On Sunday, the New York Times's Pete Thamel filed a dispatch from Haifa, Israel. Why was a college sports reporter filing from Haifa? Thamel was checking in on Jeremy Tyler, the 18-year-old uber-prospect who, in the wake of Brandon Jennings's now-viewed-as-successful European experiment, decided to forgo his senior year of high school and play overseas for Maccabi Haifa.
Thamel reports that Tyler's decision is at this point -- which, to be fair, is very early in the process -- not only regrettable but disastrous. Tyler is clearly immature and distracted by the potential of NBA riches, which he apparently considers a sure thing. His coaches and teammates do not like him. He is struggling to see minutes on the court. And if things keep getting worse, Tyler's NBA draft status is likely to keep falling. These early returns are not promising. A key graph:
His coach calls him lazy and out of shape. The team captain says he is soft. His teammates say he needs to learn to shut up and show up on time. He has no friends on the team. In extensive interviews with Tyler, his teammates, coaches, his father and advisers, the consensus is that he is so naïve and immature that he has no idea how naïve and immature he is. So enamored with his vast potential, Tyler has not developed the work ethic necessary to tap it.
Of course, as one teammate reminds Thamel, Tyler has been a pro for less than 100 days, and he's done so in a foreign country with few friends at an unusually early age. He deserves some slackThis time last year, people were raising similar questions about Brandon Jennings (though those questions had far more to do with ability and playing time than attitude). Still, while Tyler's situation is unique among hoopsters, he's not the first 18-year-old to enter the workforce. He's not even the first 18-year-old to enter high-level sports; by age 18, top-level soccer prospects are being thrust into intense club matches. 18 isn't old, but it's old enough to know when to shut up.
Anyway, Jennings's situation worked out, and there's no reason Tyler's can't either. So let's avoid extrapolating Tyler's situation into an indictment of the European option for recruits. For now, it's just an indictment of Jeremy Tyler, and things aren't looking good.
A local college teacher who asked students to draw a black man with a noose around his neck awaited word Oct. 28 on how he could be disciplined.
Los Angeles Trade Technical College teacher Bill Robles could be disciplined in various ways if officials found that Robles gave the homework assignment with malicious intent, but the primary option is to ask him to undergo sensitivity training, college President Roland “Chip” Chapdelaine said.
Based on his initial review, Chapdelaine said he did not think Robles gave the assignment with malicious intent.
“He gave an assignment that was probably insensitive,” Chapdelaine said Oct. 26, adding he had to reserve final judgment until he conducted a full review.
Final decisions would not be disclosed, however, since the situation is a personnel matter, said Chapdelaine, who did not respond to an e-mail by presstime on Oct. 28 to confirm if an ultimate recommendation had been made.
Robles wouldn’t have to take training but only be recommended to do so, Chapdelaine said Oct. 26.
Although there are different levels, the training generally involves dialogue, exposure, understanding and discussion with people from different ethnic groups, Chapdelaine said, adding he could not speculate on future discipline.
Camelle Williams and other African American students walked out of class Sept. 16 because Robles passed out an image of a black man standing in his bare feet, pointing to the floor with one hand and holding a noose around his neck with the other.
Students in the Drawing II and Drawing III classes were given a different assignment the same day — a picture of a home, students said — but Williams still filed a complaint after talking to Robles.
“He was defending himself the whole time. He didn’t say he was sorry,” said Williams, who recently went before the L.A. Community College District’s board of trustees about the incident.
“He didn’t even acknowledge the noose,” she added.
Robles said he doesn’t remember exactly what he said that day but did not intentionally give the assignment as a racist gesture or to offend anyone. He added that he never associated the photo with any racist themes.
“In retrospect, I see it was an error in judgment,” Robles said.
Black students had an uproar over the image, he said, “and I can see their side of it, but I’m totally devoid of any of those (racist) feelings.”
“I did it in total innocence,” he added.
[Home page of Bill Robles’ Web site, which highlights his work as a courtroom sketch artist.]
Home page of Bill Robles’ Web site, which highlights his work as a courtroom sketch artist. Robles, a longtime courtroom sketch artist, has worked at Trade Tech for roughly 20 years.
Chapdelaine said he did not know of any other complaints filed against Robles in the past.
Robles said he picked the assignment — originally something he drew based on photos he saw many years ago in a magazine — because he felt students could apply drawing principles they learned in class with it. Students, he said, were complaining about not wanting to do certain assignments, so Robles said he wanted to give them an assignment that would be “stimulus” to the students.
Robles said he never gave the assignment to students before. Chapdelaine and Williams, in separate interviews, said he did.
Raymond Baptist, a visual communications student who saw the illustration before it was passed out, refused to draw it.
“It was kind of shocking to me,” Baptist said. “He’s not even being considerate of people’s feelings.”
Virtually all the black students — about five in a room of roughly 30 — walked into a neighboring lab and told another teacher about the incident, according to some students.
“Everybody just came in mad, basically,” Baptist said.
Robles added that the picture — which he said was an intriguing pose and photo of Trinidadian artist and performer Geoffrey Holder — was considered a piece of art several years ago, wasn’t considered offensive, and appeared in a magazine.
Baptist said that doesn’t change his opinion about the photo “because people saw it for what it was … especially black students.”
“We see a black person with a rope around their neck,” he added.
School officials held meetings, including one with Robles. An administration official also visited the class to evaluate Robles because of the incident, and not for a usual review, Chapdelaine said.
Robles apologized to students several days later. The school also apologized in a letter “on behalf of the Arts Trades and Fashion Department” and the administration “for the lack of sensitivity in the Visual Communication assignment…”
Williams said she didn’t accept Robles’ apology, but wants him fired, noting that she doesn’t have a personal problem with him. She said the situation should not be tolerated because racism shouldn’t be tolerated anywhere.
“He is only a symptom to a much bigger problem,” she said, also alleging that racism exists at the school.
Robles reiterated he is not racist, adding he would not have passed out the assignment if he was.
“I don’t know why somebody would want to tarnish a career spending all (these) 40 years with something like this,” he said, reiterating it was false that he meant to offend anyone.
“You’re worried about your 40 years. I’m worried about my 400 years (of slavery),” Williams said as a response.
Later, Robles added, “In retrospect, I’ve had a sensitivity awakening.”
He said he was in “lala land” because he just didn’t think in racist terms when he saw the drawing, but is now more aware.
Nana Gyamfi, a lawyer and co-founder of L.A-based Human Rights Advocacy contacted by Williams, said she would help Williams get the word out about the situation.
People have the right to speak out, Gyamfi said.
“The damage has occurred,” she added, “whether the intent is there or not.”
An art teacher who gave his Los Angeles Trade-Technical College students a racially offensive classroom assignment received a slap on the wrist, but the president of the college may lose his job over it.
Bill Robles, a veteran courthouse illustrator and teacher in Trade-Tech’s Visual Communications Department, gave each of his students in his drawing class a picture of two caricatured Black men pulling a noose around their necks and, as homework, instructed them to draw the figure of the man on the left in the picture.
The class of 30 students was outraged by the assignment to the point that none of the students drew the picture and the five African-Americans in the class walked out on the spot.
Reyna Mendez, one of the offended students, said the picture was totally inappropriate and she asked Robles why he would present a picture like that for them to draw.
Mendez, who is writing a story about the incident for the college newspaper, said Robles told her he wanted to show the “gesture” depicted in that picture so the class could learn to draw gestures. Finding that to be an unsatisfactory reply, “I told him there are a lot of other pictures he could have used to show us how to draw gestures,” Mendez said.
Camelle Williams, a visual communications major who grew up in Long Beach but resides with her grandmother in South L.A., was so incensed by Robles’ picture that she spearheaded a protest against him which culminated in a confrontation with the Los Angeles Community College District Board of Trustees last week.
Robles, an elderly man believed to be in his 70s, was immediately challenged by Williams about his assignment when he gave it last month. “He began to unapologetically defend himself by saying, ‘In all the years I have been teaching, I never had one complaint about this assignment,” Williams said.
“Even after all the African-American students walked out in protest, it was the remaining students who had to explain to him how offensive this is to all races, not only to African-Americans.”
Williams reported Robles’ actions to the college administration, including the president, Roland Chapdelaine, who promised a thorough investigation of the matter and swift discipline to follow, if warranted. Robles’ offense occurred on Sept. 16 and by the end of the month, the investigation appeared complete and Chapdelaine informed Williams that he would recommend sensitivity training for Robles and he would put in his permanent file a reprimand for not having a syllabus for his class.
Williams found Chapdelaine’s recommended “discipline” to be unacceptable, since a reprimand for Robles’ failure to have a syllabus did, in no way, address his offense, so she marshaled her fellow students and took the issue over Chapdelaine’s head — to the board of trustees, which met at Pierce College Oct. 21.
The meeting hall was packed, as most of the people went to express to the board their concerns about a farm and an equestrian center at Pierce College. Williams and her “Robles’ picture” item was listed last on the agenda. But when she spoke, things changed.
First of all, when Jimmy DeVance and other Robles students, distributed Robles’ picture to the crowd gathered for the meeting, the people reacted with horror and stunned disbelief. Although they went there to support a farm and a horse facility, they immediately found something else to champion — the removal of whomever is responsible for this abomination they saw before them. Williams spoke movingly to the board about what Robles had done and what Chapdelaine had failed to do. After she finished, the board turned to Chapdelaine — who was present because the board was scheduled to vote on the extension of his one-year contract to head Trade-Tech — and asked him to give an account of himself with respect to the Robles incident.
Chapdelaine said his investigation showed that the adverse student reaction to Robles’ use of the picture was “split” and that, in affect, it didn’t seem to be that big of a deal. He said, however, he would have a full report on the matter on Monday.
When the time came later on in the afternoon for the board of trustees to vote on extending Chapdelaine’s contract, it voted “no.”
The old NBA player walked into the high school gymnasium for his first day of work Monday night wearing a Cleveland Cavaliers’ long-sleeved T-shirt and practice shorts. The gym at Trimble Tech High in Fort Worth, Texas, hardly resembled the packed 18,000-seat arenas in which he used to play. On this night he wouldn’t be matched up with Kobe Bryant(notes) or Michael Jordan – only unheralded former small-college stars. No more charter flights or Four Seasons suites. These days, it’s Best Westerns and long bus rides.
This is where 38-year-old Isaiah “J.R.” Rider now finds himself, preparing for his first season with the North Texas Fresh, one of more than 50 teams in the American Basketball Association. Sixteen years ago, Rider was the fifth overall pick of the NBA draft, a promising rookie for the Minnesota Timberwolves who would go on to win the All-Star dunk contest. Nearly two decades of self-inflicted drama and personal pain – including several arrests and a 3½-month stay in jail – have now dropped Rider to the low minor leagues, desperate to revive his career and rewrite a different ending to his troubled story.
“I still have it in me,” Rider told Yahoo! Sports. “I still have something left in the tank. It’s still in my blood. My juices still flow.
“I know I can still ball.”
No one ever doubted Rider could play. He showed flashes of being a dynamic scorer and his acrobatic dunks brought crowds to their feet. During his nine-year stay in the NBA, he averaged 16.8 points while making stops in Minnesota, Portland, Atlanta, Los Angeles (Lakers) and Denver.
“I look on a lot of NBA courts today and I still don’t see guys with the talent he had,” said Washington Wizards vice president Tommy Sheppard, who worked in Denver for Rider’s brief stay. “He wasn’t the best ball-handler. But he scored in bunches and was an unstoppable force.”
Of course, wherever Rider went, chaos usually followed. He was repeatedly late to practices, meetings and games. He was convicted of kicking a female manager of a sports bar and busted for possession of marijuana and an illegal cell phone. He spit on a fan. He quarreled with management, coaches and teammates, once threatening Atlanta Hawks center Dikembe Mutombo(notes).
Rider, who grew up in Alameda, Calif., even once missed a meeting with the Oakland mayor that would have led to the city naming a gym after him and opening up a midnight basketball program in his honor.
“I’m upset that my career didn’t go as long as it should have went,” Rider said. “Looking back at it, I would have changed some things.”
Rider spent his last full NBA season with the Los Angeles Lakers in 2000-01. He was left off the playoff roster, but still received a championship ring.
“J.R. was the type of player who wanted to do things his way, and if his way didn’t match with the system sometimes there was a conflict,” Shaquille O’Neal(notes) said. “Whenever you go to a new team, you have to go with that system. If you don’t go with that system, then they oust you. He was a hell of a player and if he would have been a system-type baller then he’d probably still be here today.”
Rider’s NBA career ended in the fall of 2001 when the Denver Nuggets waived him after just 10 games. “It was because of chronic lateness,” Sheppard said. “The talent was undeniable. But we had structure. …That’s where all the bad habits came together. The Nuggets were in no position to take that, even with his talent at that time.”
After the Nuggets cut him, Rider was certain another NBA or overseas team would eventually give him a chance. Nothing materialized.
“I thought they were trying to politic me out [the NBA],” Rider said.
After returning to the East Bay, Rider’s life went from bad to worse. His mother, Donna, suffered a heart ailment and – after what Rider claims was a misdiagnosis – slipped into a coma and eventually was taken off life support. Rider considered Donna his best friend. Once, after Rider was ejected during a game in Minnesota, she walked onto the court, told him to be quiet and ushered him to the locker room.
“We were talking one day looking out at the ocean from the house I got for her in Alameda,” Rider said. “Then the next day I get a call at 2 in the morning saying she is in the hospital. I never talked to her again, man.
“I was blaming myself because I’m not playing and she’s used to going to games. I was like, ‘Screw the world.’ ”
In early 2006, Rider was arrested in Marin, Calif., on a domestic-violence charge after allegedly driving off with a former girlfriend against her will. Ordered to stay away from the community, he drove into another car after a sheriff’s deputy tried to confront him. His substance-abuse problems worsened after he began to lace marijuana with cocaine. Rider eventually pled guilty to several charges, including felony cocaine possession and evading an officer. He received a seven-month sentence in Marin County jail, and says he served half the time.
“It was the ultimate low point of my life,” Rider said. “…There were no visitors. No one down for me. No letters. I had fake friends. They left me for dead. I’ve been there for so many people. I co-signed to pay for homes. I paid for weddings. But when I was struggling, no one was there for me.”
Jail didn’t cure Rider’s problems. In January 2008, he was arrested in Berkeley, Calif., after a confrontation with a taxi driver while also possessing an unlawful firearm and being hit with a $5,000 warrant for grand theft. A drug arrest followed two months later. In March 2008, he was arrested on Los Angeles’ skid row for investigation of auto theft before being released later in the day. He says the car belonged to his cousin.
“I regret it,” Rider said about his problems. “I wish I could have it back. &hellipI had to face and go through all of that to just get to this point now.” Isaiah Rider won an NBA championship with Shaquille O'Neal and the Lakers, but he was not on the team's playoff roster. (NBAE/Getty)
Thomas Brown, a deputy district attorney for Marin County, and Rider’s lawyer, Garrick Lew, both say Rider made a lot of his problems worse by not following through with court requirements. As in most areas of his life, tardiness was a main problem.
“He couldn’t get out of his own way,” Brown said. “He would be able to resolve a felony or misdemeanor with fairly minimal diversion obligation and couldn’t do that at all. There were always excuses. But personally, people wanted to see him succeed. He just couldn’t do it and the courts got sick of it.”
Lew said Rider has since fulfilled all his legal obligations.
“Most of the trouble he got in was from not going to court,” Lew said. “It upset the judge. His bail would go up when he failed to do what he was expected to do.”
Not surprisingly, Rider also ran into financial problems. The Marin Independent Journal reported that Rider lost his mother’s home in Alameda to foreclosure in 2006 and also lost two properties in San Leandro, Calif., and several cars. Lew said Rider also paid for his sister to complete a master’s degree program and helped support two brothers.
So how is Rider doing financially now?
“That’s not public,” Rider said. “That’s no one’s business whether I drive my Bentley to practice or ride with one of the coaches. I’m able to eat, able to feed myself and feed my family.”
Rider, who now claims to be drug-free, said he began to turn his life around at the start of the year by attending church. He also reunited with a former girlfriend, Vanessa Cassidy. Rider and Cassidy dated while he was playing for the Lakers. Six months ago, she convinced him to leave the troubles of the Oakland area behind and move with her to Phoenix. The couple is now engaged and she is pregnant with a boy to be named Isaiah Rider III. Cassidy also is staying with Rider in Texas as he plays for the Fresh. Isaiah Rider thrilled fans when he won the 1994 dunk contest as a rookie with his
“It’s been only her and that’s it,” Rider said of his main supporters. “Her and God. It seemed like everybody else, and I say this not mad at anybody, left me for dead in that support group. All the friends I used to have are not there. Arn Tellem, the agent I started with, won’t answer the phone. Personal friends in Oakland, those friendships ran dry. I have quite a few associates, but very few close friends.”
Hoping to restart his career, Rider contacted Joe Lee, a Washington-based agent who represents several players in the minor leagues and overseas. Lee, who has a law-enforcement background, was skeptical of Rider’s sincerity.
“I gave him a test to see if he’d be on time calling me back and to see if he’d do the things I wanted him to do,” Lee said. “And we went on for about two good weeks and he was on time all the time.”
Rider’s goal is to eventually land an overseas contract that could potentially pay upwards of $20,000 a month. Lee said teams in China and Dubai have expressed some interest, but all want to see him playing first. The hope is that the Fresh afford him the opportunity to compile some video evidence.
A 90-minute face-to-face meeting with Rider convinced Fresh owner Jay Bowdy to sign him. “I understand that he’s made mistakes, he had his chance and he flunked on it for whatever reason,” Bowdy said. “But the reason why I took him is because unless you mess up with me and I see it … then I’m not going to not accept you because of what you did 10 years ago. That’s a long time and there’s so much you can learn from your experience from that.”
Bowdy, 26, said Rider will be one of the two highest-paid players and the Fresh also are providing him with an apartment. But that doesn’t mean Rider will be banking much money. Sixty percent of the pay for players and coaches, Bowdy said, comes from each night’s merchandise and ticket sales. The team will practice and play its home games in a high school gym and practices are scheduled at night so players with day jobs can attend.
“Just give me a gym with a nice floor and I’m good,” Rider said. “It’s a long way from practicing at [Trail Blazers owner] Paul Allen’s house in Seattle, but it’s still good though.”
Rider also thinks he’s still good enough to prove he can at least play overseas, where he could land a better contract.
“Money is green everywhere,” he said. “I have a gift and I feel like I got to do what I got to do. God gave me a gift, and I feel like I should be able to play basketball for as long as I possibly can.”
Rider still has dreams he can make it back to the NBA. Most NBA general managers see his chances as just that: a dream. One Eastern Conference executive said it would be “almost impossible” for Rider to earn another job in the league at his age.
Rider needs to work on his conditioning, but Bowdy said he is only about 10 pounds over his NBA playing weight of 215. He also liked what he saw from Rider’s first practice. The first game for the Fresh is Nov. 22.
“He still has his tenacity and no-lose attitude,” Bowdy said. “I was impressed. I will be scared to see what he does to my players when’s he’s in shape.”
Just two months ago, Rider claims he pulled off his famed “East Bay Funk Dunk” that won him the 1994 dunk contest. He says he did so in a park. While wearing jeans. The video of the dunk he provided, however, makes it questionable, at best, whether the rim was the regulation 10 feet.
Still, Rider remains undeterred. “I’m the best player in the world not playing,” he said.
For now, Rider has pledged to stay out of trouble and continue working toward his goal. In addition to playing for the Fresh, he’s nearly finished filming a documentary about his life. The film will focus on Rider’s struggles after he left the NBA. Only one part of the documentary is left to be shot.
Somewhere in an old gym in North Texas, Isaiah Rider continues to search for the right ending.
Isiah blasts Magic over criticisms in new book =================================
Magic Johnson in a soon-to-be-released book, Isiah Thomas said he'd had enough. And so he began to fight back.
"I'm really hurt, and I really feel taken advantage of for all these years,'' said Thomas, the Hall of Fame point guard and former NBA coach and executive, most recently with the Knicks. "I'm totally blindsided by this. Every time that I've seen Magic, he has been friendly with me. Whenever he came to a Knick game, he was standing in the tunnel [to the locker room] with me. He and [Knicks assistant coach] Herb [Williams] and I, we would go out to dinner in New York. I didn't know he felt this way.''
The criticisms are made by Johnson in When The Game Was Ours, which he co-wrote with Larry Bird and author Jackie MacMullan. The book, to be released on Nov. 4, tells the inside story of the most important rivalry in basketball history.
Much of their story involves Thomas, who as captain of the Detroit Pistons served as a primary threat to the championship ambitions of Bird's Celtics and Magic's Lakers. The book offers revelations that have stunned Thomas. Magic addresses years of rumors by finally accusing Thomas of questioning his sexuality after Johnson was diagnosed with HIV in 1991. Magic also admits that he joined with Michael Jordan and other players in blackballing Thomas from the 1992 Olympic Dream Team, saying, "Isiah killed his own chances when it came to the Olympics. Nobody on that team wanted to play with him. ... Michael didn't want to play with him. Scottie [Pippen] wanted no part of him. Bird wasn't pushing for him. Karl Malone didn't want him. Who was saying, 'We need this guy?' Nobody.''
"I'm glad that he's finally had the nerve and the courage to stand up and say it was him, as opposed to letting Michael Jordan take the blame for it all these years,'' Thomas responded during one of several interviews he gave to SI.com on Wednesday. "I wish he would have had the courage to say this stuff to me face to face, as opposed to writing it in some damn book to sell and he can make money off it.''
Thomas, who is the first-year coach at Florida International in Miami, confirmed that MacMullan attempted to reach him for comment six months ago, but he declined through his publicist to speak with her.
Magic's most shocking accusation, however, is that Thomas was responsible for spreading rumors that Johnson was gay or bisexual after Johnson tested positive for HIV, forcing his retirement at age 32. "Isiah kept questioning people about it,'' Magic says. "I couldn't believe that. The one guy I thought I could count on had all these doubts. It was like he kicked me in the stomach.''
Thomas vehemently denied that he had gossiped behind Magic's back, pointing out that he knew better than to engage in such hurtful talk.
"What most people don't know is, before Magic had HIV, my brother had HIV,'' Thomas said. "My brother died of HIV, AIDS, drug abuse. So I knew way more about the disease, because I was living with it in my house.''
His brother, Gregory Thomas, died five years ago, Isiah said.
"Magic acted and responded off some really bad information that he got,'' Thomas went on. "Whatever friendship we had, I thought it was bulls--- that he believed that. Let me put it to you this way: If he and I were such close friends, if I was questioning his sexuality, then I was questioning mine too. That's how idiotic it is.''
The book's main source for this allegation is Magic's longtime agent, Lon Rosen, who says Thomas told him in 1991, "I keep hearing Magic is gay.''
"C'mon, Isiah, you know Earvin better than anyone,'' Rosen replies.
"I know,'' Thomas answers, "but I don't know what he's doing when he's out there in L.A.''
On Wednesday, Thomas denied that conversation. "I don't know Lon like that,'' he said, adding that he reached out to Johnson at the time. "I remember calling Magic and saying [of the allegations that he was rumor-mongering], 'You know that's some bulls---.' ''
Magic declined to be interviewed for this story. Rosen, speaking on behalf of his client, said he and Magic stand by everything attributed to them in the book.
Thomas insisted he felt too much sympathy for Magic to be spreading rumors about him.
"I felt awful for him; I felt awful for everybody,'' Thomas said. "But I knew enough at that time that he didn't have to retire. The 'blood' thing we do in the NBA -- where we stop the game because of blood on somebody's shirt and all that ceremonious stuff -- we're not stopping HIV/AIDS that way. We still do it out of some insane fear that came about when Karl Malone and everybody was saying they weren't playing if Magic was playing.''
Instead, Thomas said he helped make it possible for Magic to return in 1992 to the All-Star Game.
"They weren't going to let Magic play in the All-Star Game; all the players were coming out [against him],'' Thomas said. "You know how that all got turned around? I had a meeting with all of the players -- because I was president of the players' association -- and I told them not only was he going to play, but we were going to shake his hand and give him a hug. And I was the first to shake his hand and hug him and give him a kiss, to let people know that's not how the virus is spread.
"And you can go back and check at the players' association. Call Charlie Grantham [the former union executive director and COO] and ask him how Magic got to play in the All-Star Game. Ask him who called the meeting.''
When The Game Was Ours credits NBA commissioner David Stern with inviting Johnson to play in the All-Star Game, despite objections from some players and owners. The book does acknowledge, however, that Thomas was the first player to embrace Johnson on the court before the game.
"I don't discriminate," Thomas said. "I don't believe any race or ethnic group or social group should be discriminated against, because I have been discrimated against, and I know it would be wrong for me to discriminate.
"I think Magic has been misled on a lot of things, and unfortunately this has been another one of them. I am hurt and disappointed that he has chosen to believe others as opposed to his closest friends. And I think you can go back and look in that era and see who his closest friends were, and who his closest friends are now. At that time, I don't consider Lon Rosen to be one of his closest friends; he was one of his business advisers making money off him.''
According to the Orlando Sentinel, Spike Lee is critical of Perry’s work describing, "Meet the Browns" and "House of Payne" as "coonery and buffoonery."
He has even compared Perry’s work to Amos and Andy. Lee has always been a controversial figure, however this time he is bang on.
Perry is the face of coonery with his Madea character leading the way. She is loud, ignorant, abrasive and downright ridiculous. Her solution to dealing with problem children is to break out the belt and pray. She is the mythical mammy that White folks think exist in every Black family.
How exactly does his vision of Black womanhood advance Black people? The overriding theme in Perry’s movies is that a woman must submit and pray to find a mate in life. His vision of Black womanhood is sexist and promotes Black male hegemony. Just like his White male counterparts, Black males seek power through oppression.
It is one thing to show Black people doing the electric slide at a party and another to show us shucking and jiving at every turn. Perry has responded by saying:
"You know, that pisses me off," Perry tells Byron Pitts. "It really does. Because it's so insulting. It's attitudes like that that make Hollywood think that these people do not exist and that's why there's no material speaking to them. I would love to read that to my fan base."
Of course these people exist, but is this really the image of Blackness that we want promoted. Is it any wonder that Obama, a Harvard educated Black man can have his intelligence questioned, when this is the image of Blackness in pop culture?
Black people are hungry to seem themselves reflected in mainstream media. They are so hungry that they will eat the sand, without every realizing that the images that they are consuming are a mirage. They eat because men like Perry tell them to and because that is all that is available. This is not nourishment for the soul.
Perry wishes to receive accolades from his and his employment of black bodies. Well, when White people employ a Black housemaid, should Black people be thankful for their generosity? When Whiteness fills it supports staff roles with people of color and saves the well paying jobs for White people, should we be thankful for the hand up? Employing Black people to participate in the diminishment of Blackness, is not something we should ever be thankful for.
Perry is very resistant to any criticism of his work. We are expected to ignore the sexism and coonery because it has a Black face behind it. Being Black does not give you any more authority thank a White person to diminish Black people. Whiteness is maintained as a powerful force through the support and collusion of people of color. While Perry is mass producing these harmful images, POC are fighting against them in an effort to get an education and jobs. If Tyler Perry really wants to do something for Black people, he can ride off into the sunset from whence he came.
* Reporter: Christina Gonzalez * Posted by: Tony Spearman
Los Angeles (myFOXla.com) - A sketch in an art class is stirring controversy at Los Angeles Trade Technical College. Some students say the sketch of an African-American dancer is racist.
The What's up news site is dedicated to informing the public on what's going on in the world. This site will cover Social and Political Issues as well as Sports and Entertainment.
Robles passed out an image of a black man standing in his bare feet, pointing to the floor with one hand and holding a noose around his neck with the other.
drawing, but is now more aware.
Magic Johnson in a soon-to-be-released book, Isiah Thomas said he'd had enough. And so he began to fight back.
