Black History Month: Mend It, Don’t End It

Hi folks, and welcome to another edition of TPL.  Happy Black History Month.

At least I'd like for you to enjoy it.

But if you're like me, you already know that February is going to be about four things: 
  1.  A whole lot of tired, patronizing ads from companies who see BHM as yet another vehicle to squeeze yet another dollar from your wallet.
  2.  A whole lot more idiots who will walk the earth believing that Mae Jemison was not the first black woman in space, but the mammy-cartoon character for a brand of pancake mix.
  3.  Even more idiots whose only tangible knowledge of the black history is slavery, Martin Luther King, and Barack Obama.  Or that sufficient commentary on the black experience derives from rap music, BET, The Cosby Show, Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton/whatever hot mess is calling himself in charge of the local or regional NAACP, and, yes, Barack Obama.
  4.  And yet even more idiots who, in spite of all I've said above (and there's so much more we could each contribute), will still question the need for a Black History Month in the first place.

Black men, Black women, this is our fault.

You read that right.  We only have ourselves the blame.

Part of the reason BHM is so fucked up right now is that we aren't teaching it right.  Sometimes I truly wonder if we're teaching anything at all.  I know we're not learning much.
(I mean, I appreciate the "Little Known Black History Facts" on the TJMS as much as anyone, but how many of us have actually gone out and ordered a subscription to American Legacy magazine?  You know, the source for all those facts you hear on the radio everyday?  Exactly.)

And that's just part of what's wrong with BHM.  Perhaps the most egregious offense is that, inexplicably, we've allowed not just (racist, far-right, and culturally indifferent--it is a must that I qualify this) white people, but just about anyne who is diametrically opposed to our collective interests to co-opt vestiges of our history.  Every time I hear some tripe from the mouths of a Dennis Prager or an L. Brent Bozell, someone who will never be mistaken for a friend of black people, or even (black man) Larry Elder to invoke MLK as a means to support the notion of black pathology, I want to vomit.  But what makes me actually do it is the knowledge that no one ever stands up to these people.

Are we that ignorant of our history, so derelict of our responsibility, and so unappreciative of our legacy that we're just gonna let it go for a pittance?  How are we supposed to expect others to respect where we've come from when we ourselves won't do it?  Nobody is going to our backyards to mow our lawns; pulling the weeds and trimming the hedges is our job, and ours alone.

Ironically, it was Carter G. Woodson's ideal that the day would come when there would be no need for a black history week, let alone a month.  But at the rate we're going, Tom Joyner will commemorate a Black History DECADE before I'm an old man.  (And that is the paradox for all you BHM haters.  The less you get us, the more you will get all that we've done in February.  So there.  You wanna see the end of Black History Month?  Learn black history.)

Black History Month used to be special.  It was a time when we looked back and shared our collective experiences and touched the embroidery of the threads our people wove into the American fabric.  Now it's been cheapened and marginalized.  More people know Rosa Parks as a rap song than the woman who sat down on a hot day in Montgomery.  (How even fewer people know about Claudette Colvin, who actually preceded Parks in protesting Montgomery bus segregation, is beyond criminal.)  Fraternities and sorrorities are more likely to hold house parties than encourage intellectual discourse in black homes.  Our institutions can organize rallies and boycotts in support of the Jena (La.) 6 or the Scott sisters of Mississippi,  but no NAACP member has yet demanded that the town of Scottsboro, Alabama commemorate the legacy of nine teenage boys who actually were victims of an injust legal system.  We can protest a raggedy ass flag depicting the defeated army of a long-forgotten empire (save the neo-confederate apologist groups out there), but say nothing about all those Confederate memorials across the South that I believe cause more harm to our self-esteem than whatever diaper South Carolina wants to fly over its state capitol.

This is the shit we've got to fix, people.  When the people who laud Bill Clinton as our, ahem, first "black" president refuse to hold him to task for the way he threw Sister Soulja, Lani Guinier and Joycelyn Elders under the bus, that's a problem.  When we fall all over ourselves about how hip-hop denigrates our women, but fail to acknowledge how early R&B, rock and roll, jazz, and the blues featured artists whose lyrics and lifestyles would make Eazy-E blush, that's a problem.  When we hold up those same yellowed and fading portraits of MLK, Lincoln, and Kennedy, and yap about how someone else got beat up and sprayed with high pressure hoses somewhere else, but have no knowledge about any black person of historical significance to your own fucking neighborhood, that is a problem.

When we lament how our children don't seem to know anything, but we haven't learned the things they should be taught; and we say that our children lack any respect for authority when we haven't shown them the type of person who's worthy of respect, when our history and culture are defined by one particular network that black people no longer own, we have a problem.

But, thankfully, with every problem comes a solution.  Black History Month as we know it can be fixed.  And it starts by reclaiming our history and our legacy from the brink.  Let's start getting involved again; let's start reading, discussing, and engaging each other in the issues that matter to us.  Let's challenge those people who dispense lies and half-truths about our history for their own selfish reasons.  Let's actually go out and learn something about somebody who made an impact in our own communities.  I know that is a lot harder for someone living in Swamp Fox, SC than it is for a cat in Atlanta, but it should also be that much more rewarding. Let's appreciate that the luxury of having such a rich history and heritage comes with the responsibility to see that endures.  Because black history is American history.  We were here before the Mayflower, we shed the first drops of blood for democracy, we fought bravely and honorably in every conflict this nation has ever fought.  We created American music, and redefined American athletics.  We changed the game in our own way, and often on our own terms.  That's something to be celebrated, not ignored.

So with this, I start my observance of Black History Month 2011.  Not from the puropse of seeing it fade into indifference, but out of the hope of seeing our history securely intertwined within the links of all things American, for that is the only way that BHM truly becomes obsolete.

May the next 27 days be fruitful and prosperous to all.

5 Random (Yet Well Thought Out) Observations About Randy Shannon's Firing

1.  Randy Shannon was the right coach at the right time.
All you people who are quick to play the affirmative action card (read:  unqualified minority) can eat shit right now.  Larry Coker, for all his success on the field, left the program in tatters.  More players were getting press for criminal activity than for what they did on the field.  Practically nobody graduated.  Miami football was a black eye to all of college sports, and an insult to black academic and social progress.

Enter Randy Shannon.  He grew up in Miami, won championships there as a player, and another as an assistant coach.  He knew the school.  He knew the lineage of Canes football.  And, most importantly, he knew the pools of talent in the area.  As Donna Shalala stated at his hiring, he is Miami.  Not only was he arguably the best qualified man for the job, he was definitely the most uniquely qualified candidate for the position as well.

Yet past performance doesn't equal future success.  And for that reason...

2.  Miami was absolutely correct to part ways with him.
Shannon is an absolutely fabulous leader.  He reestablished an air of discipline and accountability.  His players graduated.  By virtually all accounts, he did everything right as a coach.

Except win enough games.

Somewhere down the line, Shannon seemed to forget that he wasn't coaching  Boy's Town, but at the U.  Consistent 7-5 seasons, with losses to seemingly inferior schools in your own state, will eventually get you fired anywhere.  But at Miami, where the expectations are winning conference titles and competing for BCS championships, 7-5 is beyond substandard.  Even when you are fielding teams that students and alumni can be proud of, you can't get by with mediocre seasons when you're stocked with 11-1 talent.

But in no way should that make his tenure a racial issue.  Shannon's firing is not an indictment of his intelligence, his coaching acumen, and damn sure not his color.  ESPN's Mark May, defending Shannon shortly after the initial reports, said "[Shannon] was brought in to change the culture of the program.  He did that."  And I agree; most people do.  But most of us could also see that Coach Shannon took the program as far as he could take it.  It was time for a change. 

Shannon got the job because he deserved it.  He got a contract extension because he deserved it.  And he got fired because he deserved it.  It's not that hard to understand.  Shannon is a tremendous coach and he will get another head coaching opportunity much sooner than later.  But just as there should be no debate on his hiring, this is not another Tyrone Willingham situation, either (and besides,Shannon walks away with a better record).  Randy Shannon may not have been given all the chances in the world (I could never really say that about a black coach), but he certainly had enough.

So, if you must bring up affirmative action (though you shouldn't), acknowledge that its intent is to create equal opportunities, not equal results.  A black man was given a chance to display his talents; he succeeded in some respects (and be honest---for a first-time coach he really didn't do a bad job), but ultimately things didn't pan out.  That's perfectly OK with me.  And I bet it's just fine with him, too.

They could have let him coach the bowl game, though.  Just sayin'.

3.  Love him or hate him, Fox Sports' Jason Whitlock is right.
Funny, when I saw the final score of that Central Florida game, I thought that Shannon was going to be on the hottest seat in the country next season.  When I saw the news that he'd been fired, I thought immediately of what Whitlock said in 2008 about Turner Gill.

Gill, currently the head coach at Kansas, was the front runner (?) for the job at Auburn.  I remember all the hoopla and bellyaching that came about because he got passed over for a guy who was like 1-70 (exaggerating here) at Iowa State.  And to be honest, with Gill coming fresh off a MAC title at Buffalo, I didn't get it, either.

But then I read Whitlock's column, and I realized that you can't just jump at any job because someone else tells you that it's the best opportunity.  You should choose that job (or stay where you are) because at the time, it's the right one.  Gill ended up at a place where he had close ties to the conference (he starred at rival Nebraska), and where it seems like there's isn't as much pressure to win now as it is to be competitive.  Should he had been given the chance to coach Cam Newton?  Don't know.  But I am sure that Gill would get to grow at Kansas in ways they'd never let him at Auburn.

I'm not going to contradict myself and tell you that Shannon shouldn't have taken the Miami job; he should have.  I'm hoping that next time, he considers where his strengths and weaknesses are, bounces them off the expectations of the program, and chooses a place that can not only utilize his leadership and talents to their fullest, but also can better afford to take the time necessary to build a consistent winner.

Shannon, if given the time and the financial commitment from whoever hires him, can build a championship team in short order.  But black, white or purple, schools like the University of Miami are not the places to be for a young coach to get his teeth cut.  Better to go to a lower-tier Big 6 or an up-and-coming mid-major first.

4.  Randy Shannon's successor won't do that much better, anyway.
First of all, Miami is one of the lowest-paying jobs available for a program with such lofty expectations.  And I promise you, nobody in broadcasting is going to take less money tor all the hassles that come with coaching.  Especially at a school like Miami.  So dreaming about a big name coach like Jon Gruden gets you nowhere.  Ditto for Mike Leach, unless you want to see the program go back to the bad ol'days of the Coker era.  Butch Davis isn't leaving Chapel Hill, either.

So, that leaves room for some young coach or seasoned coordinator who, like Shannon, will have his first head coaching opportunity.  Good luck with that.  Maybe they could get some retread a la Rick Neuheisel, or perhaps Dan Hawkins can get another shot at glory.  If it were me, I'd shoot for the latter.

Miami can't get the big names because it doesn't have the money (Yeah, I know...all that cheddar from licensing and apparel?  Really?).   A young coach won't survive because there's too much pressure to win, and win now.  And even with the best possible coach locked up, the team still plays in a way-too-large arena too far away from campus, suffers from poor training facilities, and is at least a step behind its in-state rivals when it comes to recruiting blue-chip prospects.

Sounds like a recipe for mediocrity to me.  Which tells me...

5.  Miami fans had better prepare for the new reality.
Contrary to what Athletic Director Kirby Hocutt wants you to believe, that "better days are ahead for Miami," what the firing of Shannon signals is not the beginning of the end of rough times, but rather the end of the beginning. 

Miami is not an elite team, and they haven't been the entire decade.  They've lost games to schools like Carolina and Georgia Tech, and they're losing ground in recruiting to schools like UCF and South Florida.  These schools have solid coaches and have either built or are building better facilities.  These are programs on the rise, with bright futures ahead of them. 

Better days are ahead for programs like Connecticut, not Miami.

While it's way too premature to equate the Hurricanes to a has-been program like, say, Holy Cross, I do think it's more than fair to look at the U next year and see Notre Dame.

Yes, that Notre Dame, where first-year coach Brian Kelly brought the Irish a 7-5 record and a bowl game---and they're happy about it.

See, just like Miami this season, ND was another big-name school spoiled by their history of success, and their heads in the sand about the changing landscape of college football.  They thought the name itself would carry the team to 10-2 seasons and the Orange Bowl.  They were wrong.  They held their standards way too high; they felt entitled to outstanding seasons.  They ended up with running out three so-so coaches (Bob Davie, Willingham, and Charlie Weis), shelling out lots of cash, enduring monumental embarrassments, and nearly causing irreparable damage to their credibility (as a football team and an academic institution)before they came to their senses and realized that they are what their record says they are:  a good team but not a championship one. 

And this is a school that's got buckets of  money and first class facilities.

So, don't think that you're going to hire the next Jimbo Fisher and tear up the ACC Coastal next year, or the next five years, or be in any position to compete for a BCS slot before the end of the coming decade.  It's not gonna happen.  Florida will just reload next year with a bangin' recruiting class.  FSU and Virginia Tech will be the only two teams that matter in the ACC (again), with Carolina, Maryland, NC State, and Ga. Tech continuing to build and get better.  The other Florida schools are ascending to prominence fast.  It's only gonna get worse before it gets better.

Every team at some point goes through a nadir of sorts.  Nebraska seems to have come out of theirs.  Notre Dame probably have turned the corner, but they're nothing close to where they were with Lou Holtz.  Tennessee will be good again, and Georgia will be back as well.  But until the Miami athletic department fixes the other things that's wrong with their program, you can only rightfully expect more mediocre seasons for years to come.

Miami is, at best, a middle-of-the-pack-team in a middle-of-the-pack conference.  Get used to it.

Affirmative Action is Never Going Away. Here's Why.

Today I was reminded of a Texas legislator who, some years back, tried to push a bill that eliminated racial preferences for athletes (football players, specifically) at state-supported schools like the University of Texas and Texas A&M.  Yeah, you know that thing didn't have a chance.  He probably did, too.  I'm wagering that its passage wasn't the point.  More importantly, I think what he was trying to do (and if I'm correct, he was truly ahead of his time) was to point out a dirty little secret whites will never cop to about Affirmative Action.

Remember the passage in Ellison's Invisible Man, where the protagonist was working at Liberty Paints?  Remember the irony that came out of the firm's whitest white paint?  (For the uninitiated, it took ten drops of black paint in order to create it.)  The genius of it was, though it alluded to the hypocrisy of Jim Crow, that same passage almost seamlessly fits into the Affirmative Action debate. 

It's funny how some people will fight heaven and hell to deny others something close to the same opportunities they had, except when it suits their selfish interests.  And too often, those interests lie in their pocketbooks and wallets.

Stop groaning.  You knew what this thread was about the minute you saw the title.  Yes, I know you're already tired of the debate, regardless of what side you're on.  But have you ever thought that maybe it's because each side keeps saying the same damn thing?  Have we lost the ability to take the opposing view and flip the script?  I mean, for me I can accept that some people feel that everything is a zero-sum equation, and that every break little Jamaal or Maria gets comes at the expense of their little snots.  But why do they seem to get away with the institutional racism that allows them to be seen as victims of a PC-crazy, meritless society while their oppressors are getting fat off undeserved entitlements? Why does it always appear that the biggest whiners of Affirmative Action seem to be amongst the most prosperous in this struggling economy?

Allow me to let you in on a little secret:  the war against Affirmative Action is a farce.  It's not going anywhere, and white people won't allow it to.  You read that right.  Minority-based preferences and set asides are here to stay, and all us black folks can thank Whitey for it.  Contrary to what you hear on Fox News or read from the Southern Heritage Newsletter, white people love Affirmative Action.  More accurately put, they need those preferences and set-asides to remain in place more than we do.

This deserves an explanation.  It's a well-known fact (should be, anyway) that the biggest beneficiaries of Affirmative Action policies are white women, who overwhelmingly marry white men, who in turn have white children (obviously, though many adopt interracially), about half of which are males.  And yet the biggest complainers of preference policies, the ones most likely to vehemently preach of reverse racism in the practice, are white men.  Ironic, no?  The demographic who collectively gains the most from race-based policies are the very ones who are most threatened by them.

At first blush, it is kinda hard to figure.  But if you look at it another way, it's certainly understandable. See, beneath all the vitriol and empty logic about preferences, there's a white noise (pun intended) speaking another unacknowledged truth.  You hear it at schools like FAMU and Bethune-Cookman (white baseball and golf teams), Fayetteville (NC) State (a model of an integrated university:  military, whites, out-of-staters) and the venerable Morehouse College (white valedictorian).  You hear it when applicants employ nepotism and alumni connections to pave a better path to the corner suite.  You hear it when Essence magazine defends its choice of a white fashion editor. That sound you hear is perhaps the dirtiest little secret of the debate:  white people get as much from preferences and set-asides as they feel they had taken away.  The institutional racism that perpetuates the intended beneficiaries as less-than-stellar, while those supposedly left out collectively profit exponentially, will not allow it.

See, the white middle class was built on preferences, preferences afforded to veterans (via the GI Bill), college students (affordable student loans), the indingent (WIC, AFDC, etc.), and, yes, preferences based on race (Jim Crow).  If  those set-asides were taken away from them tomorrow, if we all compete fairly, and thus are forced to compete equally, then it stands to reason that whites would be disproportionally affected; and with the increased competition and scarcity of resources from a more meritocratic union, the tiping point would be the largest transfer of wealth in this nation's history since the Manifest Destiny, far more than any teabagger's fearmongering misspelled on a placard would proclaim.

So the next time you hear some hack whine about Affirmative Action (or immigration, for that matter), remind yourself that the game still favors them; the more that's supposedly taken away, the more it's really given back.  In other words, don't be fooled by the rhetoric, and don't be ashamed to take advantage of something we as a people were long overdue, and that far too many were stepped on for us to have. 

Because like at Liberty Paints, its enemies of getting theirs, too.