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.

The Year of the Well-Managed Life

Usually I view News Years Day as an auspicious occasion, that ushers in a host of new opportunities. Unfortunately, I know that when the sun rises on January 1, I will be faced with the same  problems and issues, surrounded by the same crap and living under the same conditions that made 2013 feel like a 12-month stint in purgatory.

When it comes to life, I realize that the only thing I control is me and how I respond to everthing and everyone else. So the only way 2014 is going to better than 2013 is if I'm better...better at pursuing opportunities, assessing situations, judging people, making decisions and just managing my life.

So here's to a year filled with greater opportunities, better situations, good friends and valuable associates and smarter decisions that are all the hallmarks of a well-managed life.

The Hypocrisy of the Imus Witch Hunt

First, let me say that nobody should get a pass to diminish, disparage or degrade black women—not Imus, Snoop Dogg, R. Kelly or any of the popular male figures in the entertainment industry. While I neither deny nor begrudge the Rutgers women’s basketball team their right to be offended and outraged by Imus’ crude comments about them, I refuse to participate in our community condemnation of him unless we are willing to also collectively condemn what our brothers in the entertainment industry have been saying about and calling us for decades.

If we look at this from the standpoint of what is “the greater evil”, Imus’ remarks degraded eight black females, while rappers have degraded a generation. I live in New Orleans—birthplace of bounce music, p-popping and the Rest In Peace t-shirt—and I’ve seen the impact of the chickenhead/bitch/ho image of us that is perpetuated by our brothers in the entertainment industry. After 20 years of being inundated with music and images that portray us as gold-digging, morally-challenged, aesthetically-lacking beings whose only purpose for existing is to meet the immediate physical needs of black males, we now have MILLIONS of girls and young women who are comfortable with degrading and compromising themselves in order to attract and keep the attention of black men and boys.

Where were the complaints when Tupac referred to Faith Evans and the late C. Delores Tucker as “bitches” and “sluts” in his songs? Who in our community condemned Dr. Dre when he attacked Dee Barnes and pushed her down a flight of stairs? Who amongst our black leaders spoke out against the “Tip Drill” video and stood in solidarity with the young sisters at Spellman who warned Nelly to not show his face on their campus after it was released? While each of these sins of inaction are affronts to black womanhood, the fact that the vast majority of the black men either overlooked or defended R Kelly and his “golden shower” video featuring various sex acts with a 14 year-old—not an 18 year-old or 21 year-old, but a child barely out of grammar school—is the most egregious affront I have ever seen. Not only did brothers defend R. Kelly, many of them either had viewing parties of the video or passed it around amongst each other like it was a tape of Ali or Tyson's greatest fights. Worse, after the video was leaked to the public one of our oldest and most esteemed black organizations nominated this child molester for an “image” award. To this day, brothers in the music industry are still lined up to work with R Kelly, with his latest "collabo" being a "guest appearance" on the remix of Fat Joe’s song titled “Make It Rain,” which includes lyrics bragging about making it “rain on these hos” and a video that features money being thrown at scantily clad women dancing like strippers.

The vociferous demands by the black community to censure and punish Imus, while refusing to admonish black rappers and the behind the scenes entertainment professionals who produce and promote misogyny directed towards black women, are both hypocritical and shortsighted. Unless we are willing to work towards changing a community culture that accepts and supports the degradation and disrespect of one half of our race by the other half, we don’t have a leg to stand on in demanding severe reprimands for people outside our community who do the same thing.