Black men in America are not just in the doldrums, they are in a tailspin. They don't seem able to do anything right - politics, sports. They can't even sing anymore. All they can do is rap. What is that?
Black men led the Civil Rights struggle in America. I'm not just talking about Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. I'm talking Eldridge Cleaver, H. Rap Brown, Huey P. Newton, and Stokely Carmichael. The voice of America's black man blared like a thousand trumpets, and black communities across this nation heeded their calls. Today, barely a peep comes out of the black men in America's congress. Thank God for our black women. These sisters fight with both hands. Such bravery makes them the undisputed voice of black America today.
Fight? Black men don't fight anymore? They shoot. That is one thing they excel at: shooting other blacks. At that, those men are world-beaters.
There was a time when black men were the scourge of the fight game. Of the top five weight classes in boxing, blacks ruled them all. In the most storied of those divisions - the heavyweights - nine of the top ten fighters on Earth were African-American, including Muhammed Ali, Joe Frazier, and George Foreman. Recently, Britain's Tyson Fury took on America's top fighter, Devonte Wilder, 6' 7", 245-pound slugger, and wiped the floor with him. Why does that matter? Because fighting matters. Fight reflects a people's spirit - its courage, its will. With his fist, Joe Louis galvanized, not only a race but a nation. Thirty years later, Muhammed Ali inspired a world.
Blacks in baseball are in worst shape than those in boxing. There are no more Willie Mays' or Hank Aarons in baseball. In fact, there is not a single African-American play in all of Major League Baseball that bears mentioning. You may say, "Blacks still dominate basketball." Yes, but even there, they are slipping. The last three NBA Most Valuable Player awards went to foreign-born men: Giannis Antentekoumpo in '19 and '20 and Jokovic in '21.
We've changed. Time was when black did not sing like normal folks; did not fight normal, either. Rather, we did it like we had been infused. It was something. I suppose, that steadily coalesced within us - imbued over centuries of abuse - a curious and wondrous compensation called "soul". It peaked in us in the 20th century and manifesting itself in an awakening that bordered on mysticism. The Negro League's Josh Gibson hit baseballs farther than any human in history. A goliath named Wilt Chamberlain set NBA records that will never be broken, like averaging 50 points a game over an 81 game season. And fighters named Jack Johnson and Sugar Ray Robinson sent white men scurrying for answers that did not come for another hundred years.
Came the jazz men - black musicians who rose like zeniths to make music never heard before. It was "soul", and black folks felt it. We found comfort in our blackness - a sanctuary even white folks envied, and longed to join. Yeah, being black in America was not so bad, after all.
That was then, as they say, this is now. Our "awakening" has soured into our "ineptitude". Black men today can barely pass a baton. They can't fight. They can't sing.
Black men at the height of their power had white men just where they wanted them - back on their heels, daring not to further prod these ascendant people. Then, came the "ineptitude" and with it our waning stature, and the inevitable loss of respect. That is where the black man is now. He has lost the respect earned over a century of struggle.
The white man never respected the slave; neither did he respect the sharecropper But, the respected man who could carve out a niche their own terms like the black man did in America. Too bad we carved it in balsam wood and not stone.
