Bob Cousy and the Medal of Freedom

 

Bob Cousy chokes back tears as he speaks of his late wife Missy.

 In spite of everything, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Romans 5:3-5

Ok, it’s a stretch to call it heartbreak. It’s not really suffering.

But it is painful just the same. And in spite of Paul’s promise it is hard for me to see how this leads to hope. Although I will keep looking.

I know that in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter at all.

I am long past the time when I had a naïve belief that my heroes, especially my sports heroes, were likely to live up to my expectations.

But it was painful to read the stories of Bob Cousy receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom last week. 

Make no mistake. He deserves the award.

Cousy has always had a special place in my pantheon of sports greats. Part of it was because I learned that he was cut from his high school team as a freshman and then again as a sophomore. But he didn’t give up. He got a scholarship to Holy Cross, won an NCAA championship, became a consensus All-American, and an NBA star.

This led me to believe that in spite of my obvious lack of talent, with enough practice, I too could become a great basketball player.

Obviously, that didn’t work out.

But as a young child I became a fan of the Boston Celtics. Those were the Celtics of Cousy and Russell and Heinsohn and Sanders. After one of the games, the announcer was interviewing Bob Cousy, and he asked him about the two young guards who had just joined the team, Sam and K.C. Jones.

“Well,” said Cousy, “personally I’m prejudiced, but I think they’re two of the best young guards in the league.” Actually, he said “pwed-ja-dissed.” And he called them “gods,” not guards. But my young mind reeled. My hero, Bob Cousy admitted on national television that he was prejudiced. I was glad that in spite of his prejudice he could see their talent, but even so, I was deeply disappointed.

Of course it was not long before I realized that he meant he was prejudiced in favor of his teammates, not against black people.

As a basketball player he was amazing, winning six world championships with the Celtics, and leading the NBA in assists for eight years in a row. And he has led a great life off the court as well. In 1950 when black teammate Chuck Cooper was denied entry to the team hotel in North Carolina, Cousy also refused to stay there. By every measure, he has lived an exemplary life.

Cousy has said in the past that he felt guilty that he did not do more to stand up more for another black teammate, Bill Russell, who was the target of several racial incidents in Boston. And he reached out to Russell in a letter expressing his regret. But the truth is that probably says more about Bob Cousy’s sense of right and wrong than it does of a moral failing. Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Michael Jordan are the other three NBA stars who were previously honored with the medal of Freedom.

Bob Cousy deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

So far it’s all good. Bob Cousy received an award he richly deserves. An appropriate coda to a life well lived. After the ceremony he said, “this really is the cherry on the sundae.”

But then.

The news accounts told how Cousy choked back tears as he expressed his sadness that his wife Missy, who passed away in 2013 was not there to share the moment with him even though she “put up with me for 63 years.” And as Cousy sobbed at the podium, Donald Trump put his hand on Cousy’s back to comfort him.

What?

That venal man put his hand on Bob Cousy?

It is a strange juxtaposition because Bob Cousy is everything that Donald Trump is not. He really did rise out of poverty. He grew up in a diverse neighborhood that was basically a slum. He worked hard. He promoted racial equality. He is humble and smart and decent. And, to use a cliché, he is a great family man.

“Mr. President, I know in your world you’re well on your way to making America great again,” said Cousy. “In my world, it’s been great for 91 years.”

Earlier this month, he told NBA.com, “I simply feel, without getting into the politics of it at all, like many Americans — I agree with some of the things he’s done and disagree with others.”

That’s more affirmation than Mr. Trump deserves, but I could live with it.

And then.

Cousy said the honor was special in part because “it is being presented by the most extraordinary president in my lifetime and I’m a B.R., for before Roosevelt.”

According to the Worcester Telegram “Mr. Cousy, a long-time independent, said he respects the White House as the most powerful office in the world and he felt compelled to pay tribute to the president.”

“I understand how controversial Trump is,” Mr. Cousy said. “So I didn’t want to say something that was going to go viral and get all of us in trouble, but I thought that was a nice middle ground and ‘extraordinary’ I suppose can be interpreted in any number of ways in the mind of the listener.”

Maybe.

I can understand how someone could agree with some of the policies the president has embraced. But how can a person of such obvious fundamental decency countenance the indecency, racism, misogyny, and corruption of Mr. Trump?

I want to believe that if Missy had been there he wouldn’t have said that.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish.

Racism in the Age of Obama

President Obama Addresses the Memorial Service in Dallas

Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.
I John 3:18

Yesterday morning President Obama spoke at the Dallas Memorial Service for the five police officers killed last week. If you missed the speech, you can watch the whole service here. In his remarks, he cited the verse above and lamented the fact that words, his own words, spoken at so many different occasions of national grief, were not enough.

In a New York Times column this morning, Frank Bruni asks the question, “Has Barack Obama Hurt Race Relations?”

There are people who believe that he has.

More specifically, there are white people who think he has.

They blame him for pointing out the stupidity of arresting Professor Henry Louis Gates at his Cambridge home. They blame him for the observation that if he had a son, that young man would look like Trayvon Martin. And they blame him for talking about the issue of police shootings of black men at the memorial service for five slain police officers. 

His memorial reflection focused first and foremost on the sacrifice of the slain police officers and he applauded the Dallas police force for their role in saving lives when the shooting started, but for his detractors that did not loom as large as his statement that racism is still a problem in America.

A Pew Research study released this spring shows that blacks and whites have very different views of the state of race relations in America. Only 36% of whites believe that racial discrimination is a problem. Among blacks that number is almost double, at 70%. The disparity is not surprising. The people who actually experience racism think it is a bigger problem than the people who only observe it, or perhaps even inflict it.

But it must come as a surprise to many social scientists that both numbers are not higher, since we have reliable research showing that racial discrimination is a problem, even for people who are trying their best to overcome it.

We (white people) are in deep denial on this issue.

Our collective view seems to be that since there are laws against discrimination and we do not personally see ourselves as racists, there is no longer a problem. At least there should no longer be a problem. 

And we have gone even further. Now we label as racist the person who points out the racism. Activists are called race hustlers. Civil rights is called the grievance industry. 

The critics of the President’s view, that though we have come a long way we still have a long way to go, are seemingly unaware that their unrelenting attacks on his views provide incontrovertible evidence that he is correct.

And the racist abuse directed at President Obama is beyond our ability to quantify it. As I was writing this I went looking for examples, but there are too many. Typically the main article is written with subtle racism and then the comments overflow with raw sewage. 

We should be beyond this, but we are not, and we are not about to blame ourselves. We are angry that the black guy in the White House keeps reminding us.

Just Do What's Right

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Philippians 4:8

Over the years, many of my heroes have disappointed me.

But there are some people for whom my admiration grows with time and I later realize that although I may have thought well of them, maybe even idolized them, I also fundamentally underestimated what they had done.

Dean Smith is in the latter group.

I was always a fan. I admired the way he never got flustered, never seemed to lose his temper. He did not gloat when his teams won. He did not whine when they lost. He was gracious in victory and defeat. He seemed to keep it all in perspective. And when he retired after 36 years of coaching basketball at the University of North Carolina, nobody had won more games. And his players actually graduated.

In a book called, “The Carolina Way,” written with Gerald Bell and John Kilgo, Smith said, “My basketball philosophy boils down to six words. Play hard; play together; play smart.”

But there was a lot more to Dean Smith than basketball.

In an article written for the Washington Post, John Feinstein told of researching a feature on Smith. He writes, “One of the people I interviewed for the story was Rev. Robert Seymour, who had been Smith’s pastor at the Binkley Baptist Church since 1958, when he first arrived in Chapel Hill. Seymour told me a story about how upset Smith was to learn that Chapel Hill’s restaurants were still segregated. He and Seymour came up with an idea: Smith would walk into a restaurant with a black member of the church.”

“You have to remember,” Reverend Seymour told Feinstein, “Back then, he wasn’t Dean Smith. He was an assistant coach. Nothing more.”

So Dean Smith, an assistant coach, not yet 30 years old and a newcomer to Chapel Hill, invited a black member of the church to go to lunch with him at a restaurant where the management knew him because the (all white) basketball team often ate there. They were served without incident, and that was the beginning of desegregation in Chapel Hill.

When Feinstein went back to Smith to ask him for more details on what happened that night, Smith was visibly angry. “Who told you about that?” he demanded.

“Reverend Seymour,” Feinstein answered.

“I wish he hadn’t done that.”

“Why?” asked Feinstein. “You should be proud of doing something like that.”

And then, Feinstein recalled, “He leaned forward in his chair and in a very quiet voice said something I’ve never forgotten: ‘You should never be proud of doing what’s right. You should just do what’s right.’”

In 1988 Smith was part of a delegation of People of Faith Against the Death Penalty in a clemency hearing for a man whom Coach Smith had befriended when he brought members of the UNC basketball team to visit inmates on death row.

Smith led the discussion with the governor. Pointing his finger at him, he said, “You’re a murderer!”

And then, one by one, he pointed to members of the PFADP and the pastors in the delegation and said, “And you’re a murderer! And you’re a murderer! And you’re a murderer!” Then with his finger pointing at himself he said, “The death penalty makes us all murderers.”

In “A Coach’s Life” he wrote: “What do you call the worst human beings you know? Human beings loved by the Creator!”

At the end of the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hear these words of mine and do them.” Dean Smith was that kind of Christian.

The Apostle Paul followed his message on truth, justice and excellence with a sentence that Dean Smith would have been too modest to speak, but he is one of the few people who could have said it without exaggerating his values and actions, “Keep on doing the things that you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will be with you.”

The Fierce Urgency of Now

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

Rev. Dr. Marin Luther King, Jr. August 28, 1963

On this day in 1963, Dr. King stood on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered what we now call the “I Have a Dream Speech” to 200,000 peaceful advocates for racial justice.

They were marching, he said, to “demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice,” and to remind the nation of what he called “the fierce urgency of now.”

He talked about pursuing this struggle with discipline and dignity and he talked about solidarity with white people who would share in that struggle. The militancy of the struggle, he argued, “must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. They have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.”

The tragic shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri, and the reactions to it, provide a sad reminder that the dream is not yet a reality.

We have come a long way. The idea of a black man as President of the United States was hard to imagine when Dr. King addressed the crowd in Washington. Our society is more integrated, more open, and less overtly racist. These improvements are real and they are dramatic. The need now is less about new laws, although the gains made by the voting rights laws need to be protected. We cannot minimize our needs in job creation, education, and health care, but in many ways, our greatest need is for new attitudes and new understandings

And we have a long way to go.

If you don’t believe that racism is alive and well, just go on almost any internet site that hosts commentary on the shooting in Ferguson. A web site set up to receive donations to help pay the defense costs for the police officer who shot Michael Brown received so many racist comments, they had to shut it down and start again. For a glimpse of what it looked like before the shutdown, click here. Columnist and Fox News contributor Linda Chavez wrote a column for the New York Post complaining that it was biased to call Michael Brown “an unarmed black teenager.”After all, he was over six feet tall and weighed three hundred pounds. As if large teenagers were no longer teenagers or unarmed.

Racism is the air we breathe. It infects all of us. In a New York Times column titled, “Is Everyone a Little Bit Racist?” Nicholas Kristof reminds us of our latent racism. There are many people, he points out, who are enlightened, who are intellectually opposed to racism, and yet harbor racist stereotypes and prejudices.

Studies have shown that when doctors treat people for a broken leg, they prescribe pain medication more often for white patients than they do for blacks and Hispanics. Black students are suspended by school administrators at a rate that is three times the rate of white students. Although blacks and whites use marijuana at approximately the same rates, blacks are arrested 3.7 times as often.

Kristof cites another study in which scholars responded to nearly 5,000 help-wanted ads. They sent half of their resumes with stereotypically black sounding names and the other half with white sounding names. It took 50% more mailings to get a response for a black name as for a white name, and a white name gained the applicant an advantage equal to eight years of experience.

In yet another study, scholars found that we unconsciously connect “American” with “white.” In 2008 they questioned a group of California college students and found that they treated then presidential candidate Barack Obama as if he were more foreign than Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister, in spite of the fact that many of the students were supporting Obama for president. The tests also showed that although Americans knew that Lucy Liu is an American actor and Kate Winslet is British, they still thought Liu was more foreign.

Not only do we have a hard time recognizing the reality of our own racism, many of us believe that America is more prejudiced against white people than against black people.

That fact is so bizarre, I was tempted to call this column, “White People Are Crazy.”

According to a study by scholars at Tufts and Harvard, both whites and blacks agree that anti-black racism has decreased over the last sixty years. But the study also shows that whites believe that anti-white racism has increased over that same time period and now is a bigger problem than anti-black racism.

Participants were asked to rate the anti-black racism and the anti-white racism in society on a 10-point scale, with 10 as maximum bias. On average, whites rated anti-white bias as the greater problem by more than a full point. And 11 percent of whites rated anti-white bias as a 10, the maximum rating.

“It’s a pretty surprising finding,” says Tufts Associate Professor Samuel Sommers, Ph.D., “when you think of the wide range of disparities that still exist in society, most of which show black Americans with worse outcomes than whites in areas such as income, home ownership, health, and employment.”

Apparently, even our perceptions of racism are colored by racism.

In his commentary about what he seemed to perceive as an anti-white bias in the coverage of the events in Ferguson, Bill O’Reilly complained, “to the race hustlers, Officer Wilson is already guilty. They have convicted him. Their slogan is ‘no justice, no peace’. I guess that's lynch mob justice because those people will never accept anything other than a conviction of murder in this case. They don't really care what happened. They want Officer Wilson punished.”

No one should be in favor of “lynch mob justice,” but it is useful to put that in historical perspective. On this day in 1955 a 14 year old black teenager by the name of Emmett Till was lynched for allegedly flirting with a white woman. Not figuratively lynched. Brutally tortured and lynched.