Monte Poole: Jalen Rose's stereotyping remain hurtful and divisive

Story by: Contra Costa Times, Mercury News, Oakland Tribune and Bay Area News Group

Written by: Monte Poole:
Poole's email: mpoole@bayareanewsgroup.com

Every so often a sports figure comes along slinging such immaturity and ignorance that it shines a light on our society and provides an opportunity to educate.

It might be through thoughtless action, such as Gilbert Arenas carrying guns into the arena or Bill Romanowski spitting on an opponent in front of national TV cameras.

Sometimes, it's through words, such as Tim Hardaway dropping undiluted hate on gays or John Rocker smearing hate on just about everyone.

The most recent teachable moment comes courtesy of Jalen Rose, the former NBA player who now works as an analyst at ESPN.

In the ESPN documentary feature, "Fab Five," which recalls the Michigan teams of the early 1990s that featured five freshman starters including Rose, he was unflinchingly candid about his contempt for Duke basketball in general and Grant Hill in particular.

"For me, Duke was personal," Rose said on camera for the documentary, which he helped produce. "I hated Duke and everything I felt Duke stood for. Schools like Duke didn't recruit players like me. I felt they only recruited black players that were Uncle Toms."

Although Rose was 20 years old at the time, the explosive sentiment that he recalled touched off a recent national spitstorm and incited a personal debate with Hill.

This is the kind of insult that slashes the core of a black man's soul, for it implies an acceptance of inferiority and the embracing of the subservient role to whites that was common when slavery was a legislated way of life in this country.

Hill recoiled, rightly so. He responded with an op-ed piece in the New York Times that touched on the differences between his upbringing -- both parents are college graduates; his father, Calvin, was an NFL star -- and that of Rose, while expressing disappointment in Rose for resorting to a stereotype that can divide a community.

Understand, though, Rose was expressing feelings developed over a childhood during which he was completely ignored by his father, NBA star Jimmy Walker, while his single mother scratched and patched to make ends meet.

Those who grow up with struggle sometimes resent those who don't. It's not so much a race issue as it is a class issue.

Rose surely misused the pejorative, but I understand what he was trying to say.

It's not right, but it's real.

Rose said what many who shared his predicament thought or whispered. Duke's image, then and now, is that of an uptown school that excels in a downtown game.

As a private university in the South (North Carolina), Duke conjures implications of privilege and exclusivity that create rejection visuals for a poor, insecure boy from Detroit who couldn't presume hot meals or a warm bed -- or that there would be a meal and a bed.

"I was jealous of Grant Hill," Rose conceded in the documentary. "He came from a great black family. Congratulations. Your mom went to college and was roommates with Hillary Clinton. Your dad played in the NFL, is a very well-spoken and successful man.

"I was upset and bitter that my mom had to bust her hump for 20-plus years. I was bitter that I had a professional athlete that was my father that I didn't know."

Rose was bitter not only about his own experience but, like many others, about living in conditions where it was easy and lazy to reach conclusions about those with relative wealth. He needlessly victimized himself, but the ignorant and immature tend to be comfortable with easy and lazy.

To Rose, a kid who equated black with poor because it was his existence and that of those around him, the polished and handsome Hill was symbolized as less authentically black.

It wasn't right, but it was real.

Duke and its fresh-scrubbed players represented an America that Rose believed he couldn't access. He didn't imagine being invited through the same door through which Hill had walked. Even a poor black kid who received a Duke scholarship, like Will Avery, no longer conveyed poverty.

Rose's viewpoint is partly linked to race but mostly to class, insecurities and sensibilities. And it exists within most cultures.

I worked a 1996 fight in Las Vegas in which Oscar De La Hoya, an American Olympic gold medalist and a Mexican-American born and raised in East Los Angeles, was booed by a primarily Mexican-American crowd.

His opponent, Julio Cesar Chavez, the legend who still lived in Mexico, was showered with thunderous cheers. He was perceived as more authentic than the polished and handsome De La Hoya.

It's a shallow, ignorant viewpoint, but it exists. It's real.

Rose was as ignorant 20 years ago as he is honest now. His children have it better than he did, which means there are poor kids ignorant and immature enough to perceive them as less authentic than they -- until we better absorb the lessons of such moments as these.

Email Monte Poole at mpoole@bayareanewsgroup.com