Off The Press

Off the Press, I don't have to tell you this, but I will: Stupidity will never be eradicated.  It brings to mind my childhood in Liberia (Btw, check out Wil Haygood's profile of Africa's first female President, Liberia's Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, in the Washington Post).  Back then, Liberia was more a bucolic backwater than the poster image for war and chaos it has been until recently.   I remember the then-President, William Tolbert, would always make these long-winded speeches on the need to defeat the three societal ills of ignorance, disease and poverty (IDP).  He said it so much that IDP became an idiom unto itself.  The gronah boys in the street would trade it as an insult putdown, meaning "ignorant diseased person."

Unfortunately, there is no policy program, pogrom, sterilization program or genocide that will rid us of stupidity and stupid people.  It's impossible.  We all carry the stupidity gene.  In some families, it may skip a generation or two, but it's there (you need only cast your eyes toward Washington DC to know what I mean)! 

The mature person learns to live with ignorance as the price of conducting ones affairs in civil society.  However, there are times that one wishes that there was a button we could push that would rid us of all theses stupid fools.  Specifically, I'm referring to the toxic Philadelphia controversy between local NAACP head Jerry Mondesire and Donovan McNabb.  I blogged a little bit about the brouhaha on Monday, but I'm going to riff on it a little more. 

Donovan McNabb must have been Savage Henry, or some sort of deranged perverted maniac in a previous lifetime because I can't see what he's done to deserve the attacks that he's incurred over the course of his young life.  I mean, "what is it with folks attacking Donovan?"  I don't get it!  

He was criticized as a high-schooler at Mt. Carmel prep in Chicago, he was booed at Syracuse, booed at the 1999 NFL Draft, and set upon by a fat drug-abusing punk on National TV.  Now, he's had to deal with the T.O mess.  And to further heap indignity upon insult, he's getting attacked by certain African-Americans for not being Black enough?!!  I bet you his mom has got an enemies list longer than Richard Nixon's by now.  Lawd!  Mondesire better hope that he's never in the same room as Donovan McNabb's mom.  She might cold just do a Stanley Crouch on him.

It's funny that we can laugh about it, but the truth is, that it is really sad that here we are in the 21st Century and we're still trying to navigate and fight over a box that we've let others put us in.  I mean, what is Black anyway?  Is it a tangible thing, like height or eye color?   I'm a pretty dark-skin fellow, but I get so may emails questioning my blackness that I'm starting to worry!  

The identity question goes back to the very earliest times when people began to sort themselves into tribes, clans, and barbarian hordes.  For years, Downbeat magazine used to stump some great Jazz musicians who claimed they could tell a Black musician from a White musician - by sound alone.  The whole Blackness thing is a trope - a mythology that we love to perpetuate. 

Hey, I'm not a hater.  I rock it, too!!  But, enough is enough!!

Renee West, of Black Athlete, has got something to say about the issue.  West puts herself solidly in Mondesire's camp.  In fact, in her article, titled Hey McNabb, Don't Play the Race Card Unless You have a Full House, She claims that she was saying the same stuff way before Mondesire.  She riffs on Mondesires statements, point by point:

1. Black QB's are gifted runners. By trying to play in the pocket McNabb becomes mediocre and the biggest affront to those great Black QB's before him. I have to admit that was deep. In essence you deny the ethnic trait that makes you great to the point youdiscriminate against yourself. Before you dismiss it as malarkey, didn't Atlanta Falcon QB Michael Vick want the media recently to acknowledge that he wasn't just a running (Black) QB, he could also play in the pocket? And ever since he said that, his play has been mediocre.

2. If McNabb had shared his bonus with T.O. and Westbrook, the whole media circus around the Eagles this season could have been avoided. I don't know how much McNabb makes or the amount of his bonus take. But, I have said before, and I will continue to say, I do not feel McNabb handled himself as a leader of the Eagles football team. There is a difference between 'not stooping to someone's level' and 'looking spineless.' From the outside looking in it appeared that management told McNabb what would go down, and he just went 'yes massa.' (Yes, I say sports is high price slavery, but come on.) So how could one think it would cross his mind to share his money, or soup (Mondesire suggested that too), with anyone, or ever talk to management about team affairs? That's not his nature. I would do it. I think Brett Farve should have done it with Javon Walker. I think it was intentional on Brett's part that he didn't do it.

Finally the two big issues that all the sports shows weren't quite sure how to handle - Black folks talking about Black folks, and how would this fare if Mondesire were White.

To the first, "I always thought the NAACP supported African Americans and didn't talk bad about them,"Donovan McNabb, said in response to Mondesire.

Clarence Thomas. Condoleeza Rice. Colin Powell.

I'm reminded of a spoken word/poetry reading I attended years ago.   It was a benefit/poetry competition.  The late great Philippe Wamba was there among others.  Anyway, the star of the show was this young kid from Harvard who manage to combine flow with absolute lyrical mastery.  West's article reminds me of that kid's best poem of the day.  "Ignorance rocks dreadlocks too," was the title.

It fits.

Byran Burwell, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, has some advice for the likesof Mondesire and West.  Better to be quiet than expose your ignorance, is his quiet admonishment.  Burwell writes with the sobriety and the gravitas of someone who uses his brain for more than long division.  Burwell writes:

One of the more intelligent, outspoken athletes in this city is Rams defensive captain Tyoka Jackson, who always has an insightful and occasionally provocative view of the world around him. When reporters crowded around his locker stall Thursday afternoon, Jackson couldn't wait to weigh in on this one.

"I am embarrassed for the NAACP and that gentleman who made those comments," Jackson said. "(His words) are implying that all black people should act, look, talk and play the same, that we are not as diverse as all other cultural groups. We don't all listen to rap music. Some black people listen to country music. Ray Charles had a best selling country album. We don't all wear our hats backwards. ... We don't all have tattoos on our arms. ... (When reporters) go talk to a Jesse Jackson, he doesn't represent all black people. He is representing his views, not mine."

As Jackson spoke, he delivered his message wonderfully in language devoid of urban patois.

Good gosh, I bet in Mondesire's distorted view of the sports world, Tyoka Jackson would be a sellout, too.

Here's an idea for J. Whyatt Mondesire the next time he sits down to write another "sports" column.

Don't.

Word!!

I'm out!

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• #1 Comment from hayleys165 
  1/6/06 10:36 AM | Permalink

  wow, nice blog