For so long as I can bear in mind the want to awareness on college and the cultivation of a positive mindset has been proclaimed from the hill tops but has regrettably most effective been embraced with the aid of some inside the trenches.
Today, it’s all about being “cool” or “hip.” It’s about supplying the right “photo”, approximately being capable of galvanize the ladies or one’s peers. It’s about making the crew, about being the good looking player at the basketball court docket or soccer discipline, the dude with the snazzy haircut or braids, or gangster style tattoo, or Fubu outfit, or expensive Nike running shoes, or gold chains, or earrings, or saggy pants, or sports car.
Of direction girls aren’t immune, they too are enticed with “bribes” of excellent times and pregnancy! But it is basically our boys – the next generation of Black men – that are in actual and in a few cases mortal hazard. It might be an overstatement to say that sports can be visible as a brand new shape of intellectual and physical slavery. But is it? It’s in all likelihood real to mention that due to the fact it’s far appealing and associated with stardom, that sports activities exerts a effective have an effect on on our teens and that during a few respects its affect is insidious.
Okay you assert, allow’s preserve things in proper attitude. No factor scare mongering right? After all it is best a recreation. And can we truly offload this sports activities aspect onto the media moguls, sports activities magnates or style homes? Accepted, they do have the strength and the influence but are not we those who willingly purchase their products, their offerings and who permit ourselves for use?
As powerful because the media is; as seductive because the trap of immediately fulfillment thru Nike running shoes or an NBA or NFL settlement might appear, the fact is that maximum dad and mom and kids aren’t caught up by using the hype or fooled by using the lies. In other phrases, the selection is ours. And lots of us have taken a stand towards the temptations of game knowing that one Michael Jordan, or Venus or Serena Williams, or Tiger Woods does not a whole generation make.
The vast majority of young black men who rally to the call of the sports activities and fashion media are drawn either to basketball or soccer. Almost certainly those are the “coolest” sports and the black presence is obvious. The few players who, both because of their performance or income (the 2 usually cross collectively), make it into the celebrity leagues are the brand new trademarks of fulfillment and feature emerge as the function fashions of every young black male who fancies his possibilities and sees sports activities as an easy price ticket out of the ghetto, the classroom, or the boring existence dictated by using those of his dad and mom’ era.
What I locate most disturbing is the manner in which the instructional possibilities of many young black males are reputedly being hijacked. Of path, individuals who make it into the professional ranks comprehend the significance of a scholarship and a college education. But the stories of cooked grades and stars who can barely examine or write are too real to push aside as fable.