While Jarod Hector is out of town, David Thorpe and I are trying to make podcasts that are a trim forty minutes. We missed, talking about the Knicks and a ton more! But it was a lot of fun. Search “TrueHoop” wherever you listen to podcasts.
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Another typically thoughtful, fun, and engaging episode.
TO HENRY: Your comment about the "vague" way the NBA tries to express support for social justice — which was extremely on-point — reminded me of an ad that the league is running on League Pass that is driving me to distraction.
It's about MLK Day, and it features JJJ, and the part that caught my attention (and hurts my soul) is at the very beginning. Speaking about Dr. King, JJJ says (I'm paraphrasing): "He didn't want to change the world; he just wanted to turn a wrong into a right."
WTF?! Dr. King "did not want to change the world"? Of course he did! And that's a good thing! In fact, he not only self-consciously endeavored to change the world, he also — and repeatedly — urged his followers to set similarly lofty ambitions! The world needed changing; it still does!
In America, and despite knowing it to be untrue, we constantly tell our white children that they can accomplish anything they dream of and that a better world is within their reach. Why are we telling Black children that the most revered Black American in U.S. history, the man that, more than any other, we hold up as (among other things) the ultimate embodiment of Black citizenship, was someone who didn't want to be remembered? And what can they possibly conclude about what's possible for them in their own lives if we tell them that, actually, Dr. King "didn't want to change the world" — or, put differently, that he *didn't* have a dream?
I can only speculate as to why the League decided to present Dr. King's legacy this way. But I will note that there is a long, long history of white people in this country resisting racial justice and demanding that Black people "know their place" — which is really just another way of demanding that Black people forsake any ambitions they may have to change not only their personal circumstances but the world itself.
To put it lightly, it is profoundly disappointing to see the League seemingly endorse this false and misleading depiction of Dr. King as passive, meek, and docile. It's a textbook example of the "Santa Clausification" of Dr. King and his legacy that, for decades, has insidiously undermined people's ability to understand his profoundly ambitious, radical, and visionary philosophy. It's trash, and we — all of us, very much including JJJ — deserve better.
40 minutes?!? Nahhh