At the start, it seemed simple enough…there was a disease that was seemingly ravaging the 3rd World…but hey that’s what we expect. Diseases ravage “lesser countries” and we shake our collective heads about it and say to ourselves: “if only they could be more like us…”
As my mother used to say: “God don’t like ugly.”
Welcome to 2020: The year when COVID is declared the “Word of the Year” by Merriam-Webster.
There has been mention of various infections over the last half century. In a past life, I wrote a release on the effort to make the public aware of King County’s monitoring of the response to the H1N1 (Swine Flu) virus.
That was in 2009.
That release mentioned King County was following the guidelines adopted as part of King County’s Pandemic Flu Preparedness Plan.
The Pandemic Flu Preparedness Plan was adopted by the King County Council in 2007.
Understand, even when you’re prepared, and King County has been at the forefront of responding to the pandemic, bad things can happen.
And let’s be honest—as a whole, this country wasn’t prepared for this. So now we’re paying the price.
Fingers can be pointed in a lot of directions, (and most of those fingers sure as hell better be pointed toward the big building on Pennsylvania Ave in D.C.), but we carry some of the responsibility as well.
How many of us saw the first stories of COVID-19 and thought “OK a new strain of flu, I’ll just ride it out.” Especially since it was half a world away.
When we saw the first deaths, who thought: “that’s OK, that’s in another part of the state (or country), it won’t touch me…”
It really didn’t seem real.
When did it become real?
It became real to me when I was told to stay at home and not go into my office, unless I really needed to come in.
When did it become reality?
–When my wife’s boss told her that she had tested positive.
–When 2200 miles away, my daughter is under a stay at home order in Nashville—while the rest of the state of Tennessee cavalierly continues to go about its business in the belief that COVID-19 appears to only impact “Blue States”
–When a sister (who is a medical assistant) and my niece (who is a manager at an office equipment company) were told they were “essential personnel” and had to continue going out during this pandemic.
That’s when reality sank in.
My wife and I have been under self-quarantine since St. Patrick’s Day. While we have been going out for walks and drives (house to car to road to house) we have stayed indoors.
Last week, the handle on our toilet broke, and I had to debate if I was putting people at risk if I went to the hardware store to pick up a new handle. I did go, but I spent the rest of the afternoon wondering if I was in danger because of the items I touched, and the people I passed by. I guess the bigger question should have been: because of my actions and the potential that I have been exposed, was I endangering the lives of the people in the store?
That is our current reality.
A reality that involves:
–Models that project potentially 100,000 people dying during this pandemic,
–And the occupant of the house on Pennsylvania Ave finally admitting the pandemic could go into the summer and perhaps the idea of celebrating the Resurrection by potentially putting millions at risk might not be a good idea.
Sitting here at home and I can’t help but think of Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death”
Many here in this country are guilty of the crime committed by Prince Prospero:
Indifference and arrogance.
If you think that’s harsh, look up River Church in Tampa, Florida on Google.
The pastor of this church, like Prospero, believes himself rich enough and powerful enough to ignore what is taking place outside of the walls of his castle, leaving those who he never considered equal even before the plague, to fend for themselves.
If you don’t remember the end of the story, Prospero discovers too late that those he is trying to ignore and forget have a way of finding entrance to the most impregnable of bastions.
This has been a little heavier that what I’ve posted in the past, but I’ve never had to post in the middle of quarantine either.
Stay safe and stay aware. Listen to the professionals. Be careful.
The people who love you aren’t ready for you to die.
They’ve always been around; you just didn’t realize you were watching them:
On this day, the day that has become Roman Numeral Day, we tend to think of the evolution being Doug to Steve to Donovan to Colin to Russell to Cam to now Patrick…
Fritz Pollard
But Fritz Pollard was around for the birth of the NFL, as both the starting Halfback and Head Coach of the Akron Pros of the newly founded American Professional Football Association—which today is now known as the NFL. He was a halfback, which meant he was the primary ball handler back in that ancient time—QBs were primarily blockers in the fledging days of football.
Fritz lost his job in the NFL when the Depression hit and the coaches and team owners felt it was unfair for some players to be unemployed because of the color of their skin…hmmm…imagine that…
When the rule they say wasn’t a rule ended, Black players were allowed back in the league, as long as they could run, catch and tackle. Those who could throw the football? Wait here until we decide which position you’re best suited for.
Willie Thrower (stop laughing, that was his name) played in a game for the Chicago Bears, in 1953 in relief of starting QB George Blanda. Willie went 3-for-8, was pulled and released shortly after that.
Willie Thrower
A rebel league was formed 7 years after Willie Thrower threw his passes. While the American Football League championed civil rights—including moving its All-Star game because of the racist hotel policies of the city where they were schedule to play, they emulated the older league in one way. The American Football League welcomed Black players, as long as they could run, catch and tackle.
It wasn’t that colleges weren’t developing Black QBs during the NFL/AFL war—Sandy Stephans took the University of Minnesota to back to back Rose Bowls in 1960 and 1961. Jimmy Raye was the QB for Michigan State against Notre Dame in the 1966 “Game of the Century.”
Stephans finished his career playing fullback in the AFL. Raye was drafted by Philadelphia and converted into a defensive back.
And of course there were plenty of QBs learning the game at places like Grambling State, Southern and Tennessee State, the campuses of America’s Historic Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Eldridge Dickey was an All-American QB at Tennessee State and was drafted in the first round by the Oakland Raiders—but soon after the Raiders thought he would be better catching the ball than throwing it.
Oct 20, 1968; San Diego, CA, USA; FILE PHOTO; Denver Broncos quarterback Marlin Briscoe (15) in action against the San Diego Chargers at San Diego Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Darryl Norenberg-USA TODAY Sports
In an ironic twist, the year Dickey was drafted, there was a Black starter in Denver. Marlin Briscoe started for the Broncos—but only after the starter broke his collarbone and the backup couldn’t do the job.
Briscoe played 5 games and passed for 14 TDs—a Bronco rookie record he still holds. His reward for playing so well?? He was released by Denver for wanting to play QB. When he was signed by Buffalo, he was converted to wide receiver. He would win two Super Bowls with the Miami Dolphins…but not in the position he wanted to play.
Irony: it’s likely that Briscoe was converted to wide receiver because Buffalo already had a Black QB—Grambling’s James Harris—the first Black QB I remember seeing in the NFL.
Coming into ‘70s, Black QBs didn’t need a burning cross…oops, I mean a burning bush, to realize if they wanted to play the position they had been playing since Pop Warner, they might want to look someplace else.
Condredge Holloway was the first Black QB to start in the Southeastern Conference, playing for the University of Tennessee.
Warren Moon was at the wheel of the University of Washington team that beat the vaunted University of Michigan in the 1978 Rose Bowl.
When the NFL draft rolled around, both Condredge and Warren told the NFL not to bother. They took the Underground Railroad north to Canada and the Canadian Football League.
Condredge won a title up north.
Warren won five titles in a row in Canada (take that Tom Terrific) on his way to becoming the most coveted free agent in the history of the NFL, but only after showing he was a better QB than the likes of Vince Ferragamo, David Woodley, and Tony Eason—all who started in the Roman Numeral Game (and lost…) while Warren was battling snowstorms in Edmonton.
Warren Moon in Edmonton
Condredge and Warren are both in the CFL Hall of Fame—and Warren is also a member of the NFL Hall of Fame, the only player to have a bust in Canton, Ohio and Hamilton, Ontario.
Tony Dungy came out of the University of Minnesota as an All Big-10 QB at the same time as Moon. The only Black man to win the Super Bowl as a coach was converted into a defensive back by Pittsburgh.
Sensing a pattern here?
Doug Williams in the Super Bowl
It took Doug Williams, another Grambling St. grad, ripping the heart out of the Denver Broncos to get people to start thinking maybe, just maybe, a Black QB might be capable of being a Super Bowl winning QB.
When Doug won his ring, Randall Cunningham was expected to follow him into a Roman Numeral Game. He never made it, but Randall help usher in a generation of “athletic QBs” because suddenly, drafting “athletic QBs” became a cool thing.
Kordell and Rodney and Akili and Aaron and Jeff and Dante and Steve and Michael and David and JaMarcus and Colin and Robert—and of course, Russell.
Russell Wilson SB 48
They’ve been followed by Dak and Deshaun and Lamar and the starting QB for Kansas City, Patrick, starting for the team that made Sandy Stephans play fullback to stay in the league.
Understand that when he steps onto the field, Mahomes will carry a legacy that stretches back to the start of the NFL, to Fritz and Willie and Marlin and those nameless players who were given the opportunity to carry, catch and tackle, but never to throw the football.
Also understand that between wings and ribs and brats and beverages and commercials, we’re going to hear A LOT about the “great athleticism” displayed by Pat Mahomes. Why? Because Pat and Cam and Russell and Colin and Donovan and Steve and Doug are still not seen as great quarterbacks….
But as remarkable athletes.
I still have SB XLVIII on my DVR, and while watching it recently, you know the same words they’re going to use to describe Mahomes in SB LIV were used when describing Russell Wilson. For me, those terms have almost become “trigger words.”
I look forward to the day the talking heads start talking about Pat and Dak and Deshaun and Lamar—and Russ—and their great awareness in the pocket and their incredible presence on the field, you know, the same way they talk about Drew Brees, Gardner Minshew, Flat Ball Tommy and Jimmy Garappolo.
Here’s hoping this game, win or lose, is the start.
Last week, two parts of my life as a parent collided at a school board meeting. On the night that many people were rightfully focused on what happened in Downtown Seattle, a couple of miles south, the Seattle School Board was taking action on a proposal 20 years in the making.
The board approved a partnership with the Seattle-based Technology Access Foundation (TAF) to place a project-based, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) program at Washington Middle School in the Central District. The agreement is a power sharing partnership, and would give TAF some oversight on the development of the school curriculum and the hiring of staff.
This was not TAF’s first attempt at partnering with a Seattle school. Its first effort at the end of the last century left bruises that are still evident today. But TAF persevered and looked to school districts that were willing to partner with them, successfully implementing its program in the Federal Way School District and schools in Tacoma.
The issue that set off alarms for some is that Washington Middle School is also the home of students enrolled in the district’s Highly Capable Cohort (HCC). HCC is a program that Seattle Public School students test into and those students work at a level 2 to 3 grades above their peers. Students who become part of HCC usually stay together as a group from when they join the program until they graduate high school.
Placing TAF at Washington will essentially end HCC at the location, part of the school district’s never ending delicate dance of trying to balance the needs and nurture the talents of all students in the district, not just the “best and brightest,” who coincidentally happen to be overwhelming White and are the majority of the students in HCC.
So how did this decision collide with my life? Because I have been blessed with an incredibly gifted child.
At 2 years old, her day care provider was telling me and my wife she was ready for Kindergarten—if it wasn’t for that potty training thing. My daughter tested to enter Seattle schools at 4 years old, and after a few tears on her first attempt (which is a story that has to wait for another day) she started at Dunlap Elementary, a Kindergartner 2 years younger than some of her classmates.
Four years later, my family received notice from the school district informing us that our daughter qualified to enter the district’s Advanced Placement Program (APP), the predecessor of HCC. It was the district’s effort to expand the number of families of color entering APP to make the program “more inclusive.”
My wife and I were familiar with APP, and while excited about the opportunity, we were also familiar with the reports of APP being a very hostile atmosphere for non-Asian students of color, along with stories about the sense of entitlement surrounding the program.
After a sales pitch from the head of the program at that time that would make a car dealer blush, my wife and I were encouraged to speak to parents and given a list of parents whose African-American children were part of APP.
In hindsight, I should have been suspicious that it was such a short list.
Those parents acknowledged that while there were incidents of racism that were very much part of APP, the district and the school were aware and working hard to make a welcoming atmosphere for all children in the program.
Truthfully, the parent who said: “why would you want to turn down a private school education in a public school?” should have been a warning about what we were walking into, but we also agreed the challenges and opportunities it would provide our daughter were not available at her current school. So in the fall of 2008, my daughter skipped her way into Lowell Elementary School to start the 4th Grade.
It’s a decision that I regret to this day.
The racism was expected, but still painful. 12 years later, my daughter speaks about her treatment by her fellow students with a hurt and anger that resonates even as she prepares to graduate from college.
What wasn’t expected was the extreme sense of entitlement that many APP parents had. A sense of entitlement that appears to have lasted over the years and reared its head during the recent discussion of TAF coming to Washington.
You see, in the fall of 2008, as my daughter was being told to go back to her “stupid Black school,” and that she didn’t deserve to be “going to school with White people,” the school district was debating a proposal to split APP into schools in both north and south Seattle, to encourage more families to become part of the program. Until then, the school district had put all of their “smart eggs” into one basket—Lowell Elementary.
Fool that I am, I thought this was a great idea.
You would think that I supported students being placed into concentration camps.
During the public hearings about the proposal, the parents of Lowell students, White liberals, many of whom were patting themselves on the back for voting for the first Black President of the United States, voiced beliefs and opinions that would have made Bull Connors and Sean Hannity proud.
A sample of some of their comments:
“Our children shouldn’t have to engage with inferior people,”
“The school district is doing this to help boost scores of unteachable students at underperforming schools,”
“I don’t want my child to be attacked by jealous students who aren’t as bright as they are,”
And my favorite:
“While I like this idea, won’t this show the ‘normal’ students just how inadequate they are?”
When I pointed out the paradox of supporting a program but not wanting to open it to other kids in a Seattle Times OpEd, the Lowell parents turned their anger at me, and unfortunately at my daughter. When my daughter talked to KUOW radio about the potential split, I was accused of using my “media connections” to make the program “seem” racist and of coaching my daughter to “slander the school.”
It’s frightening and discouraging to hear similar sentiment voiced again as the school district seeks once again to expand opportunities for all students. The voices have changed; the condescending and elitist attitudes have not.
It all boils down to “Why is my White child being subjected to this?”
APP did split into north and south cohorts, with “south” students, including my daughter, going to Thurgood Marshall Elementary School for their last year of elementary school.
Guess what? The world didn’t come to an end. Students in the “blended” school for the most part got along, and a few of the privileged parents acknowledged their fears were a “little over the top.”
But after two years, my family was exhausted from the fight both inside and outside the school, and decided that we didn’t want my daughter to continue as part of APP.
So instead of going to Washington Middle School, after a year in parochial school, my daughter transferred out of Seattle and went to a school in the Federal Way School District; the Technology Access Foundation Academy, better known as TAFA, operating in partnership with TAF and the Federal Way School District.
And while I had concerns (and quite frankly still do) about the focus of the school—even as the Academy added an A (arts) to the acronym (STEAM)—my daughter thrived. She was able to work at her own pace and level, and did things that made her confident enough to graduate high school a year early, which the school enthusiastically supported.
While my daughter had the standard high school angst, she doesn’t hesitate to expound the virtues of TAFA. As for my wife, she has John the Baptist level enthusiasm in trying to convince parents to consider sending their children to TAFA—even though her child has been out of the school for 4 years.
I joke about TAFA being the “Island of Misfit Toys,” because it has developed a program and curriculum that ensures that every student, regardless of skill level and ability, reaches their maximum potential.
This sounds like a program that schools and parents should be fighting to include in Seattle, not building barriers to prevent it from coming in and accusing the district of using their children “like pawns” .
It appears the biggest issue with TAF in Seattle schools is that it would subject children—and their overwhelmingly liberal parents—into having to interact with students that these parents will argue are “good kids,” but also sincerely believe aren’t as “capable” as their children.
It’s a reminder that for all of its vaunted liberalism, Seattle and its “enlightened” residents can be as racist and close-minded as any proud MAGA cap wearing zealot. Their liberalism only extends to other people’s kids, never their own.
Portrait of Dr. King on Cherry and MLK , Seattle, WA
“We’re not alone. Good people will fight if we lead them. What our mothers and father fought for, we will not let die. Not today.”
No, that is not Dr. King. That is Poe Dameron, rebel commander, speaking in “Rise of Skywalker” (sorry for the spoiler).
Before you start rolling your eyes, stay with me.
It’s not an exaggeration to say that we’re at a crossroads. Think about what our mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, friends and families fought for over the span of a single generation. At times some of those efforts were flawed, but they were done with the best intentions, because the results were focused on taking us a few steps closer to the “Beloved Community” that Dr. King gave his life for.
Just think, within the span of Rosa refusing to move and the final culmination of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” in 1980 we saw:
–A reduction (I won’t say the end) of overt racism,
–A growth in opportunities for communities that we’re once on the outside looking in,
–A growing acceptance of couples who are in loving, committed relationships, whose only sin was that they were “different,”
–So many changes over such a short time that a few of us even allowed ourselves to believe that we were being judge on the content of our character.
Sadly, the erosion of those victories started not long after the battles were won, and incredibly over the last 4 years, we’ve seen far too many people proudly walking in lockstep (or possibly goose step) back to the days of “separate but equal.” They wouldn’t call it that, they prefer terms like “traditional values,” like racism, sexism, and intolerance are proud traditions that must be preserved at all costs.
For those who haven’t seen Rise of Skywalker just yet, Poe Dameron gives his speech before the start of the final battle against the minions of the First Order—and when those around him were starting to believe that no one was ready to fight with them, to fight to help restore what had been lost.
Today, to those who are weary because we have been fighting and seemingly losing so much over the last four years, and you’re starting to believe that no one is ready to fight Today, to those who are weary because we have been fighting and seemingly losing so much over the last four years, and you’re starting to believe that no one is ready to fight with you, I want to remind you—and all of us— that we are not alone. We are not alone and we will not let what Dr. King and so many others whose names
It’s not going to be easy, and Dr. King reminded us that it was never going to be easy, but he also never let us forget that in the end you can never lose hope, because he believed until his dying day that “unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”
“If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all. And so today I still have a dream.”
For my first draft on how this was going to begin, I had a long, rambling travelogue of my life, and what had lead me to decide that I wanted to put my thoughts into a forum like this—but being a Marvel comics fan—I’m going to do this like one of their stalwarts.
Stan Lee and Steve Ditko didn’t reveal the origin of Dr. Strange, the Master of Mystic Arts, until his third issue, and that’s the direction I’m going to go. I’ll tell you what I am later, besides the title gives you a pretty good indication of what I am. Today, I’m going to focus on the subtitle.
Ralph Ellison’s book “Invisible Man” has a number of targets in the Black and White Communities, but it always comes back to the idea that unless seen as doing something that “offends” the larger society, Black men are mostly “invisible”
But invisibility also allows a certain anonymity, which provides opportunities to observe situations and conditions unobserved, undetected, and undisturbed.
I’m going to have fun with this. I have lots of interests in lots of areas, and most of the time what I put on this electronic missive will focus on that.
But every once in a while, I will provide a perspective on life in our times from the gender and hue the majority tends to ignore unless we’re hauling a ball, singing a song, acting a role—or having our heads pushed into a police car.
So buckle up and enjoy the ride—here’s hoping that at times I make you smile, make you laugh, and, on occasion, possibly make you angry. But I hope always make you see things from a little different of a perspective!!
Thoughts From A Short Round Black Man 