Jason Whitlock: As I've mentioned many times before, sportswriters are the rock bottom most pathetic at writing about race. Since race is such a flamingly obvious feature of sports, sportswriters have to be politically correctier than thou at all times to avoid mentioning the elephant in the locker room. Fortunately, one exception is AOL's Jason Whitlock:
Sports Commentary
by Jason Whitlock
I’m calling for Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the president and vice president of Black America, to step down. ... We need to take a cue from White America and re-elect our leadership every four years. White folks realize that power corrupts. That’s why they placed term limits on the presidency. They know if you leave a man in power too long he quits looking out for the interest of his constituency and starts looking out for his own best interest.
We’ve turned Jesse and Al into Supreme Court justices. They get to speak for us for a lifetime.
Why? ...
Rather than inspire us to seize hard-earned opportunities, Jesse and Al have specialized in blackmailing white folks for profit and attention. They were at it again last week, helping to turn radio shock jock Don Imus’ stupidity into a world-wide crisis that reached its crescendo Tuesday afternoon when Rutgers women’s basketball coach C. Vivian Stringer led a massive pity party/recruiting rally.
Hey, what Imus said, calling the Rutgers players "nappy-headed hos," was ignorant, insensitive and offensive. But so are many of the words that come out of the mouths of radio shock jocks/comedians.
Imus’ words did no real damage. Let me tell you what damaged us this week: the sports cover of Tuesday’s USA Today. This country’s newspaper of record published a story about the NFL and crime and ran a picture of 41 NFL players who were arrested in 2006. By my count, 39 of those players were black.
You want to talk about a damaging, powerful image, an image that went out across the globe?
We’re holding news conferences about Imus when the behavior of NFL players is painting us as lawless and immoral. Come on. We can do better than that. Jesse and Al are smarter than that.
Had Imus’ predictably poor attempt at humor not been turned into an international incident by the deluge of media coverage, 97 percent of America would’ve never known what Imus said. His platform isn’t that large and it has zero penetration into the sports world.
Imus certainly doesn’t resonate in the world frequented by college women. The insistence by these young women that they have been emotionally scarred by an old white man with no currency in their world is laughably dishonest.
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My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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16 comments:
"A man who doesn’t respect himself wastes his breath demanding that others respect him.
We don’t respect ourselves right now. If we did, we wouldn’t call each other the N-word. If we did, we wouldn’t let people with prison values define who we are in music and videos. If we did, we wouldn’t call black women bitches and hos and abandon them when they have our babies.
If we had the proper level of self-respect, we wouldn’t act like it’s only a crime when a white man disrespects us. We hold Imus to a higher standard than we hold ourselves. That’s a (freaking) shame."
Perhaps he should take Sharpton's place for a while.
Yeah Whitlock's really nailing it out of the park right now.
In the sophisticated football analysis circles I visit, Whitlock gets a lot of ridicule, only some of which is undeserved. But when it comes to social issues, I've loved the guy for years.
He consistently writes the only mainstream sports/race combo articles that aren't disgusting perversions.
Jason Whitlock is an underappreciated social critic who got his start and earned his stripes doing sports work.
To add a little anecdotal flavor, he consistently responded to my emails and struck me as incredibly down to earth and friendly when I met him at a sports radio football game for charity when I was in high school (he's from KC).
That is an incerdibly good article.
Steve, thumbs up on the new font.
Question:
Is the crime rate for black professional atheletes as high as for all blacks males by age.
If so it is strong evidence that the democrats idea that poverty is a root cause of crime is wrong.
Yeah, it's a decent article, but we seem to be so overwhelmed by bullshit that we overpraise any mildly reasonable opinion piece by a black guy.
Something else that's annoyed me, is how everyone (even Ann Coulter)is saying things like
Hey, what Imus said, calling the Rutgers players "nappy-headed hos," was ignorant, insensitive and offensive
Anyone watching the game would have noted how "ghetto" and masculine the girls were, so it was actually pretty accurate and funny.
What's wrong with netball anyway? Or is that only for middle class white girls?
And one final thing: IMUS, GET YOUR HAIRCUT.
"Question:
Is the crime rate for black professional atheletes as high as for all blacks males by age.
If so it is strong evidence that the democrats idea that poverty is a root cause of crime is wrong."
By Floccina, at 4/18/2007 8:26 AM
Floccina,
Interesting question (of which I don't know the answer), but you do have to consider that many of these athletes grew up in poverty, so the sudden wealth they acquired at a young age isn't going to change their views on acting responsibly (or hanging with a new crowd).
What I find disturbing (somewhat off tangent) is the crisis in creativity among African-Americans. Blacks have been at the forefront of musical creation since Scott Joplin. Now?
You can listen to Master P or the Game and it's basically the same stuff that NWA was doing 15 years ago. There has been nothing new since then. What happened to the enormous amount of talent and creative efforts that used to characterize Black popular music?
Good question about black musical creativity.
It had to be tied to white sensibilities. On their own, they returned to the wild.
What I find disturbing (somewhat off tangent) is the crisis in creativity among African-Americans. Blacks have been at the forefront of musical creation since Scott Joplin. Now?
You have to master (let alone play) an instrument to be musically creative. Guys like Charlie Parker and Jimmy Hendrix slept with their instruments. Rap, on the other hand, is all about the singer, not the song. It's about conveying your authenticity and coolness, which is incompatible with practicing scales in your room all night.
This guy was certainly correct about the "pity party". Maybe that lady coach should be checked for a recent weapons purchase? One thing that was hilarious about this was the WHITE GIRL;she was prob a benchwarming nobody. When she got the chance to get some attention,she really ran with it! Her piteous comments about how "Imus knows not one of us",and her general butt kissing of the black players were fun to watch-but its scarey that people took her seriously! :0
Uh,back again. Re "black musical creativity":how do you know blacks arent as creative as they have always been?? Maybe what theyre doing isnt as accesible to the white mainstream as it used to be;for ex,are Jill Scott and Usher(acts whites dont like much) good? Maybe black music is being shut out o' the mainstream by (c)rap music,and so is getting "blacker";as white pop music seems to be a cheap copy of black music! (J.T. etc):)
"Good question about black musical creativity."
Not sure I agree. Now, more than any time in history (ie, the 20th century), popular music is polarized. There is commercial music, and there is good music, and there is very little overlap. The best band in the world, Arcade Fire, managed to sort of break into the mainstream but they are on an independent label. The previous best band in the world (and one that reached heights of absolute superiority last achieved by The Beatles), Radiohead, is thinking about not having a record label at all.
It's true that The Beatles and Beach Boys started out as simple pop bands before developing into brilliant artists (to be specific, Brian Wilson was a genius rather than 'The Beach Boys'), but now we just have this gigantic dichotomy between music that is utterly, explictly irrelevant like Ashlee Simpson and literally dozens of great bands that will never be played on corporate/mainstream radio. There is a difference there.
Some people say that music was great in the 60s/70s and is relatively poor today, but they're not literally correct. There is a LOT more good music today. It's just that music that gets played on mainstream radio is much worse. The explanation that makes sense to me is that when the industry was in its infancy it simply had music guys finding the best music possible and producing/promoting it. Since then, we've developed mega-corporations that use much more 'sophisticated' methods to manufacture pop stars. Some musical genius/eccentric/visionary is MUCH less likely to wield a lot of influence in the era of marketing firms and test groups.
I think there is actually a deeper issue to be explored here, about the nature of capitalism. Objectively speaking, capitalism and the corporate 'free market' absolutely does not lead to consumers getting the best music. The reductionism that whatever people buy and listen to must be what they want just can't be defended except in the abstract.
Anyway, all of this applies to rap music. The most technically sophisticated, most interesting rap music is not what's played on mainstream radio/BET. It's often referred to as 'backpacker' (rather than 'indie' in rock) rap -- referring to college students.
[Side note: Eminem is actually an extraordinarirly talented rapper]
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