When I brought up LeBron James posting online a photo of the Heat players dressed in hoodies, with their heads bowed, in solidarity with Trayvon Martin, as political expression, Bryant seemed nonplussed. "I won't react to something just because I'm supposed to, because I'm African-American," he said. "That argument doesn't make sense to me. So we want to advance as a society and as a culture, but, say, if something happens to an African-American, we immediately come to his defense? Yet you want to talk about how far we've progressed as a society? Well, if we've progressed as a society, then you don't jump to somebody's defense just because they're African-American. You sit and you listen to the facts just like you would in any other situation, right? So I won't assert myself."
March 31, 2014
"There's a bigger issue in terms of being an African-American athlete, and the box people try to put you in..."
"And it's always a struggle to step outside of that," says Kobe Bryant, in the excellent (but subscription-only) New Yorker article titled "The Fourth Quarter, Kobe Bryant confronts a long—and possibly painful—goodbye." The article is by Ben McGrath, who continues in this paragraph (on page 45 of a piece that goes from 38 to 49):
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I was delighted to read that a prominent, successful black man was able to suggest that Trayvon Martin might just have been another jumped-up punk in a hoodie. Apparently he was forced to recant later.
Yeah "black Twitter" went wild about this and so Kobe went all mealy mouthed bullshit.
Oh well.
Kobe has some big time experience with the criminal justice system. It's not surprising he can relate to an accused person.
Good for him for taking the right position in the first case. too bad he was forced to "understand" that "his people" think that you're supposed to forever remain looked in a box.
Dear Leader must hold a beer summit with Kobe to straighten out an African American who refuses to stay in the plantation.
As a progressive white liberal I hereby declare Kobe Bryant an inauthentic black man
Kobe and Ta-Nehisi Coates probably wouldn't get along. Tribalism is that guy's bread and butter.
I brought up TNC because he's currently trading blows (and saccharin praise) with Jonathon Chait.
Oh man. He's in trouble now. Kobe becomes an instant uncle tom.
I wonder what Crack would have to say about this. Oh yeah, "blah blah blah racist blah blah blah"
I stand with you, brother. You may also want to drop the "African" prefix. You, and I, are now American. That's it. It does not destroy our heritage to acknowledge this reality with its alternate path.
Curious George said...
I wonder what Crack would have to say about this. Oh yeah, "blah blah blah racist blah blah blah"
Crack would say, as Kobe discovered, without blacks you're Kelly Rindfleisch. The glorious individual. Where no one has to - or will - come to your aid, or stand by your side, unless it's convenient for them to do so, no matter what the "disinterested" whites do to you. Y'all can keep that.
Crack would say, as most Americans are discovering, that kind of thinking doesn't lead to a country but to a neurotic selfishness that does more to tear the country apart than bind us together. Here or elsewhere. It's ripping apart the Republican Party, right now, and that doesn't stop them. They'll only stop themselves.
Crack would say, as Martin Luther King said, I'd rather been seen as "maladjusted" than go along with the Republican Party's current sociopathic outlook.
That way leads only to death,...
Seems to me that Kobe figured out that had Zimmerman been black, nobody outside Sanford FL would have heard about this case.
It's nice to know some people are reflective enough to understand, even though the culture won't let them express it.
Crack said:
"White conservatives - who say it's racist for blacks to discuss race because it makes whites uncomfortable - don't understand this country, it's history..."
Who said it's racist for blacks to discuss race?
Perhaps it is because that's all lefties seem to think about these days. Lefties are obsessed by race. Does that obsession make them racist? Yes. Discussing race doesn't make one racist but an obsession about race - yes definitely racist.
So this interview is old and he's already recanted?
Meh.
"..Crack would say, as Martin Luther King said, I'd rather been seen as "maladjusted" than go along with the Republican Party's current sociopathic outlook.
That way leads only to death,..."
3/31/14, 12:30 PM
Speaking of death, what is the leading cause of death among black males 16 to 36? Republicanism?
LarsPorsena ,
Speaking of death, what is the leading cause of death among black males 16 to 36? Republicanism?
What would that matter?
This conversation about Kobe's views between ESPN's Steven A. Smith and Arsenio Hall is very interesting and probably not what you'd expect from Steven A.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2014/03/30/stephen_a_smith_kobe_bryants_comment_about_trayvon_martin_was_right.html
Illuninati,
"Who said it's racist for blacks to discuss race?"
I've been called a racist since I merely joined the conversation on the - surprise - "black" side.
"Perhaps it is because that's all lefties seem to think about these days."
Or, you and others are so focused on your political Hatfield Vs. McCoy feud with the "lefties," you missed the cultural sand shifting beneath your feet.
"Lefties are obsessed by race."
Good Republicans used to be.
"Does that obsession make them racist? Yes."
That's an odd reaction. We have a history. Much of it hidden from us - all of us. A lot of what we're learning is just being acknowledged after hundreds of years - validating the black aural history of our nation. That's not bad unless you don't accept blacks as Americans, and are determined to live a lie, including the one about not wanting unnecessary barriers placed before blacks, or to do us any harm.
"Discussing race doesn't make one racist but an obsession about race - yes definitely racist."
I don't know how black people, specifically, and their friends whatever their color, can be called "obsessed" with our well-being in a white supremacist country and culture with hundreds of years of validated South African-type hostility, of an almost unimaginable terror, tenor, and length, that we must call "home".
How detached from reality, are you, to say that?
Bryant spent formative years in Italy and is (or was) fluent in Spanish, Italian and English. He had a distinctly different upbringing from most of his NBA peers.
The Crack Emcee said...
I've been called a racist since I merely joined the conversation on the - surprise - "black" side.
This is a lie. Crack outed himself as a racist by revealing he believes in skin color based group guilt among other racist principles.
"I don't know how black people, specifically, and their friends whatever their color, can be called "obsessed" with our well-being in a white supremacist country and culture with hundreds of years of validated South African-type hostility, of an almost unimaginable terror, tenor, and length, that we must call "home".
How detached from reality, are you, to say that?"
You really need to get over yourself, pal. For as long as we have a second amendment and I'm allowed to defend myself, you're not coming into to my home and taking anything from me, my wife, or my children, based on something that happened before we were born.
Move on, buddy. You'll live a happier life.
crack: "I've been called a racist since I merely joined the conversation on the - surprise - "black" side."
First: LOL-Lie.
Second: Crack as someone who is really against calling people racists gratuitously?
LOL-eleventy!!.
Crack said:
"I don't know how black people, specifically, and their friends whatever their color, can be called "obsessed" with our well-being in a white supremacist country and culture with hundreds of years of validated South African-type hostility, of an almost unimaginable terror, tenor, and length, that we must call "home".
How detached from reality, are you, to say that?"
If this attitude is prevalent among the black community, then it appears that the desire for a multiracial culture is dead. Perhaps people are just too tribal to live together.
illuninati: "Perhaps people are just too tribal to live together."
Well, we already know they are in several places in Africa.
And Europe.
And Asia.
And everywhere.
Gee, it's almost like it's a "human nature thing".
I guess we aren't so "Post-History" after all.
Sorry Francis.
Fukuyama, not Albert Sinatra.
Crack,
My black father and the rest of his side of the family (who all actually grew up black in the pre-CRA and Jim Crow era) would laugh you out of the building with your constant whining about being an oppressed black in 21st century America. Maybe you can ask them for advice on how they managed to live highly successful lives with real and not imagined obstacles.
You know how often we talked about race in our family? ZERO.
Drago said:
"Gee, it's almost like it's a "human nature thing".
I guess we aren't so "Post-History" after all."
Obviously tribalism is inherent in human nature. Just because people live the USA doesn't change human nature. Capitalism enables people of different backgrounds to live together since they are rewarded according to their contributions to society rather than by their political connections and tribe. The only way a multiracial society can work is for everyone to sign onto scrupulously moral behavior in which government treats everyone exactly the same regardless of race or tribe. By ginning up racial hatred and by treating people differently under the law because of race, the left is busy destroying the system which would make a multiracial society possible.
Crack:
Speaking of death, what is the leading cause of death among black males 16 to 36? Republicanism?
"What would that matter?"
As the great philosopher Pogo said:
We have met the enemy ahd he is us.
Illuninati:
The Left is creating a manageable stock. That is the goal and cause of left-wing ideology.
Marshal,
"Crack outed himself as a racist by revealing he believes in skin color based group guilt among other racist principles."
Look at my post - never mentioned guilt once. That YOU mention guilt is interesting.
eric,
"You really need to get over yourself, pal. For as long as we have a second amendment and I'm allowed to defend myself, you're not coming into to my home and taking anything from me, my wife, or my children, based on something that happened before we were born."
Oh, now you're Oscar Pistorious, scared of the black phantom:
South Africa has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world. An armed burglar in your home is a terrifying possibility. But in a land still suffering from the myriad effects of enforced segregation, some find it hard not to hear "the old white fear of the swart gevaar,” as South African journalist and crime writer Margie Orford puts it, in Pistorius's legal defense.
This threat of the swart gevaar — meaning “black peril” — was used under the racist, white-minority apartheid system to excuse all measures of violence and control on South Africa’s population, Orford writes in a recent essay. Orford calls the idea of an unknown, presumed dangerous black intruder hiding in Pistorius’s bathroom the "third body" in the case.
When you're ready to talk on a level above "Birth Of A Nation" let me know,...
The Crack Emcee said...
Look at my post...
Crack's new theory: racism must be present in every post or it doesn't exist.
Can't wait to test his application of this avant garde principle.
Illuninati,
"If this attitude is prevalent among the black community, then it appears that the desire for a multiracial culture is dead. Perhaps people are just too tribal to live together."
Naw, it's just the white guys. Notice how you leapt from "black people, specifically, and their friends whatever their color" to the assumption nobody can get along without whites laying the ground rules? That's white supremacy.
Maybe WHITES are too tribal to live with others.
Maybe WHITES are too tribal to work for justice.
Maybe WHITES are too tribal to see the wreckage they've wrought, and help rebuild, instead of continuing to do damage.
Maybe WHITES are too tribal to stop making fun of the people they've oppressed, to quit trivializing our concerns, and basically acting like modern human beings.
Maybe WHITES are too tribal to make it work.
hey boom,
"My black father and the rest of his side of the family,…"
And what's your point? That not all blacks agree on everything? Really? You think that's news to me?
Your attempt at patronizing me on the subject of black America is what's laughable. Why don't you go ask them if there's blacks who disagree with them out there, see what they say. Whoopie!
And then why don't you ask them why 97% of blacks vote against you - and them - and agree with me.
Get back to me on that one as well,...
Illuninati,
"The only way a multiracial society can work is for everyone to sign onto scrupulously moral behavior in which government treats everyone exactly the same regardless of race or tribe."
Right - so treat the injustice against blacks exactly the same way you would if it were whites made to be punished for 15 generations and then you've got a nation built on a firm foundation of justice.
Without it - you're just blowing smoke and anyone on the other side of that cloud of bullshit can smell it.
Crack: "Maybe WHITES are too tribal to live with others."
We have much to learn from the Hutu and the Tutsi.
Much.
Like the vest way to wield a machete when hacking the head off a child.
I mean, there's probably a "white" (wrong) way to do it and a "black" (very very correct) way to do it.
Crack will elaborate shortly.
Crack,
You're so focused on playing your victim card that you completely missed my point. Which is that you live in a very different America than our parents did. If they could find success, then why can't you? They had real institutional barriers to overcome. The only thing you have to overcome is your inability to see things in any other way than that of a "victim".
I belong to a golf club that is 99% black. We're made up of doctors, dentists, lawyers, teachers, police officers, pilots and retired military officers to name a few. You know who the blacks are that disagree with our life choices and successes? Losers. Losers looking for an excuse for their failings.
Crack: "Your attempt at patronizing me on the subject of black America is what's laughable."
LOL
Boom, how dare you interrupt Cracks patronizing with what Crack asserts is patronizing?!!
Who do you think you are?
Crack?
crack: "And then why don't you ask them why 97% of blacks vote against you - and them - and agree with me."
Crack feels very very comfortable in the herd.
Crack Emcee said:
"Maybe WHITES are too tribal to live with others.
Maybe WHITES are too tribal to work for justice."
I didn't list races because I include both black people and white people in the human race. Black people and white people are equally guilty of tribalism. It is a legacy of evolution.
"Right - so treat the injustice against blacks exactly the same way you would if it were whites made to be punished for 15 generations and then you've got a nation built on a firm foundation of justice."
The reason people supported the civil rights movement was to try to achieve a society in which the government was blinded to race. As I said, the present project by lefties to bring race back into the center of governance is a repudiation of that principle.
hey boom,
"You're so focused on playing your victim card that you completely missed my point."
And you're so intent by BEGINNING with that conservative "victim" trope you're already losing my interest.
"You live in a very different America than our parents did."
So? That wasn't white's doing.
"If they could find success, then why can't you?"
How could Pakistan have a woman president - twice - but women still be oppressed there? Don't you see the successful outcome of a few has nothing to do with the misery of others? You hold to a fantasy. Magical thinking.
"They had real institutional barriers to overcome."
Implying - though everyone agrees this is still a racist country - today's barriers are what? Imaginary? WHen whites outnumber blacks 6 to 1? Hold 12 times the wealth? Got to the financial starting line 400 years earlier and then - with money made on black slavery and Jim Crow - wipe your hands of it and say "Too bad"? Claim to "never think" about race but demand to dictate it's terms?
Oh yeah, you guys are going to have a GREAT time trying to recruit blacks with the message all 97% of us have got white America wrong.
"The only thing you have to overcome is your inability to see things in any other way than that of a 'victim'."
And you've got to stop using Right-Wing focused group terms to talk to me because they don't work. No "victim" group has freed themselves from slavery. No "victim" group toppled Jim Crow. No "victim" group has made the KKK an ugly organization. No "victim" group has changed the laws of this country or has added parts to the Constitution to make it mean what it actually says. And no "victim" group has turned Hip-Hop culture and Rap Music - which whites declared wasn't even music - into the biggest world-wide phenomena culture has ever seen.
Like the Harlem Globetrotters, we spread the joy of America without even trying. So, as Bill Burr said, white America may have created supermen by accident, so that cry of "victim" rings as hollow as every other white diversion blacks have seen through, as though we also have X-Ray eyes.
"I belong to a golf club that is 99% black."
Congratulations.
"We're made up of doctors, dentists, lawyers, teachers, police officers, pilots and retired military officers to name a few."
And your point is?
"You know who the blacks are that disagree with our life choices and successes? Losers. Losers looking for an excuse for their failings."
Or people who refuse to assimilate in order to "make it" far enough they can look down on others with such abandon. Tell me, hey boom, what did Glenn Ford do to make him a "loser" in your (and presumably your friends in law enforcement's) eyes?
What did that "loser" Jordan Davis do when Michael Dunn killed him? Ask the teachers in your group how they feel about kids being killed for loud music.
What did straight-A student and Florida A& M football player Johnathan Ferrell do as he was shot and killed by a police officer? He was seeking assistance after being involved in a car accident.
Did that ever happen to anyone at the golf club? If it does or did, what do they say? "Suck it up!", I imagine, instead of expecting and demanding the same treatment as everyone else. How did they get an integrated golf club anyway?
I don't like to assume, but I'd say somebody complained so y'all can be a bunch of stuffed shirts about other's efforts to survive.
Not impressed.
Illuninati,
"The reason people supported the civil rights movement was to try to achieve a society in which the government was blinded to race."
You lie to yourself - people DIDN'T support The Civil Rights Movement. James Baldwin, alone, lost three friends to assassins bullets - Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and James Meredith - and you're going to try and paint that as white support?
Like I said, whites need a history lesson that doesn't flatter them, because the one they've been getting is a fabrication right out of "Gone With The Wind"...
Crack. You need some help, dude. I hope you can find it. You are in some deep shit. Your argumentation, such as it ever was, has deteriorated into realms of logic normally occupied by high school students. Those all cap exclamations are sure signs of loosening screws.
James Merideth is alive and well, by the way, and he would find you vile.
Michael,
"James Merideth is alive and well, by the way, and he would find you vile."
My bad - I meant Medgar Evers. And such hostility. You are no friend to blacks, that's for sure. Jeez. You'd have thought my mistake was shitting on your shoes, not mixing up names. You've gotta be desperate to use something so petty.
And so what if James Merideth disagrees? And what makes you think I don't know his views, too? (Why are whites so insistent on thinking they can tell me about black people?) And why are the strays from black thought so important to whites when A) it's obvious you'd rather ignore millions in the desperate attempt to promote a handful of outliers who reflect your views, and B) that's never worked? Booker T. Washington - a black history giant - got the boot from black folks for that very act. James Merideth's no different. Why you think he is, is what's revealing. White folks do love dey special niggas.
Why don't you talk about all the successful blacks who challenge your view, still - they outnumber James Meredith, and Larry Elders, and Clarence Thomas, and Condoleezza Rice, and all the rest, by a vast margin - why don't you talk about them? They're successful, too - are they also in "realms of logic normally occupied by high school students" as millionaires and icons, or are you unwilling to admit anything but what reflects the current white sociopathic tendency I've mentioned - where we somehow build a country on your inhuman indifference to a massive injustice while ignoring each other's plight because you found your one favorite black (there's always one!) who disagrees?
And whites wonder why the term "Uncle Tom" is still in use.
You reward them - but only for giving you even the tiniest of cover.
Let James Meredith change his mind and you will, too - about James Meredith, not your assumptions.
That's where your loyalties lie - in believing your own lies - and anybody sane can see it,...
There do seem to be significant and qualitative swings in Cracks postings.
Crack, all kidding aside, are you on painkillers for anything?
You were speaking the other day of isolation etc. Being physically immobile or something like it and on painkillers would explain the peaks and valleys and outlook.
"Bryant spent formative years in Italy and is (or was) fluent in Spanish, Italian and English. He had a distinctly different upbringing from most of his NBA peers."
So, what of it? Didn't you notice that he has black skin? When that's the case a person is not allowed his own opinions based on his own experiences. He's required to have the ones given to him. Usually by white liberals. If he wanted to have his own opinions, he should have been born white. It's that simple.
Crack. You dont know my views, asshole. You are wacked out, dude, and you need to see somebody for help. Whoever it is encouraging you is not doing you a service, man.
What's "revealing" is that you are in the middle of a very bad situation and have no idea how to handle it other than to deliver these stupid lectures both here and on your blog. You need some help and I hope you find it.
"Oh, now you're Oscar Pistorious, scared of the black phantom:
South Africa has one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world. An armed burglar in your home is a terrifying possibility. But in a land still suffering from the myriad effects of enforced segregation, some find it hard not to hear "the old white fear of the swart gevaar,” as South African journalist and crime writer Margie Orford puts it, in Pistorius's legal defense.
This threat of the swart gevaar — meaning “black peril” — was used under the racist, white-minority apartheid system to excuse all measures of violence and control on South Africa’s population, Orford writes in a recent essay. Orford calls the idea of an unknown, presumed dangerous black intruder hiding in Pistorius’s bathroom the "third body" in the case.
When you're ready to talk on a level above "Birth Of A Nation" let me know,..."
Don't pretend like you haven't asked for reparations. Reparations means you want the government to take from me, because I'm white, and give it to you, because you're black.
Come and take it from me, pal. I dare you.
Good God. Kobe Bryant, commenting on the George Zimmerman trial and the death of Trayvon Martin.
If ANYBODY were to be sympathetic to George Zimmerman, on the basis of "presumed innocent until proven guilty," you'd think that it ought to be Kobe Bryant.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/02/national/02kobe.html?_r=0
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