From Obama to Grant Hill: The "Not Black Enough" Label Still Applied

I’ve watched with more than casual interest as the fallout continues from the comments made by former NBA star Jalen Rose in a recently released ESPN documentary about “The Fab Five,” the University of Michigan’s former assemblage of great college basketball talent.

In the piece, Rose ignited a firestorm of controversy with his charges from roughly 20 years ago that black players who played for Duke University were “Uncle Toms.” Predictably, much of the dustup has centered on Rose’s misguided comments and Grant Hill’s strong reaction in a follow-up op-ed piece in the New York Times.

 But the issue has also touched an exposed nerve within the black community. One that has for too long been the 500-pound gorilla in the room nobody wants to acknowledge.

 The very definition of blackness.

Sadly, too many young African-Americans, and adult ones, too, seem to believe for whatever reason that we as a people are some monolithic block, ordained to speak alike, think alike and even live alike. Never mind the reality that we are an extremely diverse people of varying shades of color, backgrounds, educational level, socio-economic status and political thinking.

African-Americans are considerably more than just rappers and athletes. We are artists, writers, educators and statesmen and everything else in between. Our academic achievements should be lauded every bit as much as our athletic ones.

To say that one of us is any more or less black than another simply because of how he or she speaks, where they live or where they attend school is not only naive, but dangerously ignorant. We should instead strive to celebrate our many differences and embrace them rather than mock them from fear or petty jealousies.

You don’t have to be from the ‘hood to “really” be black. You shouldn’t be accused of “acting white” for receiving high marks in school.

I’ve been puzzled to read the many message boards that assert that Hill was somehow a little overly sensitive on the matter. That simply makes no sense. It was egregious enough that Rose foolishly made the sweeping statement that all black players who played for Duke were somehow “Uncle Toms.” When he singled out Hill in particular and his specific family dynamics, he made him the personification of the point he was trying to make. That may or may not have been Rose’s intention, but that was clearly the result.

Anybody in Hill's shoes would have been offended, too. And rightfully so. Calling a black man an “Uncle Tom” is the worst thing any black man can be called. They’re fighting words that contribute divisiveness and nothing positive to the black community.

But don’t get me wrong. I loved the Fab Five, I loved the way they played the game and I loved the swag they oozed.

And probably like most African-Americans who also loudly rooted against the NBA's Boston Celtics back in the day, I, too, was hardly a big fan of the Christian Laetner- and Bobby Hurley-led Duke teams of the early 1990s.

But I always respected their talent and many accomplishments.

Never once did I ever consider any of the African-American players on the Celtics to be “Uncle Toms.” Nor I did likewise ever hold young men like Hill, Johnny Dawkins or Tommy Amaker or other black Duke players in similar low regard for simply playing basketball for one of the nation’s premier programs and elite universities.

Rose was just plain wrong to go there, regardless of how Duke did or didn’t recruit.

 More disconcerting, however, is that it's not just young black kids like Rose at the time who still foolishly think that way. Now the leader of the free world, Barack Obama was handily defeated by former Black Panther Bobby Rush in a 2001 race for a Chicago congressional seat.

A key part of Rush's strategy at the time was to successfully paint Obama as "not one of us" because he had the temerity to go to mostly white schools (Columbia University and Harvard Law) and live in a very nice, upscale neighborhood with his wife and two small daughters. Never mind that he was proud black man who took care of his black family on a daily basis or that, as a dedicated community activist, he worked with indigent black folks who needed his help the most.

Yet Obama was somehow still largely perceived at the time as “not black enough” by some African-Americans.

He had just begun his long shot bid for the White House in late August 2007 and was still hardly a household name yet outside the most devoted of political circles when CNN first aired footage of his shooting basketball during a stop at a South Carolina elementary school.

 Temo Figueroa, the National Field Director for the Obama campaign, told me later that he was originally terrified upon first hearing of the news. “My first question was ‘Did he make it?’, ,” Figueroa admitted, his fear being that any perceived lack of game on Obama’s part would have just further substantiated the notion at the time that he wasn’t “really” black.

Unfortunately, having game is at least one Litmus Test for blackness in the eyes of some. I like to think we can set the bar a lot higher than that.

I can give Rose a pass of sorts because that is what he thought as an immature 18-year-old because we've probably all said or thought some crazy stuff at some early juncture in our lives. But, for the life of me, I can’t understand all the praise he’s received from the talking heads about his honesty and candor in the piece.

Since when did anybody warrant a hearty pat on the back for being ignorant?

Both Rose and King have since been busy on the interview circuit, offering mea culpas to anybody who'll listen now while making clear that those words were their thoughts back in the day and not now. But I'm guessing the powers at ESPN might have had something to do with that, too, given that the controversy of their words has clearly overshadowed the documentary itself.

But I still hold out hope that this has all been a teachable moment and that we will have all learned something from it. Namely that African-Americans have enough challenges in this world already. Let’s not add our own ignorance to the list.

 We can do a lot worse than see our kids end up like Grant Hill.

Cascade Patch sports correspondent John Hollis spent nine years at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, covering college football and basketball, the Falcons, the Hawks and high schools before spending a year covering news. He left the AJC in May 2009 and wrote his first book, "Life in the Paint: The Story of a Black Man Fighting for His Identity," an autobiographical narrative/social commentary on racial identity. He currently lives in South Fulton County with his wife Regina and Davis, the couple's 6-year-old son.