The True Spirit of Christmas and Sports Collide

I thought these two amazing articles about the redemptive power of sports were appropriate considering my last two posts. Happy holidays.

"There are some games where cheering for the other side feels better than winning"

The San Quentin Giants are no ordinary baseball team

We Miss Our Tribes

I need to get away from politics for a minute. Yes, I know, it's been almost a month since I last posted, but I've been mired in end-of-the-semester hell. Now I'm back and I need a break from Obama, especially because he's pissed me off again. If you don't know why, click here. Moving on...

I've finally found a legitimate sociological reason to justify my obsession with sports. It's because I miss my tribe, whatever that tribe might have been back in the day. I think all sports fans miss our tribes. People from every culture can appreciate this, because at one point we were all in tribes. For those of us who prefer sports to say, I dunno, WAR, but who do love some good healthy chest-thumping on occasion, sports fills a gap in our ancestral link. Specifically, the one where we used to suit up, paint up, armor up, dress up, drug up our best warriors and send them howling into mortal combat against the neighboring tribe's best warriors to defend turf, women, cattle, bragging rights. Just as it was back then, we cannot all be warriors, but we admire our warriors. Sports fans are wannabe, modern-day warriors. Why else would we paint our faces, don our tribal colors and throw rocks at each other in stadium parking lots? (Dodgers fans, insert "throw shanks at each other in stadium parking lots" here.) Sports brings together a whole spectrum of different types of people by the hundreds of thousands for one unified purpose: KICK THEIR FUCKING ASSES! And our warriors are kicking ass on our behalf, because in our day-to-day lives we can get arrested for kicking people's asses. Witnessing semi-authentic violence is wonderful catharsis, especially when we can imagine that, as representatives of a specific a geographical region, the players are doing it for us. Also in our day-to-day lives most of us haven't reached the highest level of, well, anything. It's a thrill to watch insanely skilled people match wits and athleticism with others of similar caliber. (This last point is the only reason I can fathom that anyone watches golf. Minus athleticism.)

Sports is social networking. Nothing else prompts us to spark up conversations with total strangers like sports. I wouldn't talk to half the straight white guys in the world if it weren't for sports. Guess what I discovered? They're not all morons! (They're also not all straight, but that's another story.) Sports helps us reconnect with our hometown roots, especially when we're living away from the city in which we grew up. I hated Philadelphia when I lived there, but don't let some nimrod in a sports bar start bashing Philly, 'cause it's on like Donkey Kong then. It warms my cockles when someone peeps my colors and runs up on me like, "Are you from Philly? I'm from Philly, too!" Then it turns out they're from some weird suburb I've never heard of 30 miles outside of Philly or like, Camden, New Jersey, but I wouldn't admit being from there, either. Whatever. You get my point. If you're from Philly and you are a Philly sports fan, you're part of my tribe. Together you and I can recreate that lost link to our ancestors that make us feel a part of a larger family unit, a common mind, and a whole lot of bragging about shit that we had absolutely nothing to do with.

Other, Non-Tribe Related Bennies of Sports:

• Sports gets us free drinks. Just ask all the lucky bastards who happened to wander into the Overtime Sports Bar the night the Phillies clinched to move into the World Series this year. That's all I'll say about that.
• Sports is the safest hot button topic. It's actually fun to argue about sports, unlike arguing politics and religion, which sucks. You can definitely get a chair broken over your dome in a sports argument, get cheap beer poured on your autographed authentic Mitchell & Ness throwback, but generally you won't get a cross burned on your lawn or labeled a baby-killer.
• That's about it.
  

Play the Race Card at Your Own Risk

Please pay attention to what your president-elect is doing, black people (and people of all colors who voted for him.) Now is not the time to wipe your brow and go *phew.* Just because he's black doesn't mean that you can go back to being political couch potatoes; just because he's black doesn't mean you ought to agree with all his policies, nor expect that he's always working with our best interests in mind. It does not mean we can kick back and relax, or that we are now considered full and worthy citizens in this country. And it especially does not mean you need to get your ass on your shoulders when a white person criticizes him. Dr. Cornel West, one of the most righteous brothers on the face of the earth, expressed this sentiment quite succinctly: he is both one of Obama's biggest supporters and his one of his biggest critics. All of us who cast our votes for him would be very wise to take a similar tact.

This is a perfect case of be careful what you wish for. We've got ourselves a black president. The historical significance of this can never be diluted or disputed. But I exhort you to keep this in mind: we have ourselves a president (who's black.) He was elected President of the United States of America, not President of the United States of Black People. He's not going to decide on signing this policy or enacting that law like, "Hmmmm, will black people like this?" Forget about it. PAY ATTENTION, but pay attention with a critical mind. He will get raked over the coals by people who want to see him fail because he's black. There's a whole bunch of folks lining up to say I told you so. You cannot allow this to cloud your judgment. Watch out for them. Call them on their shit because it's foul. But if you get mad and play the race card just because a non-black criticizes him (like Al Sharpton does every time someone sneezes in a black person's direction) you will be doing so at your own risk. You are risking being reactionary, risking acting like the victim, risking missing the opportunity to critique what might really be going on. Ask yourself, why is Whitey jumping all up in Barack's face? Then ask yourself, why is Whitey jumping all up in Barack's face? Maybe he's doing dirt. Because he will, you know. Some think he already is. For instance, he's electing people to his Cabinet, like Bush's defense secretary Robert Gates, who have a history of supporting the wars in Iraq and Afganistan, when part of his campaign hype was promising to end these horrendous, unjust wars. Was he talking out of his neck to get elected? Maybe, maybe not. These are the type of issues that require further investigation. While Barack's Cabinet candidates so far are both Democrat and Republican, none of them are especially progressive.

Conversely, let us also resist the urge to sling around that tired-ass epithet "Uncle Tom" as soon as we perceive Barack as "selling out" to Whitey. First of all, read the book, because you're ignorant for using that term if you don't know where it comes from or understand its historical context. Secondly, if he does something you don't like, it's way too easy to call him a sell-out. That is not critical thinking. Lack of critical thought creates such things as bigots, Sarah Palin, bricks, and other undesirables we don't want participating in our political processes. If Barack pisses you off, that's good—it means you're paying attention. It means you're not just drinking the doped up Kool Aid. Get involved in activism. Write him a letter. Start a blog. Do something. Sitting there calling him names will not make him accountable, nor will it improve your status in this society.

Let the man do his job and remember always what his job is: President of the United States. I don't know about you, but I really hate it when one famous black person speaks and the rest of the world thinks he or she is speaking for all of us. Last I checked, we weren't the Borg. Barack is not our spokesperson. Be aware of bigoted critics, but also be aware of following him like a blind dog. Whether you like it or not, there are other issues on the table besides us and him. He knows it. So should you.

Don't Ask Barack for No 40 Acres OR a Mule

Okay, my peeps, I'm not exactly telling you to stop huffing the Obama glue yet. We need to enjoy the love affair for as long as we can, because the man has to clean up eight year's worth of a big steaming pile of you-know-what—he's going to get his hands dirty. What I am encouraging you to do is temper your expectations.

Mainly, don't go clamoring for reparations for slavery.

Does the government owe us? No doubt, but it shouldn't come in the form of a big ole' check that you'll just run out and blow on some Jordans and a Caddy. Nor should you expect the first black president to push the issue of reparations. It's not a case of whether we should worry "about what white people think." We shouldn't. But the fact of the matter is, they hold a much larger portion of the voting bloc than we do, and as far as I'm concerned, Obama's margin of victory in the popular vote was entirely too close for comfort. This means his margin for error is much tighter. His opponents are wringing their collective hands waiting for him to give black people some sort of unfair advantage, whatever the f*ck that could be. You KNOW this. And the public is fickle. As soon as a Democrat screws up they vote in a Republican and vise versa (except for the last eight years of mass mania.) So what I'm saying is, just because your brother got himself a phat job doesn't mean he's going hire you to be his personal assistant.

What you should expect, in fact, demand, is that Barack begins to build social programs that will invest in the long term elevation of disenfranchised people from across the rainbow. This includes, but is not limited to a few basic reforms:

• Eliminating ghettos. Ghettos are created when poor people are confined to a few areas within a city typically as far as possible from "everybody else," and when transportation to other areas is inadequate at best. This sets up an "us" vs. "them" mentality in both the rich and the poor, leaving no room to imagine a scenario where people of all income levels can reside together. This means building mixed-income housing developments, where a $400/month apartment exists in the same complex as a $2,000/month apartment; building HUD houses in middle-class neighborhoods. It can and has happened in cities across the country, and should become standard practice. Of course there will always be gated communities and the like, but that's fine. We don't want to live with them anyway.
• Socializing health care and education. If you're afraid of the word "socialism," do some research about how well Canada has done with FREE health care and education. And they're still a capitalist society. The two can be integrated successfully.
  
• Investing in truly effective job training programs. I'm not talking about just teaching people how to type so they can work a cash register. I mean building well-funded community centers in the 'hood where people can receive anything from high-quality academic enhancement tutoring to training in the latest computer technology. You want folks off of welfare? This is a good place to start.
  

Now when I say "basic reforms," I don't mean simple or fast. But a well-fed, skilled, healthy black person is a lot less likely to bust a cap in your ass than one who's doing whatever to survive or because he feels like his little three block stretch of turf is the only thing he can really call his. These and other reforms will take a while to get rolling and will require a concerted effort to keep rolling, but in the long run, perpetual motion will kick in and they have the potential to correct the decades of ill we've been combating since Emancipation.

Don't hold your hand out to Barack. Hold your fist up, and make the man that YOU put in office do right the right way: invest, invest, invest in the poor and working class for generations to come. Then we can buy our own damn mules.