Wednesday, January 29, 2014

How dangerous can a narrative be?

Photo shot by Ross D. Franklin of the Associated Press on Oct. 13, 2013.


 By Will Brown

One man prefers to stay in his lane and let his actions speak for him. The other speaks and then backs up his bravado with performance. Both men are highly successful, relatively well compensated, college educated men from California communities where stories of such success are underreported.

Yet, if you watched or listened to the narrative that is being formed about Marshawn Lynch and Richard Sherman one might think these two Seattle Seahawks teammates spent more time in San Quentin than honing their craft at universities on separate sides of San Francisco Bay.

Lynch is the Seahawks running back who was fined $50,000 by the National Football League earlier this month for not speaking with the media. The Oakland-bred former Cal-Berkley running back, who was undoubtedly pressured to speak at Tuesday’s Super Bowl media day, spoke for six minutes before saying the scene wasn’t for him and left.

His departure was not well received.


USA Today said Lynch “ditched media day, then swore on live television”, NFL.com dubbed it “Marshawn Lynch’s Media Day misadventure”, ESPN.com said “Lynch snubs Super Bowl media.” The Denver Post didn’t mention Lynch, while the Seattle Times simply posted a link to Lynch’s two-minute interview later Tuesday with Deion Sanders.

Why should the dearth of words from a 27-year-old football player be scrutinized with such fervor? Because less than a fortnight ago Lynch’s 25-year-old teammate, Sherman, was vilified for speaking with passion and emotion after the biggest achievement of his professional life.



If you are a black man and uber successful it’s only a matter of time before someone believes it’s their right to remind you what happened to Icarus when he flew too close to the sun.

Men like Michael Vick, Ray Lewis and Kobe Bryant are among those who brought the downfall on themselves through their actions. Conversely, there are men like Sherman and Lynch who are more complex than what is characterized by the sports media.

It’s not solely professionals that receive such characterizations.

DeBray Bonner was a high school running back in rural South Texas. He spent two years at a small-school power, got in trouble, transferred to a high school 40 miles away, didn’t fit in there and wound up at Woodsboro High School. He parlayed a very good senior season into a scholarship offer from Minot State, a Division II program in North Dakota.

On the day Bonner signed a National Letter of Intent to play for the Beavers, last February, the man responsible for editing the story written about Bonner called him a “thug.” The supervisor of this editor also called Bonner a “thug” despite the fact neither man had ever met the running back or his family.

Bonner, nor his family, ever found out that the local newspaper thought so little of him.
He did not make it to Minot State, instead enrolling at Allan Hancock College in Santa Maria, Calif. to play football and earn a two-year degree. If you have ever seen Woodsboro, Texas, you would know just how much of an accomplishment that is.

But, let’s return to Lynch.

If one paid closer attention to what Lynch said in the interview with Sanders instead of what was said about him, they would find a man who prefers to let his actions speak for him.

Sanders: You camera-shy? You just don't want to talk, really.
Lynch: I'm just about that action, boss.
Sanders: You about to go get it. You just like to do.
Lynch: That's what it is. I ain't never seen no talking winning nothing. Been like that since I was little. I was raised like that.

Oakland and Compton are two California cities that have produced their fair share of criminals, thugs and scoundrels. Lynch and Sherman are not among them.



For more than a week, a segment of the sporting world grumbled how Sherman, could be so arrogant and classless in the immediate aftermath of victory. Yet, when Lynch chooses to let his actions speak louder than his words, he’s mischaracterized as a miscreant.

“Race played a major part in how my behavior was received, but I think it went beyond that,” Sherman wrote on SportsIllustrated.com this week.  “Would the reaction have been the same if I was clean-cut, without the dreadlocks? Maybe if I looked more acceptable in conservative circles, my rant would have been understood as passion. These prejudices still play a factor in our views because it’s human nature to quickly stereotype and label someone. We all have that.”

Lynch and Sherman are the newest characters in a narrative that has not changed in the 15 years since Stephen Balkaran wrote an essay on Mass Media and Racism in the October 1999 edition of Yale Political Quarterly.

“One of the main reasons for the inadequate coverage of the underlying causes of racial stereotypes in the U.S. is that the condition of blacks itself is not a matter of high interest to the white majority. Their interest in black America is focused upon situations in which their imagined fear becomes a real problem.”

Laughs and liveliness,

-Wb
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