Comment of the Week - White Boys Gone Wild: It’s a Racist, Racist World
July 20, 2008
I wanted to do something like this awhile ago. What I was doing, though, was taking comments, good, bad, or ugly, noting them then commenting on the comments. There got to be so many, and my comments were so long that it might have taken up to six hours to complete the chore.
But yesterday one of the panel member of the “Black Bloggers and Obama” symposium is the founder-owner of the blog, “What About Our Daughters.” I happened to have saved her open tab so when I started my laptop this morning her site popped up. Lo and behold I was faced with, “Comment of the Week.” There was simply a headline, a comment, and a citiation. How simple.
So, I’m borrowing from WAOD and doing basically the same. I will comment, but very briefly… (it’s really a woman’s world, after all).
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T3–Wright, Chicago, got it. I was guessing Fanon. (Well, I say “got it”, I mean “will get it”.)
Superb work here, in the article–too good to call a “post”–and in the comments both.
As I said earlier in another comment, I just found this site (via Cosellout) this afternoon, and I’m impressed. By now, though, I’m also depressed. Lemme see if I can tease out why.
For the record, I’m a white guy. Middle class culturally, lower-middle-class financially, punk tendencies. (Uhm…punk rock, maybe I should specify…) Left coast the last decade, 20-odd years in the midwest earlier.
I don’t care about soft drugs, so the Miller thing didn’t really register with me. I dislike white powders in our society, so I hoped Jones would get shafted (though, since it was powder, and not rock, we know what’ll go down*) and did register shock that 6 grams doesn’t get a guy intent to distribute.
Why I’m depressed is that I didn’t take the next step and start wondering where the condemnations were gonna come from. Why I’m depressed is it took Dwil to point out to me that not wondering this was due to my racism, my failure to consider race. Damnit. More work to do on the cop that lives in my head, obviously.
Anyway, thanks, Dwil–I don’t like being forced to confront my own ignorance, my own failings, but it’s gotta happen or I won’t get anywhere.
Great work.
I can’t resist: what’ll go down…is his sentence! Ba-zing! -Fat Contradiction
The above comment is why I write about the confluence of sports, race, society, and culture. I’m sure it’s much the same for my guest writers here at SOMM: MODI, SML, and MCBias.
Love the choir, but love the converts even more.
Comments
18 Responses to “Comment of the Week - White Boys Gone Wild: It’s a Racist, Racist World”
Got something to say?
It is precisely the converts that are the greatest satisfaction in writing… or even not converts, but the start of a reassessment process where an email says: “Thanks, I never thought about it that way before”…
…but it is also the choir that helps keep the spirits up when the mountain seems so big that you might be wasting your time…
also, I had this choir-vs-convert “value of blogging” discussion with a writer at Jack and Jill Politics yesterday (yeah, I’m still at the Netroots Convention which ended less than an hour ago) and I was told not to downplay the value of “the choir” because there is inherent value in qualitatively and quantitavely validating what people are already feeling (i.e. ESPN is racially-biased in their coverage)
MODI
Were you talking to CPL?
MODI-
I am not downplaying “the choir.” The faithful readers of this site seek “to make converts” just as I do, you do.
As you know SOMM started not as a blog but for someone to see examples of my writing as it pertained to sports instead of politics, so I was never in it for popularity, or “to be heard.” I was trying to get a job. Only after the state of the sports Internet blogosphere became apparent did I realize that there was little diversity in this Internet space and recognize that it mirrors MSM.
Now, it’s not about a job so much as it is making different voices heard, challenging the status quo, and speaking truth to power. And that extends to player and team analysis (how many journalists do not dis a certain player or team because of their connections with that player or team?).
Hell, we need much, much more than just the people who visit regularly, if a difference is going to be made. So every person who begins to understand what all the people associated with SOMM is extremely valuable…. I remember people emailing me early on telling me they didn’t want to tell anyone about my blog so they could bust out with new info and a different opinion to their friends! I was like, “NO NO NO! Tell them, by all means, tell them!”
I feel like as long I write what I feel, the peeps who visit will continue to visit - we know we’re cool with each other. But the question is always, where is everybody else? Where the fuck are they? Why are these trained seals hitting Deadspin despite the fact that their “fearful leader” has disappeared?
You know why? It’s like those fool coming out of voting booths in 2000: “Oh, I voted for Gore. Oh, I voted for Gore,” (no that it matters that much politically) but voted for Bush. They lied because they >em>knew the country was fucked up and knew that they would look like assholes trying to defend their Bush vote — so they lied and acted liberal for the cameras.
I think everyone who regularly visits would love it if SOMM received half the visits as Deadspin or even the Big Lead. Then the outlook for the future might not be so damn bleak…. But it is - and that’s the problem and that’s why I love the converts even more.
Tell you a little story…
I did a spoken-word event for an audience of black people. I did what I do and they clapped. That was it - they clapped. I was shocked. All the other spoken-word events I’d done were for audiences of white people who went insane (and some insanely pissed)…. Afterward, the people from the audience came up, one by one, and thanked me. Then I talked with the woman who was hosting the event. She told me that the reason why the reaction was so different was because I was preaching to the choir and that not even she realized when she booked me because she had seen me originally speaking to majority white audiences with black followers in those audiences.
The lesson here was that the black people who followed me and watched in those majority white venues were reveling in the thought of being able to watch these white people and their reactions. but when a black audience was all in the same place, they wanted release from the stuff I was saying. They wanted to be entertained. So when someone else got up and spoke and performed their spoken-word pieces about events or slices of life I considered trite, the all-black audience loved it. They wanted release, they wanted entertainment; they didn’t want to think when they went out for an evening of entertainment. And if the message was serious, they wanted it wrapped in something other than straight-forward speak.
I learned a valuable lesson that night…. and really, I need to apply it here, too.
Dwil,
There are choir members who still need the message too…usher members, deacons, mothers of the church, junio mission….heck….the message is never old or completely learned.
BTW, Jemele is getting killed on her piece on “gang signs”…someone emailed it to me earlier, I checked out the comments….so typical…nothing surprising.
Sista Miranda I saw the article. My dumb @ss should be shot for even going on ESPN racist website. Its like getting on stormfront.
Anyway I think if Jemele really wanted to make a point she could have pointed out with photos how a lot of the gang signs and frat signs are common. Like the Kappa sign and crip sign or the mason sign and the latin king sign.
You know with these internet bigots you have to spell it out real slow to their retarded @sse. Archie Bunkers think black culture consists of making babies, commiting crimes and rap music.
Oh well thats the last time I get on ESPN Klan for the next 6 months. I actually made it 4 months before today.
Miranda,
Just read Jemele’s article (didn’t read the comments, though). Just illustrates what you have been saying all along: The NFLPA is lame as hell. I think the best point was the fact that this proactive move makes the league seem like a casting call for a early ’90’s gang movie. People are going to think, where there is smoke there is fire, the only problem being the league created the smoke in the first damn place.
In my opinion it is just another footnote in the villification of the black athlete.
Really enjoyed that comment Dwil. I think about the same issue.
Miranda-
Jemele Hill’s piece???
There was one particular hand gesture that came to mind when I heard the NFL will be intensely scrutinizing players’ hand signals for possible gang signs next season. And let’s just say the response I thought of is the same gesture Michael Vick gave Atlanta Falcons fans.
Hmmm, sounds much like the last line of my piece on gang signs…. But now, for the backtracking caveat:
I’m usually not opposed to a league being proactive, but in this case not only has the NFL gone too far, it has successfully insinuated to the public that the league is full of Doughboys and O-Dogs.
Yeah, yeah. I don’t even need to read the rest, but I did…. And at the National Sports Review a dude named “Bull Connor” commented on the gang sign “Note.”
Anyway, back to Hill, there’s thius little nugget that you alol seem to miss:
“It has an element of institutional racism to it, frankly,” Cornwell said. “It’s harmful when the Michael Vicks, Jamal Lewises and Ray Lewises of the world send the message that most black players are on the edge of lawlessness, and the obvious and most appropriate representative to push back that view is the union. Unless the union holds the league accountable, I don’t think the league is going to do it on its own. There’s a benefit to it. They get credit for it in the media all the time.”
The NFL’s heart is in the right place, but there are times when even the most well-intentioned rule can be harmful. Case in point: David Dicks, the police chief in Flint, Mich., has come under fire for ordering officers to arrest people who wear their pants too low and expose what we’d rather not see. Personally I detest seeing young men “sag,” because they’re copying prisoners. But even I can’t argue that Dicks’ directive is unconstitutional and provides a convenient way for cops to racially profile.
So Vick, etc. = lawlwessness and the union isn’t doing anything about it…. if that isn’t a bullshit nothing-ass double entendre fucking quote….
And then to say the NFL’s heart is in the right place???!!! WTF! Are you serious?…
And black men sag because of prisoners??????????????????????
Yeah, and I guess I missed the point of her piece, huh?
Guys,
Jemelle Hill is skating on thin ice at ESPN, and it took a lot of courage for her to write this piece you guys are referring to.
When ANY black writer not named Whitlock writes something, I don’t bother to read the comments. If the article is about race or about a black person, in general, the race-baiters are out in full force. And they represent the basest negativity of those folks, and it’s sad.
It is sort of funny that right after the white cat gets popped for riding dirty, THEN the NFL comes out with this gang sign mess. So, since symbols are important again, do we need to go back to the proliferation of nooses that are popping up all over the place these days. Don’t tell me that black folks are burning black churches and tying all these nooses.
yeah, dwil, I also appreciated your comment. Very well put and didn’t think that you were downplaying the choir. Ultimately, I do write for the converts and it often affects my writing style (i.e. I might spell shit out in a “peel-the-onion” kind of way that can be understandably exasperating to the choir). I think my comment was more about if there is ANY value in reaffirming the choir — a question that i’ve also struggled with.
Anyway, I tend write with the white reader in mind. Although most SOMM commenters are black and brown, I suspect that most of our readers are white, as are the mainstream journalists that read SOMM.
BTW, your spoken word story has a telling point and is appreciated. And as I told you this weekend, it is rare that I write anything that I want to write anymore, whereas I am always writing what i feel I have to write — regardless of audience. Shit gets tedious and tiring, but besides us and TSF, who else is really going to do it? Honestly, I miss writing about actual sports, my Knicks, and the game within the games… I WISH I can write about that stuff more…
But every freakin time i start my article about why Bernard King belongs in the HOF or why Mariano is AT MINIMUM the 5th best Yankee ever, I read some dumbass biased shit on ESPN, and I table the sports stuff for another day… and another day… and another day… it’s been going on a couple of months now… can’t really help it. I could understand why many are looking for a fun break in their reading. Hell, I’m looking for the same damn thing. I know that you understand…
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anyway, i was happy to see Shoals call out against some bullshit Brad Miller article. http://www.sportingnews.com/blog/the_sporting_blog/entry/view/8863/brad_miller_breaks_his_weed_smokin_silence
If more of this goes on in the “mainstream blogs” then I might finish that Bernard article after all
MODI
You know I pointed the same issues Shoals had with that Bee story in another comment on Dwil’s first blog post about the topic. It was interesting to see that his article got all the usual responses from the folks at the Sporting News. He even got accused of playing the race card. Lovely.
People refuse to even consider the possibility what the world isn’t right or fair and that they are to blame for that. That’s too much to consider. Josh Howard get’s pillored for weeks for his drug use, Brad Miller gets nothing.
Oh yeah, Dwil you need to add that Nick Kazcur cat to your story about white boys gon’ wild. That dude was caught transporting large quantities of Oxy and then turned snitch for the feds. Amazing how that escaped national notice.
But, when Lance Briggs flipped his Lambo, it was on ESPN for four days straight. Don’t talk about what happened to Tank Johnson.
Big Man,
What’s even more fascinating is how it turns out he crossed an international border with these pills, flipped on a guy he may NOT have gotten the pills from….because all of a sudden its a mystery man named Danny…out somewhere on Hwy 93…….you just cant make this stuff up:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/07/18/patriot_players_drug_arrest_detailed/
And let’s not forget how Lawrence Phillips represents all that was wrong with Nebraska football, meanwhile the Peter brothers were equally as criminal minded and terrorizing women in Lincoln.
Hell, Peter King is still trying to ‘humanize’ Jason Peter and his new ‘drug manifesto’.
Sad indeed.
I forgot crazy ass Jason Peter.
How the fuck can you get picked up with 202 pills and only get charged with misdemeanor drug possession? Those pills can sell for like $20-$35 a pill on the street. 202 pills is a dealer stash.
That is the issue that needs to be examined. The different ways police treat athletes of a different hue.
He bought those pills across the Canadian border, lied on where he got them from…..and all he gets is a misdemeanor posession STATE charge?
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