In Black America; Full Dissidence, with Howard Bryant

From the University of Texas at Austin, KUT Radio, this is In Black America. A full distance to me, the bottom line with that project was, it really was an outgrowth of my last book, The Heritage, where I started to ask some different questions. I think that as a Black writer, you certainly look at situations over the past decade. More importantly, you look at Ferguson, you look at Eric Garner, you look at Tamira Rice and Trayvon Martin and all of those things happening. You're looking at the backlash from the Obama presidency and the election of Donald Trump, and I think that it was important for me to start to look at another question that I had asked in The Heritage, which was talking about these Black athletes, whether it was LeBron James or Derek Rose or the rest of these players talking about their power, Malcolm Jenkins and the players coalition. But then asking another question in the wake of Colin Kavernick, which was, how much power do you actually have if you lose everything or if you risk everything for taking on a Black position?

Howard Bryant, senior writer with ESPN.com, NPR's Week in Addition Correspondent, an author of full distance notes from an uneven playing field published by Beacon Press. Whether the issues are protest, labor, patriotism or class division, it's clear that professional sports are no longer simply fun and games. Sports industry is a hotbed of fraction and inequities that reflects or even drives some of the most divisive issues in our nation today. Bryant, for a better part of three decades, has covered professional sports. Now in his ninth book he provides insight into a cultural African American continues to navigate the sharp edges of whiteness as citizens who are always at risk of being told to go back from where they came from. His essays covers the player on a relationship, the medialization of sports, and the myth of integration just to name a few. I'm Johnny Ohens in junior and welcome to another edition of in Black America. On this week's program full distance with Howard Bryant in Black America.

They think it's a compliment when you're when they're saying these things to you, but it really in some ways it doesn't sound like a compliment. When somebody tells you that they're colorblind, how can you be colorblind in this culture and and protect me at the same time? You can't be colorblind. You have to be as one of the great writers as Ibrahim Kendi says as a quoting Angela Davis. You have to be anti-racist. You have to realize that the color does matter and it's very, very important because it's going to inform how you see the world around you. Sometimes acting like your colorblind or using those terms in some ways it's the equivalent of putting your head in the sand. You've got to be active and realize what what these terms mean and what the implications are if you're going to actually have real friends. Within the nine essays, Howard Bryant survived in his latest book entitled Full Distance. He draws directly from his own life. He underscores the casual betrayal inherent in his white friendship, romantic and otherwise. And traces his and other family sacrifices in addressing the advantages of whiteness, particularly with regards to education.

Much of his book is not about sports. But a ever changing land capable what it means to be African American in this country. Bryant underscores the degrees to which white believes they are the only true Americans and our others are just renters. Born and raised in Boston, he graduated from Temple University in 1991. He earned his master's degree from San Francisco State University in 1993. Bryant began his career at the Oakland Tribune in 1991. He worked at the Washington Post before joining ESPN in 2007. Bryant's prolific baseball writer on the variety of topics affecting the game. And that's why in Black America caught over them before the COVID-19 breakout at Spring Training in Florida. You out in Spring Training? Spring Training in Tampa today with the Yankees for the next few days. And then we'll go over and go see the other teams.

Go see the Astros and go see the Nationals and then back to Arizona to do Dodgers and A's and Giants in everybody else. It's that time of season. So how's it been looking? It's good. It's good. Obviously the big story, of course, is the Houston Astros and Dusty Baker and Taken over and with all this scandal-faken place. It's been interesting to see how the players are dealing with each other and how they deal with cheating and baseball and everything else. And I'm always concerned about Dusty. He's the most successful black manager the sports ever had. He's in an incredibly difficult position. Taken on an issue that's not really his. But I'm hoping that he's going to be able to manage it if anybody can do it Dusty can. And your thoughts on the Diasco handle it well? No, I thought they handled it very poorly. I thought they handled everything about it poorly. I think they especially handled the fact that they hired Dusty to clean up their mess for them and they gave him one year contract. And then the general manager that they hired who has no experience, they gave him three years. So once again, it's a hard position for Dusty to be in. And I think that you're going to see, I think the Commissioner of baseball and company, I don't think they handled it as well, neither did the Players Association.

So I think you're going to see a lot of frontier justice this year. You're going to see some players getting thrown at. You're going to see some stuff on the field. And we'll see how they handle the other part of this, which is if it so turns out that you find out that a lot of other teams have been doing the same thing. So what led you to write your ninth book? Well, for this instance, to me, the bottom line with that project was it really was an outgrowth of my last book, The Heritage, where I started to ask some different questions. I think that as a black writer, you certainly look at situations over the past decade. More importantly, you look at Ferguson, you look at Eric Garner, you look at Tamir Rice and Trayvon Martin and all of those things happening. You're looking at the backlash from the Obama presidency and the election of Donald Trump. And I think that it was important for me to start to look at another question that I had asked in The Heritage, which was talking about these black athletes, whether it was LeBron James or Derek Rose or the rest of these players talking about their power, Malcolm Jenkins and the players coalition. But then asking another question in the wake of Colin Kaepernick, which was, how much power do you actually have if you lose everything or if you risk everything for taking on a black position?

If you had real power, then your career wouldn't be in jeopardy simply for trying to defend black people. When did we come to the notion or realization? If one is discontent, that equates to being an unpaid chaotic. And an American, absolutely. And where does that put black people, since we're constantly fighting for our rights, we're constantly fighting for a place here. It always puts you in a disadvantageous position. It puts you in the position. Now you're being pitted against the entire country. And it made me ask myself one of the questions that is central in the book, which is, are you a renter of the American dream or are you an owner? And I make the conclusion that we're renters. Because every time you say something, people feel like they can tell you to go back where you came from. And you can't do that if you're an owner. If you own something, people don't tell you to go back because it's yours.

And so I sort of felt like I just started to reach a period of exhaustion. And I felt very nervous about where we are as black people in this country, because I'm nervous about where we are as Americans in this country. And you know when something happens to everybody, black people get it worse. And so I was especially thinking about a lot of those young black kids who are, and I don't mean to call them kids, I'm just older than they are. But you know, for the ones who 2008 was their first election. And they thought it was different. And they thought that, okay, you got a black president and how much stock and import did we put into that? And then you go from that to this. It's like, it's like getting punched in the face. I found it interesting to a point where we're basically living in two different Americas. And when you talk about the perception of the police from a white point of view versus the perception of a police and police departments from an African-American point of view, does, I guess, to some extent does television have a lot to do with this?

Absolutely, it does. And I think in one of the essays I wrote called Copaganda, which is all about police propaganda and entertainment. You recognize how much education people have about their police departments from television. How much they learn about it, how much they believe in that relationship, all from that mass media of the, you know, cop buddy movies and TV shows and sitcoms and the rest of it. And you see how both that and post 9-11 America has really played out into this idea of the inherent goodness of police that the police are the good guys. And the black experience is antithetical to that. The black experience is very, very different. And so you start asking yourself, where do you have this, you know, why is this gap so wide? And I think one of the arguments that I was making was in this, the reason why this book is titled Full Decidence, it's that you find out all of these people in your supposedly integrated, you know, community and your integrated workplace and everything and you come from the same values and you make around the same money and you kind of come from the same place. Then you start talking about policing and you realize it is that two America's that you're talking about. You realize that all of a sudden you do look at it very, very differently.

And this is one of the reasons why it's so different and so difficult to have accountability and to have justice and all those different things because the viewpoint, the life experience is just so different. Like for example, we're talking about, you know, this presidential campaign, we're talking about Michael Bloomberg and the the tape of him talking about throwing kids up against the wall and this assumption that black kids are all carrying guns and everything. So you look at that video in Orlando of a six year old being arrested, a six year old being handcuffed and I grew up around white people, I grew up and after we left Boston as a kid, I grew up in, you know, third, fourth grade up until graduation in a predominantly overwhelming white community that didn't even have any real money. As an adult now, you know, my son goes to those same types of schools, although they're a little bit higher up, fluently, you would never, ever, ever handcuff a white six year old. You wouldn't, you just don't do that. And so you look at this and you start to look at your white friends and on the one hand, they look all horrified, but on the other hand, they still can't make that leap.

They still won't look and say, look, you can't do this. You shouldn't do this and somebody should be held accountable. They'll find all the different ways in the world to act horrified, but they will not change their minds about what is this actually say about police and policing. As you say that, I remember a passage in the book where one of your friends said, I don't know the relationship you had with her that she doesn't mind you being black. So that was when I was a kid. That was one of the things that used to happen all the time when you grew up around all those kids and they wanted to make it sound like they were doing you the biggest favor in the world by treating you like a human being. Well, you know, it's okay. My parents aren't, they don't mind. They don't care that you're black. I'm like, well, that's good. That's good. I care that you're white. How about that? And so you start looking at these things differently and you realize, I think the thing that's interesting about it too, and it's not necessarily to be confrontational, it's to think about how we treat each other in terms of language. Think about what you're actually saying. They think it's a compliment when they're saying these things to you, but it really in some ways, it doesn't sound like a compliment. When somebody tells you that they're colorblind, how can you be colorblind in this culture and protect me at the same time?

You can't be colorblind. You have to be, as one of the great writers, as Ibrahim Kendi says, as a quoting Angela Davis, you have to be anti-racist. You have to realize that the color does matter and it's very, very important because it's going to inform how you see the world around you. Sometimes acting like your colorblind or using those terms, in some ways it's the equivalent of putting your head in the sand. You've got to be active and realize what these terms mean and what the implications are if you're going to actually have real friends. I found it interesting how or how you made the connection between Colin Kaepernick and Nike and his commercial and the national football league and his relationship with corporate America. Well, I was concerned at first because obviously when Colin took the knee and you saw what was happening to him, there was no question about his politics and about him trying to do something for Black people to draw attention to where we are as a country in terms of policing and not just Black people, but the lack of accountability on police.

So go look up the video of Daniel Shaver, the white pest control guy who was essentially shot to death by police at point blank range. He's a white man. So it's not just a racial thing, it's a policing accountability thing. And then I started to get worried about it on the other side because I saw that Colin hadn't given any interviews in almost three years and he hadn't spoken and I was worried about what this meant. And he and I had spoken a couple of times and we had texted and I was really concerned by saying to him, are you allowing other people to speak for you by not speaking by not giving interviews? Are you letting people shape you in a way that you don't want to be shaped? And then I heard from a lot of grassroots activists who were frustrated with Colin as well because they were like, well, how come he's not saying anything?

And we need him and we want him to be out front on all these things is he walking away from us. And so I was worried about that. And then the Nike commercial happened and then he got rehabilitated and he did that commercial, which was a harmless, inspiring, excellent commercial. And you saw what some of these law enforcement departments did across the country. You saw some of these people try to boycott Nike. You saw retailers trying to boycott Nike and it made me ask a question, if this is the land of the free and it's okay to have opinions, why is it so important not only to destroy this man? But now you're going to go up against one of the biggest corporations in the world simply by letting him do a 30 second commercial. I mean, the response seems so disproportionate and that told me if you're willing to go out of your way to boycott a massive billion dollar corporation, if you're willing as law enforcement to put felons or to put suspects in Nike gear on their mugshots, which a few of them did around the country, then that told me that Colin Kaepernick needs even more support because this is an active campaign to try to ruin this man. It's bad enough. He's not even playing so he doesn't even have a job. Now you don't even want him to have a livelihood at all. So I thought the response was so disproportionate and it told me that I was wrong about Colin.

It told me that he needed more support in many ways because the opposition to him was so overstated that it told me that that my mind had to change. If you're just joining us, I'm Johnny Johansson Jr. and you listening to In Black America from KUT Radio and we're speaking with Howard Bryant. Sr. Right out for ESPN dot com and sports course behind it for NPR's weekend edition and author of his latest book full of dissidents notes from an uneven playing field. However, when does a certain level athlete gets to the point where they think they aren't African American winning winning essence, they are. Well, I don't think that they don't think they're African American anymore. I mean, it could be that. I think they recognize that it's easier for me to walk away from this or that my industry is telling me I got to walk away from this and you've seen that through on exists for 50 years and you've seen it with O.J. You saw it with Tiger Woods. You see it with the new tennis player Madison keys where you have these players and of course the biracial aspects of it change as well. But these players know what's happening. They see what happened to Muhammad Ali. They see what happens to the Colin cappinix of the world and the mock mood Abdul Raouf. They see what happens to them.

And they also see what's difficult in their own lives when somebody reporters come to them and talk to them, ask them about racial questions. They see what happens in the news cycle and they don't need the grief and they back away from it. They don't want anything to do with it. And so you realize that even in this massive multi billion dollar sports world that we're in, it's an incredible level of anti blackness where the leagues are telling you what's going to happen if you take on these controversial positions. And my issue has always been, why are they so controversial? All you're doing is supporting. That's it. It's not like you're advocating the overthrow of the government, which you're really doing is you're asking for the same accountability that we say that we want for everyone. But the price is so enormous. I know that's right. What were you trying to express or did express in the portion that dealt with mediocre white boy?

Well, there are a couple of things about that section. The biggest thing that I was trying to get across in that essay was this place of being trapped that I find African Americans to be in, you know, especially, you know, even thinking about my own life and my own career and journalism. Where on the one hand, when you're, when you're not doing well, people say you're, you're draining the system. And then when you do well, people say, oh, well, you were an affirmative action hire. You only got your job because you were black. So you're ruining, you're ruining the country because you're black, but you're also only succeeding because you're black. And you listen to this, this idea of this meritocracy, it goes out the window for you. We try. We are told to do the right things. Go to the good schools, get the education, pay attention, pay your dues. And then when you do those things, people say, oh, well, you're just an affirmative action hire. And it's incredibly demeaning and it's insulting and it's humiliating. But the other part of it that I was trying to get at in that in that essay is the phenomenon that I refer to as the assumption of competence.

Whereas the white men in that business, they assume their own competence. They assume they belong in that room. Even when they don't get jobs, they don't assume that the person who got the job over them doesn't belong in the industry. Unless it's you. If it's you, it's like, well, you only got that job because you were black. They never assume your competence. They never say, well, he's really good. He's really good and he paid his dues and he's been doing the same job I've done. And he was just better than me on this one. Instead, there's always this sort of racial resentment that you can't escape that you can never be unstuck from. And so what I was getting at in that essay was also to say, well, you know, there are very, very few people of any race of any gender and any color that are truly, truly exceptional. So you have to accept your own mediocrity as sort of the white foundation of these industries as well. But that never happens. The only time you assume incompetence is when somebody black gets a job that you think you should have had. This is not in the book, but how do young people navigate this confusing and sometimes contradictory world that we live in?

Yeah, it's a good question, John. And I didn't address it. And part of the reason I didn't address it was because I don't know the answer. And I don't resent it. I don't mean to sound resentful because I'm really not. I'm just thinking about the ideas in my life right now. I just felt it hard to come up with an answer. I felt like it's not, is it my job to also give you hope? Where's the hope coming from? I wish I knew. I found it. But where I found the hope in this world was in recognizing the con of it. In recognizing that as black people, we do not need your approval in order to move forward. We don't have to buy into all of these different tropes that ultimately do not serve us. That what really is your salvation in a lot of ways is to see through this and to not have to listen to it. I think that the area where, as I said, I was very, very concerned was in talking, especially to some of these affluent black kids out there that are going to the Harvards and the Yales and the Ivy League schools, and then get that bucket of cold water in the face there too, where it's like, wait a minute, I thought we're the elite ones and you realize that you're not. For me, what I really find the most hopeful also is in the area where you have an opportunity to speak, you feel comfortable doing so.

I think that it's interesting to me where you have some of these folks having what I refer to as their sort of full dissidents moment, like the NFL coaches right now where they've paid all their dues and they're not getting that pay off. You're supposed to be a pay off or paying your dues. What are we going to do when you realize that that pay off doesn't apply to me? I'm hoping that we get more voices and I'm hoping that there is an opportunity for people to express themselves and maybe carve out new paths, maybe the hope comes from the recognition that you asked me to lean into this, you asked me to buy into it, and now there's nothing here so we're going to create something new for ourselves. I found it somewhat comical and then somewhat personal when you wrote about the appreciation days with law enforcement and these appreciation days are being commemorated around tragedies of citizens and I was wondering when a radio or journalists are going to have appreciation day and some of these ball parks and airlines and other resorts. Well, it's one of the things that I'm concerned about when I talk about being concerned about this country.

We only accept heroism if you've got a gun in your hand and those are the heroes. And there's an essay in there as well called it's okay to criticize the military where you're talking about sort of the American priority. And we never question if you look at what's happening in the country today, so you have whether it's a Elizabeth Warren Medicare plan or whether it's a Bernie Sanders Medicare plan or whether it's a Pete Buttigieg Medicare plan. The first thing people say is, how are you going to pay for it or if it's a student debt plan, how are you going to pay for it? If it's more and more and more weapons, nobody asked that question. And if you do some research, if you hop on the Brown University's done this wonderful study called the Costs of War, which is how much money it's cost us to be fighting since 9-11, this country is drowning in enormous military debt. It's drowning in debt and that debt is not going to get paid off and yet we seem to think that there is a bottomless pit of money for the Defense Department. And you look at what's happening to your college graduates who are stuck in debt and who are doing worse than their parents and who are living at home.

Where is this country going to go if you do not have the opportunity to have a career and you look at those percentages. I mean, just hop on and look up anything on student and student debt, especially some of the government statistics and you're looking at the future. It's on as 15 years old and I'm looking at these numbers and I'm going, this generation is doomed and at some point something's got to be done about it. But the narratives fueled by media in a lot of ways is that we'll talk about an $800 billion defense budget. But if you try at all to talk about education or health or improvement in other ways that don't include killing, we make it sound like it's an impossibility. And it's not. It's just a difference in priority. When you have an opportunity to talk to these young ball players, are they finding themselves walking a tight rope or being uneased when it comes to political issues or social problems? Sometimes I think it depends on what kind of protection they have. The NBA is a little bit different because you got LeBron there.

And when you've got the best player talking about this stuff then they've got a little bit more cushion because they're not isolated. It's like, well, LeBron said it. Talk of my can't say it. So it's not that bad. When you're in a position like baseball where you don't have any African American players, you only have 65 black players in the whole sport anyway. And the black players that you do have are not very eager to talk about racial or political issues. Yeah, it's very, very, very difficult. The same is true for football when you see the chilling effect of what they did to Colin Kaepernick. There's an acceptable way to talk about issues in football and that is to be part of the players coalition. And then there's a way to essentially lose your whole career and that's to align yourself with Colin Kaepernick, even though Eric Reed is back out there playing. So I think that the players have a greater awareness of it now, but I think they are very much trying to navigate. How do I maintain my blackness? How do I maintain my citizenship without risking my entire career that I've worked my whole life to build? Looking forward, how would you talk about the tremendous debt? And I use that, that particular word, intentionally tremendous debt that the military is putting upon our young people in the next generation.

But is there lightness at the tunnel? Are the corners to be turned in this lesson? Well, I think it depends on the leadership. I think it depends on what this country chooses to value, what direction it chooses to go in. I think even if you go back and listen to the conversations about the military, even from Dwight Eisenhower back in the 1950s when he was president, he's a Republican talking about how we're essentially caging ourselves. We're making a prison out of this country in terms of being too heavily invested in war. And so you realize that it's not necessarily a partisan issue as much as it is a priority issue within that partisanship. And the attitude that we have today, you asked me earlier about how you get pitted against your own country. This post-911 attitude that we have, which is now, for my entire life, I'm 51 years old, for my entire life, the American flag has always been aspirational.

White people, black people, Latinos, Asians, everybody's had the same thing. Maybe we're not perfect yet, but we're getting there. That we have a dream to aspire to, whether it's a Statue of Liberty and all of these different things that we talk about. You know, it's light, you know, things were better than they were. And I don't feel that today. I feel today that when people talk about the American flag, it's simply a symbol to be obeyed. And if you don't obey it, whatever that it is, then you're unpatriotic. And that's a very, very different message from the America that I've grown up in. Howard Bryant, senior writer with espn.com, NPR's Week in Addition Correspondent, and author a full dissonant note from an uneven playing field. If you have questions, comments or suggestions asked your future in black America programs, email us at inblackamerica at kut.org. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. Remember to like us on Facebook and to follow us on Twitter.

The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessary, those of this station or of the University of Texas at Austin. You can get previous programs online at kut.org. Until we have the opportunity again for technical producer David Alvarez, I'm John Leon Hansen, Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America CDs. KUT radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in black America CDs, KUT radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712. This has been a production of KUT radio.