A Man For All Seasons

A Black Man Who Wants To Eat At The Dining Room Table All Of The Time

Since the institutional murder of New York City’s Eric Garner for selling loose cigarettes, the institutional murder of Detroit’s 12-year-old Tamir Rice for loitering in a park, the institutional murder of Baltimore’s Freddie Gray after his severed-spine ride in a police paddy wagon, the institutional murder of Ferguson’s Michael Brown, the institutional murder of Charleston’s Walter Scott, and the thousands of other blacks over the last four hundred years in this country who have met death at the hands of authority, I have gained respect for a relatively new very angry voice in the analysis of “why.” His name is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, born as Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr. in the middle of Harlem 68 years ago. As a slender seven-foot-two black kid with exceptional grace and speed on a basketball court, he was recruited by every basketball powerhouse in the country.

He picked UCLA, led them to three NCAA national championships and was the Most Valuable Player three times. He later played pro ball for 20 years, leading his team to six pro championships and was picked the MVP six times. Hidden by all of the athletic ability was a keen intellect bolstered by majors in history and English at a very good university. Keen enough to recognize that even with all of his athletic accomplishments because of his size and skills, he was still considered a second-class citizen in a white country. Kareem stayed angry. In 1968 he refused to play for the U.S. Olympic team because the country did not recognize him as equal to whites. On NBC’s Today Show Kareem was asked by host Joe Garagiola why he wouldn’t play for his country. He replied: “Yeah, I live here, but it’s not really my country.” Joe responded: “Well, there’s only one solution. Maybe you should move.” Maybe Joe had suffered too many concussions as a Major League baseball catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. Maybe Joe was a little short in the history of slavery and black people. It was the wrong answer to a young smart black guy who knew the history of his race. This time he really stayed angry. He wanted to eat at the dining room table all of the time.

A Little Black History By The Black Poet Langston Hughes

In the middle of the 20th Century Langston Hughes wrote the poetry behind the subservient role of blacks in the social and economic life of the United States. In “Florida Road Workers” Hughes wrote ironic lines about white travel.

“I’m makin’ a road for the cars to fly by on./ Makin’ a road through the palmetto thicket for light and civilization to travel on./ Makin’ a road for the rich old white men to sweep over in their big cars and leave me standin’ here. Sure, a road helps all of us! White folks ride—and I get to see them ride./ I ain’t never seen nobody ride so fine before./ Hey, buddy! Look at me. I’m makin’ a road!”

In “Brass Spittoons” Hughes described the lowly life of blacks in service jobs. “Clean the spittoons, boy./ Detroit, Chicago, Atlantic City, Palm Beach./ Clean the spittoons. The steam in the hotel kitchens, and the smoke in hotel lobbies, the slime in hotel spittoons: Part of my life./ Babies and church and women and Sunday all mixed up with dimes and dollars and clean spittoons and house rent to pay. Hey, boy!/ A bright bowl of brass is beautiful to the Lord./ Bright polish brass like the cymbals of King David’s dancers, like the wine cups of Solomon./ Hey, boy! A clean spittoon on the altar of the Lord./ A clean bright spittoon all newly polished. At least I can offer that. Com’mere, boy!”

In “I, Too” Hughes writes about his dark brothers. “I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother./ They send me to eat in the kitchen when company comes./ But I laugh, eat well, and grow strong./ Tomorrow I’ll be at the table when company comes./ Nobody’ll dare say to me ‘Eat in the kitchen,’ then./ Besides, they’ll see how beautiful I am and be ashamed—I, too am America.”

Kareem writes about the fact he is not welcome at the dining room table yet.

Some Black History Kareem Remembers In His Books And Essays

Many people felt that the election of a mulatto president in 2008 signaled that the problems of white on black racism was over. After living during Jim Crow days and before civil rights legislation for three years in the South, I knew it wasn’t over. When the white citizens of Jacksonville, North Carolina would force the generation that lynched and burned blacks just for looking at Southern women and who forced my Korean War veteran Marine Corps sergeants to walk in the streets instead of on the sidewalks--well, one knew it might take generations to end racism. And it will. When Georgia Senator Thomas Watson, already dismayed about the number of “inferior” blacks in the South, wrote this about Italians, Jews, Poles and other European immigrants tainting our shores and land in 1910, it signaled what racists felt about Jews, Catholics and blacks: “The scum of creation has been dumped on us. Some of our principal cities are more foreign than American. The most dangerous and corrupting hordes of the Old World have invaded us. The vice and crime which they have planted in our midst are sickening and terrifying. What brought these Goths and Vandals to our shores? The manufacturers are mainly to blame. They wanted cheap labor and they didn’t care a curse how much harm to our future might be the consequences of their heartless policy.” What is different about the right-wing rhetoric of Donald Trump about Mexicans and Muslims today? Nothing.

Kareem remembers that between 1882 and 1968 authorities allowed 4,742 blacks to be killed by lynch mobs. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover believed that black brains were 20% smaller than whites. In Jim Crow days black women trying various hats on had to wear skull caps so that fabric would separate white heads from black heads. And then there was the day when an uppity black entertainer named Dorothy Dandridge, who was singing at a white Chicago hotel that didn’t allow her to stay in its rooms, dipped a big black naked toe into the hotel swimming pool. Observers forced the hotel to empty the pool immediately. The War Department after World War II honored mothers who had sacrificed sons by sending first-class railroad tickets to white mothers and third-class tickets to black mothers. When Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s homerun record of 714 in 1974 he had received so many death threats which declared he would never reach home plate alive, his mother was terrified and rushed out and embraced her son between home plate and third and held him until he crossed the plate. As late as 1986 the U.S. Supreme Court decided that a Louisiana woman with 3/32 black blood was truly black. She wanted to be declared white so that the white family of her boyfriend would accept her. Remember when a black was declared 3/5ths of a person for voting purposes? If you lived south of the Mason-Dixon line and had one drop of black blood you were forever black.

Kareem : The Very Shy Social Critic

After 20 years of pro basketball Kareem has emerged as an intelligent, rational critic of what is wrong with America. He writes columns for Time, The Huffington Post, and Esquire, appears as a pundit on many TV news programs on MSNBC and CNN. His written and spoken comments are filled with historical anecdotes and literary allusions. He did not waste his sports scholarship on a sports management major taught by coaches. He is still angry that rules against dunking the basketball were made specifically to remove that skill from his game skills. He was known for his spectacular dunks with his long arms extended. He is so tall with such unusual measurements all of his clothes must be tailored. Jay Caspian Kang describes Kareem’s persona in a recent New York Times article: “Abdul-Jabbar has been in the public spotlight for 50 years, and for almost all that time, he has drawn the ire of most reporters who have dealt with him. For a black athlete to be accepted by the sports media … he had to appear humble and deferential and continually thankful to the white world for giving him a chance to become rich and famous. Abdul-Jabbar, who, like many shy, intelligent people, channeled his innate awkwardness through a hardened mask of superiority, didn’t fit the model.” He has published ten books. Only two are about his basketball days. Most cover historical topics.

Kareem was exposed early to prejudice. While still in high school he was hired by a black newspaper to cover the Harlem riots in 1964. In high school he was already known throughout New York City as a basketball star. Even his picture was taken by the famous society photographer Richard Avedon. On a high school basketball trip to North Carolina he saw Mr. Jim Crow dominate blacks. In his own high school Kareem was called a “jungle bunny” and a “nigger” and his Irish coach Tom Donahue called him “nigger” at times. Remember when Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) refused to be drafted into the Army for the Vietnam War because “No Cong had ever called him a ‘nigger?’” Kareem had the same attitude. Kareem publicly converted to Islam a day after he had led the Milwaukee Bucks to the NBA title in 1970-71. He had started his conversion from Lew Alcindor to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar while a student at UCLA. He had been raised a Catholic by his parents. Here is how Kareem explained his religious conversion: “It was a transformation of heart, mind and soul. I used to be Lew Alcindor, the pale reflection of what white America expected of me. Now I am Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the manifestation of my African history, culture and beliefs. The question I’m often asked is why I had to pick a religion so foreign to American culture and a name that was hard for people to pronounce. Some fans took it very personally, as if I had firebombed their church while tearing up an American flag. Actually, I was rejecting the religion that was foreign to my American culture and embracing one that was part of my black African heritage. Remember, up to 30% of slaves brought from Africa were Muslims. The adoption of a new name was an extension of my rejection of all things in my life that related to the enslavement of my family and people. Alcindor was a French planter in the West Indies who owned my ancestors. My forebears were Yoruba people, from present day Nigeria. Keeping the name of my family’s slave master seemed somehow to dishonor them. His name felt like a branded scar of shame.”

The Long Journey Of A Talented, Determined, And Angry Man

When the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama was bombed, killing four young black girls and partially blinding another, Lew-Kareem lost it. He wrote: “As I watched the ineffectual moral outrage of the black southern preachers, the cold coverage of the white media and the posturing of the John F. Kennedy White House, my whole view of the world fell into place. My faith was exploded like church rubble, my anger was shrapnel. I would gladly have killed whoever killed those girls by myself.” That raging anger is still there. I wonder what Kareem is saying about the fact that present-day black children are less likely to get pain drugs when suffering from appendicitis. Only 21% of black children receive a pain opioid as compared to 40% of white children. I bet Kareem’s shrapnel is really flying over that one.