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By: Harold Michael Harvey
In the early 1990's there was much talk about what would happen to young black males. Statistics at the time indicated by the age of 25 every one of three would either be dead or confine to a reservation called a penal institution. The outlook was bleak. Nightly news reports filtered into our homes, scenes of young black men, laying stiff in the streets covered with blood or being paraded to jail with hands cuffed behind backs. It was not a pretty sight.
Our church and community leaders debated what could be done to stem the raising tide of a lost generation. We discovered an absence of fathers in the home on an alarming scale.
Thus, the notion of mentor/mentee relationships took hold of the community. African American men of good moral character and professional standing were called upon to put their hands on as many young boys as they could and steer them into adulthood.
Each February my calendar would be filled to capacity with speaking engagements to local schools. The kids got a chance to talk with a lawyer and could dream, that one day, they too could become lawyers.
Visiting the schools once a year offered little impact to eliminating the absence of male role models in the lives of inner city kids. I needed a way to place my hands on as many young black males as possible for a prolonged period of time.
I didn’t know how to go about doing this until one day in February 1991. I came home from a day of defending several young men in the robbery of a Brinks truck in which the driver of the truck shot and killed one of the robbers. That evening my wife announced she had enrolled our son in the Little League program at Cascade Park in the five and six-year-old division. I had wanted to wait much later to get him involved in baseball. God forbid, I introduce him to the game and he didn’t have my passion to play it at a high level of intensity. To my chagrin, he took to baseball like he was born to express himself through the science of the game.
Coley was drafted by the Pittsburgh Crawfords (under the recommendation of Chico Renfroe League teams took names from teams who played in the Old Negro League).
A schism developed between the coach and the team mom. The coach quit before mid-season. The void was filled by a committee of fathers who had a player on the team. I was the only father who had played baseball beyond high school. I wanted to teach fundamental baseball skills, the others wanted to coach the kids how to beat other five and six year olds. There is quite a difference in the two. I was suspended from the coaching staff. I have a knack for being suspended by people who do not like my point of view.
I asked the Cascade Park and Recreational Center to allow me to organize a new team the following year. They agreed and the Homestead Grays Youth Baseball Team and Educational Academy was born. The academy was designed to teach sound fundamental baseball skills and to prepare young men for adulthood.
We started with a group of 15 boys in the five to a six-year age group. The very first kid I drafted was Andre Burgin. Andre was drafted on the recommendation of my son who came home from school one day and proclaimed at the dinner table I had to draft Mr. Burgin. “Why,” I asked?
“Because he is the only kid in the class who can out run me,” Coley said.
So Andre Burgin became a Homestead Gray.
I waited several years to draft a kid I had my eyes on since he was three years of age. Coley and Courtney English met in preschool. We had him on an all-star team I believe the summers of ‘92 and ‘93. He came to us full time in 1998. He was the intellectual on the team. Courtney could be counted upon to alert me when the defense was out of order or when it might be time to get another pitcher warmed up in the bullpen. He was playful, but keep his head in the game.
We picked up the most physically gifted athlete in those years when Teddy Minters’ mom caught a bus with him and her three-month-old baby (seated in a scroller) in order to get Teddy to our first practice. It was cold and windy that February afternoon, and I was impressed with his mom’s commitment to bring him out without the assistance of a man in the house.
Seeing Katrina Minter standing on the sidelines that afternoon, holding onto her baby’s scroller, told me in no uncertain terms, what was at stake. There were far too many women running their households and attempting to be fathers to their sons while maintaining their role as mommy. This dilemma is akin to pulling oneself up by ones own booth straps. Such a task is nearly impossible.
The 1992 Homestead Grays were as hapless as the 1962 New York Mets. We managed to win four games. There were two teams we beat twice. Yet the 1999 Homestead Grays were as amazing as the 1969 New York Mets. We won our first 10 games before losing on the road to our arch nemesis the Forest Park Indians in a disputed call. Later that year this team won the Park Championship, the league championship and the Sandy Koufax District Tournament.
They went off to high school as champions. We stayed together for another four years, until I sent them off to college, scholarships in hand. All of them, that is, who wished to go.
Before it was time for college, we had a lot of work to do. I perceive baseball as a science, but when played well, it is a work of art. Thus we taught team work as a practical reality of everyday life through teaching the art of hitting the cut off man and making an accurate relay throw to nab the advancing base runner.
When it came time to teach the importance of each member of society performing his duty to advance the cause of society, I installed the hit and run play. The hit and run play is different from a straight steal in that the batter must make contact with the baseball to prevent the runner from being thrown out at second base. The batter and runner must execute the play to precision for it to be successful.
Then I talked to them about the ultimate sacrifice was for a teammate to give himself up for the team. This lesson ended in a demonstration on the art of the sacrifice bunt. Wherever we traveled to play, high school coaches, college coaches and professional scouts would approach me after the game and remark how discipline and fundamentally sound the Homestead Grays played.
Sometime after they entered high school, I recalled these sweet little kids suddenly began to use the “N” word. Where it came from, I don’t know. I addressed the use of this word head on and once suspended the team’s top pitcher, Truett ÒNeal, for repeated use of the “N” word. He came back from the suspension after apologizing to the team. I then suggested instead they use the word Negro.
One day I dropped by Fredrick Douglass High School to check on several of my players who were on the baseball team. I was standing behind the dugout and heard someone say, “Negro please . . . ” I glanced inside the dugout to see several Homestead Grays engaged in a conversation. I smiled, said hello and disappeared into the sunset with the knowledge they had picked up something from the Homestead Gray experience.
Ten years ago yesterday these young men culminated an incredible week. They sweep through the state district tournament like Sherman’s march to the sea. Five teams were placed on the field to confront them, including their arch nemesis the Forest Park Indians. None could withstand the precision with which the Grays took the field that week. Eight years of hard work came down to one grand week in ‘99.
The following Homestead Grays hold college degrees today: Andre Burgin, Business, Florida A&M University (now working on a Master’s degree at Clark Atlanta University), Coley Harvey, Journalism, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University (Sports Reporter, The Telegraph, Georgia Tech beat writer), David Reid, Morehouse College, Arnold Relaford, Gordon College (hip-hop artist), Courtney English, Morehouse College (a candidate for Board of Education, Atlanta Public Schools), Calvin Booker, Georgia Tech (a long shot prospect NFL quarterback), Jonathan Harris, Tuskegee University, Billy Lucas, Babson College, Terry Bailey, Oglethorpe University (a second year law student at Mercer University), Melvin Purdue, St. Anselm ( still playing semi-pro baseball in California), Zettler Clay, Georgia State University(a Master's candidate in Journalism, University of Maryland) and Blake Covington, Emory University (currently A working actor). The team catcher, Keith Marsh is currently enrolled in Life University. Jimmy Jucks currently enrolled at Atlanta Metropolitan College as well as Victor Mshindi McIntyre. Three of them are parents Marcus Wilson, Anthony Foster and Keith Marsh.
While we celebrate the accomplishments of these young men, it grieves my heart to think of the few who did not avail themselves of the opportunity to advance their education. My door is always open. My phone number has not changed and I would love to hear from them.
Great things are expected from this group. We will check back in another decade to see how they have impacted society.
© July 12, 2009
Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label baseball. Show all posts
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Monday, March 16, 2009
The Politics Of Baseball's Doping Scandal
The thought occurred to me the other day, President Obama, a noted left handed three point shooter, could have an enormous impact on baseball's doping wars. It seems just a year ago the government was all set to bring Barry Bonds, baseball's home run king, to trial on perjury charges and to charge future Hall of Fame pitcher Roger Clemens with lying to Congress.
Both cases stems from the resolve of former Attorney General, John Ashcroft, several years ago to go after Balco Laboratories , largely believed to be a provider of human growth hormones.
Ashcroft went after Balco with the same vigor he utilized to force the Patriot Act into the national lexicon. The Justice Department under Ashcroft cast a wide net and sent the Balco kingpin to jail along with the trainer of baseball's home run king, Barry Allan Bonds.
The Obama administration immediately upon taking office, stepped into several quagmires left over from the Bush years, namely the economy, the housing crises, the war in Iraq and the closing of Gitmo. They also have to contend with what to do about "Barrymo" and "Rogermo."
The government cases are complicated by the fact their investigations commenced long after the alleged drug use occurred. Thus the government has to rely upon the testimony of the trainers who allegedly pricked the stars in the hinney and endowed them with super human powers to hit and pitch their way into the record books.
In the case of Mr. Bonds, his trainer has spent time in jail over his refusal to testify against his boss. The government has not been able to pressure him into testifying and were forced to release him from jail without extracting any concession from him to cooperate at trial.
Mr. Bond's defense team has been successful in getting any evidence that smacks of drug use thrown out of court. What scant evidence the government has remaining at its disposal must have a witness to establish a change of custody back to Mr. Bond's backside. Presumably the only person who can establish the proper change of custody is his trainer. The Bonds case has been put off indefinitely and may never be presented to a jury.
Roger Clemens has denied that he knowingly used a banned substance. Brian McNamee, his former trainer, however, states that Mr. Clemens was injected with a human growth hormone on numerous occasions by him. According to Mr. McNamee, Clemens' wife was also pricked on her posterior by him with a human growth hormone in the pitcher's bedroom. With respect to Mr. Clemens the government has a witness, albeit a tainted witness.
It was presidential politics which threw out the first pitch in the baseball drugging wars with the knuckle ball Mr. Ashcroft lobbed to Mr. Bonds and it may be presidential politics that saves Mr. Clemens.
In late 2007, George Mitchell, a former congressman, submitted his investigation into the use of banned substances to Bud Selig, commissioner of baseball. Listed in that study was one Roger Clemens, a heretofore, sure fire bet to be elected into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. Mr. Clemens had refused to cooperate with the Mitchell investigation and had declined an earlier invitation to come to Capitol Hill and discuss any knowledge he had on the use of steroids in baseball.
Following the Mitchell report, Mr. Clemens thought better of the idea and decided to appear before a congressional committee looking into steroid use in professional baseball. He hired a prestigious Washington law firm, Covington & Burling.
When Mr. Clemens retained Covington & Burling a young senator from Illinois was a slight blimp on the presidential radar screen. Mr. Obama was doing so poorly Georgia Democrats did not invite him to speak at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner held in February last year.
One partner in Covington & Burling law firm was a former justice department official, Eric Holder, who represented the National Football League earlier in this decade when the league was clouded with the suspicion of widespread drug use. Mr. Holder is credited with getting the NFL, the player's union, the justice department and law enforcement representatives together in the same room and essentially delayed the investigation into the use of banned substances. His sagacious legal work allowed the league time to police itself without government intervention and a wide scale indictment of its players.
Just as the government was poised to present its case against Mr. Clemens to a federal grand jury, Mr. Obama snaps off a wicked three-two slider at the knees (Steve Caltonques) and appoints George Mitchell, a special envoy and sends him to resolve the dispute between Arabs and the Jews.
Next the president nominates Mr. Holder as Attorney General. He removed himself from the case due to the fact his former law firm had represented Mr. Clemens in this very matter.
Mr. Holder did not personally represent Mr. Clemens, that assignment fell to Lanny Breuer another partner in the firm and yet another Obama justice department nominee. Breuer is waiting congressional approval to become assistant attorney general, in the Department of Justice's, Criminal Division. This is the division that is charged with deciding whether to prosecute Mr. Clemens and whether to continue to prosecute Mr. Bonds.
What makes the government's case against Mr. Clemens problematic is the fact, as Mr. Clemens' defense counsel, Breuer strongly argued McNamee is a "troubled man" who "apparently has manufactured evidence."
Obviously if approved by the senate, Breuer will follow the bosses lead and not have any contact with the government lawyers prosecuting this case. However, knowing the boss has such strong feelings about your key witness must have a chilling effect upon the justice department lawyers called upon to bring Mr. Clemens to justice.
(c) Copyright March 16, 2009
Both cases stems from the resolve of former Attorney General, John Ashcroft, several years ago to go after Balco Laboratories , largely believed to be a provider of human growth hormones.
Ashcroft went after Balco with the same vigor he utilized to force the Patriot Act into the national lexicon. The Justice Department under Ashcroft cast a wide net and sent the Balco kingpin to jail along with the trainer of baseball's home run king, Barry Allan Bonds.
The Obama administration immediately upon taking office, stepped into several quagmires left over from the Bush years, namely the economy, the housing crises, the war in Iraq and the closing of Gitmo. They also have to contend with what to do about "Barrymo" and "Rogermo."
The government cases are complicated by the fact their investigations commenced long after the alleged drug use occurred. Thus the government has to rely upon the testimony of the trainers who allegedly pricked the stars in the hinney and endowed them with super human powers to hit and pitch their way into the record books.
In the case of Mr. Bonds, his trainer has spent time in jail over his refusal to testify against his boss. The government has not been able to pressure him into testifying and were forced to release him from jail without extracting any concession from him to cooperate at trial.
Mr. Bond's defense team has been successful in getting any evidence that smacks of drug use thrown out of court. What scant evidence the government has remaining at its disposal must have a witness to establish a change of custody back to Mr. Bond's backside. Presumably the only person who can establish the proper change of custody is his trainer. The Bonds case has been put off indefinitely and may never be presented to a jury.
Roger Clemens has denied that he knowingly used a banned substance. Brian McNamee, his former trainer, however, states that Mr. Clemens was injected with a human growth hormone on numerous occasions by him. According to Mr. McNamee, Clemens' wife was also pricked on her posterior by him with a human growth hormone in the pitcher's bedroom. With respect to Mr. Clemens the government has a witness, albeit a tainted witness.
It was presidential politics which threw out the first pitch in the baseball drugging wars with the knuckle ball Mr. Ashcroft lobbed to Mr. Bonds and it may be presidential politics that saves Mr. Clemens.
In late 2007, George Mitchell, a former congressman, submitted his investigation into the use of banned substances to Bud Selig, commissioner of baseball. Listed in that study was one Roger Clemens, a heretofore, sure fire bet to be elected into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot. Mr. Clemens had refused to cooperate with the Mitchell investigation and had declined an earlier invitation to come to Capitol Hill and discuss any knowledge he had on the use of steroids in baseball.
Following the Mitchell report, Mr. Clemens thought better of the idea and decided to appear before a congressional committee looking into steroid use in professional baseball. He hired a prestigious Washington law firm, Covington & Burling.
When Mr. Clemens retained Covington & Burling a young senator from Illinois was a slight blimp on the presidential radar screen. Mr. Obama was doing so poorly Georgia Democrats did not invite him to speak at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner held in February last year.
One partner in Covington & Burling law firm was a former justice department official, Eric Holder, who represented the National Football League earlier in this decade when the league was clouded with the suspicion of widespread drug use. Mr. Holder is credited with getting the NFL, the player's union, the justice department and law enforcement representatives together in the same room and essentially delayed the investigation into the use of banned substances. His sagacious legal work allowed the league time to police itself without government intervention and a wide scale indictment of its players.
Just as the government was poised to present its case against Mr. Clemens to a federal grand jury, Mr. Obama snaps off a wicked three-two slider at the knees (Steve Caltonques) and appoints George Mitchell, a special envoy and sends him to resolve the dispute between Arabs and the Jews.
Next the president nominates Mr. Holder as Attorney General. He removed himself from the case due to the fact his former law firm had represented Mr. Clemens in this very matter.
Mr. Holder did not personally represent Mr. Clemens, that assignment fell to Lanny Breuer another partner in the firm and yet another Obama justice department nominee. Breuer is waiting congressional approval to become assistant attorney general, in the Department of Justice's, Criminal Division. This is the division that is charged with deciding whether to prosecute Mr. Clemens and whether to continue to prosecute Mr. Bonds.
What makes the government's case against Mr. Clemens problematic is the fact, as Mr. Clemens' defense counsel, Breuer strongly argued McNamee is a "troubled man" who "apparently has manufactured evidence."
Obviously if approved by the senate, Breuer will follow the bosses lead and not have any contact with the government lawyers prosecuting this case. However, knowing the boss has such strong feelings about your key witness must have a chilling effect upon the justice department lawyers called upon to bring Mr. Clemens to justice.
(c) Copyright March 16, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
A Rap On Race, Wall Street, Mc Cain And Rush
I’ve been trying to take the nation’s pulse of late relative to its new president. I keep getting mixed signals, perhaps because the here-to-fore majority culture in America never thought anyone other than a member of the “Club” would occupy the Oval Office.
I'm not sure most Americans quite know what to make of this gentlemen and his sleeveless dress wearing lady living in the White House. It is a paradigmatic shift of volcanic proportions. Yet, a paradigm deeply rooted in the America dream, albeit, a portion of the dream left out of that seminal document, signed under duress by members of the landed gentry.
Usually, at least in my lifetime, the American president is extended a 100 day window to get acquainted with his new digs and to get a feel for the lay of the land so to speak. This is not so in the case of number Forty-Four. He is a mocha light, smooth talking prez, who points to East Africa and not Eastern Europe when ancestry is discussed.
It would be easy to dismiss the enormous attention that number Forty-forty has received in his first month and an half in office on the accident of birth. But that belies the crux of the conundrum, or does it?
The first signal to catch my eye about how the public views this president differently from others is in the downward movement of the stock market. Historically, the stock market, contrary to popular myth, favors a Democratic president over the Republican one. According to Slate, “since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S & P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return.”
Moreover, the majority of bear markets in the 20th century were Republican bear markets; for instance, the stock market crash of 1929, the oil embargo in the early 1970's, and the market correction in 1987. In spite of these market indicators which favor Mr. Obama’s administration, the market lags behind in performance under his first six-weeks watch.
Why is Mr. Obama having a problem instilling confidence on Wall Street? After all, the new president did not wait to see what would develop and bask in the glow of the oval office. He immediately began to address the sagging economy and pushed through a massive spending bill within his first 20 days in office. Was this not a message to Wall Street the president was serious about getting the economy moving again?
Next, Mr. Obama placed all the financial cards on the table and told the America people that the previous administration had one budget for the War in Iraq and another one for everything else American. Still no movement on Wall Street showing it was confident that this “One” was committed to straightening the mess.
Then the president released a plan to help struggling homeowners get a handle on their mortgages. He introduced a plan geared to homeowners who are underwater in their mortgages and another for those who have gotten behind but have the ability to pay once their loans have been modified. He sweetened the pot with $1000 going to the bank for every mortgage the bank modifies.
And the beat goes on.
Thus far, Mr. Obama’s two ardent critics are Sen. John McCain, the first white candidate to lose a presidential election to a visibly black candidate and Rush Limbaugh, a piped piper of conservative Republican thought.
Mr. McCain blind-sided the president with questions regarding the purchase of a presidential helicopter that the president did not order. In his rants with stacks of papers in his hands and on his table, McCain looks to be the perfect sore loser, whining and stubbing his toe over less important issues while the economy tanks. Perhaps, this is a view of what he would have been doing in his first six-weeks in office had he and Gov. Sarah Palin won the job neither, in retrospect, seemed suited to handle.
Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer by trade and by all accounts he is a master at his trade, which appears to be getting primarily white Americans riled up over “them against us” politics. Just when many Americans who did not vote for Mr. Obama were getting into that feel good feeling about the prospects of a black president, Limbaugh rushed to the aid of the conservative cause and publicly stated concerning the president’s plans to stimulate the economy: “I hope he fails.”
What’s that? He hopes the president fails to stimulate the economy so many of Limbaugh’s listeners can get back to work, stay in their homes and profit from their 401 ks. How callous How insulated from the dire straits of his listeners Rush must be with his contract worth $400 million just extended through 2016?
What then fuels these willy nilly assaults on number Forty-four? Could Eric Holder, Attorney General, be correct in his assessment “we are a nation of cowards,” when it comes to race?
I’m just asking. But it wouldn’t be fair to posit this question and leave it to our collective thoughts for clarity.
When I was a criminal defense lawyer, I was often confronted with the dichotomy of race in jury selection. How do you get twelve people to put aside a lifetime of internal biases and prejudices which they do not know they have? I knew that if I could select an impartial jury panel, the presumption of innocence would remain with my client throughout the trial and he or she would walk out of the courthouse doors with me.
I began the first week of this brave new century driving up to northwest Georgia to select a jury in a capital murder case. My client was the oldest of three brothers who along with a friend, were accused of shooting to death a white teenage male and severely wounding his black friend.
When the trial began, I was certain that someone sitting at the defense table was guilty of murder, and I was equally certain my client was not the guilty person. The prosecution had poisoned the jury pool with pretrial talk of “them” and “they”, which were code words for the black defendants.
Conversely the media, as far away, as Atlanta was full of the pristine life lived by the teenage wrestler who ventured out one Saturday afternoon to pick up the family dog from the veterinarian and ended up in a gully with a bullet in the side of his head.
My job was to get the jury not to see race, but to see the defendants individually. We had several hundred to voir dire ( to interview) where we hoped to select a fair and impartial panel of twelve and one alternate. The judge put twelve citizens in the jury box at a time and the other several hundred were in the courtroom.
The State and defense took turns interviewing the panel. I quickly asked for a show of hands if anyone had any bias or prejudice against my client because he was accused of murdering a white person. I did not get any show of hands, nor did I expect people to open up in a room full of strangers and admit they harbored ill-will toward someone just because of race.
I followed this up by telling a true story of a lesson I learned on the baseball field. It was my last collegiate season of baseball at Tuskegee University. We were playing Savannah State University one Saturday in April of 1973. I had reached base on a single and promptly stole second base. The next batter hit a ball in the gap in left center and I half-heartedly ran towards third, where Coach Martin yelled at me to put it in gear and score. As I approached home plate, I could feel the baseball beaming toward me, like a heat-seeking missile. I saw the catcher come up to block the plate and I went into a fade away slide and entered the home plate area in a cloud of dust.
When the dust cleared, the catcher was coming towards me to tag me, I was not sure if I was safe or out. I did not want to be out, because I had not hustled on the play and Coach Martin had to yell to get me to turn the juice on; so I moved towards the catcher, picked him up and dumped him on the ground. The umpire called me safe and the fans went wild.
I reached the steps of the dugout, my teammate, Steve Duval, came over to me and pointing his finger in my face said: “You are a racist.” I had never thought of myself as a racist before that day. My mom did not raise me to be a racist. Nothing in my past suggested that I should react in a racist way. Yet between innings, I had to come to grips with what my friend had said.
There was no reason I dumped the catcher other than the fact he was the only white person in the ballpark. None of the adults involved said a word to me. Not one, including my coach who always taught us to make good moral choices. Nor the umpire who worked for the post office and was well respected in the Tuskegee community.
After telling this story I did not ask the jury for another show of hands, but you could tell from the expressions on their faces I was calling upon them to dig deep and root out any sign of prejudice. I told this same story to every panel of twelve citizens we interviewed and the whole courtroom heard the same story over and over again. During the recess the deputies came up to me and would say: “I’ve heard that story several times and I still can’t figure out if you were safe or out.”
Then on Wednesday, after a long day of jury selection, the judge sent everyone home and asked the lawyers to remain. He then proceeded to tell me earlier in the day a deputy came forth and told him of a conversation he had with a certain juror on the first day of jury selections. He said juror number 68 asked the deputy “what do you think of that Nigger lawyer from Atlanta.”
Juror number 68 was stricken from the panel. On the ride back to Atlanta, my wife, whose keen insight into human nature helped me select this jury, said we had won the panel because the deputy had held on to that information for three days and only decided to reveal what he knew to be wrong after being confronted over and over with my public admission of how easy it is to be prejudice without giving a thought to it. She was right, three weeks later, my client was acquitted of malice murder.
What should this tell us? It should tell us that racism grows deeper than the surface denial that oh “it doesn’t have anything to do with his skin color.” “I have lots of black friends, besides that he is half white.” “I just hope the man will fail... just like I hoped that Kurt Warner would fail to rally the Cardinals and win the Super Bowl.” Can’t you just see the banality in these shallow responses?
As if he sensed America is about to blow a tremendous opportunity to escort the world into the 21st Century, British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, flew across the pond recently to address a joint meeting of congress. He urged this August body to put aside petty bickering and get behind the leader of the free world. Perhaps, that is as it should be. A Brit telling his American cousins it is time to bury the slave mentality of the 18th Century, for the world waits to get behind America as America exhibits the best in all of humanity.
(c) Copyright March 11, 2009
I'm not sure most Americans quite know what to make of this gentlemen and his sleeveless dress wearing lady living in the White House. It is a paradigmatic shift of volcanic proportions. Yet, a paradigm deeply rooted in the America dream, albeit, a portion of the dream left out of that seminal document, signed under duress by members of the landed gentry.
Usually, at least in my lifetime, the American president is extended a 100 day window to get acquainted with his new digs and to get a feel for the lay of the land so to speak. This is not so in the case of number Forty-Four. He is a mocha light, smooth talking prez, who points to East Africa and not Eastern Europe when ancestry is discussed.
It would be easy to dismiss the enormous attention that number Forty-forty has received in his first month and an half in office on the accident of birth. But that belies the crux of the conundrum, or does it?
The first signal to catch my eye about how the public views this president differently from others is in the downward movement of the stock market. Historically, the stock market, contrary to popular myth, favors a Democratic president over the Republican one. According to Slate, “since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S & P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return.”
Moreover, the majority of bear markets in the 20th century were Republican bear markets; for instance, the stock market crash of 1929, the oil embargo in the early 1970's, and the market correction in 1987. In spite of these market indicators which favor Mr. Obama’s administration, the market lags behind in performance under his first six-weeks watch.
Why is Mr. Obama having a problem instilling confidence on Wall Street? After all, the new president did not wait to see what would develop and bask in the glow of the oval office. He immediately began to address the sagging economy and pushed through a massive spending bill within his first 20 days in office. Was this not a message to Wall Street the president was serious about getting the economy moving again?
Next, Mr. Obama placed all the financial cards on the table and told the America people that the previous administration had one budget for the War in Iraq and another one for everything else American. Still no movement on Wall Street showing it was confident that this “One” was committed to straightening the mess.
Then the president released a plan to help struggling homeowners get a handle on their mortgages. He introduced a plan geared to homeowners who are underwater in their mortgages and another for those who have gotten behind but have the ability to pay once their loans have been modified. He sweetened the pot with $1000 going to the bank for every mortgage the bank modifies.
And the beat goes on.
Thus far, Mr. Obama’s two ardent critics are Sen. John McCain, the first white candidate to lose a presidential election to a visibly black candidate and Rush Limbaugh, a piped piper of conservative Republican thought.
Mr. McCain blind-sided the president with questions regarding the purchase of a presidential helicopter that the president did not order. In his rants with stacks of papers in his hands and on his table, McCain looks to be the perfect sore loser, whining and stubbing his toe over less important issues while the economy tanks. Perhaps, this is a view of what he would have been doing in his first six-weeks in office had he and Gov. Sarah Palin won the job neither, in retrospect, seemed suited to handle.
Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer by trade and by all accounts he is a master at his trade, which appears to be getting primarily white Americans riled up over “them against us” politics. Just when many Americans who did not vote for Mr. Obama were getting into that feel good feeling about the prospects of a black president, Limbaugh rushed to the aid of the conservative cause and publicly stated concerning the president’s plans to stimulate the economy: “I hope he fails.”
What’s that? He hopes the president fails to stimulate the economy so many of Limbaugh’s listeners can get back to work, stay in their homes and profit from their 401 ks. How callous How insulated from the dire straits of his listeners Rush must be with his contract worth $400 million just extended through 2016?
What then fuels these willy nilly assaults on number Forty-four? Could Eric Holder, Attorney General, be correct in his assessment “we are a nation of cowards,” when it comes to race?
I’m just asking. But it wouldn’t be fair to posit this question and leave it to our collective thoughts for clarity.
When I was a criminal defense lawyer, I was often confronted with the dichotomy of race in jury selection. How do you get twelve people to put aside a lifetime of internal biases and prejudices which they do not know they have? I knew that if I could select an impartial jury panel, the presumption of innocence would remain with my client throughout the trial and he or she would walk out of the courthouse doors with me.
I began the first week of this brave new century driving up to northwest Georgia to select a jury in a capital murder case. My client was the oldest of three brothers who along with a friend, were accused of shooting to death a white teenage male and severely wounding his black friend.
When the trial began, I was certain that someone sitting at the defense table was guilty of murder, and I was equally certain my client was not the guilty person. The prosecution had poisoned the jury pool with pretrial talk of “them” and “they”, which were code words for the black defendants.
Conversely the media, as far away, as Atlanta was full of the pristine life lived by the teenage wrestler who ventured out one Saturday afternoon to pick up the family dog from the veterinarian and ended up in a gully with a bullet in the side of his head.
My job was to get the jury not to see race, but to see the defendants individually. We had several hundred to voir dire ( to interview) where we hoped to select a fair and impartial panel of twelve and one alternate. The judge put twelve citizens in the jury box at a time and the other several hundred were in the courtroom.
The State and defense took turns interviewing the panel. I quickly asked for a show of hands if anyone had any bias or prejudice against my client because he was accused of murdering a white person. I did not get any show of hands, nor did I expect people to open up in a room full of strangers and admit they harbored ill-will toward someone just because of race.
I followed this up by telling a true story of a lesson I learned on the baseball field. It was my last collegiate season of baseball at Tuskegee University. We were playing Savannah State University one Saturday in April of 1973. I had reached base on a single and promptly stole second base. The next batter hit a ball in the gap in left center and I half-heartedly ran towards third, where Coach Martin yelled at me to put it in gear and score. As I approached home plate, I could feel the baseball beaming toward me, like a heat-seeking missile. I saw the catcher come up to block the plate and I went into a fade away slide and entered the home plate area in a cloud of dust.
When the dust cleared, the catcher was coming towards me to tag me, I was not sure if I was safe or out. I did not want to be out, because I had not hustled on the play and Coach Martin had to yell to get me to turn the juice on; so I moved towards the catcher, picked him up and dumped him on the ground. The umpire called me safe and the fans went wild.
I reached the steps of the dugout, my teammate, Steve Duval, came over to me and pointing his finger in my face said: “You are a racist.” I had never thought of myself as a racist before that day. My mom did not raise me to be a racist. Nothing in my past suggested that I should react in a racist way. Yet between innings, I had to come to grips with what my friend had said.
There was no reason I dumped the catcher other than the fact he was the only white person in the ballpark. None of the adults involved said a word to me. Not one, including my coach who always taught us to make good moral choices. Nor the umpire who worked for the post office and was well respected in the Tuskegee community.
After telling this story I did not ask the jury for another show of hands, but you could tell from the expressions on their faces I was calling upon them to dig deep and root out any sign of prejudice. I told this same story to every panel of twelve citizens we interviewed and the whole courtroom heard the same story over and over again. During the recess the deputies came up to me and would say: “I’ve heard that story several times and I still can’t figure out if you were safe or out.”
Then on Wednesday, after a long day of jury selection, the judge sent everyone home and asked the lawyers to remain. He then proceeded to tell me earlier in the day a deputy came forth and told him of a conversation he had with a certain juror on the first day of jury selections. He said juror number 68 asked the deputy “what do you think of that Nigger lawyer from Atlanta.”
Juror number 68 was stricken from the panel. On the ride back to Atlanta, my wife, whose keen insight into human nature helped me select this jury, said we had won the panel because the deputy had held on to that information for three days and only decided to reveal what he knew to be wrong after being confronted over and over with my public admission of how easy it is to be prejudice without giving a thought to it. She was right, three weeks later, my client was acquitted of malice murder.
What should this tell us? It should tell us that racism grows deeper than the surface denial that oh “it doesn’t have anything to do with his skin color.” “I have lots of black friends, besides that he is half white.” “I just hope the man will fail... just like I hoped that Kurt Warner would fail to rally the Cardinals and win the Super Bowl.” Can’t you just see the banality in these shallow responses?
As if he sensed America is about to blow a tremendous opportunity to escort the world into the 21st Century, British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, flew across the pond recently to address a joint meeting of congress. He urged this August body to put aside petty bickering and get behind the leader of the free world. Perhaps, that is as it should be. A Brit telling his American cousins it is time to bury the slave mentality of the 18th Century, for the world waits to get behind America as America exhibits the best in all of humanity.
(c) Copyright March 11, 2009
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