What do you guys think about this article?
Guys,
This is courtesy of Ed. He didn't give me his opinion of it yet, i'm glad he's saving it, so what is yours?
NFL truth: Hip-hop culture hurting NFL
Jason Whitlock / FOXSports.com
Posted: 1 hour ago
You get one NFL Truth today. Watching Chad Johnson and Larry Johnson undermine their respective head coaches, Marvin Lewis and Herm Edwards, on Sunday gave me a singular focus, forced me to contemplate an uncomfortable truth.
African-American football players caught up in the rebellion and buffoonery of hip hop culture have given NFL owners and coaches a justifiable reason to whiten their rosters. That will be the legacy left by Chad, Larry and Tank Johnson, Pacman Jones, Terrell Owens, Michael Vick and all the other football bojanglers.
In terms of opportunity for American-born black athletes, they're going to leave the game in far worse shape than they found it.
It's already starting to happen. A little-publicized fact is that the Colts and the Patriots — the league's model franchises — are two of the whitest teams in the NFL. If you count rookie receiver Anthony Gonzalez, the Colts opened the season with an NFL-high 24 white players on their 53-man roster. Toss in linebacker Naivote Taulawakeiaho "Freddie" Keiaho and 47 percent of Tony Dungy's defending Super Bowl-champion roster is non-African-American. Bill Belichick's Patriots are nearly as white, boasting a 23-man non-African-American roster, counting linebacker Tiaina "Junior" Seau and backup quarterback Matt Gutierrez.
For some reason, these facts are being ignored by the mainstream media. Could you imagine what would be written and discussed by the media if the Yankees and the Red Sox were chasing World Series titles with 11 African-Americans on their 25-man rosters (45 percent)?
We would be inundated with information and analysis on the social significance. Well, trust me, what is happening with the roster of the Patriots and the Colts and with Roger Goodell's disciplinary crackdown are all socially significant.
Hip hop athletes are being rejected because they're not good for business and, most important, because they don't contribute to a consistent winning environment. Herm Edwards said it best: You play to win the game.
I'm sure when we look up 10 years from now and 50 percent — rather than 70 percent — of NFL rosters are African-American, some Al Sharpton wannabe is going to blame the decline on a white-racist plot.
That bogus charge will ignore our role in our football demise. We are in the process of mishandling the opportunity and freedom earned for us by Jim Brown, Walter Payton, Doug Williams, Mike Singletary, Gale Sayers, Willie Lanier and countless others. And those of us in the media who have rationalized, minimized and racialized every misstep by Vick, Pacman and T.O. have played an equal role in blowing it.
By failing to confront and annihilate the abhorrent cultural norms we have allowed to grab our youth, we have in the grand American scheme sentenced many of them to hell on earth (incarceration), and in the sports/entertainment world we've left them to define us as unreliable, selfish and buffoonish.
I take you to Arrowhead Stadium this past Sunday when two competent and respected black head coaches led the Chiefs and the Bengals in battle, and their efforts were periodically sabotaged by Chad and Larry Johnson, the two players Lewis and Edwards have defended the most.
Football fans are aware of Lewis' love affair with Chad Johnson, the Flavor Flav of the gridiron. Johnson's insistence on conducting a minstrel show during games has long been reluctantly tolerated by Lewis. Johnson, I guess, is just too talented, productive and well-compensated for Lewis to discipline. So Lewis has chosen to enable, going as far as making excuses when Johnson's selfish behavior extended to an alleged locker-room shoving match with coaches (including a swing at Lewis) at halftime of the Bengals' Jan. 8, 2006 playoff loss to the Steelers.
Coming off an 11-5 regular season and having been crowned the toast of Cincinnati, Lewis responded to that Johnson meltdown by vowing to cut the player who leaked the fight information to the media.
Since then, the Bengals have been one of the league's biggest disappointments, finishing 8-8 last season and starting 1-4 this season. Injuries have played a significant role in Cincy's troubles, but so has a lack of on- and off-field discipline and focus. Lewis' coddling of Chad Johnson has destroyed the chemistry that made the Bengals a playoff team in 2005.
On Sunday, with the Bengals trying to rally out of a two-score deficit, Johnson failed to finish a pass route, which contributed to Carson Palmer throwing an interception.
Not to be outdone, Larry Johnson continued his season-long pattern of immature behavior, spiking the football in frustration with 4 minutes to play and the Chiefs attempting to run out the clock. The Bengals were out of timeouts and the spike stopped the clock, giving Cincy one last chance to make a comeback.
Johnson, despite receiving a new $45-million contract, has brooded, pouted and complained all season. He spent the off-season promising to be a leader and has spent the first six weeks of the season spreading locker-room cancer. Edwards-coached teams have traditionally been the least-penalized squads in the NFL. This year's Chiefs are one of the most-penalized squads. Nickel back Benny Sapp drew an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty on Sunday, had to be dragged off the field by Donnie Edwards, and was spotted on the sideline arguing with players and coaches.
Race is not the determining factor when it comes to having a good or bad attitude. Culture is.
Hip hop is the dominant culture for black youth. In general, music, especially hip hop music, is rebellious for no good reason other than to make money. Rappers and rockers are not trying to fix problems. They create problems for attention.
That philosophy, attitude and behavior go against everything football coaches stand for. They're in a constant battle to squash rebellion, dissent and second opinions from their players.
You know why Muhammad Ali is/was an icon? Because he rebelled against something meaningful and because he excelled in an individual sport. His rebellion didn't interfere with winning. Jim Brown, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, etc. rebelled with dignity and purpose.
What we're witnessing today are purposeless, selfish acts of buffoonery. Sensible people have grown tired of it. Football people are recognizing it doesn't contribute to a winning environment.
Whether calculated or not, the Patriots and the Colts have created settings in which Brady and Manning can lead and feel comfortable. I remember back in the 1980s when some black sports fans accused the Celtics of being racist for having a predominantly-white roster when Larry Bird was the star. No one remembered that Red Auerbach occasionally fielded an all-black starting lineup during Bill Russell's heyday.
My point is that it makes sense to cater to your stars. And it makes even more sense to fill your roster with players who don't mind being led, even if you sacrifice a little 40-yard dash speed.
If things don't change quickly, we're going to learn this lesson the hard way.
11 comments:
This guy has no idea what he is talking about. Again, another journalist, making wild suppositions with scant evidence. I shouldn't even going to dignify this guy with a response. This is just more sweeping generalizations. These players' personal decisions have nothing to do with culture or music. I know plenty of NFL players listen to Hip Hop without becoming jerks. The sad thing about race in America is that Blacks are constantly lumped into a group for sweeping generalizations and whites are allowed the freedom to be considered as individuals. Sadly enough, us blacks nowadays see ourselves as one homogeneous group. Also, this guy tries to take attitude assessments and tries to make them moral issues. A black football player spiking a football means he lost his temper, nothing more, nothing less. To take that, and other alleged behavior to say all the team's penalties are on him??? come on...this guy, black or not, is a second rate journalist and a third rate thinker.
way more newsworthy to me is the fact that a Nobel prize winning scientist was interviewed in an article and said genetics studies would one day show blacks and Africans are genetically intellectually inferior. I am a tough nigga: stereotypes, generalzations, parody, derision i can take, but an assault on our fundamental intelligence, an effort to prove we are intellectually inferior than Europeans, this is so demeaning. All the terrible stereotypes believed about Jewish people, I have never heard anyone say they are generally stupid. This I can't take.
I agree with you in spirit and theory, Drew, but I think Whitlock is on to something here...brass generalizations notwithstanding. Clearly, this guy has issues with hip hop and black youth culture but it doesn't mean he's wrong in some of the things he's saying.
Let's put sports aside because I agree with you that difficult, selfish guys (like he's alledging Chad and Larry Johnson are) have always been around. However, I think there's something to be said about mainstream hip hop culture's value system, which puts shallow emphasis on personal glory, materialism, empty boasting, predatory acts against women and being a star and it's corollary effect on our youth. What did you call it? Oh, yes...the "Dipset Generation." Hip hop culture, in my opinion, has driven this. I completely understand how socio-economic factors have contributed but the truth is that hip hop and mainstream rap music revels in it in a way that has definitely influenced young, impressionable followers. To think that hip hop fashion, slang, attitude and manners of self-expression are the ONLY things young people are taking away from the culture is just naive in my opinion.
At what point are the purveyors of this nonsense accountable? Forget white folk and their stereotypes about black people. I'm more concerned about the effect the music and overall culture is having on this generation of kids. I don't think anyone of us can deny that it's had an enormous one. I think that's what Whitlock is saying in his own round about way.
I think Whitlock is confusing hip hop culture with gang/jail culture, which has begun to take over hip hop. they style, the "dances", the lingo... I remember hip hop as being a positive influence on the inner city youth. A creative outlet where you could still be "hard", but instead of fighting one another there were battle raps, up-rocking, etc... Hip hop has gone from afro-centric to incarcerated. This is along the same lines of the recent crusade undertaken by Bill Cosby. Its a message that, sure, all these sterotypes, bigotry, and racism exists, but instead of getting angry at the white folks that perpetuate it, its time to be self-reflective and stop perpetuating the stereotypes within ourselves. Getting angry is easy, but its not changing the fact that the family unit barely exists anymore in non-white cultures. Cosby states some staggering stats in his book "Come on People":
"One out of three of homeless people are black."
“Homicide is the number one cause of death for black men between 15 and 29 years of age and has been for decades.
“Of the roughly 16,000 homicides in this country each year, more than half are committed by black men. A black man is seven times more likely to commit a murder than a white man, and six times more likely to be murdered.
“Ninety-four percent of all black people who are murdered are murdered by other black people.
“Although black people make up” “12 percent of the general population,” “make up nearly 44 percent of the prison population.
“At any given time, as many as one in four of all” black men, “young black men are in the criminal justice system—in prison or jail, on probation or on parole.”
94% of ALL black people who are murdered are murdered by other black people?!? I mean.. Its sad. And those are just stats for black people. I'm sure if they did the same digging for hispanics it wouldn't be too far removed. we shouldn't be picking the author of this article apart for his poor delivery but addressing the fundamental issue he is revealing.
That is what we need to look at here. the fact that people are attempting to lead out of the darkness, and being criticized by the very people they are attempting to enlighten.
There is no way this dude or Bill Cosby could enlighten me with simple platitudes.
"You know why Muhammad Ali is/was an icon? Because he rebelled against something meaningful and because he excelled in an individual sport. His rebellion didn't interfere with winning. Jim Brown, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, etc. rebelled with dignity and purpose.
What we're witnessing today are purposeless, selfish acts of buffoonery. Sensible people have grown tired of it. Football people are recognizing it doesn't contribute to a winning environment." I thought that was pretty good
reggie,
that is my point. the message is what we need to be reading. Instead people too often get stuck on the language that is used, or the delivery, or the vocabulary, or the person... whatever the case may be, this guy is making a good point. Bill cosby is making a valid point. If we choose to ignore it, or even be so arrogant as to say we can't learn anything from it, is really its own form of ignorance and intolerance.
I am arrogant. I dont believe this guy said anything I couldnt read in a high school newspaper. His message was a gross simplification of the prison system, hip hop culture, and black athelets. Yeah, he is simplfying things to make a point, but I prefer writers who specify and provide substantial evdience for their arguments. Not just grand arguments that get people's attention. (thats how propoganda works.)
By the way, please stop waving the Muhammed Ali flag. Writers like this guy were calling him crazy when he was rebelling against society. A lot of things he thought and said were extremist. In the large sense he was right about a lot of stuff, mainly the vietnam war, but this cookie cutter, hallmark verision of him is absurd, and far from the truth. (By the way, he was a womanizer...guess he has some stuff in common with niggas today.)
Bill Cosby is a comedian. he sons gets killed in an awful way, all of a sudden he wants to start screaming at black people about how they act. I wont deride him, because he is obviously grieving over his dead son. Screaming how bad black people act isnt going to change a thing. All those statistics have been around for mad long, and yet they dont change anything.
Dre your last sentence doesnt make sense to me. You are saying by reading and dismissing rabble rousers, I am being intelorant and ignorant. What??? I disagree with Cosby and this guy. I have no problem with them saying and doing what they want with their microphones, because the message sounds trite to me doesnt make me ignorant (maybe it actually makes me sharp, maybe it doesnt.), nor does it make me intolerant.
Drew,
You make the same grandiose sweeping inferences when you say taht bill Cosby is only doing this because he lost his son, or that writer's like this said this about Ali... you're doing the same thing you say you don't like to read.
You're also bringing things up that have nothing to do with the situation (he was a womanizer).
I'm just not sure I follow your arguement. I don't see your point. The point I'm making is about the message that is being said, and as I said before, regardless of whether is was said well or not. I agree that this writer was trying to get attention, and I don't agree with a lot of the language he used in hhis article (buffonery, etc...) those were obviously done to grab attention. But are you sayin gyou don't agree with what he's saying? Cause all I've gathered it that you don't like the writer. But we aren't debating the writing..or at least I'm not, I'm sying that his message is true.
Same as Cosby's message.
"All those statistics have been around for mad long, and yet they dont change anything."
Uh.. YES! EXACTLY!
What do you know about Bill Cosby's life that gives you the right to say he's doing this because his son died? He is trying to change those stats. He could easily be sitting at home counting his money and not giving a damn like a lot of other black celebrities. And if he's doing it for some press, or to make a little money, SO WHAT? At least he's still out there trying to get the message across.
Perhaps you don't understand my last sentence because you have not taken the time to address the issue of which I'm speaking. I said that because of your post:
"There is no way this dude or Bill Cosby could enlighten me with simple platitudes."
I mean, are you saying that you can learn NOTHING from these messages? That is ignorance. It like these balck people saying they won't vote or Obama cause he's not REALLY black. SO WHAT?!?! That is the same mentality that keeps those stats the way they are. And until we stop shotting the messengers cause we don't want to deal with the message, NOTHING WILL CHANGE. So way what you will about the state of minorities in this country, we have the power to change it if we just look within ourselves and stop putting the plame on false profits and "second rate writers and third rate thinkers".
First of all, there is a difference between me writing on a blog and a guy writing an article. I wouldnt write an article saying these things, because these are just my random opinons. If i was to write an article I would do and provide evidence for my claims. On this we are just expressing opinions for the sake of discussion.
I said that I think Cosby is in mourning, because all these problems have existed for years, and he wasnt this screaming Polemic. His son gets killed on the side of the road by two thugs, and he starts screaming at poor black people about their behavior. I am not saying he doesnt really believe what he is saying, but i am saying i dont think that is a happenstance, but i could be wrong. Doesnt really matter? Whatever the reason, i dont think his efforts will lead to anything because they are naive and simplistic.
Secondly, I dont know why you have to revert to silly tactics as scolding my ignorance. I am not ignorant about problems within the black community. Ive read much smarter people talk about these problems in more depth with more analysis than Bill Cosby or this random writer provides here. Is that not the opposite of ignorance? It just sounds petty when you try to lecture my ignorance. I dont know why you have a problem with me being bold and confident about my opinions? If we were talking about Soccer or Baseball, I wouldnt say anything, because I have such little experience with them, my opinion is completely uninformed. If you think these are groundbreaking ideas...fine. They arent to me. They are simplifications. Let me say this clearly, it is not the writers I have a problem with, I also think THEIR IDEAS are not that smart.
Maybe I should be more clear: these guys have said nothing that is either new, particulary intelligent, or insightful, to me. They are just repeating the same grand, sweeping, cliches about black people I've heard my entire life. And I've come to believe they dont get at the real truth of our situation in this country or our problems within our community.
Ali being made into a saint, when he was by no means one, is key to an argument being made about Ali as some past example of atheltic moral excellence. To me, these atheletes having kids outside of marriage is more of an issue than how they celebrate touchdowns or get along with their coaches. Thats just me.
Valid points from everyone. I think the issue with this guy is that he is making sweeping, ignorant generalizations. I would think that you Dre, being a fan of Hip-Hop, would realize that this guy is wrong in his generalization of it. It is as Iz said, its more the dip set generation. Or, in other words, the prison culture. Its not about Hip-Hop. Its about what these ignorant asses are saying is hip-hop. Just because this guy says so, doesnt mean that its true. Which is what Drew is referring to when he says that this guy oversimplified what he wrote.
Ill take it a step further and say that the guy OWES it to his people to be responsible when reporting on it. He has to because the rest of the media wont. This guy isnt the sharpest guy of the bunch, but this is the guy that the media LOVES. You may recognizer the MO: man of color who is willing to write something that may be seen as controversial. So that the rest of the media doesnt have to say it. If people get angry they can simply say, "Hey. We didnt write it. He did. It must be true". Same way that the media highlighted every single black writers no one has ever heard of during the Vick trial as long as they were bashing him. There, I made a sweeping generalization of my own.
I wont try and analyze Cosby in all of this, but I do agree that its not like were hearing from one of the great thinkers around. Just because Cosby said something like this, everyone must take pause? A guy so far removed from the street (by only about 60 years) that HE knows? On Oprah (and yes, I watch Oprah with my wife since shes a stay at home mom for now) he said, "Now listen. Im not trying to say that there isnt institutionalized racism, but im also saying that we are helping to keep ourselves down". I agree with that. To that end, I also agree with you Dre about your statement that we need to look within ourselves for most of the answers. But that doesnt mean we then have to ignore the other answers that dont come from within.
One last thing though, how do you compare people not voting for Obama because hes not Black enough to thinking that Cosby has got it all figured out? Or ignoring this football player being wrong about what hip-hop is and how its influencing NFL players and how he makes sweeping generalizations?
First of all, I would like to apologize, Drew, if you feel I was being petty and attacking you with my statements. that was not my intention. It just bothers me when I see or hear people not facing the facts and getting angry at someone who is saying something about it.
Lou, if you read my first post, that is exactly what I started out by saying... that this guy is mistaking hip hop for gang/jail culture. We are in complete agreement. But whether over-simplified or general, these issues are still valid and need to be addressed. I could care less who wrote the piece, I'm more interested in the conversations it sparks... in what people think we can do about these issues. So what if they are simplified, so what if an overpaid sports writer or a comedian are talking about them, and by the way, I don't think Bill Cosby is an idiot. The man is pretty intelligent and the fact that you bring up his age should be an indication that he has probably seen and dealt with racism far beyond what any of us have ever dealt with.
As for the article, I had my issues with the way he wrote it. I've already said that I agree with Drew about it screaming for attention. But Taking the mistake of saying its "hip hop" out of the equation, this guys is making a very valid point. Vick, Pacman, Vick's brother or cousin or whoever that just got accused of rape, those two football players brawling in the casino last week, its horrible. And it perpetuates the stereotypes and justifies the stats. That gives more ammo to the racists than Bill Cosby "airing dirty laundry".
Look at the kids in our schools. They are caught up in the jail culture as well. Not to mention mainstream hip hop has now become jail culture. so perhaps that is why this guy's is confused.
As for the Obama/cosby correlation, I just don't understand why some black people do things like say they won't vote for obama cause he's "not really black", or get angry at Cosby for speaking out about uplifting themselves, but those same people are quick to cheer when OJ is found innocent or rush to Michael Vick's defense. ITs just doesn't make sense. perhaps someone can explain why? I would really like to understand where that mentality comes from and why it exists.
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