Tom Matlack examines the racial implications of playing, watching, and supporting American sports.
My son is the starting outside linebacker on the 10th-grade Boston College High football team. Varsity, JV and 10th grade squads share a locker room at the Jesuit school. The majority of the kids are white, but a handful of the best players are African-American. The black kids control the music in the locker room, and this is the song they play before and after every practice and every game. It’s become a theme song that each kid knows by heart:
So I ball so hard muhf*ckas wanna fine me
But first ni**as gotta find me
What’s 50 grand to a muhf*kaa like me
Can you please remind me?
This sh*t crazy
Ya’ll don’t know that don’t sh*t faze me
The Nets could go 0-82 and I look at you like this sh*t gravy ball so hard,
This sh*t weird
We ain’t even ‘spose to be here,
Ball so hard, since we here
It’s only right that we be fair
Psycho, I’m liable to be go Michael
Take your pick, Jackson, Tyson, Jordan, Game 6
Got a broke clock, Rolleys that don’t tick tok
Audemars that losing time, hidden behind all these big rocks I’m shocked
Too, I’m supposed to be locked up too
If you escaped what I’ve escaped
You’d be in Paris getting f*cked up too
Let’s get faded, Le Meurice for like six days
Gold bottles, scold models, spillin’ Ace on my sick J’s
B**ch behave, just might let you meet Ye,
Chi-town’s D. Rose, I’m movin’ the Nets to BK
“Niggas in Paris,” Jay-Z and Kanye West
♦◊♦
I’ve spent enough time in places like Harlem, Dorchester, and South Central L.A. to realize that drugs and sports are viewed as the most reliable ways out of the ghetto. Sure, there are African-American mothers living below the poverty line who understand that education is a far better bet than perfecting a jump shot or becoming a gang kingpin, but for the most part they are helpless to do anything about it. There is no credible public education system in those places. And since they as parents have no experience with education, they have little ability to understand what their children will even need to become a lawyer or banker or even president. The only programs that seem to work are total immersion—programs like the Epiphany School here in Boston or Homeboy in Los Angeles—where children attend school from morning to night and even on weekends to keep them off the streets and infuse them with the most basic concepts that white children of college-educated parents get every night before going to sleep.
♦◊♦
Early on in the Boston Celtics’ championship 2007-2008 season, I found myself inside the locker room, a middle-aged, obsessive sports fan pretending to be a reporter for a night. (Yes, a wet dream of epic proportions.) I had managed to sell the idea of writing a very brief piece about the team’s Russian masseur, Vlad Shulman, to Boston Magazine (“The Best Hands in the Game”). The team’s suits had made clear that they didn’t want staff quoted during the season, but they were more than happy to grant me a one-day press pass and send me into the locker room to see what I could find out.
I wandered among my heroes, a pass around my neck, trying to get them to talk to me while they changed into their uniforms. What I got was an up-close-and-personal look at what many professional basketball players are really like: African-American and functionally illiterate. Few of the players would engage with me. They knew the big-time reporters and grudgingly talked to them, but I was clearly a new face, a scrub. They grunted at me. Two stars, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, refused to talk to anyone except during the postgame press conference.
There were two exceptions: Tony Allen and Ray Allen. Ray asked me who I was and what I wanted. After I replied, he asked me to wait while he put on his shorts, then turned around and sat down to talk to me for 20 minutes. Within thirty seconds, I had all that I needed for the article and just started asking him about his background and his game. I found him so unlike the rest of the players. Where they seemed to me to have very little real education, he was thoughtful and articulate. I fell in love. I wore a Ray Allen jersey to every game the rest of the year. To this day, he is perhaps my favorite athlete.
But it was my talk with Tony Allen that actually stuck with me. Tony is known as a freak of nature in terms of his athletic ability, particularly as a defensive specialist. He doesn’t even look that big, but he can stop pretty much anyone in the league when he has his wits about him. His wits are the problem both on the court and off. From what I could tell he is borderline mentally challenged.
I taped all my interviews. The clip of Tony became a favorite among my friends because to an Ivy League guy, Tony sounds like he is out of his mind (you can listen to it HERE). We laughed our asses off listening to him, but inside it made me sad. Really sad.
This guy has zero chance in life, I kept thinking to myself. He can play basketball but beyond that he barely knows what planet he is on.
♦◊♦
When I was in college, one of my professors, Peter Kilby, developed what he called the “oil slip hypothesis” in which he showed that citizens of countries where oil was discovered actually fared worse than those in Third World countries where economies were forced to develop more broadly. When oil was discovered, wealth became extreme both in magnitude and concentration. There was remarkably little spillover from the owners of oil to the nations’ citizens who were struggling to survive.
Terrific wealth of the few, it turned out, further impoverished the many. The scene in the Celtics locker room brought me back to Professor Kilby and made me wonder whether eliminating pro basketball altogether might actually do more for the African-American community than continuing the charade of success for the genetically-gifted few.
♦◊♦
I live a short walk from Fenway Park. I have grown tired of the Red Sox after spending 46 years living and dying by every pitch, and so these days I go to a few games a year just to catch up with friends. The games drag on forever, so my buddies and I bet on pretty much everything to pass the time. Dollar bills change hands and end up back where they belong by the end of the game.
We have two favorite bets, beyond the obvious baseball-related ones. The first is called “grass or dirt.” It’s a bet on where the ball will end up when the umpire rolls it out at the end of each inning: on the dirt of the mound, or on the infield grass just off the mound. The second bet is based on who is the first to point out an African American anywhere in the stands of Fenway Park.
At first, I resisted the second of these two bets as blatantly racist. Then I embraced it as a sociological study of just how segregated and hypocritical so-called liberal Boston really is. As the innings pass by and we all fruitlessly scan the crowd for a black face, the common refrain is, “This is just fucking insane!” Half the players are black, and yet none of the fans are. Once we went into the seventh-inning stretch before a dollar changed hands.
♦◊♦
As much as Charles Barkley might say, “I am not your role model!” adult men in America worship professional athletes. In Boston, we have not one but two 24-hour sports radio stations devoted exclusively to dissecting every player, play, and team. ESPN has become the most valuable media franchise in America for the very same reason: guys love to immerse themselves in sports.
From an African-American perspective, this idolatry of sports is tragic. It is not good to have a few dozen men become enormously wealthy—with those who can ‘t handle it, squandering that wealth through bad behavior—while a million black men are in prison (43 percent of the total inmate population) and the majority of African-American boys can expect not to find a decent job and live in poverty.
From a white perspective, this athlete worship is hypocritical. It turns grown men into circus characters. We adore them for one thing and one thing only: what they do with the ball. We refuse to look under the covers at what is really there. It may be that athletics is great for teaching discipline and hard work to youngsters, but from the NCAA to the NBA it’s all about money and winning—not about character or even a 7th-grade reading level—and things get more than a little out of whack.
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I was sitting with a group of rich, white, finance guys when one of them brought up the fact that the Jets cornerback, Antonio Cromartie, has nine children with eight women in six states. “Four of his kids, each by a different woman, are three years old,” my friend pointed out. “They all delivered at the same time.”
He went on to point out that the Jets had to front Cromartie $500,000 to try to deal with his status as a deadbeat dad. “He had six probate courts, each of which had assigned a percentage of his salary to a different mother for child support. None of the cases was consolidated, so when you added them up, he owed 300 percent of what he made,” my buddy claimed.
Another friend pointed out that Cromartie had recently been on HBO’s football show Hard Knocks, trying unsuccessfully to name all of his children.
I laughed. I then I got quiet as I thought about Wilt Chamberlain’s claim that he had slept with 10,000 women, and Antoine Walker going broke after making $110 million as a player… and I thought of Tony Allen, in his lovable way, talking nonsensically to me when I asked him about Vlad.
♦◊♦
I don’t blame African-American pro athletes. Most are making the best of a horrific situation. Between unemployment and a good chance at jail or tens of millions of dollars, which one would you choose?
No, I blame us for drinking the Kool-Aid of pro sports: the packaging, the theme music, and the talk shows all aimed at obscuring the underlying truth of how narrow these men’s skills truly are, and the role of race in everything that is going on.
My friend Stephen Locke, an African-American artist, wrote a compelling piece about why he doesn’t want to talk about race. That’s his right. He’s been on the receiving end of racism all his life. But I do want to talk about race. I want to talk about how insane it is that my son listens to rap songs about “niggas” every day, about Tony Allen and every other functionally illiterate NBA player, about Jackie Robinson’s number being enshrined in segregated Fenway Park, and even about Antonio Cromartie’s nine kids—because all those things aren’t a poor reflection on them. They reflect the truth of race in American right here, right now.
How about we look at sport not just as a male obsession where our favorite players run, jump, hit, and catch balls with amazing agility, but where our deepest vulnerabilities as a nation get played out just below the surface? We like to believe that we aren’t racist—that the Civil Rights Movement is over and done with—and yet it’s nearly all white fans who go to basketball games to watch these freakishly large, predominantly black men perform like circus performers. We don’t want to know what’s going on underneath because that will lead us back to the larger truth of staggering poverty, illiteracy, and hopeless circumstances among large numbers of black American across this country.
How about we start talking about high school graduation rates rather than triple doubles? Who gives a shit about winning a game when people are suffering systematic discrimination?
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour is getting late
“All Along the Watchtower,” sung by Jimi Hendrix, song by Bob Dylan
—Photo desbyrnephotos/Flickr
Maybe you have valid points, but I find the underlying premise of this particular article to be very stereotypical. I am an African-American male. I graduated in the top 10% of my H.S. class. I was in art, advanced symphony and marching band and was a stud in basketball and track. I went on to play basketball for The Ohio State Buckeyes after high school. I graduated from Ohio State with honors in Education and even returned to receive my M.A. in Education two years later. I played basketball in Germany, France and Switzerland immediately after finishing my B.S. Today,… Read more »
Random thoughts, no answers. When I began teaching in a junior high (long, long ago before there were middle schools in LA), it was predominantly upper middle class and white. Then came bussing. Old guard teachers spoke up at faculty meetings saying, “What are we going to do when the influx hits?” Well, what we did was teach. And I could only hope my students would develop an affinity for learning. It’s sad that there’s a perceived road to success through sports, because how few student athletes ever manage to make it to the pros. I was a student at… Read more »
Wow! very interesting stuff from all who have replied to the article and being a black man from England I don’t know If I qualify to raise any valid points on sports as such, but as a person of colour i can surely add something. It wasn’t unitl I read ‘The Blind Side’ that i fully understood the state of sports in America. It appalled me that such an educational system could exist that is there merely to ensure the continued success of the NBA, NFL etc etc etc by finding the biggest, most athletic and most agile people in… Read more »
I agree, fathering and reading. But it’s also bigger. After all, Obama didn’t have his dad. Re: earlier comments does it have to be one or the other, Tom?! I both hear what they’re saying and want to say but that’s what he’s asking! It is difficult to poke our favorite things and find honesty: where we buy our groceries is connected to slavery, etc etc etc. You are neither shifting the blame, destroying free will, nor eternally taking the big boy’s toys away. You’re simply being honest, and honest is where both trouble and goodness are. Our culture is… Read more »
“(you know, a guy said that to me once, after cupping my left ass cheek on the subway. Easy, baby. We’re just trying to have a little fun. It was a full subway car. Nobody really paid any attention. Nobody could really be bothered.)” Okay I laughed out loud because you took my discomfort and raised me one. I hope you smacked that guy. As for the thing that white boys get at night. I think its as simple as reading and a father. As my friend Jackie rightly points out there are many, many smart, successful black men in… Read more »
I always love what you write, Tom, mostly for the way you make the uncomfortable important enough to be stayed with. I am uncomfortable commenting on sports, or men and sports, or sports and African American men, because I don’t know shit about sports. They bore me. I do not understand them. Generally, I quickly agree: there is something profoundly race skewed, and money skewed, and just awe-full about the whole industry. You are immediately and in-arguably right: to shut the whole thing down would probably do most communities a world of good. Billions and billions of dollars of good,… Read more »
Where are the “evo bio” people on this issue? Cromartie is a genetic juggernaut, just like Sean Kemp. He’s a Darwinian success story. (All those children with all those women? He’s a reproductive All-American!) Someone out there knows the math better than I do, but if you have nine children, there’s a good chance that in a few hundred years a big chunk of the country’s population will be descended from you. In 500 years, probably a quarter of Americans will be able to claim Cromartie blood in their veins. Maybe he’s just thinking really long term? Kidding aside, I… Read more »
From the perspective of an athletic Canadian female who pokes her head in on NFL, MLB and NBA games only sporadically this is an intriguing subject. We do not have the African-American population found in the United States, nor do we have the number of professional sports teams. Our public education system, while not perfect, graduates record numbers of kids who go on to university both with and without academic and athletic scholarships. That being said, perhaps it is only in part a question of color. If athletic prowess is as revered as Tom says, and God-like reputations wait for… Read more »
I think this is a great example of how we can slowly move towards change just by shifting the way social networks operate. I applaud you, Tom, for writing about these issues and not pretending to have all the answers but to at least get the questions out there so we can think about things differently. Up until a few months ago, I had one black friend. Yeah, it was a case of “my black friend” in living color, but I hadn’t a clue how to change it. And – as @daddyfiles points out – it wasn’t as if I… Read more »
To solve this we have to end the prejudice in housing. A deghettoisation is necessary for all white,black,red,brown yellow. Remember that black males had very few career opportunities for generations. The harassment of achievers (police who enforced social ranking ) Made achievement moot. We in this country love to segregate poor from rich etc. Instead of building “low income housing” use the tax code to spread the people into the general population so they can learn how to be educationally assertive. There are few stupid athletes esp in football as the highly complex dance is an art form as much… Read more »
“Who gives a shit about winning a game when people are suffering systematic discrimination?”
I don’t view the two as mutually exclusive.
Tom, I’ve got a proposal: Bet your buddies 10/1 that you’ll see a black man in the stands before the 3rd inning. I’ll show up, you win, we split the difference.
JFB
PS: At 5’10” in my prime I could dunk. I also entered 1st grade reading on a 12th grade level. Parenting is where the magic or the damage happens.
I had good parents Jackie, I could never dunk. 😉
Tom, you wrote: “I want to talk about how insane it is that my son listens to rap songs about “niggas” every day, about Tony Allen and every other functionally illiterate NBA player, about Jackie Robinson’s number being enshrined in segregated Fenway Park, and even about Antonio Cromartie’s nine kids—because all those things aren’t a poor reflection on them. They reflect the truth of race in American right here, right now.” These things aren’t a poor reflection on them? Antonio Cromartie knocking up all those women like a sperm lawn sprinkler isn’t his fault??!!? That is pure and utter bullshit.… Read more »
Aaron I do believe in free will but only up to a point. Do you blame a kid growing up in the slums of mexico city for failing to go to Harvard? I don’t. What you fail to acknowledge is that there is no level playing field in the Unites States. It’s rich and poor. And African Americana are disproportionately poor with categorically less access to quality education than other groups. We have a separate and unequal education system by class. But the correlation is also to race. My point is simply that putting pro black athletes on a pedestal… Read more »
(yesyes)
Dear God Peter, you write as if every university and corporation doesn’t bend over backwards to accept more blacks into their ranks. Yes, there are socioeconomic differences. Time for the black community to step up to the plate.
I am certainly not trying to make blanket statements about black men and intelligence. I know many very successful, brilliant men who happen to be african-american. What I am saying is that sports, it seems to me, plays a role in perpetuating racism in America. A white crowd watching black men who are valued purely for their athletic ability–specifically NOT their minds–seems to me to be at its core more of a problem than a solution to widespread poverty and truly incredible prison rates.
How about we talk about High school graduation rate instead of triple doubles? Good question. Tom I can assure you, your sincerity in writing this article as a White male is sufficient to get you into even. You are a good man. Thanks for not keeping quite. Whites people admire black men’s physical ability, but why do blacks not admire white intelligence or their achievements?. This i believe is the right way to ask this questions,And in my opinion, I think it is because the black mind evades knowledge, avoids mentally challenging task. Instead of embracing it. I am an… Read more »
Peter, I’m curious to know why you believe “blacks do not admire white intelligence” or “the black mind evades knowledge?” I’m black–at least last time I checked I was–and I’ve always admired and pursued knowledge. Actually I was unaware knowledge came in a color, a sentiment I learned from my parents–black–and shared by all of my black friends.
JFB
Jackie, race has a way of influencing out inclination. Black people favor physical activities such as hustling, sports, music. Than personal development to make money and when you don’t invest in the mind it reflects in the society. We rather play basketball, football, rap, fight boxing before we favor education. Unless our parent set us on the path of education as youth. Then we stick to it. Without this influences our natural inclination is our physical abilities. For thousand of years our ancestors have harnessed this ability in farming, hunting (Not philosophy, not chemistry, not politics like the romans) so… Read more »
“Black people favor physical activities such as hustling, sports and music?” CLEARLY were not hanging around the same black people. My father was a jazz musician. My mother was a research scientist. My eldest brother was the chief civilian officer of the Port Authority before he retired. My sister is Chief Counsel to The Mayor of NYC on Environmental issues.
I could continue but the point I’m making is: if your sample group only reflects what you know, it’s easy to be myopic.
JFB
Myopic is when your example of success is citing your immediate family. But in a larger society where African American American success is in sports and entertainment, wheras engineering graduation remains constant over a 10yr period there is a problem, a larger problem , one of a racial magnitude , where a segment of the societies success is celebrated in sports by largely successful white population. Then may be its time to look at the root cause of our problem our self, our history, our society. What roles do they play in this situation.
https://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/the-invisible-man/
I’m not only a member, I’m also the president.
JFB