(ThyBlackMan.com) It looks like Charles Barkley has done it again. The black man paid to say anything his bosses tell him to has gone on the attack against NBA superstar, Derrick Rose. Rose, who plays for the Chicago Bulls, has had to deal with numerous injuries. He has also been one of the most dedicated, hardest working players in the league, achieving things by his second or third year that most players can’t accomplish in a decade.
But Derrick Rose also understands that there is more to life for a black man than running and jumping for an audience full of rich white people. According to Yvette Carnell at BlackLikeMoi.com, Rose has stated that he has to consider the long-term implications of his injuries rather than destroy his body in order to get on the court right now.
“When I sit out it’s not because of this year. I’m thinking about long term. I’m thinking about after I’m done with basketball. Having graduations to go to, having meetings to go to, I don’t want to be in my meetings all sore. Or be at my son’s graduation all sore just because of something I did in the past. (I’m) just learning and being smart,” said Rose.
This bolt of honesty, reflection and critical analysis didn’t sit well with Charles Barkley, who seemed to imply that Rose was an ungrateful negro for not being willing to give up his body and his future in order to get on the court and play right now. He even called Rose stupid for his remarks.
“He’s a great player and a great kid…but that was stupid. We’re so blessed. I limp around but I go home to a big ol’ mansion,” Barkley said. “There are people that work harder than Derrick Rose that go home to a shack. There are consequences for what we do for a living. We’ve got the best life in the world. I’m a poor black kid from Leeds, Alabama, who grew up in the projects and I don’t mind limping around [now]. When I go home, I have a big ol’ house. I’ve got good sheets; I don’t know the thread count, but they’re good sheets. I’ve got a big car and I never have to worry about
bills. Derrick Rose is making $20 million dollars a year and he’s got a couple of bad knees. There are pros and cons of what we do for a living.”
The interesting thing about how all of this has gone down is that Barkley can’t argue, for one second, that Derrick Rose isn’t dedicated to the game of basketball. He became a team leader very early in his time with the Bulls, and is every bit as accomplished as Sir Charles was at the same stage in his career.
But here’s where Derrick and Charles part ways. Derrick is an intelligent, conscientious black man who thinks about his future and uses his platform as an opportunity to help those he left behind in violent, downtrodden parts of his home city of Chicago (I’ve seen Rose in action in the community, it’s extraordinary). Charles Barkley comes from the Michael Jordan era, where he and Michael (now Kobe) seemed to believe that they didn’t owe anything to anyone other than themselves, their agents, and the white women they were sleeping with outside their marriages.
The divergent manner in which each of these black men view the world is a function of generational divides, as well as divides in sophistication and intelligence. Coming out of Leeds, Alabama, Charles Barkley is an old-school athlete who likely grew up in a world where you thank white people for not spitting on you. So, his mention of being a “poor black kid from Leeds Alabama who grew up in the projects” is a reference to the notion that, because he was a poor, black kid, he should be willing to grovel and give anything to the whites who gave him so much.
This is the kind of low self-esteem that results from enduring years of continuous abuse and oppression. Because many of us don’t see ourselves as equal to whites, we believe we owe them everything. We are also willing to take the blame for all that’s wrong in our community without once mentioning the hundreds of years of continuous terror that racist white-controlled institutions have thrust upon our community. Notice, for example, how Charles Barkley will regularly speak about what’s wrong with black people, but will almost never mention the atrocities that whites have committed against blacks.
While one could hardly disagree that Derrick Rose doesn’t owe a debt of gratitude to The Chicago Bulls for giving him an opportunity, he doesn’t owe them his future and he doesn’t owe them his life. All he owes is a commitment to practice and play as hard as he can without risking serious long-term injury to himself or an addiction to dangerous drugs athletes use to get on the court before they are ready. This is a reasonable tradeoff.
All throughout professional sports, there is a huge, invisible cost to the black community (or what we in Economics might call “a shadow price”). The price is represented by all the of millions of black men who’ve given up everything in order to try to win the one-in-a-million lottery ticket of professional athletics. Most black men lose these “Ghetto Hunger Games,” and end up giving up everything, while receiving nothing in return. Some of these men ignore educational opportunities, forget about their physical health and destroy themselves mentally in order to have a chance at a short-term spot in the sun.
Years later, when these men are financially destitute, hooked on drugs, suffering from significant brain damage, and limping around like 80-year old men, those sports teams that claimed to love them so much are looking for the next hot negro they can transport out of the projects. Unfortunately, sports has done more to hurt black men than to help them.
Many of the men who give up everything for a sport are rarely able to transform themselves into adequate husbands and fathers in their 30s, 40s and beyond. Derrick appears to be smarter than that – he doesn’t just want to be an asset for the Chicago Bulls. He also wants to be an asset to his family and to his community. For that, I give him a standing ovation.
My advice to Derrick would be simple: Keep working your butt off, never forget your responsibility to your team, stay out of trouble, avoid unnecessary drugs or surgeries, don’t get on the field until you’re ready, think about your future, never forget your family and most importantly, tell Charles Barkley to go to hell (or Leeds, Alabama, I’m not sure which one is worse). Charles should focus on sports and leave the social commentary alone. The commercial he did many years ago was right on-point: He is NOT a role model.
Staff Writer; Dr. Boyce Watkins
Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition. For more information, please visit http://BoyceWatkins.com.