“Sure, this country has a black president, but when you look at a black president, President Obama is left with his foot stuck in the mud from all of the Republicans with the way he’s treated,” . . . “We have moved in the right direction, and there have been improvements, but we still have a long ways to go in the country.”

Hank Aaron, theroot.com

Our group engaged in a spirited discussion the other day on the subject of today’s athletes and their seeming disdain of anything that might be construed as support for civil rights. We, rightly or wrongly, automatically believe that because these INDIVIDUALS are paid exorbitant amounts of money that they MUST be socially or politically conscious. What is missed the possibility that being awake may be an impediment to financial success.

At the time of our celebrated “golden age” of sports/political nexus, we forget that those athletes did not have global fame as well as hundreds of millions of dollars to weigh against their devotion to the social issues affecting their people. We forget that Muhammad Ali did not become the most recognizable athlete in the world until well into the second half of his career, essentially when he was in decline. We forget that the great Jim Brown retired in his prime and did not become the force for change until after he stopped playing football. Yes, they were both part of the struggle while competing but not as intently as after.

The biggest point is that Floyd Mayweather made more in his last fight than most of our glorified athletes of the civil rights era did their whole careers PUT TOGETHER. Money is a strange thing. Like the old saying goes, “most people who claim money is the root of all evil, don’t have any.” Not to impugn the credibility or altruism of our leaders of the past but the kind of money that is thrown at today’s athlete HAS to make you wonder what would have happened if some in the past had that same opportunity. We all like to think that money wouldn’t change things for those that are in the know.

The truth, however, is much more ambiguous. If the true heart of a man is shown by his works, and not by what he’s paid for those works, how then do we explain the children of Martin Luther King, the seminal witnesses to how this government deals with dissent, arguing over MONEY? How does a “leader” like an Al Sharpton or a Jesse Jackson (and his children) become civil rights prostitutes, available for the highest bidder to come be the face of whatever injustice has been perpetrated upon one of our people? (I use the term leader very, very loosely but there are some who follow these fools)

The great Hank Aaron made a very valid point equating the new face of racism in Amerikkka with “starched shirts.” What he didn’t say explicitly, but instead implicitly, was that the same people who we are BEGGING for our rights (whatever we may be begging for this week) are the same people who are responsible for our oppression in the first place. We like to think that there is some measurable difference between ‘Pubs and ‘Crats as it relates to us as a people. In fact, the only difference is one party is more receptive to using us as props in its morality play than the other. I’ll let you decide which one I’m talking about. Notice I didn’t say players, but props.

Players get to say something.

They have lines. Props are like trees, they set the scene but the real action is over there. Who goes to a movie to watch the cinematography?

In the very recent past the parties were actually flip flopped in their “liberal” approach to us as a people (the whole Lincoln was a Republican argument as if that made a difference).

It was the Democrats that opposed the ending of slavery and the subsequent civil rights legislation that followed. I won’t go into the history, there are blogs on this very page that can give you a primer of that. What I will say is if you think that your being crat or pub means a damn thing in this society, YOU NEED TO WAKE THE HELL UP!! (its Sunday so its my obligatory no cussing day, not because of Trickstianity but because I’m usually closeted in the lab alone for most of the day writing so have no one to cuss at/to)

Back to the point. We tend to put all this pressure on the Kobes and LeBrons of the sports world to stand up and say something about the condition of their people.

But we must remember, just because you are from the hood, which Kobe is not, doesn’t mean that you understand why the hood exists. (notice I did not say that the hood exists, Stevie Wonder knows that, but WHY the hood exists) Now you are a multi-million dollar face of a franchise/product, able to snap you fingers and get whatever it is you want and we like damn fools expect that non-conscious person to support the cause of poor people? Come on, lets be real, and that is NOT REALITY.

Most of us gained our knowledge of the underbelly of this society by self-education. We didn’t learn what we think we know in school. (Additionally, at least some of us went to college for what it was worth, they didn’t) We learned it out there in it. We learned it by hours and hours of reading authors that I’m quite sure these individuals never heard of. We, as a people, are the only people on this planet who cares whatsoever what an athlete thinks or what an entertainer thinks. (white people may listen to what Bono has to say but they don’t take life lessons from him the way we do from Beyonce)

I’m going to end this first part with a question for you the reader. We want Kobe Bryant to embrace all things black (even though he’s never been all that into “black” anything his entire life) but the Judge, the CEO of the Fortune 500 company, the doctor, the PhD, the FUCKIN policeman who we see every damn day that also happen to be black, we don’t expect anything from them at all. When was the last time you read an article asking why John Thompson (CEO of Microsoft), Kenneth Frazier (Merck), Kenneth Chenault (AMEX) or Don Thompson (McDonalds) was not doing more to advance minority hiring or giving more of the companies profits back to the community from whence they came? We MUST end our practice of confusing correlation with causation. If the premise becomes our current crop of athletes are unconscious because of money, then the opposite must be true, our past conscious athletes would have been unconscious if they had money.

Drops mic and walks from stage dripping blackness.