I want out!!!

The Pacers' Stephen Jackson was

reportedly struck by a car and fired

his gun outside a strip club early Friday.

He averaged 16.4 points per game last

season. (Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)

I cannot tell a lie. Often times I can be found making incendiary comments about black men and the way we are portrayed. . .correction. . .the way we ALLOW ourselves to be portrayed in the media. The self-fulfilling perpetuation of the black male ego has got us in a sad state of affairs. Bravado has made us very unaware of what life is really about. If the classroom is a boxing ring, we have accepted being overmatched and have called off the fight before showing up. If Corporate America is the race track, we can’t find the keys. If law offices were soccer fields, many times our black lawyers find themselves kicking the ball to themselves. If we cannot find black men aggressively competing in the classrooms, Corporate America or law offices, then where are we? Ahhh, yes!! Let’s go to the football field and the basketball courts, that’s where you’ll find us.

I can understand that life’s riches and the opportunity to see these riches are not afforded everyone. And so if trapped in a culture, community, city, neighborhood, household, you find yourself the continuous victim of belittlement and verbal punishment, you make the decision that life is a pile of shit and you don’t care how you live it anymore. I’m not saying your self-deprecating tendencies are right, but given the state of human mental conditioning, I understand.

What I cannot understand nor condone, are men, being paid absorbent amounts of money to physically entertain every night, finding themselves in the line of direct trouble. . .or sometimes just in the line-up!! I can no longer even place blame on the shoulders of rap music. Sans a couple of people, the nature of hip-hop has completely gone the way of projecting how much someone has, not how little. This black angst would only be necessary if you’re fighting for a piece of the pie. Not only do these men have a piece of the pie, but they also have a piece a cake and the big piece of chicken too!! So the recalcitrant nature of these men has no surface on the back of black culture with which to stand any longer. There is no excuse for their transgressions against. . .against. . .the world, let alone their own people. And let’s make no mistake about it; creating negative perceptions is a transgression.

Because I have a fantasy football team this season, I have continuously scoured sporting websites looking for nuggets of important information that could give me an advantage over my opponents. Sadly, what I have found is that the sports reporters have become just as proficient at scanning police reports for rap sheets, as they have the stadiums or basketball courts. What’s more, what a player has done off the field of play has become essential to what a player’s capacity is for sport; an adjunct statistic, if you will.

I once quipped with my league mates that it’s a shame I have to check the front page and the page 5 criminal reports to see if I can still start my fantasy players. Crazy enough, as long as a player is convicted early enough in the week, they can be out on bail by Wednesday, apologize to their teammates, their fans, family and the organization on Thursday, practice on Friday and Saturday and on the battlefield earning $300,000 checks on Sunday.

I am sad to report, however, that we are not given fantasy points for any of our players being involved in shoot outs, robberies, drug possession, money laundering or domestic violence, yet the statistics for each team, mount up abound like free throws, home runs and rushing yards. Perhaps realizing the perceptible fact that a man firing rounds in the air to save his life after getting beat up and ran over by a car was not a suitable statistic for the sports pages, this reporter found a way to include the points per game average of a year ago.
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Forgive me; I am at a loss for words.