LaGarrette Blount
Listening in on last night's Buccaneers preseason game reminded me to be angry.
LaGarrette Blount, now with the Bucs, was the talented running back for the University of Oregon who, two years ago, following a game against Boise State, responded to a shove from a white player on Boise with a punch to the jaw. He got suspended for almost his entire senior season, which caused him (a 6 foot 250 pound Jerome Bettis clone) to fall from the first or second round to free agent status. That's a lot of cash that Oregon cost him and his family. A clear cut example of racism. A black man is pushed and responds with a punch to the jaw. In "Hoosiers" when the white kid hit another white kid and said, "I got him a good one!", the audience, including me, cheered. A black guy does the same and he's out a million bucks. Clear cut racism.
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The question for LaGarrette and all the other young, black, and rightfully angry men in this nation is, What do you do with this kind of incident? The answer is: You gotta be twice as good if you're black. Or Asian. Or Hispanic. This nation is ruled by white males, and if you're not a white male you're gonna get screwed at some point in your life. Do you burn the place down or do you do better? You better do better, because we only get one chance in life. Bitterness lasts a lifetime. Don't let it eat you up. There's always gonna be shit like what Oregon pulled on Blount, you don't have to look hard to find it.
This young man has a target on his back and a burden on his shoulders. When he dies in sixty years that Boise State incident will be in his obituary. But what will the rest of it say? It's up to him. He could gain 10,000 yards and make tens of millions of dollars and give Oregon and their athletic director the finger in his rearview mirror ten years from now. Or he could let that stuff eat him up. I don't know anything about him other than what I read, and that he is a hell of a talented football player. A potential star. I wish him luck.
LaGarrette Blount, now with the Bucs, was the talented running back for the University of Oregon who, two years ago, following a game against Boise State, responded to a shove from a white player on Boise with a punch to the jaw. He got suspended for almost his entire senior season, which caused him (a 6 foot 250 pound Jerome Bettis clone) to fall from the first or second round to free agent status. That's a lot of cash that Oregon cost him and his family. A clear cut example of racism. A black man is pushed and responds with a punch to the jaw. In "Hoosiers" when the white kid hit another white kid and said, "I got him a good one!", the audience, including me, cheered. A black guy does the same and he's out a million bucks. Clear cut racism.
============
The question for LaGarrette and all the other young, black, and rightfully angry men in this nation is, What do you do with this kind of incident? The answer is: You gotta be twice as good if you're black. Or Asian. Or Hispanic. This nation is ruled by white males, and if you're not a white male you're gonna get screwed at some point in your life. Do you burn the place down or do you do better? You better do better, because we only get one chance in life. Bitterness lasts a lifetime. Don't let it eat you up. There's always gonna be shit like what Oregon pulled on Blount, you don't have to look hard to find it.
This young man has a target on his back and a burden on his shoulders. When he dies in sixty years that Boise State incident will be in his obituary. But what will the rest of it say? It's up to him. He could gain 10,000 yards and make tens of millions of dollars and give Oregon and their athletic director the finger in his rearview mirror ten years from now. Or he could let that stuff eat him up. I don't know anything about him other than what I read, and that he is a hell of a talented football player. A potential star. I wish him luck.
posted by joe sweeney at 9:14 PM
2 Comments:
This post sucks.
This post really, really sucks, man.
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