Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 997

ESPN Must be High: Drugs & Jim Crow in Sports’ Reporting

ESPN Must be High: Drugs & Jim Crow in Sports’ Reporting by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan
My concern and interest in sports often has little to do with sports.  While I am clearly a fan, someone who enjoys watching and thinking about sports, I am often drawn into the world sports because of the larger implications and meanings.  Sports are more than a game; it is a pedagogy, a technology, and an instrument of larger social, political, and racial processes.  During a recent interview with Colorlines , I spoke about the danger in seeing sport as purely game, entertainment, or distraction:
One of the things that often strikes me is the disconnect between progressive and those engaged in anti-racist movement and struggles — and sports. Sports continues to be seen as antithetical or a distraction, or not part and parcel with the movements for justice. I think that when you have a society that is increasingly invested in and has been for the last 30 years, with incarceration, with a suspension culture, with racial profiling, it’s not a coincidence that you have a sports culture that’s equally invested in those practices. And invested in the language of the criminal justice system.
I consume and am consumed by sports not simply because of the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” but because of its potential as a source of social change.  Yet, sports continue to be a site for the perpetuation of injustice, violence, and despair.  As a critical scholar, as an anti-racist practitioner, and as someone committed to justice, my gaze is never just as fan.  In watching games, listening to commentaries, and reading various sports publications, I am unable and unwilling to suspend this gaze.  So, it should be no surprise that when I recently opened ESPN: The Magazine, to find an article on drug use and college football, it had my attention.
“Of 400,000 athletes, about 0.6 percent will be tested for marijuana by the NCAA.” The lead-to ESPN’s sensationalized and misleading story on marijuana use and collegiate football, thus, frames the story as one about both rampant illegal drug use and the absence of accountability.  While attempting to draw readers into their stereotyped-ridden, sensationalized tabloid journalism masking as investigative reporting/journalistic expose, it reflects the dangerous in this piece.  “College football players smoking marijuana is nothing new. Coaches and administrators have been battling the problem and disciplining players who do so for decades,” writes Mark Schlabach.  He highlights the purported epidemic plaguing college football by citing the following:
NCAA statistics show a bump in the number of stoned athletes. In the NCAA's latest drug-use survey, conducted in 2009 and released in January, 22.6 percent of athletes admitted to using marijuana in the previous 12 months, a 1.4 percentage point increase over a similar 2005 study. Some 26.7 percent of football players surveyed fessed up, a higher percentage than in any other major sport. (The use of other drugs, such as steroids and amphetamines, has declined or held steady.) A smaller percentage of athletes actually get caught, but those numbers are also on the rise. In the latest available postseason drug-testing results, positive pot tests increased in all three divisions, from 28 in 2008-09 to 71 the following school year.
It is important to examine the evidence because of the narrative being offered here and the larger context given the racial implications of the war on drugs. 
According to Schlabach, 22.6 percent of football players acknowledging using marijuana; in student-athletes playing football were the most likely to acknowledge marijuana amongst those participating in MAJOR sports.  While unclear how he is defining major sports, I would gather that those major sports include football, track, basketball, and baseball, coincidentally sports dominated by African Americans in disproportionate numbers.  Why limit the discussion here other than to perpetuate a stereotype?  Does the revenue or popularity of a sport require greater scrutiny?  I think not. 
Examination of the actual NCAA study tells a different story.  Indeed, baseball (21.5%); basketball (22.2%), and track (16.0%) trail football.  Only men’s golf and tennis, with numbers of 22.5% 23.2% trails football amongst non-major sports.  If one compares reported marijuana use between collegiate football players to their peers in swimming (27.2%) ice hockey (27.4%), wrestling (27.7%), soccer (29.4%), and lacrosse (48.5%), it becomes clear that football is not the problem.  Add women’s field hockey (35.7) and women’s lacrosse into that mix, and yet again it is clear who is getting high.  In fact, when High Times or Bill Maher looks for a role model within collegiate sports, they are more likely to call upon soccer or lacrosse players than a football player. 
ESPN further mischaracterizes the study by failing to sufficiently acknowledge the differences drug use in Division 1 football and Division III.  The NCAA study found that marijuana use is least common amongst Division I student-athletes (16.9%), where Division II student-athletes (21.4%) and those from Division III having the highest level of usage with a number of 28.3%.  Since the 2005 study, drug usage actually declined at the Division I level, while increases were seen in other two divisions.  
Yet, ESPN and others continue to disseminate these false and harmful stereotypes about big-time collegiate athletes as spoiled, entitled, out-of-control and HIGH; as criminals lacking discipline and immune from accountability.  Irrespective of intent, by focusing on “big-time” sports and by failing to differentiate between Division 1 and Division 3, ESPN and others play upon racial stereotypes.  Is it just a coincidence that ESPN doesn’t note that marijuana use is highest amongst collegiate athletes from Division III; is it just coincidence that 76.7% white Division III football players are white?  It is just an oversight that the focus is on Division 1, even though marijuana use is well below averages for student-athletes and non-student athletes alike? 
Is it just a coincidence that focus is on the sport – football – that is 51% black?  What does it tell us that men’s lacrosse, which is 91% white, wrestling (80% white), field hockey (90.5%), ice hockey (89.5%) and men’s soccer (72.1% white) are all sports with high marijuana use yet are unseen as problems?  What does it tell us that ESPN and others conveniently erase them from a story on drug use and higher education?  If fact, it tells us a lot about the sport media and the misuse of data for the sake of a sensationalized story.  In that same April 30th issue, ESPN published a story about drugs and University of Oregon where Sam Alipour notes that, “between 40 percent and 60 percent of their teammates puffed”:
The school's football program reflects those realities. In interviews with The Magazine, 19 current or former Oregon players and officials revealed widespread marijuana use by football players for at least the past 15 years. Former Ducks, including current pros, estimate between 40 percent and 60 percent of their teammates puffed; current Ducks say that range remains accurate.
While I am no social scientist, interviews with 19 people along with the fact that “The Princeton Review and High Times both have ranked the University of Oregon among the most pot-friendly schools” and that during the 1990s the “Grateful Dead made Autzen Stadium a regular tour stop” is not evidence of a drug epidemic within the Duck football program.  It certainly isn’t evidence that allows for statistical claims such as 40-60%, a number that not surprisingly was circulated widely by other media outlets.
Both articles reveal even more in terms of the perpetuation of stereotypes that have consequences in both the sport world and beyond.  It is yet another illustration as how “what it means to be criminal in our collective consciousness” is “what it means to be black.”  As argued by Michelle Alexander, “the term black criminal is nearly redundant” so much so that “to be a black man is to be thought of as a criminal, and to be a black criminal is to be despicable – a social pariah” (p. 193).  One has to look no further than a Yahoo report –“ESPN's 'Higher Education': Rampant Use of Marijuana in College Football Isn't the Least Bit Shocking” to these conections.  Responding to ESPN: The Magazine report, Adam C. Biggers waxes sociologist to explain their findings:  
One part of the story that should be looked into is the player's backgrounds. Many of the athletes in the ESPN report are African-American and come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Based on my experience, marijuana isn't considered a "drug" by many in the urban community. I've been around college athletes, even coached at the prep level in Flint, Mich., and it's clearly evident that marijuana is ‘nothing’ when compared to other illicit substances.  That may be true, but it's still illegal. In hockey and baseball, the use of smokeless tobacco is acceptable. Young players under the age of 18 use it on a regular basis. To them, it's part of the culture, as is marijuana to the urban community.
One has to wonder how Mr. Biggers would explain marijuana use amongst lacrosse or soccer players; what sort of stereotypes and white racial frames might he use to interpret prescription drug and recreational drug use amongst non-athlete students?
The effort to isolate the problem to football and to connect to “urban culture” is not surprising given fact that a study from the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education found that 95 percent of respondents imagined an African American when asked about drug user.  The media narrative here (and elsewhere) is both indicative of the racial – Jim Crow – nature of the war on drugs and reflective of ways that dominant culture justifies and sanctions the racist war on drugs.  According to Michelle Alexander, “racial bias in drug was inevitable” (104).   Part of the reason why it was inevitable and remains the case today is the false narratives, stereotypes, and misinformation disseminated by the likes of ESPN has turned the problem of drugs into a problem of blackness.  From Cops to ESPN: The Magazine, from the world of politics to the world of sports, America’s drug habit has been defined through and around blackness, rationalizing and sanctioning a war on blackness. 
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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis.  Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness was just published by SUNY Press in May of 2012.

How Did the Great Migration Change America?

Jonathan Holloway, Professor of History, African American Studies, and American Studies at Yale University.

Rev. Jesse Jackson at NATO Protests: "People Are Searching for Alternatives to War"

DemocracyNow

Rev. Jesse Jackson of the Rainbow PUSH coalition joined Iraq Veterans Against the War and Afghans For Peace at the head of Sunday's anti-NATO march in Chicago. "People are here are from around the world searching for alternatives for war," Rev. Jackson says. "Now [the U.S.] seeks to expand a long-term commitment to Afghanistan -- $2 billion to $4 billion a week while we're laying off transit workers, closing schools hospitals. We can't afford it -- it's a mission not worthy of the investment."

MHP Show: Is 2012 the Year of the Young Woman?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


Host Melissa Harris Perry with Emily Carpenter (Girls for Gender Equality); Leslie Cardona (Young Women Creating Change); Julie Zeilinger (Barnard College Undergraduate); Salamishah Tillet (Professor, University of Pennsylvania).[image error]

Black in America w/ Marc Lamont Hill, Imani Perry, Eddie Glaude & Toure

BEMultiMedia  Black Enterprise talks being Black In America on the Our World TV show with Marc Lamont Hill, and special guests Toure, Imani Perry, and Eddie Glaude.[image error]

The Attack on Black Studies and Talking Race & Politics with Writer Adam Mansbach on the Season Finale of 'Left of Black'

The Attack on Black Studies and Talking Race and Politics with Writer Adam Mansbach on the Season Finale of Left of Black
Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype by writer Adam Mansbach, the author of several books including Angry Black White Boy(2005), The End of the Jews  (2008) and the New York Times Bestseller Go the F**K to Sleep.  Mansbach discusses the inspiration for Macon Detornay—the protagonist of Angry Black White Boy—the surprise success of his “adult children’s book” and his new graphic novel Nature of the Beast.  Finally Neal and Mansbach discuss race in the Obama era and the legacy of the Beastie Boys.
Later, Neal is joined . also via Skype by LaTaSha B. Levy,  doctoral candidate in the Department of African-American Studies at Northwestern University.  Levy and several of her colleagues including Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor and Ruth Hayes, the subjects of a celebratory profile in The Chronicle of Higher Education, were later attacked by a blogger at the same publication, raising questions about the continued hostility directed towards the field of Black Studies.  Neal and Levy discuss the responses to the attack, as well as her research on the rise of Black Republicans.
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Left of Black airs at 1:30 p.m. (EST) on Mondays on the Ustream channel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/left-of-black. Viewers are invited to participate in a Twitter conversation with Neal and featured guests while the show airs using hash tags #LeftofBlack or #dukelive. 
Left of Blackis recorded and produced at the John Hope Franklin Center of International and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University.
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Follow Left of Black on Twitter: @LeftofBlackFollow Mark Anthony Neal on Twitter: @NewBlackManFollow Adam Mansbach on Twitter: @AdamMansbach

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A Circle of Friends: Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke & Jim Brown

A Circle of Friends: Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke & Jim Brown by Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan
The documentary A Night in Vegas directed by Reggie Rock Bythewood highlights a little known personal relationship between the late actor and rapper Tupac Shakur and boxer Mike Tyson.  Shakur was murdered in Las Vegas after a Tyson boxing match fourteen years ago this September.  That the two men—iconic  figures in the 1990s and two of the most visible representations of Hip-Hop generation masculinity—maintained  their friendship beyond the glare of celebrity journalism, even as they were also linked by their criminal convictions for sexual assault and rape, seems the most amazing aspect of their relationship.  The friendship between Tyson and Shakur raises questions about what other historical figures had relationships that remain largely unknown to the general public, but offer insight to how such figures envisioned translating their fame, wealth and relative political influence into meaningful engagements on behalf of Black communities.
At the height of the Civil Right Rights Movement in the 1960s, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. emerged not only as the titular head of the movement, but the most well known freedom fighter in the world. When King was weighed down by the challenges of his vocation, there were few, if any,  who could have fully understood what he was going through.  The isolation that King experienced because of his unique role in history is not unusual for those who are essentially peerless—the reality that those of us who can readily locate our peers, often take for granted.
The lack of a legitimate peer-group, for example is what fueled comedian Steve Harvey’s meltdown last fall on Donnie McClurkin’s show, as he tearfully admitted that he simply didn’t have anybody to talk to.   Earlier in Harvey’s career, the King’s of Comedy tour with the late Bernie Mac, Cedric-the-Entertainer and DL Hughley perhaps allowed him to find  a community of peers, but given the demands from family, individual career goals, and even personality conflicts, such networks can be difficult to sustain over long periods of time.  What if, for example, Lauryn Hill had access to such a network a decade ago?
Ironically for King, his most logical peer in the early 1960s was the man that was publically positioned as his ideological opposite, Malcolm X.   The men were hyper aware of each other—King’s non-violent strategy was regularly targeted when Malcolm X played the ideological dozens—and also understood how they each benefitted and were limited by each other.  In other words they needed each other—King more so than Malcolm X—in order to effectively reach their constituencies.  
We can only imagine how the two might have developed a real friendship and understanding of each other’s political passions if they would have had access to the technology that we take for granted now, like text-messaging.  Indeed would such a relationship been allowed to exist, given the political implications of the two most well know Black leaders of their era, working in concert with other, even behind the scenes?
Malcolm X, in fact, had such a relationship during nine months period from mid 1963 until March of 1964, as part of a small network—a circle of friends—that included the heavyweight boxer Muhammad Ali, football star Jim Brown and entertainer and businessman Sam Cooke.  The period was one of the most tumultuous of  an era that included the March on Washington, the bombing of the 16th Street Baptists Church and the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Malcolm X and Muhammad Ali were publically aligned because of their membership in the Nation of Islam, though they did not become close until 1962.  Cooke and Ali appeared on television together and Cooke produced an album by Ali.  Ali and Brown were close because they were two of the most successful Black athletes of the era. Few though, knew that at the time the Ali first won the heavyweight championship in Miami in February of 1964, that the quartet of men were running tight; Ali for example calls Cooke into the ring in front of television cameras just after his fight with Sonny Liston ends.
At the time Malcolm X was the oldest of the group (38) while Ali was still a very young and green age of 21.  As athletes,  the brash and outspoken Brown and Ali were the most well-known and Cooke was the most well-regarded (the function of him not being unspoken), while Malcolm X was the public spokesperson for a religious group that was still on the periphery of American society.  Indeed Malcolm X became more well known with the publication of his autobiography—after his murder—than at any point during his political career. 
Whereas Malcolm X brought political gravitas and experience to the group—he envisioned the young Ali as the best way to make the political goals of the Nation of Islam palatable to young Black Americans. Before Ali was transformed into political icon he was in the late 1960s, he was thought of as little more than a “clown prince”  Cooke brought a business vision to the collective.  When Cooke becomes really tight with Ali, Malcolm X and Brown during this period, he is in the process of transitioning from his career as a singer to that of a label owner (The SAR label) and music publisher.  Well before popular artists talked about publishing and owning master recordings, Sam Cooke was, like his contemporary Ray Charles, getting publishing rights for his music.
We can only imagine what kind of things may have come from this circle of friends as internal politics within the Nation of Islam, which Malcolm X was forced out of in March of 1964, drove a wedge in his relationship with Ali, who remained loyal to the Nation.  The two men would never speak again speak to each other after June of 1964.  Malcolm X was murdered at the Audubon Ballroom in February of 1965; Cooke was murdered outside a hotel room in December of 1964 under still questionable circumstances.  That the two men who were essentially the “brains” of the operation were murdered in such close proximity seems more than coincidental to some, including this writer. 
The fact that this potentially powerful collective was so short-lived and ultimately destroyed by violence beyond their control, suggest that there were greater forces concerned about what such a relationship would mean, particularly if it could be reproduced among other young so-called militant Blacks.  That fear was not unfounded;  The Black Power fist protest of US Olympic sprinters Tommy Smith and John Carlos in at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City was an example of what could happen, as was the willingness to professional athletes like Bill Russell and Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul Jabbar) to close ranks with Ali when he was under assault for his refusal to fight in Vietnam. 
More subtle examples can be found in Aretha Franklin’s willingness to cover the music of Nina Simone (“Young, Gifted and Black”), essentially co-signing the professional risk that artists like Simone and Abbey Lincoln took by using their music to explicitly express their political convictions.  But none of these examples had the full-fledged political implications that the relationship between Cooke, Malcolm X, Jim Brown and Muhammad Ali promised. Perhaps the closet manifestation of their relationship, after its demise, was the emergence of New York City’s “gang of four” in the 1970s—the late Percy Sutton, Basil Patterson (father of the current New York State governor), David Dinkins (the first Black mayor of New York City) and congressman Charlie Rangel.
As we can only imagine what the “circle of friends” from the 1960s might have become, we can also lament what might have happened in the mid-1990s if Tupac Shakur had survived his shooting in Las Vegas.  Would a healthy and increasingly politicized Tupac Shakur been able to reverse that downward spiral of his “big brother” Mike Tyson had he still been alive.  Would Tupac and Tyson have matured—together—to own up to the sexual violence that was already so present in their young lives and bring peace and forgiveness to the spirits of Desiree Washington and the victim in Tupac’s case? 
With Tupac Shakur as its “pied piper” (instead of R. Kelly) would the trajectory of the Hip-Hop generation have been altered?  How might Tupac Shakur and Lauryn Hill collaborated with each other on both music and in film—with Mos Def, Queen Latifah, and Will Smith perhaps? How might an older, mature Mike Tyson—hip-hop’s first athlete—have been the bridge between the generation of Black athletes like Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson and contemporary athletes like Serena Williams, Lebron James and even Tiger Woods.  Would a healthier  Hip-Hop generation been able to reach out to the man-child Michael Jackson and bring him home to thank him for allowing them to succeed on the levels that they have?
These questions, of course remain unanswered, but gives us the hope that as we look to the lost opportunities of the past, that perhaps there is a generation of Black icons who are also looking to the past and contemplating how to go forward more effectively than those who came before them.
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Mark Anthony Neal is the author of five books including the forthcoming Looking For Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities (New York University Press). He is professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African & African-American Studies at Duke University and the host of the Weekly Webcast Left of Black. Follow him on Twitter @NewBlackMan. [image error]

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Black UCLA Tenured Surgeon Depicted as Gorilla at Public Event, Files Suit

ShamefulHonestTruth  A respected African American faculty surgeon filed a racial discrimination suit against the UCLA Medical Center and UC Regents. Dr. Christian Head has been intentionally degraded based on his race and UCLA officials have ignored blatant acts of racial discrimination, including an edited photo depicting Dr. Head as a gorilla being sodomized by his supervisor. That alone is offensive. But the fact that the photo was publicly presented for laughs during an annual medical school sponsored event attended by more than 200 physicians, faculty, residents and guests is both shocking and indefensible. Hear what Dr. Head has endured and what UCLA officials continue ignore.

To sign the petition to stop UCLA go here: http://www.change.org/petitions/ucla-chancellor-gene-block-stop-discriminatin...