Mushnick!

My point was not that I think football players or gang members listen to rap/are black.

Phil Mushnick comes at this with a rather simplistic world view. It's the same one that led him to say Jay-Z shouldn't be allowed to own the Nets because he's rapped about selling drugs. Mushnick fails to understand where that culture comes from and what it means, which makes him an entirely worthless commentator on it.

There was time when he could have said (and is old enough that he very well might have said) that tie dye T-shirts are being sold to propagate draft dodgers. He paints with a broad brush. I don't think he's a racist as much as out of touch.

He's written very directly about hip-hop culture, and I'm sorry if I can't help but see that as a sneer toward black culture.

 

It would be very easy to get pummeled like Mark right now. I don't want that.

I guess I didn't totally equate "hip hop culture" with black culture. I would never look down on black culture. I don't know if I feel the same way about the hip hop culture.

 

Here's what I'm thinking. Please, correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm thinking you (and Phil Mushnick) see football players, of all races, listening to Rick Ross and wearing baggy jeans and athletic gear. Then you see Rick Ross, who raps about using drugs, taking advantage of women and committing occasionally violent crimes while he wears his baggy jeans and athletic gear. The fallacy, one which I really do have a problem with, is the connection that wearing the clothes and listening to the music lead directly to acting out the songs, to wanting to be the musicians.

To draw some parallels: This would mean that kids wearing tie dye and listening to Jimi Hendrix in the late 1960s are high most of the time. This would mean that kids who wear black and listen to Nine Inch Nails cut themselves. This would mean that kids wearing leather jackets and flat tops did cocaine and beat Whitney Houston.

The culture doesn't create the person.

 

I accept that point.

 

It appears we have reached an impasse.

 

Sometimes colors are just colors. The majority of people aren't in gangs, so without some marketing research indicating otherwise I think its safe to assume that the majority of jerseys sold aren't sold to gang members. To suggest that Nike or Under Armour are undertaking an entire operation, the cost of design and outfitting a school with new duds, just to sell to a gang, to me is drawing a line that's not there.

Are there really enough members in even the largest gangs to justify the evil marketing genius he suggests exists?

 

There certainly are when it comes to hat designs that a team will never wear. Football jerseys actually worn on the field ... I don't have the data required to answer that, but I find it to be a stretch.

 

Where's it come from? What does it mean?

I have no use for Mushnick's take on it. But yours I do.

 

Everything I'm about to say comes with the hedging of, "in my opinion." But I should add that, though I realize my anonymity means I could be coming from anywhere on this, I know of what I speak on this matter through first-hand experience and academia. Now, with that out of the way:

Poor men want to be rich. We know that because Bruce Springsteen told us it and because it makes sense. There are values in poor urban culture placed on having nice things because they suggest that the possessor has risen above his or her surroundings and found ways to make it work. There's a knowledge pervading tenements that no one is really doing well. They wouldn't be here if they were. But the attitude is simple: Show off what you can and stand out how you can. That's what has led success stories from city slums to gaudy purchases and reckless spending; here's a chance to show off to the world that you made it.

When I was in school, the new Air Jordans were deemed must-have. I shopped at Payless, wore the Pro Wings with the velco straps. My parents, who grew up in vastly different environments, were frugal, and even though we had more money than most of my classmates, my clothes were never as nice. I was mocked often for them. The kids with the new Air Jordans were held up as Gods, if only for a week before the next cool thing came along. They wore jerseys, sometimes of their favorite players, sometimes of players they had no interest in. Knicks fans wore Pistons jerseys. The reason was the same: Clothes provided an opportunity to flaunt.

As we got older, the gangs started coming around. As early as fifth grade, I knew people who either had joined a gang or claimed to have joined a gang. When we got to middle school, the influence became more obvious. Those connections helped those kids buy nicer things and flaunt more, which garnered more respect and popularity. We didn't know how you got those new shoes, whether you stole them, stole money to buy them or sold drugs to get the money to buy them. But the shoes were nice. There's some vapidity to it all, for sure.

But this is the point I must make: Many of those same kids, same friends, who ogled the new Air Jordans and begged their mothers to buy them a Starter jacket, turned down the opportunities for gangs and drugs and crime. I know them. I know they did. I was there when it happened. We listened to Nas, Raekwan, Notorious B.I.G. and, yes, Jay-Z. We heard them rap about flipping kilos and their iced-out wrists, and we were jealous. But those of us who had the right influences in our lives, who learned to care and, in many cases, had parents who cared, we placed value in our futures.

Like I said, I grew up in that environment. But I was also better off than most of my friends. My parents were married and together, both working. We lived where we lived because of their careers, not lack thereof. And we left before I reached high school, when the pressure would have intensified greatly. But I still talk occasionally to some of those friends, the ones who dedicated themselves to getting out the right way. Some of them have. Not all. But we all still listen to that same damn rap music. And right now, I'm wearing Jordan Brand sneakers.

 

Vers, that's stated eloquently and persuasively. I would be crazy to disagree with any of it, and more importantly, I don't have the prerequisite knowledge to disagree with any of it.

What I was gulity of earlier, I suppose, is painting a group or area with the same broad brush because of the actions of a minority. Now, I'm not talking about you, but I'm sure some of the good people here understand about painting a group or area with the same broad brush because of the actions of a minority.

It gives one pause, that's for damn sure.

Signed,
jr/shotglass
Pennsyltucky, USA

 

Nobody has ever suggested that everyone who wears a black jersey or a certain cap is going to join a gang.

The issue is more the NFL's willingness to sell out its logos and well-established color schemes to appeal to a part of the market that finds some glamour in gang culture. Do street gangs do any good? They're just crime machines who eat up kids whose lives are probably in crisis anyway. Rich suburban kids who find that cool have no concept of what it really means.

Basically, the NFL -- which really doesn't need to fish for every last dollar -- is helping to sell that idea while simultaneously running PSAs about how the Jets wives collected canned goods for Guatemalan orphans.

I'm not sure it merits the level of outrage that Mushnick consistently musters, but it's a slice of corporate hypocrisy that deserves to be pointed out.

 

Gang colors on sports uniforms aren't the only thing Mushnick writes about. He's edgy and takes stands on many things. He writes from a consumer viewpoint, not only as a TV critic but as a social commentator at the intersection of sports and everything else. Most of the time, he's pretty perceptive and may be the only sports journalist in New York writing from a Ralph Nader perspective. He's not afraid to stand up to heavy-handed bullies. How many New York sports journalists can say that? I'll read anything with the byline "Phil Mushnick" or "Paul Krugman." I can't think of any other "must-reads" in New York. Best "must-read" ever, by the way, was Mike Royko, in his mid-1970s prime at the Chicago Daily News. You'd ride the El into town and hear a sudden solo burst of loud cackling. More often than not, you'd turn around and see the guyturned to 3-A, the page folded vertically, Royko's column facing him. Did I digress? Sorry.