The Asterisk In The Room

Social media is on fire talking about Richard Sherman's interview with Stephen A. Smith and Skip Bayless, during which he reads, writes and erases the latter for attempting to minimize his achievements.

As a fellow former college athlete and Stanford graduate, the exchange between Sherman and Bayless resonated with me personally.  Whenever I tell someone that I went to Stanford, I typically omit the fact that I was on the women's track team because the face of the person I'm talking to generally takes on an "it makes sense" look, as if the only way I could have possibly attended and graduated from such a prestigious and academically rigorous institution was if I'd been recruited to be some kind of college gladiator.
Even after I disclose that my admissions application included National Merit Semi-Finalist and National Achievement Finalist awards, three elected student offices (including the student body presidency during my senior year), a varsity letter in three sports and a transcript that included both high school AP and junior college classwork. Even after disclosing that I'd also been courted by West Point, MIT, Berkeley and CalTech, I still feel as if the person I'm talking to has put an invisible asterisk next to name to remind him or her that my athleticism somehow proves the implausibility of my proclaimed intellectualism and that my academic achievements are somehow fraudulent.

While black graduates from prestigious universities regularly face skepticism regarding their qualifications and achievements, those of us who were scholar-athletes at these institutions are treated like world recordholders with asterisks besides our names. To people like Bayless, our accomplishments and intellect are never afforded the same level of respect and regard as those of our white peers, and are often as discounted as a world record finish in the 100 meters, accomplished below sea level and with a strong tailwind.

Instead of acknowledging Sherman's athletic and intellectual exceptionalism, people are looking for reasons to discredit and diminish him. If he wasn't one of the best at what he does, he wouldn't still be in the league and his team wouldn't be going to the Super Bowl. And if he wasn't smart, he wouldn't have been able to get into and graduate from Stanford, or have been accepted into one of the school's graduate programs.
Richard Sherman is absolutely justified in being proud of his accomplishments, and in taking umbrage at anyone who dare dismiss them as anything but exceptional. In less than a quarter of century he has accomplished more than some people do throughout their careers. Not only has he managed to pass through the filters of being one of the best high school football players in the country, being one of the best college players in the country and being one of the best professional players in country, he has become part of the academic elite, having attended and graduated from one of the top academic institutions in the world.

In a few weeks, Richard Sherman and the Seahawks will take the field and attempt to bring home their team's first Vince Lombardi trophy. Win or lose, Sherman's detractors will be hard pressed to prove that he didn't deserve to be on that field or that his success warrants any type of asterisk or disclaimer.
The next time someone questions my qualifications or looks at me with incredulity when I tell them I went to Stanford, I'm going to take a page out of Richard Sherman's book and tell them that not only am I alumna, I am also a former student athlete which makes my accomplishments all the more exceptional and not less.

The Bash Brothers

When Don Imus referred to the predominately-black, Rutgers womens basketball team as "nappy headed hoes" in 2007, every black male public figure— from Al Sharpton to Prof. Boyce Watkins—expressed outrage and demanded that he be fired. Now six years later, some of these same black male public figures are the ones disparaging us and the silence  from our community leaders is deafening.

Earlier this week, after reading an article Prof. Watkins posted on Facebook claiming that single black mothers are raising sons who don't have adequate life skills—probably the fourth negative article about black women that he's posted since the new year rang in—I pointedly asked him why he felt the need to regularly attack black women, and this was his reply:

"...if being fair means attacking black women, then consider yourself attacked."

In the interest of fairness, it should be noted that black men are also guilty of exhibiting values and behaviors hat are self-destructive and detrimental to the overall wellbeing of their families and communities; however, Prof. Watkins and his fellow bash brothers are quick to blame everyone—from long dead slave masters to long suffering single mothers—but not black men for their choices and actions.  And while it has not only become acceptable, but de rigueur, for black men to publicly shame black woman for everything from bad parenting to bad weaves, people like Bill Cosby and Pres. Obama are taken to the community woodshed when they dare call black men to task for any real or perceived faults and failings.  Meanwhile, bashing black women has become so commonplace and prolific, that these bash brothers seem to relish coming up with increasingly crude but clever ways to disparage us. Over the past decade they've taken to calling and describing us by such monikers and epithets as chickenhead, sidepiece, bed wench, thirsty and ratchet—all of which they have liberally used in rap songs, YouTube videos, op-ed pieces, discussion forums and social media outlets.

Admittedly, are some young (and not so young) black women who are making poor personal choices, embracing negative behaviors and adopting values that are counterproductive to their individual and our collective well-being. However, there are many more of us who are ambitious, hard-working, God-fearing, self-respecting, family-loving, gracious, feminine and down right AWESOME. But instead of celebrating our virtues or promoting our achievements, bash brothers prefer to collectively portray us as gold-diggers, child support check-chasers, bad mothers, poor house-keepers and unfeminine harpies unworthy of any measure of respect or regard.

At the core of it, these actions are often  nothing more than efforts to control our behavior, silence our objections to theirs, and justify treatment or feelings about us that would otherwise be deemed misogynistic or racial self-loathing. It's as if bash brothers subconsciously believe that shining a light on our sins will keep their demons in the dark.

Even more egregious than the black men who bash black women out of (self-) hatred, are the ones like Prof. Watkins, Tommy Sotomayor and Tariq Nasheed, who bash us for profit. For them, membership in the bash brothers fraternity is an opportunity to raise their public profiles as black community thought leaders to garner speaking engagements, TV appearances and book deals. After Steve Harvey proved that publicly telling black women what is wrong with them is a sure route to book, radio and TV deals, every psuedo-intellectual brother with an Oedipus complex, a bad breakup or "baby momma" drama has sought the limelight by courting controversy with a "what's wrong with black women" YouTube video, podcast or op-ed piece. Realizing that their anti-black woman rhetoric could hardly be construed as the kind of racially-uplifiting discourse expected from someone purporting to be a black community, they immediately try to spin it as tough love, truth telling, or as Prof. Watkins claimed in his response to my post, "being fair."

Well if Prof. Watkins is seeking fairness, then allowing black men to bash us for power, punishment, profit or publicity should be as uncceptable as allowing Don Imus to bash us for public amusement.