Mother Jones - May 01, 2018

ARTCREDIT TK

MIXED MEDIA

segment went online, the demagogic Fox

News host Laura Ingraham told James

to “shut up and dribble.” Her response,

so harsh and absolute—reminiscent of

Trump saying football owners should

“get that son of a bitch off the fi eld” for

kneeling during the national anthem—

was a reminder: In theory, sports were

where athletes were seen as most Amer-

ican, but in reality, the minute a black

player spoke about the American condi-

tion with even a hint of dissidence, the

white public believed it could revoke his

license to speak up.

Of all the black employees in the hist-

ory of the United States, it was the ball-

players who were the most infl uential

and most important, the ones who made

the money. The black thinkers—the doc-

tors, lawyers, scientists, and intellectu-

als—were roadblocked by segregation.

Playing ball was the fi rst occupation that

allowed black Americans passage in the

mainstream, permission to attend white

universities and integrate white neigh-

borhoods—a chance to be American

without the asterisk. Black entertainers,

for all their prominence, were never

proof that America was fair, because John

Coltrane didn’t have a scoreboard, a fi nal

buzzer that told you coldly and defi ni-

tively who won. America liked that. Ball-

players were the Ones Who Made It.

And being the Ones Who Made It

soon came with the responsibility to

speak for the people who had not made

it, for whom the road was still blocked.

The responsibility became a tradition so

ingrained that it hung over every player.

The tradition became the black athlete’s

coat of arms, and the players who upheld

it—Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali,

Tommie Smith, John Carlos—would one

day be taught in the schools. The ones

who did not—the commercial superstars

who followed, like O.J. Simpson, Michael

Jordan, Tiger Woods—could never

escape the criticism that they shrank

from their larger duty to the people. The

tradition was so strong that it even had

an informal nickname: the Heritage.

Before his disgrace, Simpson was

America’s fi rst commercially viable black

athlete, creating pathways perfected by

Jordan and Woods, who enjoyed so

much access to the good life that the sac-

rifi ces of Ali and the old guard seemed

quaint and unnecessary. The Heritage is

now back, with a diff erence: The player

with the biggest number of zeros on his

paycheck has grown to realize that being

insulated from the fi ght by his money is

no longer a compliment—or a victory.

LeBron James is the fi rst black athlete

since Ali to be both the best, most recog-

nizable player in American professional

sports and one who makes unequivocal

support for black America inseparable

from his public persona. Unlike Colin

Kaepernick, who wasn’t a good enough

player to protect himself from severe ret-

ribution by fans, media, and ultimately

his league, James’ once-in-a- generation

ability shields him, allows him to be

himself. James does not hide from his

liberal politics, publicly supporting

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. He

loudly rejects Trump and his policies,

and unlike Jordan, who kept himself at

a corporate remove from social issues,

James wrote a check and showed his

face, unafraid of off ending the white

mainstream. He spoke up for Trayvon

Martin after the teen’s killing in 2012,

wore an “I Can’t Breathe” T-shirt fol-

lowing Eric Garner’s killing by police in

2014, and has done what Jordan would

not: give cover to the athletes without

his talent and bank account to be more

vocal politically. His leadership sent the

ARTCREDIT TK

THE GHOST WRITER

Tracy K. Smith stirs up America’s demons,

if only to bring us a little peace.

back in 2012, Princeton profes-

sor Tracy K. Smith won a Pulitzer

Prize for the poetry collection

Life on Mars. But her highest

distinction came last year, when

Smith, 46, was named US poet

laureate. Wade in the Water, her

latest book, deftly covers 250

years of the American experi-

ence, from the refugee’s plight

to a company’s toxic spill to the

complications of black mother-

hood. The slim, potent volume

includes “found” poems drawn

directly from letters between

slave owners and from black Civil

War soldiers seeking redress—

Smith visits these hauntings on

her readers without ever sound-

ing didactic or preachy. In con-

versation, she reveals herself as

a soulful teacher intent on using

her stature to mend the nation’s

oldest divisions.

mother jones:As America’s

poet laureate, what’s your

respon sibility to the people?

tracy k. smth:I see it as saying

this thing, poetry— language

being applied as fearlessly as pos-

sible in pursuit of many- faceted

emotional truths that we live

with—is humanizing. This voice VICTORIA SMITHEYEVINEREDUX