The death of five police officers in Dallas – coming after the shootings in Baton Rouge and Minnesota – overwhelms. How to make sense of the incomprehensible? How to know what to do?
“That was horrible,” people said definitively over and over again in its wake. “People are tired of being lied to," my cousin told me by way of explanation.
But I don’t think this has anything to do with people’s disgust at being lied to unless they are fed up with the lies they tell themselves. ...
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I saw Jackie Robinson in person once. It was at Yankee Stadium on Old Timers’ Day, and Iike a lot of other wiry kids, I craned my neck to take in as many legends on the field as possible. I thought then that Robinson looked old and sickly for his age. (And indeed he would die of a heart attack, complicated by diabetes, at age 53.) The other thing I remember thinking was that he was a big man, larger than life – which he certainly was.
I was reminded of Robinson – the man who had that special combination of physical and spiritual grace to break baseball’s color barrier in 1947 – because Ken Burns’ miniseries about him is set to debut Monday and Tuesday, April 11 and 12, and because Jay Caspian Kang has written a column for The New York Times Magazine’s April 10 edition in which he suggests that racism is killing baseball. ...
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Well, now we have the backlash to the fallout from Serena Williams being named Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsperson of the Year.”
How dare she be picked over fan fave American Pharoah, went the fallout.
How dare anyone compare her to a horse or pick an animal over an African-American female athlete, went the backlash.
Let me try to make a nuanced argument here, not the Internet’s forte. Williams was chosen as much for what she symbolizes – African-American female athleticism in a racially troubled country – as for what she has accomplished. ...
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Serena Williams has been named Sports Illustrated’s “Sportsperson of the Year,” and, predictably, all Hades has broken loose.
Let’s forget those who voted successfully for American Pharoah in the fans’ poll. I voted for AP, though I knew SI staffers would never give the award to a four-legged athlete. (No word from the Pharoah on any residual disappointment. Given his lovely demeanor, my guess is he’s already tweeted Serena his congrats on his big new iPhone. So much easier to type on with hooves.)
Would that his two-legged counterparts were as gracious. That SI picked a tennis player other than Novak Djokovic sent up red flags among those who saw reverse prejudice. ...
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Well, one thing’s certain: Dylann Storm Roof – really? That’s a name? – is no Rachel Dolezal.
One couldn’t do enough to embrace black culture. The other couldn’t do enough to destroy it, allegedly gunning down nine people at Bible study Wednesday night in Charleston’s historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, uttering the particularly lunatic thought, “I have to do it. You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.” ...
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There’s more than meets the eye in the Rachel Dolezal story – no pun intended.
Dolezal resigned from her job as president of the Spokane, Wash. chapter of the NAACP upon the discovery that she is actually a white woman who passed herself off as black.
Dolezal – who was married to a black man, had a child with him and has four adopted black siblings, one of whom is under her legal guardianship – says she identifies as black.
Which is not the same as saying she has been truthful with others. ...
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The latest tempest in a teapot comes courtesy of Washington Redskins’ quarterback Robert Griffin III and his San Francisco 49ers’ counterpart Colin Kaepernick, who recently took on critical fans via Instagram and Twitter respectively.
In RG’s case, he was jamming to Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” on Instagram when a fan called him out for not acting like a quarterback.
Colin meanwhile tweeted a litany of “recovery day” activities – 1,000 abs, arm workout, 10 minutes straight on the jump rope, a two-hour study session. To which fan Stephen Batten replied, “ab workout won’t help find open receiver.” Which in turn led to a verbal pummeling from Colin that ended with “get better at life.”
My first reaction was, Why bother? Why bother to respond? In a 35-year career as a journalist, I’ve been praised and vilified, even threatened. Rarely have I responded, preferring instead to follow the dictum of my favorite British prime minister, Benjamin Disraeli: “Never complain, never explain.”
And yet, I can understand. The fluidity and anonymity of the Internet are such that people respond with immediate, unfiltered vehemence. You’re punched, you counterpunch.
I think, however, this is about more than the culture of hatred bred by the web. It’s about our expectations of the quarterback, perhaps the most traditionally masculine occupation in the United States – expectations that weigh heavily on the gay, biracial quarterback at the heart of my upcoming novel “The Penalty for Holding.” ...
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