By John Sammon
Columnist - John Sammon
Vogue Magazine’s cover picture of a basketball player and a model stirred controversy. It was deliberate. Magazines love controversy because it means sales. But some people said the picture of a raging Lebron James and a tall blonde furthered negative racial stereotypes.
Could I ask a favor of black athletes? In this country? You already get paid enough to jump around. Could you refrain in the future from acting in a scary manner that would seem to indicate you’re a brainless animal?
It gives the racists in the country, and there are plenty of them, ammunition to make the case that black people are inferior. We don’t want to give them cause to promote that.
First of all, to Lebron, the fact that you’re twice as big as me, and can stomp my head, may inspire fear, but not respect. When will black men get it in their heads…..that fear is not respect?
Does a bully inspire respect? Is it your life’s goal to be a bully?
It would have been much better if you’d thrown away the ball, put on a suit and tie, stand up straight, and have a book of poetry in your hand, maybe don glasses, and look studious…..than to pose like an ape screaming at another ape over a coconut.
By the by, critics of the photo have termed it the, “King Kong” pose.
Size isn’t everything. Kong fell off the building and became garbage on the street.
Basketball player LeBron James and supermodel Gisele Bündchen
Every time guys like you do this, Lebron, you set race relations back, and make it harder. The whole miscegenation (mixed race marriage) thing I don’t care about. If the leggy blonde in the picture likes you, that’s her business.
How can I explain it to you, so you’ll understand? You see, simply practicing a physical act, jumping over and over again, and lifting weights, and taking steroids until you’re huge. Getting good at throwing a ball though a hole (hoop). Even though it pays because people pay to see it. In the long endless scheme of things, it means very little. Fifty years from now, somebody eight feet tall will be throwing a ball and you’ll (Lebron) be forgotten, except for some musty dusty records in an old sports book. You didn’t invent the light bulb, which had a profound impact.
The ability to jump, or to hit somebody over the head. That’s nothing.
I think blacks were held down in this country for so long, and for centuries had to show subservience, that many black men still think, and this is an offshoot, if I manage to scare the sh.’t out of you, that I’m gonna lay some soul on your head (beat you up). It will make me feel good. And you’ll respect me.
Instead, it only furthers the image that you, despite your size, are a childlike figure with the brain of a five year old boy. If you didn’t have your powerful size built by vitamin rich food and steroids. If we were both out in the desert lost and starving to death. You’d scream for your mother, tough guy!
This picture was staged and shot by white people who respect your ability to throw a ball and to look menacing…but that’s all. They mocked you, and you don’t even know it. This picture set racial understanding back at least five months.
I’m white. You may ask, what right do I have to comment on black male athletes? I have the right to be honest and tell you what I think. And the brutal truth is. You may succeed in scaring me, but I don’t respect you for it.
I think less of you. You guys out there who think this is cool should do everything you can to counteract the oft told story made by Nazis that blacks have smaller brainpans. If you help further that negative image by trying to show off, then you’re just a dupe who can throw a ball.
That’s all.
REFERENCES:
1. LeBron James Vogue cover criticized
2. Vote: Is LeBron’s Vogue cover racist? - NBA- nbcsports.msnbc.com
3. LeBron’s Vogue cover draws criticism
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