In light of all the recent events around the death of black men at the hands of police across America, I tried to take a 10 minute reprieve from all of the news about protest, pundits on each side of the issue and just listen to some sports radio while I was taking a ride in my car.   I tuned to the Mike Lupica show on ESPN, and for the record I have respect for Mike as a journalist, and sports writer and as an overall good guy.

While I am sure he doesn’t remember this I certainly remember playing golf at a corporate sponsored charity event when he rode up in his golf cart and  observed my futile attempts to drive the ball down the fairway.  He jumped out of his cart and walked up to my ball and hit it beautifully down the fairway for me; hopped back in his cart zoomed off.

For the record I couldn’t capitalize on the assistance he provided as I still could not hit the ball straight; but at least my final score was more respectable than it would have been without his assistance.

This brings me back to the focus of this article; Mike on his show decided on this day when I tuned in to get my mind off of the tragic events; that he wasn’t going to  talk sports; instead he was going to talk about the events in Ferguson around the death of Mike Brown as well as the death of Eric Garner at the hands of police and the contrasting reactions to the statements made by Lebron James and Charles Barkley respectively.

He re-read a statement that Lebron made the night before that he thought was very weak and neutral in his opinion yet it garnered raves from the media as demonstrating how conscious and courage’s Lebron was.  Mike simply could not understand why all the accolades for Lebron standing up when he really didn’t say anything controversial or partisan.

He went on to draw the contrast with the statements Charles Barkley made and while he qualified that he pretty much disagreed with everything Barkley said in what has become Charles annual dissertation on black pathology he praised Charles for having the testicular fortitude to take a position.  He said love him or hate him, agree with him or disagree with him which he reiterated  that he disagreed with most of Barkley’s explanations and perceptions of the black community, he gave him credit for being brave and outspoken.

I wanted to grab my phone and call in and tell Mike that he is dead wrong in his analysis of Barkley.  I wanted to tell him that he doesn’t understand that as a white guy; he is being bamboozled by Charles show of courage and outspokenness. What Charles has learned, as have many blacks before him is that if you make money from white society, corporations, interest you can benefit financially by degrading black people; especially poor black people.
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Charles has learned that disparaging black people has very little if any risk and great reward; so it is a pretend courage. It would be interesting to have the journalist who trot him out to say something outlandish against blacks to ask him to give his opinion on any pathology that might exist in the white community.

While I didn’t think Barkley merits much discussion since the more he talks the less you realize he knows and the more evident it becomes that he has some serious self hate issues and low racial self-esteem; I felt it necessary to write this article because the media continues to trot him out to perform.  I think for the record we should let the media know that we understand this game and we know   he doesn’t have the moral ground to judge anyone; a multi millionaire who can’t stay out of jail or trouble with the police himself is a poor choice to bring on the air to moralize black people.

What I would like to tell Mike Lupica  is that right now Barkley is not displaying courage but a lack of it. Now with the growing black lives matter movement against institutional racism and police oppression and the growing political consciousness  of young people  especially those in the NBA; he may find himself viewed very negatively by the very people he covers on TNT.

Believe it or not; just as many players voiced their outrage at Donald Sterling (former LA Clippers owner) for his comments that many found racist; and discussed boycotting games unless he sold the team; similar sentiments may be directed to the league and TNT to fire Mr. Barkley if he persist in his opportunistic pandering to the worse elements of society.

Time will tell….

Submitted by Christopher A. Clarke on 12/14/14. 

Christopher A. Clarke is managing editor of Black2020.Com and can be reached through the sites contact page.