http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/m...-is-a-lie.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0
Snippets:
"Few American athletes have been as widely beloved as Simpson was. Even today, his popularity seems inconceivable. “O. J.: Made in America,” the ESPN “30 for 30” documentary directed by Ezra Edelman that is airing this week, busies itself with the making of the man at the myth’s center and with the country that helped him become a monster. It’s the best thing ESPN has ever produced. And it answers my question: Simpson’s story is that of a black man who came of age during the civil rights era and spent his entire adult life trying to “transcend race” — to claim that strange accolade bestowed on blacks spanning from Pelé to Prince to Nelson Mandela to Muhammad Ali. Which is to say, it’s the story of a halfback trying, and failing, to outrun his own blackness."
"What Simpson may not have recognized, though, is that the United States’ history is a story of theft, and theft doesn’t require cooperation. Talents you don’t trade can be stolen through your silence, through your absence or after your death. And once you’ve been marked as having “transcended race,” the success you’ve earned in spite of white racism can be twisted into an example of white magnanimity. Muhammad Ali was a menace, a black fighter who engaged in psychological warfare with his opponents, changed his name after joining a black-supremacist sect and gave up the best years of his career in exile rather than killing for a country he decried as racist — yet after his death, the sportscaster Chris Myers could tweet that “When you saw #Ali, you didn’t see color, you didn’t see religion.” Martin Luther King Jr., harassed by the F.B.I. and ultimately assassinated, is now deployed as a symbol of a nation that has achieved colorblindness. Whitney Houston, a black woman who made black music after finding her voice in a black church, was congratulated on transcending race after her death. You can imagine the Barack Obama obituaries to come."
Snippets:
"Few American athletes have been as widely beloved as Simpson was. Even today, his popularity seems inconceivable. “O. J.: Made in America,” the ESPN “30 for 30” documentary directed by Ezra Edelman that is airing this week, busies itself with the making of the man at the myth’s center and with the country that helped him become a monster. It’s the best thing ESPN has ever produced. And it answers my question: Simpson’s story is that of a black man who came of age during the civil rights era and spent his entire adult life trying to “transcend race” — to claim that strange accolade bestowed on blacks spanning from Pelé to Prince to Nelson Mandela to Muhammad Ali. Which is to say, it’s the story of a halfback trying, and failing, to outrun his own blackness."
"What Simpson may not have recognized, though, is that the United States’ history is a story of theft, and theft doesn’t require cooperation. Talents you don’t trade can be stolen through your silence, through your absence or after your death. And once you’ve been marked as having “transcended race,” the success you’ve earned in spite of white racism can be twisted into an example of white magnanimity. Muhammad Ali was a menace, a black fighter who engaged in psychological warfare with his opponents, changed his name after joining a black-supremacist sect and gave up the best years of his career in exile rather than killing for a country he decried as racist — yet after his death, the sportscaster Chris Myers could tweet that “When you saw #Ali, you didn’t see color, you didn’t see religion.” Martin Luther King Jr., harassed by the F.B.I. and ultimately assassinated, is now deployed as a symbol of a nation that has achieved colorblindness. Whitney Houston, a black woman who made black music after finding her voice in a black church, was congratulated on transcending race after her death. You can imagine the Barack Obama obituaries to come."
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yeah aight... but let that black dude speak up for himself and fight for his people.
