Thursday, August 23, 2007

Honest Reflection on Michael Vick

Here is an excerpt from an article about Michael Vick getting involved in dog fighting.    The author is suggesting that Vick can be a lesson to all athletes about the dangers of letting street life and unsavory friends bring you down from your American dream.    It also touches on the anti-intellectualism prevalent in black American culture.

 

Text Box: The toadies, sycophants and apologists will make it hard on him, because they continue to line up around him with these wrong-headed alibis. They will continue to send out all the wrong messages that perpetuate this attitude some parts of my black community that makes a man returning from prison hailed like a conquering hero and the kid on spring break from college is a chump to be ridiculed. The standards are all wrong, and it has to change. Yet the apologists can’t see the corruption they are creating when the only lesson they choose to cull from this sad episode is that Michael Vick was unjustly persecuted. I already hear some of them lining up to preach this message as if it is gospel. But this can’t be the lesson. That can’t be the message. That can’t be the reality of what we can salvage from the wreckage of Michael Vick’s rise and fall. The message needs to change radically. The negative images that are embraced by too many young (black) men in our society needs to be changed to make them understand that intelligence is right and ignorance is wrong. We need to alter the perception so that it’s cool to be smart and the thug and gangster lifestyle is wrong. When your friends can’t understand that, they aren’t your true friends. From: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20399050/ Bryan Burwell writes regularly for MSNBC.com and is a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
 

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