Finally, I like SouthPark, but I'm no Token.

I was joking with you, Johnny. :-) There was an episode of South Park where Token almost says exactly what you were saying.

I wonder what Martin Luther King would think of Sheffield?

Having known a few people who knew King, among them my best friend in college (whose father was on King's Executive Staff), I would bet that whatever King might have said about Sheffield with a CBS Nightly News microphone thrust in his face, in private he would have been more than understanding of where Sheffield was coming from, though if he'd had the time he'd have spoken to Sheffield and shown him where he was mistaken. King was a hell of a lot more complex in his views than the cartoon character that gets presented to schoolchildren, and he spent at least as much of his energy trying to bring black people together as he did trying to reconcile black and white.

Thanks for the insight Andy--very cool.

Best Regards

John

P.S. I have a small pantheon of favourite historical personages and MLK has been on it for a long time.

A small anecdote: I was doing some work in the home of a black family back in 1991 (I was cleaning the duct work/ventilation system). In was the last of four homes on the day's schedule.

It was a big, three-story house and I thought they all were on another level since some were watching T.V. and others were in the kitchen getting supper ready. Anyway, while going down the hallway to a far bedroom I noticed this terrific portrait of King on the wall. For some odd reason while I was looking at it, I had this weird compulsion and took off my ball cap out of respect/tribute.

Turns out, not everyone was elsewhere and I wasn't entirely unobserved. Turns out grandma was laying down in a bedroom with the door slightly ajar. When I was working in a different bedroom she went to relay what I had done to the rest of the family and they insisted (and I mean, they insisted) I stay for supper. Since I was done for the day....

What a spread they put out too....the wife was an amazing cook--they had some spicy dishes that would set off a geiger counter. Not only that, they sent a glowing letter to my boss about what a terrific job I had on their house. Boss gave me a raise because of it.

Best Regards

John

Since it's Sunday morning and as always, I'm not in church, I might as well share another "King" story. Take it as you will.

The night King was killed, I was the only white person in an all black poolroom (long gone) in the 1400 block of Irving St NW in D.C. When I heard the horrible news on the radio, I actually was returning from having given one of the other guys a ride to his girlfriend's house.

When I got up the stairs to the poolroom, I'll never forget what I saw. There were about 20 or 30 players there, and they'd also heard the news on the radio. I was fighting back tears, as were about half the people there.

The other half were all laughing at us, racking the balls and playing away as if nothing had happened.

To make a long story short, one of the other guys and I had to leave before he got into serious trouble confronting this second group, the members of which thought that we mourners were a bunch of sentimental chumps and had no hesitation about telling us so. So we walked over to Mt. Pleasant St. and went into a mostly white bar in order to settle down---only to have to listen to some cracker ranting about how that "Communist" King had gotten what he deserved. At that point we felt like two men without a country, or at least without a bar, and so we left the bar and went our separate ways.

No moral to the story, but if you'd been there you never would have forgotten it, either.

(shakes head sadly)

I'm a Christian white* male--I'm embarrassed by how often I feel the need to apologize for belonging to all three groups.

Best Regards

John

*On the surface, my ethnic mix isn't apparent by looking at me.

I was hoping to hear a Malcolm X anecdote from you old folks.

i always figured being straight, white, male, and born in the US was Gods way of showing that He loves me extra.

i always forget that Kings comments on Vietnam "tarnished" his image so much. friggin crazy. if he were alive today, they'd be saying crap about him not supporting the Iraq War.

I was hoping to hear a Malcolm X anecdote from you old folks.

(Scratches head, then remembers one)

That same college friend of mine I mentioned earlier once stayed up all night reading Malcolm X's Autobiography. Couldn't put it down. But since he was white, there wasn't much in the way of practical political lessons he could take from it.

He did, however, discover somewhere in there that before Malcolm had been converted to the NOI, he used to get high by mixing a scoop of ground nutmeg in a glass of water. Or something like that. Don't ask me how much nutmeg or how much water, or whether this would work or not, since it's been years since I read the book myself, and anyway, I'm not interested.

But in any case, my friend figured that if it was good enough for Malcolm, it was good enough for him. So he tried it. Remember, this was in the golden age of recreational drugs, and even banana peel scrapings (as in the Donovan song) were considered passageways to some sort of higher consciousness.

So did it work? Well, sort of. According to his wife, who told me about it a year later, he couldn't take a dump for three days. He just shrugged it off as another one of Malcolm's subtle tricks to "fool the white devil."

And that's my "Malcolm X" story.

well john

at least you LOOK like a male...

hehhehheh

and you don't have to apologise for nothing. every person is an individual and is responsible for his/her own self and the way he/she is. and the people who say - well jerry falwell and george bush are "christians" and so "christians" are bad - they are stereotyping and that is just as bad a thing to do.

-----------
anyhow i know i am a dammfool for bothering to even say anything in a race, uh, discussion, but i am going to try.

reminding how many people here got their tightywhitys (hahahaha) in a knot because of the way i talk/write (not white enough)

first some of yall do not seem to want to get the difference between "black" and "Negro ancestry"

i understand PERFECTLY that if you put a picture of jose reyes and juan pierre side by side and say - which one is the black man - well, they BOTH are. duh. and neither of they would have played before 1947. DUH.

and i understand that the KKK hates any human who look like they might could have any Negro ancestor no matter WHERE they come from.

BUT

the question is - are american born Negros treated different then foreign born Negros by managers/GMs/coaches/other ballplayers.
- IF sheff and lofton say so then WHY do they say so?
- you ever wonder why american born black ballplayers don't talk like there's any difference between pale colored foreign born spanish speaking ballplayers like say ismael valdez and dark colored foreign born ballplayers like david ortiz?

- and this is not even beginning to get near the whole question of "talking white/acting white" or why derek jeter is "ethnic" and not "black" which sounds to me like a whole lot of people don't want to talk about - i mean really listen to - just say well this is how i see it/things should be seen by you so just STFU

and now i gotta get us ready to go to church

Mine isn't really a Malcolm X "story" but Malcolm X's formative years were spent in a town about 20 miles from my hometown, a town in our conference in sports and to which I traveled for said sports several times. I was first talked trash to in an organized sporting event in the gym where M.X. almost surely hung out.

When I first picked up his autobiography a few years after H.S., I said to myself, "Geez, I had no idea he grew up where he did ... you might have thought they'd have told us about his book in H.S. if just for that alone." I quickly realized the idiocy of that thought, and moved on to the rest of the book.

If you don't speak up for your fellow Black man, you aint being Black.

I think that pretty much sums up Sheffield's attitude. It's not about the percentage of African in you -- it's about sticking together and respecting where you've come from, where you've been, and where you're going.

And it's only about class when upwardly mobile Blacks turn their backs on those who are left behind.

Reading Howard Bryant's book, he relates that that's what many Black ballplayers (I think he mentions Sheffield) didn't think much of Bonds -- he was all about himself and he never bothered to help the young Black guys coming up through the system.

To put it another way, there's an old Hillbilly saying, "Don't get above your raisin'"

Here's the lyrics:

Now I got a gal that's sweet to me,
But she just ain't what she used to be
Just a little high headed; That's plain to see
Don't get above your raisin' Stay down to earth with me.

Now looky here gal don't you high head me
For I ain't forgot how you used to be
When you didn't have nothin' That was plain to see
Don't get above your raisin' Stay down to earth with me.

You need not hold your head so high
Every time you pass me by
For that don't mean nothin To me you see
Don't get above your raisin' Stay down to earth with me.

Now looky here gal you'd better be yourself
And leave that other stuff on the shelf
You're a country baby That's plain to see
Don't get above your raisin' Stay down to earth with me

I'm sure there's more going on than that, I don't agree with everything Sheffield says, and, as Andy pointed out above, extending forward to today, a lot of 'brothers' would consider you a fool for not looking out for #1.

As far as I know, Gary Sheffield has never dissed MLK.

Thanks for the stories, Andy and John. The world would be a better place if we paid a little more attention to the stories of our elders.

IF sheff and lofton say so then WHY do they say so?

Because if you took a poll of mainstream historians of the United States and asked them to use one word that best defines the country, the words "paranoia" and "excess" would be right near the top of the list. Sheffield and Lofton are merely fully acculturated Americans.

Hey, bc, your husband ever fix that cabinet?

I should be going to church as well, but I keep finding excuses not to go.

Pray for us.

117 -- Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.

sugar

guess you are one of the ones who doesn't WANT to listen and i am sorry about that.

117 -- Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

Maybe, maybe not.

But it sure impacts your perception of whether they are.

117 -- Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.

All this talk of paranoia is just part of a plot to make me paranoid, isn't it?

johnny

hunh? wha?????

cabinet? what cabinet? oh THAT cabinet.

oh yeh. fix

uhhhhhh. yeh. gonna get on it but right now i'm fixin to get the bbq ready and uh yeh i get to it

you know its been rainin and you DID want the back yard fixed and the gutters cleaned and uh

and i always pray for all yall

guess you are one of the ones who doesn't WANT to listen and i am sorry about that.

Not only did I listen, but I responded. And my response was a dig on white people, not black people. And America more than both.

Sheffield and Lofton are merely fully acculturated Americans.

Having known a few people who knew King, among them my best friend in college (whose father was on King's Executive Staff), I would bet that whatever King might have said about Sheffield with a CBS Nightly News microphone thrust in his face, in private he would have been more than understanding of where Sheffield was coming from, though if he'd had the time he'd have spoken to Sheffield and shown him where he was mistaken. King was a hell of a lot more complex in his views than the cartoon character that gets presented to schoolchildren, and he spent at least as much of his energy trying to bring black people together as he did trying to reconcile black and white.

Awesome. You should get to address the nation every MLK day. Perhaps this "MLK was against Affirmative Action" crap would be dead in its tracks...

I wonder if Sheff' feels Jackie Robinson was black. After all, a white man told him simply to "take it" passively for 2-3 years and he did so.

Well, I don't know the extent of Sheffield's historical knowledge, but while he might give Robinson some grief for his treatment of Robeson, I think it said a lot about Robinson that he later said he regretted his words.

Robinson was a complex guy in a tough spot who was doing his best. Obviously, I think on the political issues he was wrong, but there's no crime in trying your best, doing better than most and making mistakes...

Craig,

Your basic point was the one you made, but you missed my overall point. (Nice try, though). And, you did, in fact, come in and straighten things out, as I knew you would. I was also to some extent making a good-natured joke, albeit with a dart attached, which you justifiably fired back at me. Wok 77 and Wong 103, as well as BB chick 114, have made the key points on this better than I could.

****

As far as Jeter and Sheffield, I was in a long-term relationship with a mixed race woman several years ago, and although the romantic connection has been over for awhile, we are still in touch. Her background is different than Jeter's, in that both her parents were mixed, but, like Jeter, she is "beige", so to speak. It was, for her, as E-X pointed out, a complex thing. Whites would often ask "What are you?" because she didn't fit any preconceived "ethnic" appearance that they had in their minds. Blacks would sometimes mistreat her or shut her out, because she wasn't "all black", so on that level Sheffield's comments were not atypical from some stuff she deals with. In terms of her speech/communication patterns, etc, she is quite articulate and intelligent, but not in the "standard, educated" way. She loves Tupac and she also loves Miles Davis, but has "Grease" memorized from her childhood, FWIW.

So, as is always the case with these issues, they are a lot of complicated things going on along a spectrum"--culture, race, color, individual personalities etc. With the interesting stories about MLK and Malcolm X, it made me think of a teaching assignment early in my career at a GED facility. I had some black male students who were not clicking with the assigned US History stuff, so I made a four-week unit on MLK and Malcolm X, with "assimilation" vs. "separation" as a theme for building a knowledge base and as a springboard for discussion.

WRT Sheffield, someone made a good point in the Lofton thread, which is that it is possible that some of this might be Torre subconsciously, or consciously, treating his guys--the four ring-guys--differently than the new guys, so it may be that there is some lack of equity, which Sheffield and Lofton read as racial.

I wonder if Sheff' feels Jackie Robinson was black. After all, a white man told him simply to "take it" passively for 2-3 years and he did so.

I'm sure Sheff might frown on somebody willing to do that, but to be the better man and still turn the other cheek to blaze the way for his compatriots IMHO requires balls the size of grapefruits.

Robinson spoke out constantly once Rickey took the gag order off and was quiet initially to benefit everbody. I would be very surprised if, whatever his limitations, Gary Sheffield is not aware of that and is not aware that 1947 and 2007 are different times. But he might not be. Another lesson, IMO, that we can get from Robinson, is that the requirement from Rickey's standpoint, for him to play was to keep quiet.


I'm a Christian white* male--I'm embarrassed by how often I feel the need to apologize for belonging to all three groups.

If you're serious, no offense, but that is part of the problem with these discussions society-wide. People from the power groups often feel like they are on the defensive and as such get defensive. I am not a Christian, but I am a privileged, upper-middle class white male born with numerous advantages--which in some cases stemmed from others being hurt, in a sociohistorical sense. We are all citizens of history. On an individual level, though, I feel no need to apologize for any of that. I just try to be aware that other people see things I may not see if they don't fit those coordinates and they may feel resentment about that shared history.

125. SugarBear Blanks Posted: July 15, 2007 at 11:26 AM (#2441733)

Not only did I listen, but I responded. And my response was a dig on white people, not black people. And America more than both.

It didn't seem that way to me, either. Well, at least what it seemed like was that you are saying Lofton and Sheffield are paranoid.

I don't know, SBB, when I hear or read someone of color say that they've been a victim of discrimination or racism, I give them the benefit of the doubt. Of course, I want details, and if the details are flimsy, then I might back away from that.

In this case, I don't know what to think. Sheffield may be right. It's hard to determine.

And to flip the coin, I've also known scores of whites who throw around the N-word, and yet in terms of how they live are about as far from John Rocker as you can get.

I was watching the NBA Western Conference finals a few years ago at a buddy's house--San Antonio-Dallas. The guy's uncle was there--was about 70--and hated Nick Van Exel. So, as he was watching he dropped an N-bomb more or less every time Van Exel touched the ball. But, he cheered for other black players, and my buddy, who is not a racist, and whose views on race issues (and politics) are a lot different than mine, finally said, "Unc, why are calling Van Exel that but leaving out the other guys, like Duncan?"

"Duncan don't act like a ######."

Lofton and Sheffield are paranoid.

I can't speak to Lofton, but Sheffield may be a little paranoid, which doesn't mean he has not been subject to racial discrimination within and without MLB.

More Sheffiled, via Wong other thread

Noted comments wrt his son and the ones about motivation

It didn't seem that way to me, either. Well, at least what it seemed like was that you are saying Lofton and Sheffield are paranoid.

That's because you didn't seem to read the whole thing.

If America breeds paranoia, which it does -- check your history -- why would successful blacks be immune?

Call it "insecurity that God's unique bounty will be taken away" if you don't like "paranoia."

And who would be more susceptible to that than a multi-millionaire of a race treated as awfully as whites have treated blacks?

(Go to Google and look up Richard Hofstadter.)

I can't speak to Lofton, but Sheffield may be a little paranoid, which doesn't mean he has not been subject to racial discrimination within and without MLB.

As you say, they aren't mutually exclusive.

It wouldn't shock me if the Yankee "empire" writ large didn't like outspoken black guys, but Big Stein doesn't have as soft a spot for many people like the one he has for Doc and Straw.