Real quick, on the actual situation of the fact that Tim Hardaway said anything at all, let alone what he said, I’m ambivalent. On the one hand, I think that much in our society is based on not-having tough discussions. I think it’s generally perceived to be better to say the “right things” in public and reveal your real opinion in private. You know, better to maintain the veneer of civility than to break in with the ugly truth. And really, I think that much of the flak Hardaway is catching is because he did just that. Granted, a lot has to do with the way he said what he said…a whooole lot, but that’s part of it too. In general, we’ve moved beyond the blatant insult to more “code word”-type slights. That’s why there was that whole brouhaha over the degree of insult intended when Senator Biden said Senator Obama was articulate. It’s generally a compliment, but depending on who says it and in what context, it could be perceived to be an insult. Unlike Tim Bug, who made his remarks as vicious and specific as possible. (All that I said last time about certain words not necessarily being homophobic? Not this time. It came out that way because he meant for it to come out that way.) Because actually, I’m thinking that if he had toned it down just a little, there would still be a backlash, but there would probably by now be a fairly sizable anti-backlash. Some from the “family values” crowd, and some from the “first-amendment” crowd. Both backlash, and anti-backlash, I think would be warranted. What’s more interesting to me, and of more concern, is his assertion that he couldn’t play with a gay teammate. That’s pretty much where I draw the line.
I don’t consider myself to be super-progressive, or even moderately progressive. Really, I don’t even fool with describing a political temperature anymore. Whatever somebody chooses to label me, I’ll be that. It doesn’t change what I think. So bearing that in mind, as I’ve said before, people should be free to do them. I have no problem with a person being gay. That’s him. I don’t believe there’s any scriptural justification for it, but I also don’t believe there’s any scriptural justification for fornication or any of a whole littany of other things. Some of the stuff on the list in Romans 1:29-31, I’m specifically on the hook for. Other stuff, not so much. I’m pretty sure I’ll have enough to answer for on my own without being pressed over what (or who) the next man is doing. Same thing goes with questions over whether being gay has social or biological stems. I haven’t seen enough evidence one way or the other to make me believe. It might be a naturally-occurring genetic variation, it might not be. It doesn’t really matter. Not when it comes down to interactions between people.
See, I think there was a time in my life when I thought like Tim Hardaway. It might’ve been when I was in high school. I was never the type who was gonna jump out and do anything to humiliate anybody, but I think that what he said the other day pretty much captures what I thought back then. But then, I had the good fortune of having that one math class in college. I should’ve known it was going to be significant. The professor’s name was Ralph Jenkins - and he was white. I was having a hard enough time recovering from that shock, when I got to my recitation section and found that the TA was gay. Not that gayness comes in degrees, but he was reeeeaaaalll gay. I think that was my first time really interacting with somebody who was openly gay. And the thing is, there’s no story to it; I didn’t have some big epiphanic moment when I realized anything. He was him and I was me. He helped me learn math. That was it. I had a 99 average in the class. Him being straight wouldn’t have changed that. And that was my gradual realization that it really doesn’t matter.
So when I hear Tim Hardaway say that he couldn’t be on the same team as a gay dude, that’s particularly bothersome. They don’t hafta be on the same team, they’re just teammates. Nobody’s even asking them to hang out together, get along well, or even like each other. Shoot, from the way we got the story, Shaq and Kobe couldn’t stand each other, but they played well together. When a beef over someone’s lifestyle (or genetic makeup, take your pick) limits your ability to do your job, then there’s a real problem. And it’s not the other person’s problem. Kinda like if somebody sees an ant colony on TV and starts feeling bugs crawling up his arm. That’s on you.
I think I wanna do a five-by-five list like I did last year, only with different categories. Just to refresh, these are five categories of love songs, with five songs each. And again, this is not a be-all and end-all list. These aren’t even necessarily my favorite songs in each category. Shoot, they’re not necessarily even definitely in the category I’ve placed them. It just kinda made sense to me. It’s just discussion points.
So let’s roll:
Curveballs - May be witty or funny, or may just express the feelings in an offbeat way A Funky Space Reincarnation - Marvin Gaye You Got What It Takes - Joe Tex Love Rears Its Ugly Head - Living Colour Somethin’ You’ve Got - Chuck Jackson & Maxine Brown Stone To The Bone - James Brown
Blue-Eyed Jammin Skin Tight - Chicago Reach Out - Average White Band In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida - Iron Butterfly What You Won’t Do - Bobby Caldwell More Than A Woman - The Bee Gees
nahmsayin, nahmeen… Blac Mermaid - Society of Soul Sumthin’ Sumthin’ (Mellosmoothe) - Maxwell Good Luck Charm - The Ohio Players Feenin’ -Jodeci No Ordinary Love - Sade
Let’s Try It I Can’t Get Next To You - Al Green Passing Me By - The Pharcyde Hey Love - Stevie I Like It - The Emotions Find A Way - A Tribe Called Quest
Let’s Try It Again - The Second Time Around - Shalamar A House Is Not A Home - Luther Vandross Thinking Of You - Tony Toni Tone I Love You - Mary J. Blige Maybe Tomorrow - Jackson 5.
A special note about Maybe Tomorrow…as love songs sung by pre-pubescent boys go, this one kills it. It is entirely credible. Mike sings the song like his pop said he wasn’t gonna be able to play with his favorite toy for 3 months or something. I think the list of adult singers who could do this better, or even as well, is verrry short.
So John Amechi came out. Emphasis on ’so.’ My guess is that, mathematically speaking, there’s a strong likelihood that there are gay dudes in every field of endeavor one can imagine. Like I said once before, I bet that there’s a couple gay cats in the FOI, so there’s not too much else that would surprise me. A gay basketball player? Naw, I’m not shocked. What I think would shock me would be if a gay name-brand athlete came out. Like if Michael Strahan came out after his wife’s allegations. That’s when I would be shocked. A borderline scrub announcing that he’s gay after the fact? Meh. The part of the story that’s really interesting to me is the way it’s being handled in the media.
I could probably use this for the question of the week in my class, but the ‘E’ in ESPN is for entertainment. Which is all that these ‘tell-all’ books are about, anyway. I look at it like this: if the point is that we’re not supposed to care whether a basketball player is gay, then what’s the point of pointing out that he’s gay? If the only scoring that really matters is the kind that takes place during the 48 minutes on the court, why detail the off-the-court goings on? For entertainment. I mean, yeah, there’s the whole ‘being-gay-is-normal’ social engineering component too, but essentially, it’s inculcation by entertainment. Meaning that it probably wouldn’t go over quite as well without the entertainment element. Cuz look at it like this: when you see the autobiography/memoirs of some athlete, there are two things you can count on — it’s gonna follow the triumphant underdog archetype, and he’s gonna be very, very good at his sport. Or at least, he will have achieved some level of notoriety. My guess is that the former point holds true, but that second one…is suspect. Which means that the only reason we’re getting this story is for the novelty of having a gay man say that he was a professional athlete.
The other thing I’ve noticed is the tendency to make it seem that an NBA player is somehow more difficult because of the high level of ‘homophobia’ among Black folks in general, and athletes in particular. ESPN Page 2 writer Jeff Pearlman writes,
In many ways, it’d be overly simplistic to merely blame the athletes without searching a bit deeper. For many African-Americans, a disapproval of homosexuality comes with the racial territory. Being gay is looked upon as something … weird. Something … just not right. It stems from grandpa. And grandpa’s grandpa. As rapper Kanye West noted last year, it’s hypocritical for African-Americans to complain about bigotry when they apply their own form to others. From a young age, West noted, you’re taught that gays aren’t normal. Aren’t righteous. It’s not an easy cycle to snap.
As if non-Black grandpas and great-grandpas haven’t been saying the same thing…or as if there are that many people saying anything different even today. Come on, now.
Most interesting of all to me, of course, is the linguistic aspect of it all. In the same way that I question whether every usage of the n-word is racist, or whether every usage of the b-word is sexist, I don’t know that every usage of the f-word is ‘homophobic.’ I think that, if anything, the casual usage of ‘faggot’ would have to show up on the sexism chart, since it’s usually not a suggestion that the dude in question is actually engaging in homosexual behavior — that is, the definitively homosexual behavior of engaging in some type of sexual activity with a man. What is’ really saying is that the dude in question is less of a man for whatever reason. So when Pearlman writes,
I have witnessed the scene time and time again. Basketball player wears a yellow jacket with matching shoes – he’s a “fa—-.” Baseball player jogs into the dugout and trips over a bat — “fa—-.” Wide receiver avoids crossing the middle of the field – “What the hell are you, a f—— fa—-?” Why, just a few months back Steelers linebacker Joey Porter dipped into his linguistic catalogue and pulled out “Oreo fa—-” to describe Kellen Winslow of the Browns.
Now, pardon me for being blunt, but I don’t think any of those instances constitutes a suggestion that the dude takes it up the butt. What’s really being said is that the so-called faggot is less than a man. See, the real test is determining what words could be functional substitutes. My guess is that any of the female-as-pejorative words would fit very well. So, just to check it out, look at the 3rd example — Wide receiver avoids crossing the middle of the field (see: Pinkston, Todd.) “What the hell are you, a bitch?” Yup. And actually, this is a case when the adjective-ass(ed) noun construction would come into play, where both b- and f- could play either role. In neither case is the player’s sexual orientation or gender being called into question. Only his manhood. Depending on your social orientation, that could be bad enough, but what it’s clearly not, linguistically at least, is homophobia.
A friend of mine included me on an email where he and his friends list their top 5’s in several categories: MC’s, Athletes, Musicians, and Comedians. I’m not gonna reprint his list here, but I thought I’d throw some names out just to spark conversation. So what I think I’ll specify is that this is not a scientific list. Rather, it’s just my five favorites.
One thing I noticed looking at the responses, though, is that it’s a very androcentric list. Which brings to mind the question is that a societal thing, or is there something else? For instance, when you look at my top 5 athletes, it’s obviously not a direct comparison, because they competed in different events at different times, so the common standard is the degree to which they dominated their opposition. Well, certainly, I think that the case could be made that Jackie Joyner-Kersee dominated her sport as much as any of the fellas I have listed below. Yet, when I started coming up with this list, her name never even crossed my mind.
Just somethin’ to think about.
At any rate, let’s go:
MC’s
Rakim
Posdnuos
Kool G. Rap
Black Thought
Jheri Curl Ice Cube
Athletes
James Nathaniel Brown (what!)
Muhammad Ali
Jackie Robinson
Michael Jordan
Wayne Gretzky
Musicians(So for this bunch, I’m thinking specifically people that play instruements, as opposed to people who only sing.)
Duke Ellington
Ray Charles
Art Tatum (come on.)
Stevie Wonder
Quincy Jones
Comedians
Bill Cosby
Richard Pryor
Flip Wilson
Redd Foxx
Chris Rock
On the humbug, I decided to take it back to the first banner I ever had for a blog. A throwback, as it were. Anyway…
This is late, but at racialicious.com, there’s a link to an article at diversityinc that poses the intriguing question, Who’s Ward Connerly Rooting For In The Super Bowl? Given Connerly’s stance on Affirmative Action, it’s not hard to imagine that he would despise the Rooney Rule, which Lovie Smith himself sees as crucial to his being interviewed and eventually hired by the Chicago Bears.
What’s interesting to me in all of this is that people in the press have started to talk about the Dungy coaching tree. I know part of it is because he actually coached (and won) a Super Bowl, but lest we forget, if there is a Dungy tree, its roots start with Dennis Green, who hired Dungy as the defensive coordinator in Minnesota. Dennis Green got his chance in Minnesota after having a significant run of success at Stanford, where he was hired by a selection committee headed by Condoleeza Rice.
So yeah. If we, when in positions of power, would handle our B-I, then maybe AA would be unnecessary. But then again, my premise is that Affirmative Action is not about the superior, it’s about the average. It’s not just about getting one chance to succeed, it’s also about having multiple chances to fail. Remember, an equal sign has both a high bar and a low bar.
*****
Spurred on by Shay at Booker, I’ve started to do some research on my genealogy. I’ve made some decent progress, getting back to the 1850’s, although there’s much more research left to do. Sooner than later, I’m gonna take a road trip to see if I can unearth some more information. The big thing is figuring out what questions I need to ask to get the answers I want.
Plus, that will probably be just the excuse I need to go down South and rent a souped-up Charger for a few days. I’ma see what the Hemi is really all about.
*****
Chris Rock used to joke about making bullets prohibitively expensive as a means of gun control without keeping anybody from owning a gun. Well, the first steps may be pending in Cook County, Illinois. There’s bound to be plenty of wrangling, but it’s definitely an interesting proposition. Granted, at this point, it’s just a 10 cent per-bullet tax, and it’s being proposed as a means for the county to increase revenue, but I can easily see it heading in the gun control direction.
*****
Ever wondered what happens to the championship shirts they print up for the losing team? Well, in Zimbabwe, they’re wearing shirts celebrating the Bears’ win in the Super Bowl.
Losing Ground - Cymande One Mic - Nas Be Happy -Mary J. Blige Boogie Shoes - KC & The Sunshine Band Karma Chameleon - Culture Club Colors - Ice-T Cakes - Marvin Gaye Funky Worm - Ohio Players Fix It Jesus - Five Blind Boys of Alabama He’s Alive - Don Francisco Alive - Tonex Dancing Machine - Jackson 5 No One Can Do It Better - The D.O.C. Ham ‘n’ Eggs - A Tribe Called Quest Information Overload - Living Colour Kiss of Life - Sade Children of Productions - Parliament Real Niggaz Don’t Die - NWA Hypnotize - The Notorious B.I.G. Deadwood Dick - Booker T & The MG’s
I’ve played around long enough. Now it’s time to get down to some sho-nuff vocabulatin.
Looking at that clip from Airplane! that I linked to the other day, which never fails to crack me up, made me think about language again. Specifically, it made me really consider the extent to which “dialect” is different from “language” and why they are different if they, in fact, are.
So think about the scene when the guys order their food. (that’s it up there) Here’s my transcription:
Stewardess: Would you gentlemen care to order your dinners?
Jive Talker 1: Bet, babe. Slide a piece of the porter. Drink side, run the java.
Jive Talker 2: Looky here: I can dig greasin’ chompin’ on some …???
Now, if I were to break it down, I’d say that the first dude is speaking a fairly conventional dialect. That is, we know all the words he’s saying, although I’m sure that some people miss a good bit of it because all the phrases are so closely connected. In other words, he sentence diagrammers among us could probably draw that up with no problems. We can see the nouns and the verbs clearly. Honestly, those are pretty simple sentences. For Jive Talker 2, it’s a different story altogether.
First of all, I don’t know what that dude said. I mean, I got about half the line out, but on that second half, the most important half, I’m utterly clueless. Which brings me to the part I wonder about.
When we talk linguistics, particularly for the learners of a new language, the first thing we talk about is ‘phonemic awareness.’ That’s the ability to distinguish the individual sounds in that language, and depending on the discussion, the ability to connect a specific sound to an individual grapheme. Well, I would posit that when it comes to JT2, we’re all lacking in phonemic awareness. Now, having watched the extras and add-ins on the Airplane! DVD, I know that the two actors who played the Jive Talkers actually made up the language with which they spoke their dialogue. So they knew what the subscripts were going to say and they made up their script to reflect that. Which means that it’s not jibberish. They are both using real words which really express the thoughts described by the subtitles. (Although per the first sample, the subtitles obviously understate what’s being said.)
Now, expanding this to a more general reflection on the nature of AAVE, I think this begins to get at the heart of the question of whether AAVE is a separate language or just a dialect. In the example of the first speaker, I think the dialectical nature is pretty clear. The vocabulary he’s using is not entirely unfamiliar. Even “porter” for steak is understandable. That other cat, however… I just can’t figure it out. That’s why I think he’s so important. He’s the one who’s forcing me to metacognitively look at the processes I use when breaking down unfamiliar information. He’s the one who’s forcing me to try to figure out where one word stops and the next one begins.
He’s the one who’s gonna make me a better teacher.
The NFL is clearly the elite professional sports league in the United States, but sooner than later, they’re really gonna have to do something about taking care of the players after their careers are over. The case of Ted Johnson, formerly of the New England Patriots, highlighted in the New York Times today, just drives that point home again.
As much as I love to watch football, the more I think about it, if I had a son who showed large athletic potential, I’d steer him towards basketball or baseball. I might let him play at the high school level, but if he showed ANY professional promise, it would be one of the other sports. Cuz actually, if it’s just any sport at all, he’d be wrestling.
The deadline to sign up for comps and graduation is coming up soon. I haven’t decided whether I’m going to partake in all the hoola-boola of walking across the stage and whatnot. Been there, done that. Plus, I don’t think there’s a graduation ceremony that could top my undergraduate. First of all, when I was walking across the street into the building, one of my best friends stopped in the middle of Broad Street to shout me out. That made it good going in. Literally. Then, the keynote speaker was sick and there was no substitute. That meant that our entire ceremony consisted of an invocation, an explanation, and the passing out of the diplomas. Period. My name wasn’t called early, but we were still out of there with the quickness. I couldn’t have asked for better.
This time, I’ll have a longer hood and all that, but since it’ll be the May graduation, chances are that the keynote speaker won’t be getting sick. I suppose I’ll have time to come to a more concrete decision about all this, but right now I’m thinking that if I do participate in the graduation ceremony, it’ll be mainly for my family. I know many of them would like the opportunity to see me reach this milestone. Cuz when it comes to the present I think I want, not too many of them will want any dealings with that.
It’s still nebulous for me, but right now, I think I want a Glock. I’m not sure of the model yet. More than likely, a small 9 millimeter. I just can’t see myself trying to get anything bigger than that for a variety of reasons. The only thing is, I know that a Glock is not exactly the type of thing I could go to my friends and family and say, “Hey, y’all could chip in and get me one of these!! Honestly, I’ve already kicked the idea around and just about everybody looks at me like I’m crazy.
The way I see it, the fact that I have it doesn’t necessarly mean that I’m gonna use it. But I think I do wanna have it just in case I need it. Simple as that.
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