LSU FOOTBALL AND RACE RELATIONS!

Thursday, September 17^th, 2020

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

LSU FOOTBALL AND RACE RELATIONS!

Ah, the wisdom found in the New York Times. America’s newspaper (at least according to them) seems to find a reason every week to denigrate the backwards homefolks that populate Louisiana. Certainly some debasement is justified, particularly when it comes to disparaging the state’s political establishment. But there’s one area that is sacrosanct and off limits to even the least well-informed news editor. Whatever you do or write, don’t mess with LSU football.

Tiger fans were plummeted sometime back by the Times in an editorial page column, accusing Tiger fans of looking on football players as little more than mascots. The author is particularly chagrinned over LSU aficionados merely wanting to be entertained without any concern for the player as a person. “Mascots may have occasion feelings of affection, but they aren’t part of the community they serve. No one is inviting Tigers into their home, no matter how much they like the idea of their ferocity on the football field,” said the Times.

So if you don’t have some of the black players over for dinner, you must be racist, or so the article concludes. I guess I must plead guilty, since I’ve never had a player over for a meal. But I’ve never had an LSU or Southern professor, black or white, over either. Or for that matter, I guess I’m remorseful in not inviting my preacher, my CPA, my legislator, my barber, or my doctor. I would invite LeBron James or Shaquille O’Neal, both NBA superstars, if I thought they would come. No white basketball players on my list though because, what’s the movie called: White guys Can’t Jump?

The Times article is chagrined over the fact that university football players are exploited. “College players are uncompensated.” But that’s not so. Players at LSU receive full scholarships including room and board, medical care, plus on average an additional $4000 a year to cover incidentals. And then the top players get a shot at the big bucks of professional football.

The commentary goes on to reference a convoluted 12- year- old study that concludes judges who are LSU graduates are overcome with racial disparities when it comes to sentencing during football season. When LSU is nationally ranked, so the article concludes, and loses a game it was favored to win, Louisiana judges often suffer “emotional trauma generated by the upset loss that seems to fall on black defendants.” These sentence disparities are caused, now get this, because judges “are working through their own negative feelings” over the LSU loss. That’s what the article says, I kid you not.

These spurious conclusions from the Times article are by Erin C. Tarver an assistant professor of philosophy at Oxford College of Emory University, and titled:  College Football Is Here. But What Are We Really Cheering? Ms. Tarver has determined that it is us vs. them, and that football players are merely gladiators put on the field to amuse the university’s alumni.

Sure, college football has its share of problems. The financial costs have grown way out of proportion, and only the big-time college football programs are profitable. All players, black and white, place a major physical toll on their bodies with scars and injuries that can last a lifetime. Academic standards are often compromised for college athletes. The University of North Carolina, my alma mater, is currently being investigated over a major cheating scandal. But these problems affect black and white athletes alike.

It’s disingenuous to blame the fans and judges for perceived problems that affect every player out on the field as well as the sport as a whole. We can only wish that changing the rules of football could be the only barrier to releasing racial tension. In the meantime, I’m inviting Coach O and the whole Tiger team, both black and white players, over for Sunday dinner. Geaux Tigers. 

 Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide.  You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com. 

 

 

 

 

 

OUR LIVES WERE CHANGED BY 9/11

Friday, September 11^th, 2020

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

OUR LIVES WERE CHANGED BY 9/11

 I have watched through a window a world that has fallen.

                                                                                                W. H. Auden

The date, 9/11, turned into the frantic dialing of 911 nineteen years ago. A surreal feeling of shock and helplessness enveloped all Americans as we watched that day’s events unfold. In hindsight, we should ask many questions.  Is America a safer place today?  Maybe.  But we also have witnessed a fundamental shift in our culture, where liberty and freedom have been compromised so that we supposedly feel “more safe.”

I was home on that horrific when a family friend called a little after 8:00 a.m. to tell me about the first plane’s crashing into the World Trade Center. Like millions of Americans, I turned on my television just in time to see the second plane hit the second tower.

I was home alone, so I immediately felt the need to call the people closest to me. I was able to reach my mother, my brother Jack, and two of my daughters.  I told them all to turn on their TV sets. I reached my son on his cell phone as he was entering the LSU Lab School. But, what about my oldest daughter Campbell? I knew she had flown back to Washington late the night before, from California, where she was reporting a story for NBC news on the retirement of the president’s plane, a former Air Force One. Perhaps she was still home. I called her apartment but got no answer. Then the third plane hit the Pentagon in Washington. Thoughts raced through my head. Was there a fourth plane — or more? Wasn’t the White House a likely target? Was my oldest daughter sitting in her NBC office in the White House?

She didn’t answer her cell phone. I called the White House switchboard, which is noted for being efficient. There was a brief recording saying to hold on for an operator, then the line went dead. For a moment I feared the worst: a plane crashing into the White House, my daughter inside. Then I heard Matt Lauer on the “Today Show” say, “Now let’s go to Campbell Brown for an update across the street from the White House.” Campbell told a national audience that the White House had been evacuated and that she was broadcasting from a nearby hotel. She gave hourly reports throughout the day and late into the evening.

Like millions of Americans, I stayed glued to the TV all day.  That night, my wife and I kept a long-standing dinner date with friends at Chris’s steakhouse, close to our home in Baton Rouge.  Halfway through dinner, around 9:00 o’clock, my cell phone rang. It was my son James. “Dad, I’m still watching everything on television,” he said. “I just need to do something. Do we have an American flag here at home?” I told him we had one stored in our “flag box,” where we keep banners for the various seasons, as well as holiday flags for Christmas, Halloween, and Easter. When we drove into our driveway that night, a large American flag was hanging from the front porch, waving in the wind.

Ten years later, we have a lot of questions to ask, and a lot of consoling to do. How is it possible that there is still such intense hatred for our country? Who is our enemy, and how do we do battle with them? Before 9/11, life was so normal and ordinary. Now we live under the so-called Patriot Act that has stripped all Americans of basic constitutional freedoms.  We live with body scanners, “enhanced” pat-downs and “fusion” centers. For all of us, life will never be the same.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.

 

 

 

 

ALL LOUISIANA KIDS HAVE A RIGHT TO INTERNET ACCESS!

Thursday, September 3^rd, 2020

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

ALL LOUISIANA KIDS HAVE A RIGHT TO INTERNET ACCESS!

 Our illustrious state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education in Louisiana has just released a startling report.  Over 25% of students, some 179,000 throughout the state, have no internet access.  Yet the vast majority of school districts teach a good part of the week virtually over the internet.  There are some 403,000 households that have NO internet connection.

This is apparently brand new news.  At lease to the state Board of Education.  Have the members been living in a cave or on a desert island?  Is this Board just waking up to the fact that internet connectivity is a basic component for any student today?  I wrote a column back in May of 2012 (found a www.jimbrownla.com) describing how important internet availability was for any child to adequately learn in the 21^st century.  So 12 years later, our education board is discovering the necessity of a student’s ability to have web access.

What so few elected officials seem to grasp is the fact that the lack of internet access is widening the educational gap between the haves and the have nots.  Kids in homes without internet access are continuing to fall behind as the web becomes an increasingly essential educational tool. Students with internet availability at home have a significant homework and general learning advantage over the child who has no such access.

In my home state of Louisiana, the legislature just completed its regular 60-day session.  Even though Louisiana continues to rank at the bottom of most educational attainment lists, the words “internet access” were not spoken once by any state official during the session. The internet today is every bit as important as telephones were 50 years ago.  Back then, having a telephone was looked on as a right.  Today access to the internet is considered a privilege in many states — yet the lack of internet access it is the single biggest obstacle preventing less fortunate kids from competing.

In a number of progressive school districts around the country, computers track each student’s performance. If a kid gets a “D” or “F” on a test, the school’s computer generates an email to inform the parents so they can act accordingly. Modern educational strategies include seeing that every elementary school student has a computer. In India, innovative school leaders are making $35 touch screen tablet computers available to students, and many businesses are helping to fund such programs.

Computers have become a necessary way of life all over the world. But the advantage of having a computer is severely limited if access to the web is not available. The U.S. is the only industrialized country in the world that doesn’t have a national policy to promote high speed broadband. A number of European countries are making the web available to all of its citizens. The Supreme Court in France recently ruled that internet access is a basic right, and there is a push at the United Nations to do the same. Finland recently became the first country to actually declare broadband Internet access a legal right. 

Here’s the point.  Our legislature spends months, even years, talking about testing teachers, abolishing school boards, and new ways to grade students. But none of these issues are nearly as important as ensuring that all students have the tools necessary to be competitive.

Internet availability has become not just another way to learn. It has become a critical component in the learning process. And when some kids have it, and others do not, the attainment divide continues to grow. Some kids prosper, others lag behind. Until our politicians realize this, the U.S., and particularly my home state of Louisiana will be little more than a third world nation when it comes to providing competitive learning opportunities.

Without round-the-clock internet access, over one third of our kids will drift further behind, and a large part of Louisiana’s population will become functionally illiterate.  Our kids, and our state as a whole, deserve better.

Peace and Justice

Jim Brown

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownusa.com.