I watched the New Orleans - Atlanta game last night. Like a majority of viewers, I couldn't help rooting for the Saints, whether because of Reggie Bush or Drew Brees (who I have long considered a very underrated, undersized quarterback) or the triumphant return to the Superdome. I also couldn't help being majorly irritated by all the nonsense about football helping to rebuild New Orleans. Ok, fine, there are football players (notably Warrick Dunn of the Falcons, another of my favorite undersized players) who have raised money, given time, etc to the rebuilding efforts. But I really don't buy into all this crap about the football team (or the NO Hornets for that matter) rebuilding the city. I thought the best summation was when Spike Lee said the game at least gave the people of New Orleans "a few hours away from their FEMA trailers."
So this morning, as I went for my run, I was thinking about class relations (this is not a total non sequitor, just wait, you'll see the connection). I was thinking about how there are some people to whom you actually talk, in whose lives you develop active interest, and then there are some people who act more as tools or barriers. In no place was this more apparent to me than in China (big surprise) where the language barrier was even worse with common laborers than it was with shopkeepers, and where the true upper class often spoke English. But it was not just a language barrier. I generally had no interest in talking to the construction workers, and they likewise avoided me; shopkeepers were an obstacle to get past in order to make a purchase; but the upper class actively went out of their way to talk to me, and I to them. Why? We had more in common to discuss, both interests (economics, politics) and experiences (travel) and a common language in which to speak (English, or at least proper Mandarin). This is not so different in America. When is the last time you had a real conversation with a construction worker or the guy at the deli counter? And I bet you're more likely (as I am) to strike up a conversation with stranger on the train if he's wearing a collared shirt than if he's in coveralls. But I'll talk to anyone about sports.
This, to me, is the greatest redeeming feature of professional sports. More than anything else (except maybe the weather, with pop culture coming in third), it is easy to talk to just about anyone, from just about any walk of life, about sports. So does that make sports the great unifier, the one segment of society where everyone can relate? I'm not so sure about that.
See, sports plays a fundamentally different role in different communities. To most of us, sports is primarily entertainment. But to certain communities, espcially poor ones and especially black ones, sports is the only real hope for the future. And the reason that sports is able to cut across class barriers is that it exists in a comfort zone. For the upper and middle classes, sports truly is a diversion, something to do after school or watch after work or play on the weekends to break up a busy and sucessful career as a lawyer or doctor or businesman. If you're from a rich, white suburb and you're good enough to make the NFL or the NBA or the Olympics, great! If not, you're still looking forward to a sucessful career and the propect of raising your own kids in the rich, white suburbs to have the same choices you had. We are not threatened by the poor and minorities in sports (or music, or film) because this is a diversion for us. For many poor black kids (and many poor white kids as well), a football scholarship is their great hope to get out of the ghetto or the coal town or off the farm. It's not entertainment, it's a job; it's not a diversion, it's life.
Professional sports represent the greatest success of the modern segregation paradigm. In Friday Night Lights (a true story), the (effectively) white high school in the rich part of Odessa is finally willing to submit to desegregation when it realizes that it can manipulate this to get most of the black running backs and dominate their cross-town rivals. Booby Miles is the "next great black hope" until he blows out his ACL, at which point he returns to being "just another nigger." While we liberal coastals are above such language, we are equally dismissive of athletes from poor backgrounds who fail to perform. And we are scared enough of what this means about us that we took most of the elements of class and racial conflict out of the movie version. Sports give us a safe ground to praise sucessful poor and/or minority atheletes and ignore all the failures.
In the meantime, sports (and popular culture) are reeking havoc on black communities. Yes, failing schools are a problem. Yes, drugs are a problem. And absent parents, and poverty and so on. But studies show that poor blacks in poor black schools perform even worse than poor blacks in poor white schools and much worse than poor blacks in rich white schools. This means that the failure is at least partially one that can be attributed to the community, not just to socio-economic and racial factors. Many black pundits, including Bill Cosby, think that drugs, sports and pop culture (i.e. rap music) are to blame.
Whites, even poor whites, grow up with multiple white role models (on TV if nowhere else), including plenty of presidents, doctors and such as well as musicians and athletes. On the other hand, the primary role models of poor blacks in poor black communities are almost exclusively basketball and football players, rap musicians and drug dealers. The meteoric rise of professional sports and the black athlete has coopted many of the most upwardly mobile individuals in the black community. Before the rise of the black athelete, the main role models were, by default, church leaders, businessmen and other financially sucessful individuals. The collapse of the blue-collar industries that had fed a black renaissance was simultaneous with the ascent of cocaine, rap and professional sports. One brand role model was taken away and replaced with another one.
And what do athletes, drug dealers and musicians have in common? Plenty, actually. All three career paths are typified by a massive reward for a very small percentage of participants. Most drug dealers are poor (see Freakanomics), but a very few are very rich. Likewise, most high school athletes don't get recruited by colleges, and most college athletes don't get drafted, but the few who do get rich, and the few who become superstars get very, very rich. And musicians will make next to nothing without a record contract, or even with a record contract, but a few will go plantinum, get on MTV, buy big houses and get on MTV Cribs. For businesmen or lawyers, there are similarly a very few who get very rich. But unlike musicians or athletes, most lawyers make plenty of money, even if they're not millionaires. However, in the absence of lawyer role models and any percieved likelyhood of attending law schools, most poor blacks make the obvious choice, the high stakes crap shoot, the trade in drugs or beats or running backs.
The other thing that musicians, athletes and drug dealers have in common is that they tend to give very little back to the community (or even take away from the community). By simply setting up business in their home community, professionals will help to boost the community as a whole. Even if they don't, they are more likely to live in or near the community where they grew up, and so their consumption dollars are more likely to end up in community pockets and their charity dollars in local churches and community centers. On the other hand, drug dealers depress entire communities by scaring away legitimate businesses and attracting and creating addicts. Athletes, for their part, divert money that might be spent on teachers or books to buy pads and charter busses. They're just a different kind of parasite.
So this is the great paradox of sport in America. It is something that we can all talk about. But that very fact makes in the only thing we really have to talk about. Maybe it would be better if we talked about the real problems of race and class with the people who are across those divides. And if athletes made a little less money and teachers a little more, maybe that would change career choices in a way that benifited poor communities and not just a few poor individuals.
1 comment:
A couple of late-night thoughts:
Through my series of low-paying jobs this past year, I have had a number of conversations with co-workers, generally asian immigrants, who all urge me to go to (or complete) school and move up in the world while I am still young. I of course am far too embarrassed to tell them that, in fact, I have already graduated from a fairly prestigious and extremely expensive college. The reason I bring this up is that in my experience, which is admittedly anecdotal evidence, a modern college education is not the sure ticket up and out that it was in our parents' generation, though society still projects this image. Returning to the example of Friday Night Lights, it is particularly striking that nearly all of the athletes who receive college scholarships eventually return to Permian, including, if I recall correctly, the Hispanic student who attends Harvard and earns a law degree. One can probably safely assume that his income is in the upper quartile of the region, but since the movie's epilogue states that he returns (again, iirc) to join his father's firm, this is not necessarily a shift upward for him. During my last few trips home, I tend to run into many of my friends who have graduated from college, be it state schools or private, in-state or out, and the overwhelming majority of them have returned to the area and are working jobs that place them in the same class bracket that they grew up in. Again, this is largely based on anecdotal evidence, and there are notable exceptions, such as my friend currently attending Stanford Law, who made more money over the course of his summer internship than the combined yearly income of his parents. And of course, myself, who represents a sizable shift downward over one generation. But again, these are exceptions.
I mention this for two reasons. First, because I think the modern college degree has become devalued in a way that I cannot quite put my finger on. When one thinks of high-paying jobs, one thinks lawyer, doctor, engineer, corporate executive--jobs that require further post-secondary education. A bachelor's degree can often be substituted for work experience, and is in some cases (even for "entry-level" positions) preferred. Of course, my primary experience with the job market is the Silicon Valley area, and things are a little weird here. But that is my general impression.
My second point is that through this vector of approaching the topic (by which I mean the cyclical desire to leave one's small town, i.e. one's class bracket, and ultimate failure thereof), I do think the movie version of Friday Night Lights addresses the issue of class concerns in small-town America. From the standpoint of literary and film criticism, I found it to subtly flavor and inform the character of the entire film, and in fact was my favorite theme of the movie. I can understand, though, that from an activist's or social scientist's standpoint, the subtle approach is not really effective.
Anyway, I am not enough of a social scholar to determine where to go with this. Being one year removed from Swarthmore has dulled my brain. Much as I disdained the culture of intellectual elitism there, all those three dollar ideas we threw around kept my brain from going all slack-jaw.
On a personal note, I barely even knew you were back from China, and here you are blogging up a storm and meeting people in Philly to eat large quantities of meat. Glad to hear you are doing all right, especially since that email about the riots and whatnot. Hope things are going well for you.
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