... and that's not sitting well in certain circles.
How so?
It had everything to do with what Kobe Bryant said in a recent profile penned in the New Yorker that included his reasoning on why he did not agree with the Miami Heat taking a team photo where they are all wearing hoodies last year, a form of protest to commemorate 17-year-old Trayvon Martin being shot by George Zimmerman despite remaining unarmed and only wearing a hoodie in his Florida neighborhood.
“I won’t react to something just because I’m supposed to, because I’m an African-American,” Bryant is
quoted as saying in the New Yorker piece. “That argument doesn’t make any sense to me. So we want to advance as a society and a culture, but, say, if something happens to an African-American we immediately come to his defense? Yet you want to talk about how far we’ve progressed as a society? Well, we’ve progressed as a society, then don’t jump to somebody’s defense just because they’re African-American. You sit and you listen to the facts just like you would in any other situation, right? So I won’t assert myself.”
Bryant’s comments immediately sparked criticism on social media for the apparent insincerity surrounding Martin’s case and the racial components that may have led toward becoming a wrongful death. Civil rights activist Najee Ali, director of Project Islamic H.O.P.E., said in a statement that the public should boycott any Bryant-related merchandise and endorsements.
You might recall the dust-up Kobe had with NFL legend and black activist Jim Brown late last year:
Brown’s statements about Kobe earlier this week weren’t shocking for a man who has always taken athletes to task. On The Arsenio Hall Show, Brown made it clear that he doesn’t consider Kobe to be a socially conscious black man.
“He is somewhat confused about culture, because he was brought up in another country,” Brown said. (Bryant spent part of his childhood in Italy, where his father played professional basketball.) “[Bryant] doesn’t quite fit what’s happening in America.”
...
The part that is more telling has been Bryant’s reaction. Instead of privately bashing Brown for his comments, Bryant took to Twitter to further the conversation: “A ‘Global’ African American is an inferior shade to ‘American’ African Americans?? #hmm .. ,” he wrote.
In other words, Kobe Bryant was being told he wasn't black enough, the typical leftist charge against black men who don't think like the collective. And now, in the wake of Kobe's remarks about the Trayvon Martin case, that ugly canard is being raised again.
It's revealing. It's expecially revealing when you find out that after George Zimmerman was acquitted, Kobe quoted Frederick Douglass on his Instagram account:
Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. -Frederick Douglass-
I don't know Kobe Bryant from Adam but the fact that he thinks for himself is to me refreshing.
I hope he continues to do so.
