Obsidian Potency 3.0
A Letter To Whitlock [edit]
posted Thursday, 29 November 2007
I never saw this before, but Etan Thomas' letter to Jason Whitlock was cogent and meaningful. Whitlock has become a lightning rod of sorts ever since radio personality Don Imus was fired for calling the women of the Rutgers basketball team "nappy headed hos." Whitlock's response was, essentially, to call for the women and coach to 'show a little more spine.' He said that they should have just ignored those comments -- after all, athletes who paved the way for these women routinely blocked out a lot worse.
He sounds a bit like Bill Cosby, eh?
Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that. I agreed with many of the things Cosby said about the failure of black youth to follow in the footsteps of -- and expand on -- the United States civil right movement in the '60s. That movement is probably the only reason I ended up being born in this country; without it, I doubt my parents would have come or stayed here. Cosby is pretty old at this point, and for him to feel any differently would be odd. He might be out of touch when it comes to fashion and modes of speaking, but his words ring true to both young and old blacks who face a daily struggle to shake the negative stereotypes associated with certain elements of black, urban hip-hop culture.
Whitlock's not an idiot, and every column he writes contains something interesting that makes you think. At least, they used to -- his getting fired in part for criticizing a white colleague due to that colleague's demonization of Barry Bonds sometimes seems like a lifetime ago. But as Etan Thomas alludes, the derision he draws might be due just as much to the way he says things, not what he is actually saying. Posts here on OP have been misunderstood the same way; fortunately, none of us possesses anywhere near the stature of a professional journalist.
At the same time, Whitlock's biggest problem is that he sounds less and less like a nuanced man with interesting opinions, and more and more like the Larry Elders and Clarence Thomases of the world. One recent column is a perfect example: he basically blames all a team's problems on two players and their "hip-hop culture" attitudes. He's worse about prattling about the evils of hip-hop culture than Obsidian Potency is about intertwining racism with most issues.
Reading Whitlock, you'd think that only blacks are killing members of their own race, even though intra-racial crime is the rule within all American ethnic groups. In Whitlock's world, everything that isn't racist against blacks is self-inflicted damage from hip-hop's. Really? There are no negative messages from rock bands like Metallica ("Kill 'Em All"), Alice In Chains ("Junkhead," "Sickman," "God Smack") or Aerosmith ("Young Lust," "F.I.N.E")? And there are few non-black people listening to hip-hop that might be influenced as well? Is it any wonder that his recent opinion pieces have led to him leaving AOL Sports for Fox Sports? Increasingly, Whitlock seems like a perfect conservative fit.
Lookee here: Whitlock's most recent column blames hip-hop, while trying to say he isn't really, necessarily, and we don't know...yet he rolls with this line: "You're damn straight I blame hip hop for playing a role in the genocide of American black men"...and, without technically saying so, for the death of Sean Taylor. At least he isn't blaming Taylor himself. Oh, wait...he does that elsewhere in the article. My bad. If you're having trouble taking Whitlock seriously anymore, rest assured that you're not the only one.
But here's a pro-Jason observation: it seems to many observers that any blacks who disagree with the thinking of media-appointed black 'leaders' are shot down for it. Etan Thomas reveals this bias when he tells Whitlock, "It sounds like you're on their side." Whose side does he mean? This isn't an us-vs.-them debate. Black people don't all have to agree on everything, or even on fundamental issues. I saw the same press conference Thomas attended. If Stringer was "attempting to explain why his columns and articles were not only insulting but misguided," then she did a pretty piss-poor job of it. To me, she simply sounded insulted and angry. She has every right to sound that way, but it does nothing to counter Whitlock's assertions.
It's truly amazing how anger and outrage feeds on itself. Once someone goes down that road in a conversation, the other party often responds with more outrage - to the point that they render themselves unable to respond effectively to arguments and counters. This accomplishes nothing, and it was actually the worst part about the conference. Instead of sounding like a well-reasoned response, Stringer's counterattack left most of the room sounding like a bunch of angry black people beefing. I don't think that was the goal for either 'side.'
What Whitlock doesn't seem to get is this: his blind hatred of "hip hop culture," his stereotyping, his grouping of all hip hop culture with prison culture, and his complete lack of prescriptions to solve the problems of the community he simultaneously criticizes and belongs to does nothing to help anyone. It does provide neo-conservative whites with some catharsis, and it does get attention, but ultimately it accomplishes nothing. Saying "We don't want to deal with ourselves" and telling blacks we need to "recapture the mids of black youth" doesn't mean jack in the grand scheme of things.
At least Bill Cosby could point to his scholarship programs, his academic life's work, and even the production of positive entertainment like "The Cosby Show" and prove he is actually accomplishing something. For every Whitlock column like this one or this one, there seems to be at least two that follow the empty cut-and-paste routine of the column referenced above them. And that's a shame.
He sounds a bit like Bill Cosby, eh?
Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with that. I agreed with many of the things Cosby said about the failure of black youth to follow in the footsteps of -- and expand on -- the United States civil right movement in the '60s. That movement is probably the only reason I ended up being born in this country; without it, I doubt my parents would have come or stayed here. Cosby is pretty old at this point, and for him to feel any differently would be odd. He might be out of touch when it comes to fashion and modes of speaking, but his words ring true to both young and old blacks who face a daily struggle to shake the negative stereotypes associated with certain elements of black, urban hip-hop culture.
Whitlock's not an idiot, and every column he writes contains something interesting that makes you think. At least, they used to -- his getting fired in part for criticizing a white colleague due to that colleague's demonization of Barry Bonds sometimes seems like a lifetime ago. But as Etan Thomas alludes, the derision he draws might be due just as much to the way he says things, not what he is actually saying. Posts here on OP have been misunderstood the same way; fortunately, none of us possesses anywhere near the stature of a professional journalist.
At the same time, Whitlock's biggest problem is that he sounds less and less like a nuanced man with interesting opinions, and more and more like the Larry Elders and Clarence Thomases of the world. One recent column is a perfect example: he basically blames all a team's problems on two players and their "hip-hop culture" attitudes. He's worse about prattling about the evils of hip-hop culture than Obsidian Potency is about intertwining racism with most issues.
Reading Whitlock, you'd think that only blacks are killing members of their own race, even though intra-racial crime is the rule within all American ethnic groups. In Whitlock's world, everything that isn't racist against blacks is self-inflicted damage from hip-hop's. Really? There are no negative messages from rock bands like Metallica ("Kill 'Em All"), Alice In Chains ("Junkhead," "Sickman," "God Smack") or Aerosmith ("Young Lust," "F.I.N.E")? And there are few non-black people listening to hip-hop that might be influenced as well? Is it any wonder that his recent opinion pieces have led to him leaving AOL Sports for Fox Sports? Increasingly, Whitlock seems like a perfect conservative fit.
Lookee here: Whitlock's most recent column blames hip-hop, while trying to say he isn't really, necessarily, and we don't know...yet he rolls with this line: "You're damn straight I blame hip hop for playing a role in the genocide of American black men"...and, without technically saying so, for the death of Sean Taylor. At least he isn't blaming Taylor himself. Oh, wait...he does that elsewhere in the article. My bad. If you're having trouble taking Whitlock seriously anymore, rest assured that you're not the only one.
But here's a pro-Jason observation: it seems to many observers that any blacks who disagree with the thinking of media-appointed black 'leaders' are shot down for it. Etan Thomas reveals this bias when he tells Whitlock, "It sounds like you're on their side." Whose side does he mean? This isn't an us-vs.-them debate. Black people don't all have to agree on everything, or even on fundamental issues. I saw the same press conference Thomas attended. If Stringer was "attempting to explain why his columns and articles were not only insulting but misguided," then she did a pretty piss-poor job of it. To me, she simply sounded insulted and angry. She has every right to sound that way, but it does nothing to counter Whitlock's assertions.
It's truly amazing how anger and outrage feeds on itself. Once someone goes down that road in a conversation, the other party often responds with more outrage - to the point that they render themselves unable to respond effectively to arguments and counters. This accomplishes nothing, and it was actually the worst part about the conference. Instead of sounding like a well-reasoned response, Stringer's counterattack left most of the room sounding like a bunch of angry black people beefing. I don't think that was the goal for either 'side.'
What Whitlock doesn't seem to get is this: his blind hatred of "hip hop culture," his stereotyping, his grouping of all hip hop culture with prison culture, and his complete lack of prescriptions to solve the problems of the community he simultaneously criticizes and belongs to does nothing to help anyone. It does provide neo-conservative whites with some catharsis, and it does get attention, but ultimately it accomplishes nothing. Saying "We don't want to deal with ourselves" and telling blacks we need to "recapture the mids of black youth" doesn't mean jack in the grand scheme of things.
At least Bill Cosby could point to his scholarship programs, his academic life's work, and even the production of positive entertainment like "The Cosby Show" and prove he is actually accomplishing something. For every Whitlock column like this one or this one, there seems to be at least two that follow the empty cut-and-paste routine of the column referenced above them. And that's a shame.
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