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.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Black youths to get top role models
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
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
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Raising Hopes by E.J. Dionne Jr.
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."
ad_icon
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.
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."
ad_icon
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.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Fathers often, but not always, best role models
The late Earl Woods, father of Tiger Woods, definitely fits into the category of a real role model.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
Real Role Models - An Excerpt
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Best mentors give challenging advice, criticism - Chicago Tribune
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."
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."
Thursday, March 6, 2008
My Failure by Jam Donaldson
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.
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.
Sunday, February 17, 2008
'Don't try to duplicate' says MJ
"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.
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.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Now is time for Tiger to fulfill father's prophecy
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.
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.
Friday, November 30, 2007
A Person, Not A Plot Device
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.
ad_icon
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
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.
ad_icon
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
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
The Road to Bad Newz - Sports Illustrated must read
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.
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.
Friday, November 9, 2007
The Stats Speak for Themselves
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
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
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)