knows "Jordan" can sell shoes. He's not sure "Jordan" can save the world. Or maybe Jordan just doesn't care as much as I, or perhaps many of you, had hoped. A disappointing possibility, for sure. It would be as if Superman spent his time pushing T-shirts with an "S" on them instead of saving lives.

When I spoke with a number of black athletes about philanthropy and the black community, they were reluctant to call MJ out. And really I wasn't looking for them to do so. The fact that no one could tell me anything about him that didn't have to do with Nike or basketball said it all.

"Jordan's still the most influential athlete in the world in my opinion, so yeah, whatever he does is going to draw a lot of attention," says New York Jets linebacker Jonathan Vilma. "I'm not disappointed he's not more visible in terms of causes and things like that because everybody has to decide what's best for them. I just try to focus on doing everything I feel I can do to help those less fortunate."

Josh Childress of the Atlanta Hawks agreed.

"True, he doesn't use his celebrity as much as he could but maybe he just wants to stay under the radar, who knows?" says Childress, who routinely works with underprivileged children. "Growing up, people did strive to be like Jordan, and yeah, if he did something really big to fight prostate cancer or something like that, a lot of guys would support him just because it's Mike."

Warrick Dunn, whose Home for the Holidays program is one of the most inspirational projects spearheaded by any athlete, says he finds being in a position to use his name to give back is an honor.

"Michael is the greatest athlete of our generation," says Dunn, the Atlanta Falcons running back. "I'm sure he's done a lot, and he could probably do more with his fame. But at the same time he's just one man and you have to ask, 'How much can one man do?' I mean, every professional athlete can do something to make the world better."

Like Tiki Barber, who one day strolled into the office of Newark Mayor Cory Booker and asked what he could do to help. It's that kind of gesture Booker says he focuses on, more than what others are not doing.

"I've always tried to live my life by the basic principle my parents taught me from the Bible," Booker says. "To he much is given, much is required.

"I cannot discount the inspirational power of just seeing Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods achieve athletic greatness and the positive effect it has on the black community. But while it's true we live in a free democracy, we have to understand this democracy was born out of incredible self-sacrifice. It wasn't even a generation ago that you saw the extreme sacrifices made by people whose names we don't even know. Now we're in a state of crisis, and black athletes can help change that. The call is out there, but I can't be frustrated by those who don't answer the call."

But I can.

In 2005, we cheered Kanye West for saying George Bush didn't care about black people after he bungled Katrina relief efforts. Yet less than two years later we're wondering whether New Orleans is going to have enough police to contain all the violence and ghettofabulousness for next year's NBA All-Star Game. With disconnects like that, who needs the KKK? We're eliminating ourselves from the equation, and it seems as if our elite are too busy to care. I now understand what Marvin Gaye meant when he said "It makes me wanna holler and throw up both my hands."

I wonder if Jordan is ready to holler yet.

And if so, why can't we hear him?

LZ Granderson is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine and host of the ESPN360 talk show "Game Night." He can be reached at l_granderson@yahoo.com.

Education through Refutation, Introducing Louis

2007-07-02T23:30:00.001-04:00

The great thing about having a co-author is not to have an extra person to write half the book, but to have someone to think with the other side of the book's brain. In other words, having a co-author ensures the book isn't written with only one side of the issue, topic or argument in mind. Friends and colleagues, the long-awaited arrival of Dr. Louis Harrison to this blog. Read on...

"The points you made are similar to those of (Bill) Cosby. While I don't disagree that African-American parents of kids who use this kind of language lie at the heart of this problem. It is often easy to point fingers at the cause of our problems, but this doesn't give rise to solutions.

Okay, so it's true that some kids have parents who are less than desirable (to put it lightly). These kids, through no fault of their own grow up in a less than desirable environment and can only function in ways and exhibit behaviors that they have experienced. If those of us who have made it out, or were fortunate to have never been in such an environment, simply disengage, these young people may never have an opportunity to realize that there is a better way to express themselves. If all they experience is deficient parenting, deficient schooling, and are perceived as deficient by the larger society, there is little chance for climbing out of a deficient and dysfunctional environment.

Let’s point the fingers in all directions, not just at parents. Let’s point at a society that will send its least prepared and least successful teachers to inner city schools upon which they spend the least money. Let’s point fingers at an entertainment industry that promotes and glorifies those who spew the negative language into African-American communities, while those who's rap lyrics promote positive messages are virtually ignored. Let's point fingers at a society that will immediately cheer on a successful African-American athlete while minimizing the accomplishments of African-American scholars, businessmen, attorneys, engineers, teachers, physicians, ...

Let's point the finger at us, middle-class African Americans who look upon poor African Americans with disdain when we ourselves are only a generation or two (or a paycheck or two) away from poverty. Let's point the finger at a society that operates as if racism no longer exists and points to African -merican athletes as evidence of equal access to the American dream. Let's point a finger at a society that tells young African-American kids that everything about them, their color, their language, their attire, their hairstyle, their music, their home environment, their values, their perspective on life,... it's all wrong, its all negative; and that they must assimilate (act white) to be acceptable.

Let's stop pointing fingers only at impotent parents and start reaching a hand to their children, even if they don't want your hand. Let's give these young people a chance to see that there is a better way to live, that there is hope if their dreams are given direction, that there are opportunities if they prepare themselves. I know this to be true because I am here.

Thank God you were raised in a positive environment. Others of us have not been so fortunate. Nothing personal, just my two cents."

-Louis Harrison, Ph.D.

Three points and two pennies

2007-07-02T21:21:00.000-04:00

Ebony magazine's current issue has a pretty bold cover (above). I haven't read the article completely, but I do know one of its lines read: "This whole thing started with three words. “Nappy-Headed Hos.'"

Now, my question is this? Did we really wait until 2007 and a guy named Don Imus to have a candid discussion about race, vernacular and "the culture of disrespect"? Why did we wait so long? Was it because it wasn't front-page news until Imus said it? Was it because Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton were on primetime news doing interviews? Was it because it was about the women's basketball team of Rutgers University? Was it because rappers like 50 Cent are famous for songs that include similar phrases?

I can't really answer those questions. All I can do is offer my two cents.

Personally, I think there are three problems with the topic that we're only just now beginning to be honest and frank about within the African-American community.

The first problem is parenting. Just as African-American parents should encourage their children to perform in the classroom (and their respective athletie or artistic endeavor), parents must encourage their children to surround themselves with good people. I have never used the n-word or the derogatory terms for females commonly stated in songs by rappers when addressing any individual, man or woman. The reason? Because I've never been arund anyone who would tolerate those types of words coming out of my mouth.

That said, parents must try to educate their children on the importance of being around good like-minded people. They must also practice what they preach. Just as you wouldn't want to put your child in a room filled with smoke, you shouldn't put your child in a room of foul-mouthed adults.

The second problem is about pop culture and the overly-emphasized role it has in the African-American community in particular. It is not uncommon for a young black student to recite the lines of rapper 50 Cent or know the best scoring move of Kobe Bryant, yet not know enough to make a passing grade in the classroom. There is nothing wrong with enjoying rap music or basketball. There is something wrong with not enjoying school enough to make it to the next grade.

Again, parents play an instrumental role in making sure children prioritize their lives. Educators, and administrators, must also understand the role of pop culture on these young students and find new, innovative ways to inspire students to seek the same wealth and professional success as the people they see on television, only through the education.

Lastly, the problem is with blame. Too often, we seek to blame before we seek to understand. What does Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People tell us? "Seek first to understand, then to be understood." Exactly. In order to make the Don Imus' of the world understand, completely, why they can and should never be allowed to say the derogatory things they sometimes say (or want to say), we must - as an African-American community - understand why we have allowed these words to be said within our own community. Our music. Our streets. Our schoolrooms. Our homes.

Before we can blame, we must listen. By listening, I believe we can really move the needle forward to a day when children can listen to 50 Cent's lyrics without using that negative, derogatory language themselves.

But that's just my 50, I mean two, cent.

Journalist following path of Civil Rights leaders

2007-06-28T14:48:00.000-04:00

My friend Kevin put me up on a talented, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the Miami Herald. Here, that man - Leonard Pitts - shares a recent story and run-in with some people who definitely won't fit into the target audience for Real Role Models. But I sure hope their children pick up the book someday.

RACISM

Neo-Nutsies bring frustration, anger -- and joy

By LEONARD PITTS JR.

So, what's going on with you? Nothing much? Wish I could say the same.

As you may know if you've seen CNN or read the paper, yours truly has lately been the target of death threats and harassment from the ranks of the not-so-tightly-wrapped. This, after a June 3 column about the torture murder of a young white couple, allegedly by four African Americans. My column took on white supremacists and far right bloggers who contend that this ''genocide'' -- their word -- goes unremarked by news media too PC to report black-on-white crime.

It was an argument made for ridiculing and I did my best, pointing out that black-on-white crime, a relative statistical rarity, is not underreported but, in fact, over-reported, according to any number of studies and experts. This offended a self-professed neo-Nazi leader whose name you won't read here. So he got on his little neo-Nutsy website and posted my home address and phone number. It's been game on ever since -- 400 e-mails, dozens of phone calls, leaflets on my neighbor's driveway.

''You should be back in a damn mud and dung hut you nappy headed ho''. . .''Who's crying now, you affirmative action ape?''. . . and etcetera. The gist of this outburst: a handful of contentions, each more asinine than the last:

• Pitts has no compassion for the victims. (I called the murders brutal and a tragedy and said the killers should rot under the jailhouse.)

• Pitts told those mourning the murders to ``cry me a river.''(I gave that advice specifically to white supremacists yelling genocide and other stupid things.)

• The murders were so heinous they were ''obviously'' a hate crime. (Actually, heinousness has nothing to do with it. Hate crime penalties come into play when the prosecutor can establish racial or religious bias as a motive, period.)

It turns out this tactic -- publishing private information for intimidation purposes -- is one these folks use frequently to silence those with whom they disagree. Which only deepens my appreciation for the sheer guts it took to be a Fred Shuttlesworth in Birmingham or a Medgar Evers in Jackson, speaking truth to power in a time and place where everyone knew your address, assassinations were common and you could not go to law enforcement because they were part of the problem. I'm not comparing myself to those civil rights icons. I am saying that like them, we shall not be moved.

I pity the Neo-Nutsies. How impotent they must feel. How frightened and small. So they console themselves with these delusions of inherent superiority.

I grew up in the slums of L.A. and started college at 15. I won the Pulitzer Prize in 2004 and have been married to the same woman for 26 years. I'm also kind to children and play a mean game of Scrabble. So I wonder: What do these people think they have accomplished in life that makes them my better? Do they really think it's enough to have less melanin in their skin?

The Neo-Nutsies have been responsible for frustration and anger these last days. They've also been responsible for joy. Thanks to them, I've received a tidal wave of ''hang in there'' and ''we care about you'' and ''what can we do to help'' from colleagues, readers, friends and strangers all over the country. People have volunteered to guard my front door. A self-described ''big ole white guy'' I've interviewed a couple times called from Louisiana to say he had my back. Contributions have been made in my name to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Credit the Nutsies for that.

I feel a little like Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life. They say you can tell who a man is by looking at his friends. Which is true. But I believe you can also tell by looking at his enemies. Apparently, I have managed to make enemies of haters, bigots and other low, pathetic men.

I must be doing something right.

Multi-Tasking or Multi-Millions?

2007-06-26T09:06:00.000-04:00

There's a really good story about thespian Don Cheadle (Hotel Rwanda, Crash) in this month's issue of GQ magazine. In it, the writer discusses with Cheadle how and why he has remained out of the spotlight and, subsequently, out of the $10-to-20-million-per-picture salary range of his African-American counterparts like Will Smith and Denzel Washington. Even though many consider Cheadle's acting chops equally marvelous.

Cheadle, in short, believes actors - and for that matter, any professional - make money by doing the same thing over and over again. Tom Cruise, whether he's in Cold-War-inspired Top Gun or the alien-infused War of the Worlds, is almost always the same guy on screen. Same thing with Denzel, who's Deja Vu character isn't all that different from his Inside Man character. Cheadle, on the other hand, has tackled roles opposite Denzel (Devil with a Blue Dress), George Clooney and Brad Pitt (Ocean's 11, 12, and 13), starred in Oscar-winners (Crash, Traffic) with star-studded casts, while also taking on starring projects in Hotel Rwanda and the upcoming film about a D.C.-'70s Era Radio personality in Talk to Me opposite Cedric the Entertainer and Chiwetel Ejiofor, who was also in Inside Man and will again be paired with Denzel in this year's American Gangster.

Cheadle doesn't do typical. He doesn't do safe. Cheadle is all about range. Similarly, there are some notable African-Americans whom have made both millions and careers in spreading themselves into various roles and/or fields. Will Smith went from Grammys to Oscar nominations, Jay-Z has gone from The Blueprint to the boardroom of Def Jam, and Oprah has done everything from producing her own hit TV show to a Broadway production to her own magazine and book club. Still, there are others who have been successful with range in their careers.

There are corporate executives and government officials turned authors and nonprofit managers. There are athletes turned agents and actors. There are entrepreneurs turned educators, and vice versa. There are so many out there. Unfortunately, there are so many unknowns.

Real Role Models will hopefully help uncover their stories of risk-taking and endless ambition and ceaseless drive. Then Cheadle won't have to feel like a loner.

Take Credit for Tiger Woods, And Who Else?

2007-06-18T12:00:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure what the specific fraction is, but I believe Tiger Woods is less than one-third African-American. Somehow this has escaped the African-American community when taking credit for his major accomplishments (this weekend he finished second in the U.S. Open; he's finished 1-1-2-2 in the last four majors).

If we're willing to take credit for Woods' historic feats (as we did when he stormed the scene by winning the '97 Master's), why not take credit for those of other African-Americans?

Case in point, Condoleezza Rice. She started out in the Deep South like other notable African-Americans, Oprah Winfrey and Martin Luther King, Jr. The daughter of a minister and teacher, both faith and education were important aspects of Rice's childhood and sense of duty. Eventually, her family moved to Denver where she would go on to receive her B.A. in political science (Phi Beta Kappa honors) from the University of Denver. After picking up a Master's in poly sci from Notre Dame, she returned to Denver to secure a Ph.D. in international studies.

Dr. Rice then went on to serve in various capacities in government and higher education, including rising from assistant professor to Provost at Stanford University, where she became the school's youngest and first minority leader and helped turn around a $20 million budget shortfall into a nearly $15 million surplus in just a couple years on the job.

Simultaneously, Dr. Rice became one of America's foremost experts on the Soviet Union and German reunification (after the fall of the Berlin Wall), which helped her become a trusted international affairs and national security adviser to President George H.W. Bush, who also appointed another African-American-Colin Powell (previously served as National Security Advisor to Ronald Reagan)-as the first black Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the successful Gulf War.

When Powell was named the nation's first African-American Secretary of State by President George W. Bush in 2001, Dr. Rice was quickly named National Security Advisor. Four years later, she's followed in Powell's shoes as the nation's second-ever black or female Secretary of State. Pretty impressive if you ask me.

And aside from the Middle East policies that have conflicted the nation, Secretary Rice has earned the praise of several around the world for her commitment to Africa (see this month's issue of Vanity Fair for evidence) including her contributions as chair of the Millenium Challenge Corporation which provides much-need aid to dozens of countries around the world, including Ghana and Uganda. Even U2 frontman Bono gives her and her boss credit for upping America's commitment to improving Africa.

But even while Secretary Rice is considered one of the world's most influential and powerful individuals (both Time and Forbes magazine agree), her status and contributions are minimized by the African-American community in comparison to people like Woods and Oprah Winfrey.

Perhaps its because she's a Republican. Perhaps its because we're more familiar with successful African-Americans in sports and entertainment, but not-so-much in politics. Regardless, the first step to appreciating real role modes in the African-American community is to acknowledge them and their contributions.

Some of these role models may not have the prestige of being the Secretary of State or even being a professional athlete, but I'm sure they're worthy of our recognition just the same.

Lucky or Smart

2007-06-12T09:33:00.000-04:00

There's a book called Lucky or Smart that I recommend every aspiring entrepreneur read. In it, author Bo Peabody recounts his story from 19-year-old college student to multi-millionaire businessman.

But the best part about the story isn't Peabody's personal story, it's his underlying message: There is a difference between being lucky and being smart, but you can be smart enough to create your own luck.

There are plenty of stories that come to mind when I think of African-American entrepreneurs who have struck gold with a mix of smarts and luck.

Will Smith, then a Grammy-winning rapper, luckily met a young Hollywood writer named Barry Medina and the two collaborated on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, which launched Smith's acting career. Now, he's one of Hollywood's highest paid actors.

Sean Combs started out as an intern for Uptown Records, which had recently signed a young R&B singer named Mary J. Blige. He dropped out of Howard University and less than two years later, Combs was one of Uptown's executives and helped launched Blige's Grammy-winning and multi-platinum selling career.

Bob Johnson had an idea for a television station geared directly to African Americans in the late '70s. Eleven years later, BET became the first black-owned company listed on the New York Stock Exchange and a decade later he became America's first black billionaire. He's also the only African-American to own a major professional sports team, Charlotte Bobcats.

Obviously these men all worked hard to create their success, but you can certainly bet they also had their share of luck.

These men didn't have to read Peabody's book to garner their millions and fame, but I'm sure they'd agree that it's important to "put yourself in a position to get lucky, create the right situations for success, and take advantage of every opportunity."

That said, while we have great examples of African-American entrepreneurs striking it big in entertainment, music, and sports, I hope our readers can gain similar appreciation for the entrepreneurs and businessmen and women who will be profiled in Real Role Models.

Jump the gun and you'll get disqualified

2007-06-05T09:16:00.000-04:00

If you're familiar with track and field, you know that there's a pretty standard rule for any racing event: If you jump the gun, you'll get disqualified.

After two Democratic presidential debates - the first in April in Orangeburg, South Carolina, and the second in Goffstown, New Hampshire this past Sunday - I wondered if African-Americans were already jumping the gun on their political support.

Case in point, Orangeburg is a city made up of 67.5 percent blacks while Goffstown has a mere 0.3 percent. Also of importance, the median household income is $25,000 more in Goffstown than Orangeburg. And Orangeburg's crime rate is some seven times higher than Goffstown's. All that before even getting into the education gap between the two.

But you would think none of this matters when you realize even the poorest blacks in South Carolina support the same frontrunners - Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards - as the wealthier, better educated, healthier, safer New Englanders.

What does this say about the African-Americans in Orangeburg - and throughout the country since places like Oakland, California and East St. Louis (both homes to some of the worst crime rates in America) share voting histories with places like Cambridge, Massachusetts (home to Harvard and MIT) and Montgomery County, Maryland (one of America's weathiest counties) - when we vote identically to people who hardly ever share our life experiences?

This is not to say that poor voters and rich voters must be different or Ph.D voters and G.E.D. voters must be separate. This is simply to say just as wealthy and well-educated voters consider the issues such as candidate's positions on taxes, healthcare and foreign policy, the African-American community must take into account these same, and other, important issues.

For the first time in modern history we don't have an incumbent President or Vice President running for the office. If you haven't noticed, both the Democrat and Republican debates have been flooded with ten candidates each thus far.

That said, the African-American voting public has an opportunity to truly weigh in on this coming election by being active and vocal about what it is we want. We may want better schools, as I'm sure those Orangeburg residents would say, or we may want better healthcare as I'm sure everyone would say or we may want less crime as I'm sure Southside Chicago residents would say.

Regardless of what it is 'we' want, it's important to take a step back from tradition...a tradition that says whoever the Democratic frontrunner is - be it Clinton or Obama or Edwards - that's the candidate we support.

Instead, African-Americans must realize the unique nature of the 2008 election. This is an opportunity to sit back and wait for the race to start before we announce the winner.

Because if we try to win too soon, we may get disqualified from the political process altogether.

Leadership goes beyond Lebron

2007-06-01T12:05:00.000-04:00

I'm an avid sports fan. I've subscribed to Sports Illustrated for almost ten years. I fully realize that SI has an increased interest in showcasing major sporting events as the end-all, be-all and lionizing its heroes as bigger than any other humans on the planet.

This is exactly what has happened after last night's jaw-dropping performance by NBA superstar Lebron James, who scored 25 consecutive points to lead the Cleveland Cavaliers over the Detroit Pistons in game five of the Eastern Conference Finals. If the Cavs win game six, they'll advance to the team's first-ever NBA Finals.

But I had to pause when I read a column by SI contributor Paul Forrester who wrote, "how many 22-year-olds have ever taken their team this far with this much responsibility?"

I can think of some 22-year-old Army lieutenants and single mothers who have sure led their "teams" to much higher places and with greater responsibility on their shoulders.

Case in point, by the time my mother was 22 years old, she had three boys whom she was basically raising on her own (my father left us around that time). Similarly, my best friend was just commissioned as an Army officer at 22 years of age, and not long thereafter was leading a platoon in Iraq's IED-loaded fields.

While my mother is black, my best friend is actually white, but that's neither here nor there. What's important is to understand that leadership and responsibility goes far beyond the basketball court.

Michael Jordan accomplished great feats against the Utah Jazz, Detroit Pistons and New York Knicks, but my mother certainly accomplished much more by raising three boys into men from such a young age. And my best friend is preparing another group of young men for another tour in Iraq.

Talk about leadership and responsibility.

So the next time I hear a journalist talk about the accomplishments of a 22-year-old, I hope it's a story about a single parent putting food on the table or a military officer bringing his soldiers back home.

Because those "teams" are far more important than anything the NBA Finals can match.

Under the Radar, Under the Influence

2007-05-29T13:50:00.000-04:00

Sean "Diddy" Combs helped lead the "Vote or Die" campaign. Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter helped the United Nations with a "Water for Life" campaign. Tiger Woods has a learning center to encourage students to pursue fields in science and math. Oprah Winfrey has done so many good things it's hard to keep up.

But, on many degrees, these efforts remain under the radar. And, subsequently, they may be under the influence as well.

By under the radar I'm talking about within the African-American community.

For example, when a certain radio/TV show host says a racial slur spurring calls for his firing and CNN appearances by Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and the like it seems as if we're all behind it. Even if we don't completely agree with Jesse or Al, the black community is certainly talking about what just happened. And we're all putting in our two cents.

But when Diddy is trying to get young black people to vote or when Jay-Z is encouraging us to conserve water or when Tiger Woods is trying to improve science education, our community fails to provide traction for these issues to become important to the African-American community.

Why is this? Is it because racial slurs have more influence on us than concern for the environment or education? I need evidence to the contrary.

Sometimes I wonder if this simply means that we would rather gravitate toward issues affecting us in the media (i.e. racism, classism, etc.) because it's much easier than to acknowledge our lack of wide success and influence in the political sphere.

Barack Obama is the only black U.S. Senator. Deval Patrick is the only black governor in the country. Even the Democratic Party doesn't have any black leaders...just look here: http://www.democrats.org/a/party/ourleaders.html.

So while we have famous entertainers and athletes standing up to support pivotal issues facing 21st Century America (and with all sincerity, thank you!), we'll need more African-Americans to join them.

In short, the black community's radar must have a wider scan. Otherwise we'll remain under the influence.

Engineering Your Way to an NBA Salary

2007-05-23T13:47:00.000-04:00

As you're watching the NBA Playoffs, ponder this: The NBA's minimum salary is somewhere in the area of $400,000.

That's enough money to buy a new house (in the 'burbs), new car and pay off student loans...not that a pro-basketball player has college loans since most of the NBA-caliber players get full scholarships anyway. But you get the point...and that's just the minimum...the average NBA salary is roughly $4.9 million.

Now that's enough - even after taxes - for a house just about anywhere in the country. Or a Bentley. That said, I can understand why young African-Americans, especially those from low-income and historically-disadvantaged (through poor school systems, what have you), gravitate toward Michael Jordan and Allen Iverson before they look up to the black school principal or the black real estate agent with ads all over town.

But the problem isn't simply that these children gravitate toward professional basketball players before professionals at anything else...the problem is that they don't realize there's anything else in the first place.

For example, a colleague of mine was recounting a story of a black student he met after giving a speech at a Pennsylvania high school. Apparently, the principal felt it was important for my colleague to know about this kid because he was a graduating senior and college is his next step in life. However, while giving the student a ride home one day, the student marveled at a black man stepping out of a luxury car and into the driveway of a micro-mansion and literally said, "Wow! Is he like a basketball player or rapper or something?"

To his astonishment, the principal replied, "No, he's actually an engineer."

This only undermines the importance of showing our youths what is possible (financial security being one component) through education, commitment to a goal, and patience.

Too often, a young black kid is encouraged to study hard because he may not be able to maintain his spot on the basketball or football team (and miss out on that $400k-plus salary one day) if he doesn't.

Not often enough is that same kid encouraged to study hard simply for the chance to one day pursue a college degree and perhaps become an engineer, doctor, attorney or school administrator.

While Michael Jordan has made hundreds of millions of dollars on the hard court, there are literally hundreds of thousands of black professionals who live comfortable, successful lives because they furthered their education and pursued careers that involve wearing suits instead of jerseys and carrying briefcases to boardrooms instead of carrying a ball to the end zone.

Similarly, while famous African-Americans like Will Smith and Queen Latifah can credit their musical talents for their lucrative lifestyles, BET founder Robert Johnson deserves more credit for paving the way for young men and women of color to be able to share their talents with millions of viewers. And as far as I know, Bob Johnson made his impact in the office, not on the stage. To the point that they too could live in mansions and drive luxury cars.

The same can be said of famous comedians and rappers like Martin Lawrence and LL Cool J, who can thank Def Jam founder Russell Simmons for his business skills and marketing savvy.

So while I do not discourage a young student from sharing and developing his or her athletic, comedic or musical talents, I do emphasize the importance of looking beyond the NBA Draft or Grammy Awards to find a career path.

And to parents and teachers: make sure to tell your children or students about men and women like the aforementioned engineer.

After all, someone has to design those mansions and stadiums for NBA players to live and work.

African-Americans in Pop Culture: Sharing some thoughts

2007-05-18T11:24:00.001-04:00

The Cosby Show, starring Bill Cosby and Phylicia Rashad as Cliff and Clair Huxtable, had a five-year run as America’s top sitcom during the second half the 1980s. It was the first television show with an African-American cast to top the ratings. Considering it certainly wasn’t among the first or funniest shows to depict African-Americans, e.g. The Jefferson’s and Sanford & Son, maybe the Huxtables found their way into America’s non-black households for other reasons.

Ethnic and entertainment critics have theorized long and hard over the many reasons The Cosby Show became such a staple on American televisions, but the simple reality may have a lot to do with the jobs Cliff and Clair held, as a doctor and attorney, respectively. In fact, by portraying its stars in such respectable and admirable professions, The Cosby Show set a trend for success for other shows starring African-Americans. Family Matters featured Carl Winslow, a police officer; The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air welcomed Phillip Banks as a judge; and other shows like ER and NYPD Blue had African-American actors and actresses in roles as doctors, detectives and other public service-oriented jobs.

It seems television shows, especially during primetime hours, are only willing to show the lives and careers of African-Americans if they assured audiences that “these are good-natured, hard-working black people”. Even hit movies in the ‘80s and ‘90s perpetuated these roles with Eddie Murphy’s Beverly Hills Cop character Alex Foley being a detective, the Will Smith/Martin Lawrence cop flick Bad Boys, and the classic Philadelphia featured Denzel Washington as an attorney. Meanwhile, hit shows like Friends, Seinfeld, Sex and the City and Cheers depict their stars as jobless, creative (i.e. comedians, public relations gurus and writers) or otherwise employed-without-significance, e.g. Seinfeld’s George Costanza.

Similar to real life, characters like Costanza and Friends character Rachel Green, played by Jennifer Aniston, can be jobless or make bad career choices without widespread damage to their ethnicity. On the other hand, both television shows and nightly news program regularly hold up African-Americans, both real and fictionalized, as representations of the entire race. High-speed car chases, post-game press conferences and music videos are just a few examples of places where African-Americans are identified as portrayals of a race encompassing more than 35 million people in this country.

Meanwhile, other “black people” movies and television shows of recent years, Brown Sugar, Waiting to Exhale, Love & Basketball, Love Jones and BET’s Girlfriends, which portray African-American as advertising executives, writers, music producers and photographers have had only mild success compared to their more formulaic television predecessors. These professions, which require varying levels of creativity, education and talent, are held by real-life African-Americans all over the country. Unfortunately, their stories are often overlooked and untold by mainstream media, especially network television shows and nightly news programs.

What does it say about America’s popular culture and the status of African-Americans in it if we are identified as cops or robbers, doctors or patients, judges or those to be imprisoned? More importantly, what does this demonstrate to young African-Americans, our children, when they seldom see their elders in positions of leadership, success and opportunity outside of a few career fields hand-picked by studio executives and screen writers?

Michael Jordan and Deion Sanders, Will Smith and Dave Chappelle, Oprah Winfrey and Tyra Banks, Sean “Diddy” Combs and Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter. These accomplished athletes, actors, comedians, talk-show hosts, and music moguls are far more likely to be idolized by African-American youths than the African-American men and women who lead the companies they purchase from, teach at the schools they attended or start the nonprofit organizations they donate to.

Must African-Americans choose between careers in entertainment and public service or lives in crime and prisons? I do not believe so. I have heard of and met several African-Americans whom have illustrious careers as political consultants, communications experts, university administrators, Fortune executives and journalists. African-American youth, the children we must inspire and educate, need to know the stories of these individuals just as much as the oft-told “rags-to-riches” stories of the actors, athletes and characters they see on TV.

Real Role Models is intended not only as a look into the various professions African-Americans can and have succeeded in, but also as a collection of introspective, insightful and inspiring tales of drive, hard work, luck, perseverance, and pride.

Included in these pages will be the untold stories of the real Huxtables and Winslow’s, that is to be certain we share the true-life examples of African-American doctors and police officers, along with those of people like Texas women's track coach Bev Kearny, former State Department official Dr. Eric Motley, and other African-American leaders in this “land of opportunity”. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. envisioned a nation without inequality. I envision a nation where we honor and embrace those overlooked contributors to Dr. King’s mission.

by Joah Spearman (January 15, 2007)

Redefine the Finish Line: Overemphasis on athletic success may limit academic pursuits for African American children

2007-05-18T11:23:00.001-04:00

Dr. Louis Harrison Jr. remembers well when his young son was one of the fastest kids on his youth football team. It isn’t fatherly pride that keeps the memory fresh for Harrison. It’s the messages he heard directed at his son.

“People would say to him, ‘Now, don’t forget me when you make it to the pros,’” Harrison says. “And I’d think, ‘This is a kid here. You’re talking about the pros?’”

Harrison, a faculty member in the College of Education and the Center for African and African American Studies, studies how race influences physical activity and sports participation.

Harrison was more interested in seeing his son aim for college, but the experience raised questions for him. Why were African American kids given the message that they can become professional athletes when so few can? And how does this message limit the possibilities they pursue?

An associate professor in the College of Education at The University of Texas at Austin, Harrison is seeking to answer and better understand those questions. His work focuses on how race influences physical activity and sports participation.

“I’ve always wanted to try to get people who thought they were going to be athletes to kind of back up and get a bigger perspective,” he says, “because for most poor African Americans, it’s not sport that’s going to bring them out of poverty. It’s education.”

This isn’t always apparent to young people who look to the stratospheric success of athletes (and, similarly, entertainers) for role models. Contributing to this is the overrepresentation of African Americans in a few key sports, particularly basketball, football and track and field.

While African Americans make up 12 percent of the population, they make up 78 percent of the National Basketball Association, 67 percent of the National Football League and 63 percent of the Women’s National Basketball Association. Their dominance in these widely televised and popular sports has caused a stereotype to emerge in American culture: African Americans are athletically superior but intellectually inferior to whites.

“A lot of people have studied the physical characteristics that would give African Americans an advantage in those sports,” Harrison says, “but I thought there are a lot of social and psychological influences that we really haven’t taken a close look at.”

One of those influences may be how many African Americans have absorbed the stereotype themselves, so that athletics have become key to their racial identity.

Harrison looks at a process called “becoming black” or “nigresence,” which suggests that the individuals develop a racial identity over time. For African Americans, that identity includes recognizing they are a minority, and that while minorities may experience far less overt racism than they may have a few decades ago, subtle racism still exists.

African Americans make up 78 percent of the National Basketball Association, 67 percent of the National Football League and 63 percent of the Women's National Basketball Association. They hold very few other position in the sports industry, such as athletic director or head coach. African American athletes are among the few who seem above that racism and where the possibility of success seems limitless.

“In a society where being African American evokes so many negative stereotypes,” Harrison says, “it is easy to fathom why there would be fervent identification with a positive stereotype.”

Further, while immersion in academics may be seen as “acting white,” immersion in sports holds the possibility of being able to play by one’s own rules. Harrison points to basketball star Allen Iverson who sports braids and tattoos, recorded a profanity-laden rap album and is openly critical of his former team. His behavior might be unacceptable in most work environments, but as a gifted athlete, Iverson makes in excess of $10 million a year in salary and endorsements.

Because many African American youth see themselves as a potential Iverson, they limit the types of sports they participate in. While this may partly explain the overrepresentation of blacks in particular sports, it means they may exclude participation in sports they don’t deem appropriate.

It also makes them more likely to channel their energies into sports and away from school.

“While striving to achieve ‘hoop dreams,’” Harrison says, “many young people are having ‘academic nightmares.’”

The same hasn’t proven to be true for white athletes. Harrison conducted a study with white college students who had been high school athletes to understand the messages they’d received about race and athletics. Overwhelmingly, they reported that they were told academics needed to come before sports.

One participant, Ken, summed it up as such: “…my parents kept me grounded. They would always get on me about my grades and say well you know hopefully you play college football someday. If you really truly work, but you got to keep your grades up so you can have other options.”
One of the great needs of young African American males is to hear the message and understand the reality that for the vast majority, a sports preoccupation will not lead to an occupation. Dr. Louis Harrison Jr.

The white students also reported they were often steered away from particular sports because they were told that they couldn’t compete with African Americans. Once again, the stereotype was apparent. White students were told to go to college. African American students were told they’d excel in sports.

Harrison points out that the stereotype doesn’t disappear for African Americans talented enough to play college-level sports. In fact, the assumption is often made that the athletes aren’t as intelligent as the other students in the classroom.

Bev Kearney, women’s track coach at The University of Texas at Austin who has led her team to six NCAA national championships and 19 league titles, agrees that college athletes face tough stereotyping. She says her African American athletes are often labeled when they walk into a classroom.

“People have assumptions about the athletes,” she says. “They think they have special privileges, that they’re not the greatest of students. They think they’re only there for athletics or that they think of themselves as above everyone else. None of those things are true.”

Kearney maintains that a lot of progress has been made in talking about issues related to women, but that people are still uncomfortable talking about race. She believes it is time for that to change.

Harrison hopes his research will help. He’s worked closely with African American college athletes over the years, and he’s seen them stereotype themselves far too often.

“Part of what I do is let these athletes know that this is a stereotype, and yes, you will be stereotyped, but you don’t have to buy into it,” he says. “I always tell athletes and other students that to me, as sophisticated as athletics are today, you can’t be a dumb athlete.

“One of the exercises I do when there are athletes in my class is to ask them to stand up and explain what they have to do on a certain play. When you understand all the things they have to react to, all the formations they have to remember, all they have to be able to recognize and understand, it’s clear you can’t handle that kind of pressure without intelligence.”

According to the U.S. Census, there were 119,000 African American engineers, 45,000 African American physicians and 48,000 lawyers in 2000.As important as it is to work with college-level athletes, Harrison puts more of his focus on changing what it means to grow up African American and the messages kids get at an early age from parents and peers, on the playing field and in the classroom. Harrison is a Baptist minister, and he sees his research as an extension of his ministry.

“I see ministry as meeting needs,” he says, “and one of the great needs of young African American males is to hear the message and understand the reality that for the vast majority, a sports preoccupation will not lead to an occupation.”

Critical for him is how teachers are trained and prepared for working with children from different cultures. A lot of teachers may hold stereotypes themselves and make matters worse by telling kids that maybe they’ll become a professional athlete.

Harrison says teachers and students might start with a statistics lesson: According to the NCAA, about 1 million students play high school level football. Less then 6 percent go on to play NCAA football, and only 2 percent of those who play in the NCAA go on to the pros. In 2006, 255 players were chosen in the National Football League draft.

In other words, of all the high school players suiting up for a Friday night on the football field, less than one-tenth of one percent of them will end up in the pros. In men’s and women’s basketball, the odds are even slimmer.

Harrison says that television may continue to show young people examples of athletic superstardom, but the classroom needs to put the emphasis back on more attainable versions of success.

“On the educational side, you have to try to tell students the truth and to give them the actual numbers,” he says. “My purpose is not to extinguish the dreams but to fan the academic flames so that when the dream is over, reality is not so harsh.”

He wants to see teachers give kids tools to use in their lives, and one of those tools is to understand there are many viable options for good careers outside of sports.

In getting that message across, Harrison may find he has help from his son. The former youth football player graduated from Louisiana State University in 2002. Today he teaches school in New Orleans.

By The University of Texas at Austin (January 15, 2007)

Dr. Harrison's credentials

2007-05-18T11:22:00.001-04:00

Louis Harrison, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin as a member of the African-American Studies Department. He also supports the Texas Longhorns, which ranks among the leading college athletic programs in the nation.

Previously, Harrison spent nine years - six as an Assistant Professor and three as an Associate Professor - at Louisiana State University. While at LSU, Harrison received numerous honors including the Exemplary Models of Administrative Leadership Award from the American Association of University Administrators in 2006 and being recognized by the LSU Seniors as a “Favorite Faculty Member”.

Harrison has written, reviewed and published dozens of articles, journals and lectures on issues relating to African-Americans, with an emphasis on athletic performance and physical education. Harrison serves on a number of national organization boards and councils including serving on the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport’s Racial Diversity Subcommittee.

A Louisiana native, Harrison earned both his bachelor’s and Master’s in Education from the University of New Orleans before receiving his Ph.D. in Kinesiology-Pedagogy from LSU in 1997. Before serving as an instructor at LSU and the University of Southwestern Louisiana, Harrison served seven years as a teacher and coach in Louisiana’s Jefferson Parish School District.

Real Role Models - An Introduction

2007-05-18T10:46:00.000-04:00

Friends and Colleagues,

Thank you for visiting the official blog site of a book tentatively titled, Real Role Models, by myself and Dr. Louis Harrison. Louis and I are very appreciate of your support as we undertake a challenging, but much-needed, endeavor of sharing the experiences, life lessons, and perspectives of black role models around the country to uplift and inspire our youth.

Although the book's title may change before it's final print, you can be sure that our commitment will remain on finding real (black) role modes who can help inspire today's youths - particularly African-American high school and college students - to be ambitious, be committed, and not to be afraid of what opportunites are available to them.

There are several books aimed at similar purposes, but Louis and I felt there remains a need for young African-Americans to want to experience the world and all its possibilities. Too often, our youth are led to believe - either by the media or by popular culture - that they must find success as athletes, entertainers, musicians or, even worse, in crime.

In the coming weeks and months, I will be posting updates about our progress in completing this book and what we gather along the way. We welcome and appreciate your support and feedback throughout.

Sincerely,

Joah Spearman a.k.a. "JoahKnows"

P.S. I will also post relevant articles and other materials to share more about our inspiration for this book and our backgrounds.