If you thought The Undefeated sports section was about athletics, you've gone to the wrong place. It's about racism ... all the time. This past weekend you could pull up The Undefeated to read about LeBron James' (see file photo from ESPN interview) history of discomfort with white people and learn how equality is only a "theoretical concept" for African-Americans. Writer Justin Tinsley alleges that James has moved past his racial bitterness, but it's hard to determine how he comes to such a conclusion.
James was sheltered from white people until high school basketball introduced him to them. "Sports afforded James an opportunity many of the same melanin-rich boys and girls he grew up with could never have, a painful reality that largely served as the impetus for the I Promise School he recently launched," Tinsley writes. This was a narrative that was all too familiar to James and black America because, "For many pockets of the black community, equality is, and has long been, a theoretical concept. The country’s systematic blueprint that places so many communities, including the ones James called home, behind the eight ball educationally and financially has serious consequences. Inequality begets anger. Anger permeates for generations — and it lived in James." Recalling his arrival at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Akron, Ohio, James said:
“When I first went to ninth grade and to high school, I was on some, like, 'I’m not f—ing with white people. I was so institutionalized, growing up in the ’hood. It’s like, They don’t f— with us. They don’t want us to succeed.'
“I’m like, 'I’m going to this school to play ball, and that’s it. I don’t want nothing to do with white people. I don’t believe that they want anything to do with me. I don’t want no friends. It’s me and my boys, we going to high school together, and we here to hoop.’”
To Tinsley, this was James just being "raw, brutally honest and vulnerable, once again solidifying his position as an authoritative and dynamic voice of his generation."
Tinsley says James' resentment is no secret in the black community and "it is a nearly undeniable element of the black experience in America. Many black men and women harbor or have harbored resentment toward their white counterparts. That reality didn’t start with James. Rather, it was an involuntary birthright America has long passed down from generation to generation."
Quoting James Baldwin's remarks in a 1968 interview with Esquire, "The American white man does not really want to have an autonomous Negro male anywhere near him.” Tinsley believes that racism is as much a part of America’s story as its many triumphs. "It’s a haze some black people never truly allow themselves to escape — and some white people will never let them forget."
Tinsley believes James has become a vehicle for change and has altered his thinking since high school. Yet sounding earlier this year like he did as a prep, James said President Donald Trump doesn't "give a f--- about people." Though James is still a victim of racism, he breaks bread with white people and has white friends and employees, but his closest friends are black.
"James’ perception of how he once viewed white people will stay with him his entire life, if nothing else as an example of growth and maturity," Tinsley writes. Yet "James’ perception of white people and the world around him is why he’s chosen his platform to speak to those same injustices that fueled his rage."
Contrary to Tinsley's claim that James' current view of whites is an example of growth and maturity, in some respects the Lakers' rent-a-free agent still speaks like the angry high school kid who says he doesn't "give a f—." He admits it's lessened his popularity, but so be it, because "at the end of the day, [speaking] my truth to so many different kids and so many different people was broader than personally.”
James and Tinsley both aim low in forwarding the wrong message to people — especially the youth. The "dyanamic voice" of the generation is dripping with resentment, vulgarity and racial discomfort, hardly uplifting or inspirational.
