We become this way because for much of the time, when we are out of uniform and trying to develop this holy “brand,” we are dealing with parasites. There are a lot of fine agents and managers out there, but by definition they all are connected to you not by love or a shared sense of mission, but by the equation, “If he don’t get paid then I don’t get paid.” You’re dealing with parasitic life forms at all times. It creates the hardest challenge in sports: How do I defy all odds and be myself? How do I take the Dave Chappelle approach? The public says they want celebrities to be about something more than the money, but they called Chappelle “crazy” because he dared to live it. There are so few models to work from, unless you are talking about the wealthiest people in the world, people so rich they can be whoever they want to be and always have a crowd ready to applaud. In Seattle, I see Bill Gates or Paul Allen being philanthropists, and no one says, “Stop giving money to fight cancer! You don’t even have cancer!” Or “You’re too rich to worry about poverty. This is a distraction from creating the new smartphone! Why are you trying to solve a problem you don’t face?”
My family worries that my approach will eventually leave me with nothing: no team, no sponsors, no partners. That’s the first thing my Uncle Jerry tells me when he calls. He says, “Michael, do you know what? I love you and I love what you’re doing, but you have to stay on the straight line, simply because they’re waiting for you to fall. They’re waiting for you to make ‘a nigga mistake.’ And as soon as you make ‘a nigga mistake,’ they’re going to castrate you. They’re going to tear everything down that you’re speaking on. No matter how much good you do.”
It’s a lot of pressure. But Uncle Jerry starts with the vinegar and ends with the honey, saying, “Michael, I know that you are who you are, so continue to do what you do. But don’t put yourself in bad situations where they can come back and tear you down, because there are so many people looking at you for inspiration, whether you believe it or not.”
I didn’t believe it until I heard from my grandma, who lives in a small town. She told me, “Every time I go to the grocery store, they’re talking about what you’re doing. So you’re affecting a lot of different people. You just got to stay on the straight road.” That last part is a tough truth. As a Black man in public view, the margin for error is next to nothing. If I were a white man, I could make a mistake. You can be someone who brags about sexually assaulting women on videotape like Trump and still become the president. I can’t drink and drive—not that I would. I can’t be riding around with guns. I can’t be caught smoking weed in my car, even though I live in a city where cannabis is legal and sold over the counter. I cannot do any of those things. Not only because it would it gut my family. It would define me forever. No matter how much work I do, no matter the message, I’d be discredited. Everything I have ever done, every bit of the work with the foundation, with food, with STEM programs, would be discredited if not destroyed. It’s a test. But I like tests like that. I have to walk the talk. I have to transcend the human temptation to do things to blow up my life.
It’s okay though. I’m focused on being a man of my word, to my community, my teammates, and most important, my family. I’m coaching my daughter’s basketball team. I’m teaching at her school. I’m in the community because it’s real life and it’s filled with small miracles.
But at the end of the day, I’m a Black man. Just because my economic situation has changed, my platform, my substance, my soul is still in my community. When I go back and see kids struggling, I don’t know the type of man I’d be if I didn’t try to help—not only with resources but with organizing, too, so they can help themselves. That’s why Black Lives Matter is not just a slogan or a hashtag to me. It’s a call to action. But before we get to why Black Lives Matter, I want to talk about a word that feeds the idea that Black lives are expendable.
“N---ER”
Let’s start with the definition of what this damn word means:
1.Slang: Extremely Disparaging and Offensive.
a. a contemptuous term used to refer to a black person.
b. a contemptuous term used to refer to a member of any dark-skinned people.
2.Slang: Extremely Disparaging and Offensive.
a contemptuous term used to refer to a person of any racial or ethnic origin regarded as contemptible, inferior, ignorant, etc.
3. a victim of prejudice similar to that suffered by black people; a person who is economically, politically, or socially disenfranchised.
There was something about seeing Nazis and KKK and Grand Dragons marching in Charlottesville last August that reminded me and reminded a nation what the word “nigger” is really all about. It’s not a hip-hop catch phrase or even a slur that some coward spray-paints on a wall. It’s a word of violence. It’s a word they say when they raise their torches and rally around statues of slave owners. It’s a word that has one aim: to dehumanize us and turn us into something less than a person so we are easier to kill, easier to drag behind a truck, easier to dump into a lake, easier to shoot in the back. That’s all it is. It’s a word that erodes our humanity, a means to an
