http://sports.aol.com/whitlock/_a/time-to-stop-looking-...20070222104609990001

Updated:2007-02-22 12:48:59
Time to Stop Looking Past Black KKK
Denial Only Empowers Negative Forces in Community
By JASON WHITLOCK
AOL
Sports Commentary

Could you imagine the level of denial had my column not been written?

We would still be running around pretending that NBA All-Star Weekend was some sort of glorious black holiday, and anyone who dared mention the nasty elements of what transpired in Vegas would be shouted down as a racist.

Denial is a problem's No. 1 enabler.

We have a problem in the black community, and it didn't make its debut at All-Star Weekend Vegas. What was impossible to ignore in Vegas was on display in Houston, Atlanta and previous All-Star locations.

With the exception of Louis Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March, it's been on display nearly every time we've gathered in large groups to socialize in the past 15 or so years.

The Black Ku Klux Klan shows up in full force and does its best to ruin our good time. Instead of wearing white robes and white hoods, the new KKK has now taken to wearing white Ts and calling themselves gangsta rappers, gangbangers and posse members.

Just like the White KKK of the 1940s and '50s, we fear them, keep our eyes lowered, shut our mouths and pray they don't bother us.

Our fear makes them stronger. Our silence empowers them. Our lack of courage lets them define who we are. Our excuse-making for their behavior increases their influence and enables them to recruit more freely.

We sing their racist songs, gleefully call ourselves the N-word, hype their celebrity and get upset when white people whisper concerns about our sanity.

And whenever someone publicly states that the Black KKK is terrorizing black people, black neighborhoods, black social events and glorifying a negative, self-destructive lifestyle, we deny and blame the Man.

I don't want to do it anymore.

This must be the way Rosa Parks felt on that bus. She was just tired of eating white racist (spit). I'm tired of eating black racist (spit).

I'd like to kick it with my friends without worrying about the Black KKK opening fire in the parking lot. I'm tired of reading the about the drive-bys (modern-day lynchings). It gets old waking up and hearing about the Darrent Williamses, the Tupac Shakurs getting cut down in a hail of gunfire.

I'm tired of the lack of respect, the random violence, the celebration of drug dealers and the insinuation that education is anti-black.

Wednesday I received a troubling e-mail from a fan, someone who writes me frequently. She was upset by my All-Star Weekend column.

"Why are you hating so much these days and why do you sound so bitter," she wrote. "As I always say to you, you are my favorite. I am always looking for your articles, but lately you are just hating. I still love you though!"

The whole All-Star Weekend just put me on edge; it left me in a sour mood. I can't deny what I saw.

When I arrived at the Vegas airport Tuesday afternoon, All-Star Weekend gave me one final kick in the stomach, and I'm not talking about the long lines at the Southwest baggage check-in.

I stood in line for 75 minutes in the Southwest A boarding group. I was fourth in line behind three elderly white people (ages 60 to 75). They beat me in line by three or four minutes. The A, B and C groups were all filled an hour before the flight's scheduled departure.

Twenty feet away from where we all waited in line, a middle-aged black woman (45 to 55), what appeared to be her two sons (22 to 30) and an elderly black man (60s) all sat together and randomly slept, ate and talked.

When it was time to board the flight, the group of four stood, approached the elderly white woman standing in front of me and told her, "We're second in line. That's my bag on the floor."

The elderly white people were obviously intimidated. I wasn't and told the group they were crazy, and they needed to head to the back of the A boarding group and get in line behind all the people who stood for an hour.

Of course, they disagreed. I walked over and told the Southwest boarding agent to fix the problem. He witnessed the whole thing and came over and told the group they needed to move to the back of the A group. Words were exchanged between the agent and the group.

Eventually, and I'm not making this up, one of the young men told the agent that this was racism and they were being to asked to move because they were black. The other young man said that people like me were the reason black people couldn't get ahead.

The rest of the story is boring. I bring the story up to illustrate the mindset that has infected some of us in the black community.

Rosa Parks is a hero because she got tired of white people feeling a sense of entitlement to a seat on a bus wherever they wanted it. They didn't have to respect us. It didn't matter if we were there first and were just as tired. They took what they wanted from us and dared us to do anything about it.

Forty years after Parks' bravery, why would any of us think to heap this kind of disrespect on anyone else?

Why would we fight the white KKK and forty years later embrace the black KKK?

if you'd like to schedule a radio or television interview with Jason, please email him at ballstate68@aol.com. Do not call.

2007 America Online, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
2007-02-22 11:30:19

Whitlock has never written a column I agree with. He's like the Constructive Feedback of Black sportswriters. I've yet to see him write a positive article about a Black athlete.

quote:

Originally posted by RadioRaheem:
"Why are you hating so much these days and why do you sound so bitter," she wrote. "As I always say to you, you are my favorite. I am always looking for your articles, but lately you are just hating. I still love you though!"

Who are the real haters? I think it's those who sit back idly and watch their brothas and sistas self destruct.
The real haters are those who don't speak up when their peers engage in reckless sexual relationships ignoring
the AIDS epidemic in the black community. Accepting booty-calls but dismissing monogamy.

The real haters are those who sit back and say nothing about the brothas they know selling dope even though
the number of black men in prison increase every year. But congratulate and admire them for their drug-dealer status.
Embracing ignorance but denying education.

Why is it that some black people adapt negative ideas and reject positive ones? Backwards thinking, irrational
belief systems, ill-logic and dysfunctional reasoning. A serious pathology; reparations should be dispersed in the
form of psycho-therapy for proper reprogramming.

Those who appease are the real haters; critical analysis is synonymous with concern.

This is why I love reading Scoop's articles:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/print?id=2781794&type=story

What really happened in Vegas?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Scoop Jackson
Page 2

As the reports continue to flow from the activities during NBA All-Star Weekend, the rage begins to build.

Hip-Hop Woodstock. The Black KKK. Weekend leaves NBA with a black eye.

What? Seriously? For real?

As difficult as it is not to turn this generalization of the entire hip-hop culture into an issue of race, let's be honest, it is about nothing else.

Was part of Las Vegas during the All-Star weekend out of control? Yes. But nothing more than usual considering the circumstances. This was Vegas!!! A place that labeled itself Sin City before the NBA got there. Expecting everyone to act "accordingly" over the weekend is like expecting all married men in Brazil during Carnival not to sleep with another woman. Not saying it's right, but to think that nothing will happen is a little naive -- dumb to be exact. Did people really think that everyone who went to Vegas would act like they were spending four days during an NBA All-Star Weekend in Park City, Utah?

But that's not the issue. That's not where the irresponsibility lies. The irresponsibility lies with those writers and broadcast hosts who failed to do diligent research before they typed a word or opened their mouths.

History verses his story? As usual, we lost.

At some point over the last week, there should have been more balanced reporting. If not balanced, then fair. But this is an unfair sports world we live in. A world, it seems on a regular basis, that is getting more and more comfortable with dispensing covert innuendoes and subliminal messages. Especially when it comes to those of us who have love for and are part of the game of basketball. Specifically the part where young black men are getting paid millions of dollars and don't change the people around them once they get drafted.

But if I screamed the "R" word, everyone would say I'm wrong.

They say numbers don't lie. True. But the people who crunch the numbers sometimes do, and those who fail to look at all the numbers fall into the same category as Bill O'Reilly. With that, let's put the Vegas weekend into a real perspective.

According to reports, there were 403 arrests made in Vegas over the five-day All-Star Weekend (Thursday through Monday). Not saying that's a good thing, not defending the acts that got those 403 people locked up. But in order to see the truth behind that number, we need to look at what that 403 means.

As the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported, according to the Las Vegas Police Department there was an average of 80.6 arrests made every 24 hours in Vegas over those five days. Compare that to New Year's Eve, when 130 arrests were made in a 12-hour period.

Now, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitor's Authority, there were 302,000 people in town for All-Star weekend, about the same number of people (300,000) estimated in Vegas for New Year's Eve. That means the rate for arrests for New Year's Eve was more than three times that of All-Star Weekend.

But what happened while the NBA was in town is headline news? This is what becomes the reflection of a people, a culture? This is what constitutes columns and conversations of lawlessness and over-the-top irrational behavior? This is what gives people the right to editorialize and portray us as animals?

Where were these writers and broadcasters during New Year's Eve in Vegas? Where were they when the police reports were being filled out saying that of the 403 arrests, 172 were of local residents and only 231 were from outsiders who came to visit Vegas? Where were they when the police reports said that of those 403 arrests, 239 were for prostitution-related incidents, compared to an average week of 175 arrests for those same crimes. And none of these arrests involved an NBA player.

And I won't even get into, as Harvey Araton of the New York Times wrote, how nobody blamed NASCAR "for the death of a motorist who was shot in a road-rage encounter during a traffic jam after leaving the Daytona 500."

NASCAR ain't the NBA. You know the difference, I know the difference. But an NFL player comes into town, wilds out, tosses $81,000 up in the air, someone gets shot, and it becomes a reflection of the NBA?

Media, please.

Yet we are supposed to sit here and accept this? Accept what is being written and said -- and insinuated -- and say nothing? We should remain quiet as if there's absolute truth to what is being communicated about the behavior of the "hip-hop thugs and their baby mammas" (code: young black people) who went to Vegas and displayed a side of ignorance that had veteran reporters and columnists "scared" to go out of their rooms? But in Dallas a few weeks ago at the NHL All-Star Game these same cats felt safe as kittens.

Racism, please?

It's not even worth me going there.

I was asked on a radio show whether I thought in the next 10 years the NBA would have another All-Star Game in Vegas. My answer was no. But it had nothing to do with the actions that went down in Vegas, as the person who asked me the question was insinuating.

"One," I said, "there's no guarantee that the league will have a team there by then." And two, "neither will New York, Atlanta, L.A., D.C., Philly, Denver, Cleveland, the Bay or any other city that over the last 10 years has hosted an All-Star Game." I reminded him that the NBA doesn't get down like that. It spreads the All-Star Game around to give each city the opportunity to benefit from the attention and financial windfall (reportedly over $91 million over the four days in Vegas) that an All-Star Game brings.

The radio host heard me but wasn't feeling me.

Which is more irritating than anything in this recent campaign to make an entire culture (and part of a race) of people look or seem less than zero. No one wants to do the math. No one wants to look at all 360 degrees of the issue. No one wants to be responsible in their jobs.

Unbiased? Please. Please. Please.

What went on in Vegas didn't stay in Vegas. And I'm not saying it should have, but if people are going to be responsible for putting out info about what went down, the least they can do is understand their facts before they start calling all us kettles black.

Check... Mate...

I like Dave Zirin. He's got a knack for mixing sports with politics/social justice.

quote:

Originally posted by Santana St. Cloud:
I like Dave Zirin. He's got a knack for mixing sports with politics/social justice.

that was a great response. Maybe Brother Whitlock will take some of his points to heart