All of those defenders of freedom of speech/thought need to step back and rethink your position when confronted with NBA star Kobe Bryant’s unconscionable refutation of groupthink, as he had the audacity to condemn blacks who automatically promote every black individual (or black cause) wronged in America as a result of the intentional and conscious biases that exist.
How dare Kobe Bryant chastise black people for immediately finding solidarity with a cause or black individual? How dare he observe facts and have such bold nerve as to form his own opinion?
April Fools.
Bryant’s comments have stirred a hornet’s nest of racially charged commentary from the black community, all because the long-time face of the NBA suggested to the New Yorker magazine that black individuals should think for themselves:
“I won’t react to something just because I’m supposed to, because I’m an African-American,” Bryant told the magazine. “That argument doesn’t make any sense to me. So we want to advance as a society and a culture, but, say, if something happens to an African-American we immediately come to his defense? Yet you want to talk about how far we’ve progressed as a society? Well … then don’t jump to somebody’s defense just because they’re African-American. You sit and you listen to the facts just like you would in any other situation, right? So I won’t assert myself.”
The comments came from a question by writer Ben McGrath related to the members of the NBA’s Miami Heat donning hoodies, in honor of Trayvon Martin, and lowering their heads in solemn memory of the dead teen.
To his everlasting credit in my opinion and his everlasting damnation in the opinion of many others, Bryant found the players of the Heat immediately siding with Martin to be a regressive step, instead of a moment marking progress.
Even before George Zimmerman had been charged with a crime, the Heat’s LeBron James and DeWayne Wade in 2012 used hash tags on Twitter reading #WeWantJustice and took to the NBA courts with the same message and “RIP Trayvon Martin” scrawled on their shoes.
This public statement was occurring as President Barack Obama, perhaps the greatest April Fool of them all, uttered his infamous, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
The facts surrounding the night of George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin’s confrontation are secondary to most in the black community, who reflexively sided with Martin because the pigment of his skin was much darker than that of the half white-half Hispanic Zimmerman.
Don’t believe me?
Just look at black-centric websites such as Newsone.com or TheRoot.com collectively having fits of rage over Kobe Bryant’s donning his Uncle Tom hat and daring to be different in his views of the Martin-Zimmerman story.
Unlike Spike Lee, the director who tweeted out Zimmerman’s address in 2012 (almost asking for vigilante justice), Bryant didn’t rush to make a comment during the public lynching of George and simultaneous public deification of Trayvon Martin.
Let me just put it bluntly: The fact that the black community has received Bryant’s well-reasoned commentary with such an uproar of degradation and hatred showcases the absolute absurdity of America in 2014.
George Zimmerman, in alignment with the provisions held forth in the Constitution of the United States, was found by a jury of his peers to be innocent of all crimes to which he was charged. To say that the process was intentionally performed improperly, to say that each individual involved in the process intentionally behaved improperly due to a core value of bigotry is to suggest that a basic fundamental within American society is as rotten as a month-old corpse in the summer sun and that we are no futher along with efforts at racial harmony than we were in 1850.
Many in the black community – no, most in the black community – will never entertain negative facts surrounding Trayvon Martin or the events surrounding his death.
Axiomatically, it is understood he is innocent, that George Zimmerman benefited from white-Hispanic privilege.
FoxNews.com reported on some of the criticism spawned from the black community as a result of Kobe’s noticeably contrarian views on Trayvon:
Jim Brown tells the New Yorker, “[Kobe] is somewhat confused about culture, because he was brought up in another country.” Jamilah King at Colorlines lambasted Bryant for this “stingy insistence on clinging to a ‘post-racial’ identity, this very old, conservative notion that black people should not be treated differently in this country – despite all of the evidence, like Martin’s death, that they are.”
Is this the same Kobe Bryant the sports world fell in love with nearly 18 years ago for his well-spoken eloquent nature? Is this the same Kobe the black community championed for having grown up abroad and what a “well-rounded, sophisticated” individual that made him? It is, but that was before his well-rounded, eloquent nature derived an opinion that flew in the face of the professional race hustlers and propagandists.
Considering all the evidence Rachel Jeantel gave during her testimony in the trial of George Zimmerman, that anyone still questions the innocence of Zimmerman leads me to believe a large portion of the American population is still under the impression the earth is flat.
In all seriousness, go watch Rachel Jeantel’s appearance on CNN’s Piers Morgan show from July 2013. That those supporters of Trayvon Martin didn’t immediately burn their hoodies upon seeing this display is a sign intelligent life in America is waning.
Kobe Bryant, who spent most of his younger years in Italy, didn’t grow up in the authentically black communities of America. On the one hand, this meant he was not exposed to some of the racial biases that can exist to a degree throughout America, but this also means he was not exposed to those who attempt to instill within every American youth the belief that the sole reason negativity enters one’s life is due to his minority status.
It is perhaps Bryant’s upbringing that allowed him to come to his own conclusions regarding the Martin-Zimmerman affair. It is also this upbringing and the lack of racial indoctrination that possibly gives Bryant the ability to form opinions regarding such events from a much more logical standpoint than those, such as a Jim Brown, who have been brainwashed with victimology since birth.
Media wishing to interview John Rocker, please contact [email protected].
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