One of the best articles ever.

This article by Howard Bryant is one of the most elegant, introspective pieces on American society and race I've ever seen.  It's even more shocking to read it on ESPN. 

It consists of reader responses to the Michael Vick issue, and Bryant's musings about these reader e-mails.  It asks a host of complicated questions, and provides thought-provoking answers.  Seriously, articles like this make the whole industry worthwhile.

Some excerpts: 

"Maybe it is the words, words like "justice" and "equality," that get in the way. They are clumsy words designed to fool us into thinking we live under the same umbrella. We don't. We are not the same. We are not equals. We do not begin at the same starting line. We accept this fact in virtually every other facet of our lives.

"It's been hammered into our skulls that life isn't fair. Your little brother is taller than you. The boss' son has an edge on you. You went to a state school, and you're competing against kids who went to Harvard. Life isn't fair. We all understand, except when it comes to race. Only with race do we demand the myth that the scales are equaled, that everything we've done, everything we've been, has now become wonderfully balanced. When the myth of equality is disturbed, we recoil and then uncoil. Even when simple, obvious observations about life being unfair are raised -- black quarterbacks are judged differently than white ones -- intelligence immediately takes a holiday."

"Are African-Americans ever at fault for anything? Repression is over, debts for slavery is over. I cannot believe that people pay you for your racist BS. Vick did wrong, and he has to pay the penalty, just like anyone else would and should pay. Who cares what color he is? Don't play the race card because he … cannot make the correct decisions."
-- A reader's e-mail

"Think about language, the term "the race card," and feel the sting of being slapped right in the face. The sum of another person's life experience can be reduced by your countrymen to nothing more than a tactic needed to win a game, the strategic equivalent of calling a fake punt when the time is right. To them, the life you've lived is nothing but a cheap gimmick, the desperation play in times of emergency."

"...The police act like this. I know, because it happened to me. I looked the part. There is no equality, unless you, too, have been the guy with his cheekbone in the asphalt with a gun on you.

But once, you were, because that's what people on top do to people on the bottom. "Irish Need Not Apply." Grab a history book and read about how the immigrant Irish and Italians were treated by the police. Why do you think they call them "Paddy wagons"? Maybe we have more in common than we think."

In these lines, Howard Bryant hits on a lot of controversial topics.  Like him, I have felt the sting of racism from authority figures.  Like him, I have been attacked by whites who get angry whenever I bring race into a conversation in a negative way. I have been called bitter, angry, and a 'race-card player.' 

I have also been called 'white' by both blacks and whites.  I have been told I am 'white' because I hang around certain people, listen to certain music, talk a certain way, and because I took honors classes in grade school. 

So you'll have to beg my pardon if I react with outrage when a white person tells me that a given situation has "nothing to do with race."  I grew up in a country where every decision I made was viewed in racial terms by people I encountered.  This goes beyond statistics and politics.  It even goes beyond crime and punishment. 

This is the life I live every single day.  I don't expect everyone to understand it.

So how can you expect me to see a black coach get fired for achieving the same record as a white coach who gets a contract extension -- and not bring up race?  Or to see the Michael Vick case and not bring up race?  Or hear Donovan McNabb say what he said and not totally agree? 

I don't expect the white people who disagreed with McNabb to understand this.  He said that black quarterbacks are judged differently from white ones.  When pressed, he even said they are judged more harshly than white ones.  McNabb lives in the same country that I do: one where blacks call you white, whites call you white, your social and racial identities are questioned on a daily basis.  Most white people who grew up in America have absolutely no idea what that's like.  Nor can they.  It's simply not their reality. 

I've been called a sellout based on the way I talked or a song I liked.   Even on the way I've dressed or walked.  At the same time, people have assumed things about me based solely on my name or my skin tone.  Most of those assumptions aren't positive, or even neutral: most of them are negative.  Yet some people who accept some of these realities are the same ones who get angry when McNabb says he might have been judged more harshly than a white person in the same position, simply for being a black man in a position traditionally held by white men.  Go figure.

Here's the craziest part: in spite of all this, most black people I know don't lead bitter, kill-whitey lives.  We live, we thrive, we befriend people of all races, we are happy.  I am not an angry person based on what I live through everyday.  It's a reality I put on like an invisible cloak every day I wake up. 

I can live with that.  Not just because I have no choice, but because I enjoy my life.  I wouldn't trade my experiences for anyone else's.

To those who claim never to have thought of attaching race to these issues, I salute you.  You may have arrived in the mental promised land so many of your peers have missed.  Sadly, many of us still have a ton of work to do. 

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