Stephen A Smith again

I take a long time to get to writing about things. This happens mainly because I always have other things to get to first, and it works for me because I don't want to be leaping to conclusions, so having time to reflect and consider strikes me as positive. Also, it does give people time to get into more trouble.

Wednesday I posted about Stephen A Smith's defense of Mark Cuban. That was in late May, so the dust should have been pretty well settled, but I kept seeing things about him, here and there. Some of that was his defense of Tony Dungy, but then things really exploded with his comments on Ray Rice's two-game suspension for knocking his then-fiancée unconscious. Smith put his foot in it, caught some blow-back, and continued digging deeper with his attempts to explain himself, and why he really didn't say anything awful; he had just been inarticulate.

By today there is a somewhat better apology with no explaining thrown in, which I suspect has happened because someone has told him it was necessary - he has the exact same demeanor that he had before. Still, I want to examine the original comments more closely, and I am doing this relatively promptly, which I know is unusual. Sorry for anyone who gets whiplash.

First of all, I want to thank NJ.com for putting up a transcript. I had listened to the recording a few times, but there is a lot in there, and there are some actual problems with articulation - though not the ones Smith thinks he has - so having someone capture it in print is very helpful:

http://www.nj.com/rutgersfootball/index.ssf/2014/07/heres_the_transcript_of_stephen_a_smiths_comments_on_women_provoking_men.html

There are some interest points leading up to this. Last year Smith was able to interview Floyd Mayweather talk about how awful his 87 days in prison were, without asking about the battery domestic violence and harassment charges that got him there. Of course, other things he has said indicate that he found it hard to believe Mayweather's guilt. I mean, who ever heard of a boxer hitting someone?

http://pwrfwd.net/2013/04/29/how-you-talk-around-domestic-violence-espn-style/

https://storify.com/TimBaffoe/stephen-a-smith-s-twitter-history-suggests-he-s-so

I also want to reiterate he is always on the side of the structural power. Cuban's racism and Dungy's homophobia are understandable, and the big strong males who make millions of dollars well, maybe she's lying, or maybe she just had it coming. Okay, no, she didn't really have it coming, because that's a horrible thing, and it would be illegal, but she still started it.

Now, just for fun, the point by point analysis:

“We know you have no business putting your hands on a woman. I don’t know how many times I got to reiterate that. But-"

You will need to reiterate it at least once for every "but". When you say something true and follow it with "but", that's a pretty good indicator that crap is coming.

"as a man who was raised by women, see I know what I’m going to do if somebody touches a female member of my family. I know what I’m going to do, I know what my boys are going to do. I know what, I’m going to have to remind myself that I work for the Worldwide Leader, I’m going to have to get law enforcement officials involved because of what I’m going to be tempted to do."

As I condemn violence I admit my own proclivity for it, except that my violence will be in your defense, not against you. Me strong man! But I'm down with women; I was raised by one!

"But what I’ve tried to employ the female members of my family, some of who you all met and talked to and what have you, is that again, and this what, I’ve done this all my life,"

He's really starting to stumble here, but I think he is saying that he has at times gotten female relatives jobs and his male cohorts have met them, which makes the upcoming reference to hands being put on women fascinating.

"let’s make sure we don’t do anything to provoke wrong actions,"

Comment withheld at this time.

"because if I come, or somebody else come, whether it’s law enforcement officials, your brother or the fellas that you know, if we come after somebody has put their hands on you, it doesn’t negate the fact that they already put their hands on you."

Okay, this sounds to me like at least one of his relatives has been harassed in a job he has procured for her. I'm guessing more of a groping than a beating, but again, why is he making it about him riding to the defense?

"So let’s try to make sure that we can do our part in making sure that that doesn’t happen."

But what about those men that are serial abusers?

“Now you got some dudes that are just horrible and they’re going to do it anyway,"

Thanks for noticing!

"and there’s never an excuse to put your hands on a woman."

I'm not sure why you would feel the need to say that, unless...

"But domestic violence or whatever the case may be, with men putting their hands on women, is obviously a very real, real issue in our society. And I think that just talking about what guys shouldn’t do, we got to also make sure that you can do your part to do whatever you can do to make, to try to make sure it doesn’t happen."

Is that with the horrible guys that would do it anyway, or...

"We know they’re wrong. We know they’re criminals. We know they probably deserve to be in jail. In Ray Rice’s case, he probably deserves more than a 2-game suspension which we both acknowledged."

These would be much stronger statements without the "probably".

"But at the same time, we also have to make sure that we learn as much as we can about elements of provocation. Not that there’s real provocation, but the elements of provocation,"

It's not real, but study it. Why?

"you got to make sure that you address them, because we’ve got to do is do what we can to try to prevent the situation from happening in any way. And I don’t think that’s broached enough, is all I’m saying."

He's right. We spend far too much time talking about how people who make a living from violence for entertainment end up having violence spill into their personal lives, and way too much time talking about the objectification of women, or how people with wealth and fame abuse that. We totally need to spend more time talking about how you can prevent hair-trigger tempers from going off. There's not enough people talking about how women need to know when to shut their mouths.

"No point of blame.”

I am so glad you said that; I was totally confused.

And yet, I do not think Smith is really a bad person. I think he is sadly lacking in self-awareness, and kind of an idiot, but the mistakes he makes are really common ones, and make a lot of people feel really satisfied. "See? The black guy says it too!"

So he is a frustration, individually, but he is part of a larger systemic problem, and I'm still trying to wade through what I want to say about many things.

Anyway, here are some good links related to this story, and my original post.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2014/07/25/ray-rices-suspension-and-stephen-a-smiths-impossible-domestic-violence-question/

http://deadspin.com/i-do-not-believe-women-provoke-violence-says-stephen-a-1611060016?

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/07/hoodies.html

Band Review: Black Sonic Revolver

Black Sonic Revolver is an independent band out of Manchester, and they stand as good representatives of one of my favorite music scenes. With a fairly minimalist set-up they deliver a rich sound that evokes a lot of classic rock and British Invasion sound.

The guitars sometimes seem a little fuzzy, and sometimes a little more jangle, but they always combine with the percussion and vocals in a way that gives the right groove. It's not that it would really serve as dance music (maybe "Play Along"), but it is good listening.

They were up for review a few months ago, it said they were supposed to come out with a new album on May 5th, so I put them on the back burner, checking periodically. Monday as I was selecting this week's bands the album was suddenly there, and had just gotten there, with a release date of June 21st, 2014. Sometimes things just work out.

B.S.R. is available via iTunes and Amazon, and can be previewed on Spotify.

https://www.facebook.com/BlackSonicRevolver

https://itunes.apple.com/album/id892433907

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L99I85A/ref=dm_ws_sp_ps_dp?ie=UTF8&qid=1406328138&sr=8-2

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbvA044gbdB697VKhpGj0dQ

https://twitter.com/BSRevolver

Band Review: He Whose Ox Is Gored

He Whose Ox Is Gored is a four member band from Seattle, Washington.

While they would generally be considered a rock band, a friend of the band coined the term "Doomgaze", and that seems to fit the combination of heavy and introspective. They also reminded of Torche a bit, and sludge, but there are otherworldly elements that they introduce with synthesizers that make sludge not quite the right fit.

Songs border on the instrumental, with dramatic delivery. Their newest EP, with tracks "Nightshade" and "Charming the Snake", gives a good feel for the rest of the music. Music is available via Bandcamp, but the band is also touring now with dates primarily in the West. Tour dates can be found at http://theobelisk.net/obelisk/tag/he-whose-ox-is-gored/.

There was also a pretty good interview at http://echoesanddust.com/2014/07/interview-brian-mclelland-of-he-whose-ox-is-gored%E2%80%8F/.

https://www.facebook.com/hewhoseoxisgoredseattle

http://hewhoseoxisgored.bandcamp.com/music

http://www.reverbnation.com/hewhoseoxisgored

https://twitter.com/OxisGored

Hoodies

There are a lot of interesting things about what is going on with Sterling and the Clippers, which I may get back to. For now, I want to talk more about Mark Cuban and Stephen A Smith.

I do find it kind of interesting that there has been some concern about holding team owners to any expectations for how they conduct themselves, because it makes me wonder what would be found upon closer inspection, but that would just be speculation about rich people being awful; I'm not going to worry about that right now.

So let's just go right to the quote from Cuban's interview with Inc.com:

"If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it's late at night, I'm walking to the other side of the street. And if on that side of the street, there's a guy that has tattoos all over his face, white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere, I'm walking back to the other side of the street, and the list goes on of stereotypes that we all live up to and are fearful of."

Let's break that down a bit. In the admittedly small group of people that I can think of with face tattoos, there's only one who does not have a prison record that I know of, and that's Lars Frederiksen of Rancid, whom you could reasonably describe as a hard-core punk rocker.

Frederiksen could have a rap sheet that I don't know about, but he also worked out skateboard donations for shelter teens, so he may be the exception that proves the rule. Regardless, I know that a some of the better-known facial tattoos are either signs of having killed or willingness to kill, so that is a pretty serious thing. I don't like to judge people by looks, but if someone does not feel safe around a stranger with a shaved head and face tattoos, they may have a point.

Now, what was that other scary thing? A black kid in a hoodie. Right. You know who wears hoodies? Everyone. My kindergarten teacher sister wears hoodies. Middle-aged people out jogging wear hoodies, but also younger athletes, because they are often part of a team uniform, and marching band members often wear hoodies. I just saw a picture of Mark Zuckerberg in a hoodie, so very rich people can wear them. Yes, there are people who question his business practices, but I don't think anyone's going to cross the street out of fear of Mark Zuckerberg.

I saw a pink "Bride" hoodie that I believe was intended for bachelorette parties. There are lots of superhero-themed hoodies out there, so fans of comic books and movies apparently wear hoodies. I guess the scary part is just that he's black.

I don't remember hoodies being a big deal before Trayvon Martin's death -- before that most sartorial criticism seemed to be directed at sagging pants and backward baseball caps -- but okay, if Trayvon is going to be the symbol of scary black youth let's go back and get that story straight: he was unarmed. He was not the danger. He was walking back to his father's house from the store, which is neither illegal or dangerous to others, and it was only dangerous to himself because of racism that associates dark skin with crime and fear.

That brings us to ESPN commentator Stephen A Smith defending Cuban. "All of those folks ignored the part that he said about the white guy!" No, they didn't. The part about the white guy presented a false equivalency, and Smith bought into it.

"Sometimes it is about how you represent yourself, it is about how you present yourself."

Except that if you are wearing jeans and a hoodie, presenting yourself the way countless white teenagers do, you will still look like a criminal because you are black. I guess you need to wear suits all the time, but then I just read about a black man getting mocked behind his back for wearing a suit to an interview at a tech company, because that meant he wouldn't fit in with their casual vibe. There's no clear path to victory there. The game is rigged.

"And I don’t care who in the black community disagrees with me — I’m not interested in their disagreement on this particular issue because they are not looking at the bigger picture here."

For this, Smith has been called refreshing and brave. Standing with power is not brave.

Smith called Cuban honest, but accepting the surface story is not honest.

What would really be honest and brave is really taking an honest look at the system and finding the injustices in it. They have both made it, so to speak, so there's less incentive for them to do so, but again, just staying comfortable is neither honest nor brave.

Yes, some people make it. Barack Obama became president. Stephen A Smith became a sports commentator. Morgan Freeman became a respected actor. Yes there was hard work in all of that, but that doesn't negate all of the obstacles that are set up and have been in place to weaken education, demoralize, prevent the accumulation of wealth, and to criminalize so that no one blinks when you say an unarmed teenager looked dangerous because of his hoodie.

That is a corrupt system that leads to abuses. It means you can have for-profit prisons where people get warehoused for violations that have nothing to do with public safety and that are not equally enforced. It means that corners will be cut on food and medical care.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/09/20/2658701/private-prison-firms-quotas-cells-coffers/

http://www.startribune.com/262737551.html

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2014/06/30/3454874/michigan-prisons-aramark-contract/

http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/america-tonight/america-tonight-blog/2013/12/2/arizona-s-privatizedprisonhealthcareunderfireafterdeaths.html

It means a water department will cut off water in areas that are black, and they say it's for late payments, but the abandoned properties are still getting water, paid bills are somehow not resulting in the water service being restored, and it really all seems to be a move toward privatizing the water company and emptying certain neighborhoods for redevelopment.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/22/naacp-says-detroits-water-shutoffs-are-racially-mo/

It means that black people who are in auto accidents and need help are shot by the people who should be helping them, but it's not a crime because who wouldn't be scared of a black person?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bennett-l-gershman/i-didnt-mean-to-kill-reni_b_4325738.html

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2013-09-17/news/sns-rt-us-usa-police-accident-20130915_1_unarmed-man-front-door-taser

It seems that there would be a lot of work for brave and honest people to do here. It's a pity that with the resources Smith and Cuban have, honesty and courage are not among them.

Related posts:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/05/racist-music-videos.html

Also, this is a pretty good piece on the Sterling situation:

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/business_law/2014/05/nba-owners-rights-a-sterling-guillotine-stock-for-all-clippers-other-thoughts.html

Respectability

This last round of reading softened me up on W.E.B. DuBois a bit.

One thing I have found is that though I am getting over it, I was once very easily swayed by the opinions that I read if they at least sounded logical. So if other writers were frustrated with DuBois, I picked that up, and so when I was reading more recently about his efforts against Marcus Garvey, my response was more like "It figures" than to reflect more on that.

Reading about Ida B Wells, it was clear that this sort of thing went on all the time. This should not have been a surprise. I have seen the same thing happen with dog rescue groups. It doesn't matter that everyone cares about the dogs; this person disagrees on how to do it, or whom to work with, and bitter feuds develop, turning people with at least some common goals into bitter enemies who sabotage each other.

I could be mad at DuBois some more for the sake of Wells, and if it comes to a fight, I will always choose her. One thing that helped though was there was more to be mad at with Booker T. Washington.

It may not be fair to vilify Washington either, but the part that I keep getting stuck on is that he thought that respectability would be the was to stop lynching. He knew that most lynchings weren't really about the black men raping white women - he admitted that. He should also have been able to see that the industrial-based education he focused on would not bring that much respect if Southern white leaders were so willing to see it happen. He still promoted the idea that acting nice would solve the problems. Achieve respectability.

Respectability was what drew the lynching! Financial success was attacked. The Memphis Lynching that politicized Wells so much had nothing to do with rape; it was an effort to remove financial competition. Yes, when the arguments would come up, people would talk about protecting women, but that's not why they did it.

I am more aware of this because of seeing similar calls for respectability on the internet. Respectability is not a solution. Clothing or language use may be cited as a reason to dismiss what someone says, but they would find another reason, because the real problem is the ideas.

I'm not saying that presentation never matters. In the 60s marchers dressed well and were polite and non-violent because they were fighting a stereotype, and those images were carried by television and they affected people. You may also have noticed that they didn't end racism or oppression.

I guess there are two points I want to make here. One is to not believe that if you just ask nicely enough and are patient enough, it will all work out. There is no precedent of that being true. The marches were important for image, but they were done in conjunction with economic pressure like boycotts, and court cases, and nothing came easily despite everyone being very clean and polite.

The related point, and this is convenient since asking nicely does not work, is that niceness is not owed. There is no obligation to make sure that the person who is profiting from your oppression does not have to feel uncomfortable about it.

This is something John Howard Griffin wrote about his experiences with Black Like Me:

“Our townspeople wanted to ‘keep things peaceful’ at all costs. They said I had ‘stirred things up’. This is laudable and tragic. I, too, say let us be peaceful; but the only way to do this is first to assure justice. By keeping ‘peaceful’ in this instance, we end up consenting to the destruction of all peace—for so long as we condone injustice by a small but powerful group, we condone the destruction of all social stability, all real peace, all trust in man’s good intentions toward his fellow man."

You can't keep the peace if you don't have it in the first place. When people are telling you how to act, it's important to understand what goals are really being served.

Related posts:

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2014/02/nice-and-kind.html

No television pilots here

I think I have some more things to say about my Black History Month reading for the year, if I can come up with the right order and words.

One of the books I read was Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves by Art T. Burton.

I had added it to my reading list as soon as I found out that the book existed. It sounded interesting, but also I had this idea that maybe there could be a television series in there. Reeves sounded heroic and fascinating. It could fill a need for providing some diversity and undoing some of the historical whitewashing of the past. Also, there has been some success with shows set in the West - "Deadwood", "Hell on Wheels" - it just seemed like there could be some potential there. Once I was reading the book I felt differently.

It's not that Reeves was not heroic or fascinating. He was pretty cool, and while the book was pretty dry as it brought out every bit of source material imaginable, there was still some cool information. There was also a lot that was depressing.

The article about the book had mentioned a large family, but not how much his travel for the job would have kept him away from them. It didn't mention him being away when his first wife died, or some of his children getting in trouble with the law. It didn't mention the frequent slander that newspapers printed. He got praise too, and had loyal friends, including Belle Star, but there were some downsides. The article didn't mention that he found the Plessy v. Ferguson ruling demoralizing, though that shouldn't have been surprising at all if I had been thinking about dates.

Also, things ended up sounding somewhat less interesting in the book. While the commitment to accuracy was honorable, it made for a more boring tale, because often there are records of the people arrested during a certain run, but not how the cases resolved, or often that they were acquitted. The result is that often it feels like even being a remarkably successful lawman didn't do much good, and that can be totally valid, but there are already plenty of shows like that.

I'd had similar thoughts about Chang Apana, a Hawaiian detective who was closely associated with the Charlie Chan character, so I read Yunte Huang's Charlie Chan: The Untold Story of the Honorable Detective and His Rendezvous with American History as well.

It was pretty similar. There are more successfully resolved cases. He took down an opium den full of forty people with a crack of his bullwhip. Yes, the reputation he already had helped, but it's still pretty impressive.

And as impressive as he was, and respected, his chief of police still decided to try and get everyone of color to take early retirement, and despite Chang Apana's determination to fight it, illness ended up making retirement necessary. Also, the reason they wanted to force people out is that some white people were convicted of manslaughter for what was really the murder of a brown person, and even though higher ups voided the sentence after an hour in jail, you can't have things like that happening.

Basically, nothing felt the way I thought it would. There were amazing people with adventures, and they did defy stereotypes, but it wasn't this exultant thing, maybe because the stereotypes remained so deeply rooted.

It may simply be that I got into a darker frame of mind, and so nothing seemed promising anymore. That being said, I never really thought I would be the person developing those materials, so maybe there is someone out there who can do it right, and they will know when they read it. Maybe I will draw some short comics. Right now I am still in a learning phase, and I feel like something interesting is going to develop in my own life soon, but I do not yet know what that is going to be.

Band Review: XO Stereo

I was a little reluctant to do XO Stereo now, because I can only find on song by them. However, it's a pretty good song, and is for sale, so maybe that is reason enough:

https://itunes.apple.com/sg/album/show-tell-single/id695223667

Based in Los Angeles, XO Stereo is a rock band with members from The Hollowed (Cooper Campbell, vocals), From First to Last (Jon Weisberg, bass), and LoveHateHero (Justin Whitesel, guitar and keyboards).

Having listened a little to the other bands, I feel like XO Stereo is a little more sophisticated. That may be that everyone is more experienced, or just the way that this collaboration comes out, but it could also be that basing an opinion on only one song is highly speculative.

It at least seems fair to say that they should do more.

https://www.facebook.com/xostereo/timeline

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgI2uJPClQOQrXzeSR8yT-g

https://twitter.com/XOStereoBand