Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man?

Who’s Afraid of a Large Black Man (a silly title for a book) is a book written by the retired superstar of the NBA, Charles Barkley. The motivation for writing this book in the author’s own words is described as follows:

“I’ve said a million times that racism is the biggest cancer of my life-time. There’s not a chance in the world I can eliminate it or solve it. But I can’t sit around and say nothing. I can, because of my position in life, try to start a more public discussion of race and how prejudice just kills us all little by little. That’s what I’ve set out to do here, to get people to discuss something that makes every body uncomfortable.”

Sir Charles, in his typical brash and outspoken manner plunged into discussing an issue – racism and racial discrimination – which many are afraid to touch publicly, even with a nine-yard pole. The sense of ‘political correctness’ stops them delving into it. But Sir Charles is nothing if not a daredevil in such matters.

The book, published by The Penguin Press, in 2005, includes conversations with 13 prominent persons. It opens with a chapter “Looking Back at the Balcony”, which is about the phenomenal golfer, Tiger Woods. He has discussed his multi-ethnic roots and the way he was subjected to racism in his growing up years. Barkley has summed up his impressions of Tiger Woods as follows: “It’s remarkable to me that Tiger has remained pretty much without bitterness. His life is nothing if not diverse. His wife is Swedish. His caddie is from New Zealand. His mom is Thai, and his dad is black and American. You don’t see that every day, do you? Then again, maybe if we look closer, increasingly this is what we will be seeing as walls and barriers come down. Folks accustomed to being only with people who look like them may not want to see it, but it’s there more and more if you just look around when you travel. Maybe part of it is that so many people don’t have the means or opportunity to leave their communities and don’t know what’s going on outside their segregated situations. Anyway, we know Tiger knows exactly who he is and has an appreciation for where he comes from because of some ugly lessons. Still, he seems not to carry that baggage around.”

When after the traditional ceremony at the Masters Tournament, he was presented with the customary green jacket, Tiger described the bonding, which the fellow-blacks had for him as follows:

“So, there’s this closing ceremony. You go on the putting green, where it takes place, and I look up and they’re all there in their white outfits. The cooks, the staff, attendants, everybody. They’re all black. Each of them came out onto the balcony and watched it. I look back and I start thinking choked up just thinking about it. They touched me in a really powerful way. I started thinking about everything these people had faced in life, all the ugliness and all the prejudice and all the obstacles they had to deal with.”

The book includes a chapter “Building a Culture of Dignity”, which discusses President Clinton’s views on race relations. His views on education are really perceptive. Charles wrote about Bill Clinton, “He has often been called ‘America’s first black president’ because of the ease and comfort with which he interacts with black people.”

President Clinton has his office in Harlem, New York, after his second term as president of the U.S. He has a natural instinct of mixing with people of different colors, religions, and race. He said in this chapter, “The second thing, I believe, is that we tend to make assumptions about people who aren’t in our crowd that aren’t accurate. For example, poor people are not on welfare; they work. I think that most poor people would agree that the best social program is a job and that work is a lot better than welfare. Many, many poor people are the most anticrime you can imagine, because they’re the people most likely to be victimized by it. Most people who live in Harlem really want the same thing for their kids as most people in midtown Manhattan do, or that the Greeks in Queens do. They just don’t know how to get it.”

The chapter “Carrying it Forward” is about Jesse Jackson. Charles wrote, “Because Jesse ran for president, and because he’s been involved in Democratic Party for more than twenty years, I’m not sure people under thirty-five think of him as anything but a politician. I don’t think people realize he is one of the last really prominent links to the civil rights movement.” Jesse described in the book, “I was jailed July 17, 1960, trying to use a public library in Greenville, South Carolina…Jailed again in’62, ’63. Came to grad school in ’64. Was in the Selma march for the right to vote in ’65. And that’s when I started working for Dr. King, in ’65…When I started here (Chicago) in ’66, we didn’t have any black checkout clerks at grocery stores. Blacks couldn’t drive milk trucks. Couldn’t drive garbage trucks, not in ’66. I had the choice a few years earlier of trying to go pro in baseball or going on to college. I am so glad I chose college though it was a difficult choice for a while because I loved baseball so much. Still my father was militant on the subject. Big Boss said, ‘It is clear to me that the risk of going to a baseball system versus a college education is not a good trade-off.”

In the chapter “Go Down, Moses”, Charles talked with Rabbi Steven Leder. They talked of common issues, which the blacks and Jews experienced as discriminated minorities in the U.S. They had joined hands in common misery and affliction and worked together at least to knock down racial boundaries between them. Later on, both of them (Blacks and the Jews) went their own ways not because of any basic disagreement but because they were caught in the maelstrom of their own community problems. The Jews became pre-occupied with concerns about Israel in 1960s and 1970s.

Writing about Jewish racism against the blacks, the Rabbi described, “We have to start with the fact that I grew up in a racial family. I’ve written about this. My dad who is one of the most wonderful guys in the world, doesn’t know he’s a racist, but he is a racist, right? I wrote this article for the Jewish Journal called ‘the S word’, which is a Yiddish/ German word that means black, but it’s derogatory. It’s the N word in Yiddish. So I wrote this article and talked about my father’s linguistic racism. See, here’s the crazy thing about my dad. He’s the man who would offer a black man coming out of prison a job because it was the right thing to do. But he’d also call him a ‘Schwartze’. He hired a Schwartze for this and a Schwartze to do that. It is just another kind of racism.”

Barkley sought out these celebrities and persuaded them to talk about their personal experiences and views on race and racism in the U.S. Normally, many of these people would have discreetly maintained their silence. In this respect, the book is important that it has brought these issues out into the public focus.

A given situation seldom stays the same in the world in time. When Barkley played in the NBA, he focused single-mindedly on his game and the thoughts of winning as many of them as possible. The idea of becoming a role model to others was quite repugnant to him. He had said as much in print and had advised his colleagues to play the ball game and desist from thinking of being role models. Now, after retirement from the NBA, he is unwittingly assuming the role of a role model and this book is a great step in that direction. It is quite appropriate too because now in his mature wisdom, he can lead; he can show the way and there may be millions who want to follow his lead. Although there are others who think he’s the same old loudmouth that he was when he played in the NBA.

He rationalized his position in an interview at the Bob Rivers Show when he said, “It seems like in the NBA that’s one place you don’t see much racism. The only people really discriminated against are the short guys. Man, when you play with a white guy, race never, NEVER comes into play. You don’t care – you just want to win.”

He hasn’t lost his flair of being provocatively witty. To a question from Bob, “How have you changed since retiring from the NBA?” Barkley responded, “Number 1, my boobs are getting bigger, and my ass is getting bigger…those two things I really need to work on.”

The material in the book is important particularly for them who want to understand how racism exists subtly hidden in the substratum of our society but its title is quite strange. Barkley explained in “The Philadelphia Inquirer” that he wanted to call his book “Why White People Hate Me”. It is good he didn’t use it because the book is really bigger than his own persona. Maybe the present title is a retort to what Barkley wanted to call his book in the first place. It is equally irrelevant. This title was suggested by the publisher.

On a suggestion that he should run for office, for governor of Alabama perhaps and on a Republican ticket, Sir Charles broke out and said in his usual outspoken way, “Don’t know. I’m not big on either party. But I sure would have a hard time running as a Republican.” He also said, “Some show was interviewing me and my grandmother. And my grandmother said that she didn’t want me to be a Republican because it was a party of the rich. And I said, ‘I’m rich so I must be a Republican.’”

The book also contains his conversations with Barack Obama, Samuel L. Jackson, George Lopez, Ice Cube, Marita Golden, Peter Guber, Robert Johnson, Morgan Freeman, and Marian Wright Edelman.

In the Afterword, Charles said, “The people we talked to for this book were, it seems to me, secure people, which is probably why they said yes in the first place when I asked them to talk on the record about something that’s fairly controversial….What I am trying to get across, as a final thought, is that if you encourage people to venture beyond their natural environment and get them to interact with people they believe are different, they’ll find that we have a lot more in common than we think. But silence isn’t going to get it done. Ignoring the problem isn’t going to get it done. Clinging to old stereotypes isn’t going to get it done. Dialogue is best place to start. Hell, it’s the only place to start.”