BLACK ON BLACK CRIME

On Sunday March 13th ESPN aired a special documentary called "THE FAB 5" documenting the story of 5 freshman basketball players at The University of Michigan in the early 90's.  During this documentary, there were some comments made by a couple of the players, notably Jalen Rose about the Duke basketball program and their recruitment of Black American players.  Rose said that when he was a freshman he and his teammates felt that, "Duke only recruits Uncle Toms".  The words of the Fab 5 created great controversy and spurred comments from a Black American that played on the Duke team that beat the Fab 5 in the National Championship game their freshman year, Grant Hill.  Hill wrote an article defending himself and other Blacks that played at Duke and said they were credits to their race and are nothing near an "Uncle Tom".  Jalen Rose and Jimmy King of the Fab 5 also made an appearence on ESPN'S FIRST TAKE to discuss the topic with Skip Bayless.  One of the highlights of the interview was Rose and King stating that Duke only recruits certain types of Black players and nobody can dispute that.  A couple of days later on the same show, ESPN'S Chris Broussard commented about the situation and mentioned the identity crisis of young Black men and the misconception that if you don't grow up in "the hood" then you are less Black.  All of these conversations (I will place links to each at the bottom of the post) bring up a few issues that should be the focus of this arguement.  I will highlight what I feel we should all be able to take away from this situation that has so many lessons learned.

I was one of the many that watched the Documentary and truthfully if this didn't become an issue in the sports world, I would have never had a second thought about the comments made about Duke.  The Fab 5 stated how they felt at the age of 18 in their Freshman year in college and I left it at that.  Obviously the rest of the world didn't feel the same as I.  After watching the aftermath of the comments Rose and the others made I realized one big lesson that we all probably heard before........you have to watch what you say and how you say it!  Rose was speaking of how he felt at the age of 18 but he used one of the most hurtful phrases that could be used toward a Black person.  If his choice of words were any different, I may be blogging about something different.  Us regular folk who don't have to worry about being under a microscope still have to live with words we have said to loved ones, co-workers, and others.  So imagine how some words that we have said in our daily lives will blow up if we were in the position of a Jalen Rose.  Rose might still feel the same way....he might not.  What I do know is that once it leaves your mouth you can't take it back and it is then left up to the worlds interpretation.  Words are powerful no matter how much you sing "sticks and stones".

The second thing is the lesson that Grant Hill and Chris Broussard were attempting to teach us.  That lesson is in referrence to how we feel about each other as Blacks.  Some took Jalen's comments about being an "Uncle Tom" as if he changed the definition to "from a two parent household raised in the suburbs".  This is a thought process that is cacerous to us as a people.  Since when are you "more black" because you grew up in the projects?  Since when are you "less black" because you know how to speak proper English?  There is no blueprint to "being Black"!  We all are different and take different paths to where we feel we should be in life.  Jalen Rose is from a single parent household in Detroit and grew up in a financially strapped home.  Grant Hill grew up with both parents, both having Ivy league educations and were financially stable.  Tell me which one of these situations discribes racial attributes?  We are all Black and need to embrace the way that God made us.  Just because you grow up in the suburbs and go to private schools doesn't mean you are a sell out.  In my mind selling drugs to your own people and creating death in your own neighborhood is selling out much more than an Ivy league education could ever be!  We all, wether upper, middle, or lower class are all Black people and working and learning together is what we need to worry about as opposed to labeling each other.

Finally, on FIRST TAKE, Jalen said that he understands that Duke recruits a specific type of player and he understands why.  By pointing that out and choosing not to celebrate it means he is socially concious and understands the depth of why certain things are the way they are.  Now I'm not going to focus on if Duke just recruits people from certain neighborhoods with certain family backgrounds.  What I will focus on is the fact that we do need to know when practices similar to these are being practiced.  There are still many things in sports and in life that have processes to shut out certain groups of people.  Many times these organizations have many "politicaly correct" reasons that save them from being scrutinized for their actions.  What I got from Jalen's comments was that we have to be more aware of when there are injustices in certain processes that we may normally support.  Make sure that we look a little deeper into situations so that we are always supporting causes, programs, products and processes that are in line with equallity and our personal beliefs and values.  Making sure that we aren't selling ourselves out, never the less our race.

In conclussion I ultimately just want us all (including myself) to start looking at situations such as this and seeing what we can learn from them.  Both sides have points that are important but what common ground can we come to?  We have to stop separating ourselves as Black people and falling into the mental trap that was set for us all so long ago!  Check out the links for more info on this controversy.

Jalen Rose and Jimmy King on FIRST TAKE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDlfp4ADJRE

Grant Hill's response to Jalen Rose http://thequad.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/grant-hills-response-to-jalen-rose/

Chris Broussard on The Fab 5's Comments http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhfA58l6q3f7djCa84


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