"What Grant Hill and Jalen Rose Share"
Wilbon, Michael
Posted on espn.com on March 17, 2011
URL: http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/commentary/news/story?id=6227464
Now I know there are some in the class who are not as into sports as some of us are, but we have discussed that as teachers we need to be willing to grow, so here is your chance! Michael Wilbon wrote for the Washington Post for 30 years before joining ESPN permanently this year. He is a very thoughtful observer of the sports world and his commentary is extremely well written. In this article he writes about a video showing the 1990's Michigan College Men's Basketball team and how they changed college basketball.
During the video, the main speaker for the Michigan team, Jalen Rose, speaks about how his team really hated their main adversary, Duke University. Rose states that Duke would only accept a certain type of a black athlete from wealthy and established communities and not from less respected places like inner-city Detroit. And those blacks that went to Duke were Uncle Toms by joining the majority white community and not staying with the true black community.
This commentary provides a great discussion about those who come from privileged backgrounds in the black community versus those who do not. It brings up the whole discussion of the few blacks as a whole who have made it past the disenfranchisement that plagues the black community and the majority who have not. This continues our racism chapter by showing inequity is still a bitter part of our society and we as teachers, the education community and society at large need to recognize this ongoing feeling whether or not it may still be true. The trick, as Mr. Wilbon states, is we need to get past the anger and accusations to a point of all parts of society working together towards solutions to make our society truly equal and just.
No society will ever be "equal" but I agree that we should always work towards justice and to the greatest extent possible, equal opportunity.
ReplyDeleteEqual outcomes is impossible to achieve as making sure everyone runs the 100m dash at the same rate. I challenge the notion that kids cannot break out from a poor community, pursue happiness and find success....and they can do it without a government program spoon feeding them too.
I agree that it is possible for kids to break out of a poor community and succeed as we have seen multiple stories of that. However, what makes those stories incredible is those successes are extremely rare. When whole segments of society or a whole race is affected, then I believe we owe it to try and level the playing field. I am not saying it needs to be government programs, but I think the first place is to start in the field of ideas about race and who we are from a base level and start it growing from there.
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