It's a shame to watch, really.
For the past 8 years, the sports world has waited for LeBron James to finally reach his full potential and make it to the promised land, but as of last night, he's yet to get it together.
For an athlete blessed with such an incredible combination of basketball IQ and God-given talent, it's almost painful. The general sentiment I've taken from logical fans of LeBron's game is similar to that of a parent who's seen their child screw up so much that it doesn't even faze them anymore. That's extremely frustrating when you think of his situation. However, I believe that the Heat's loss and LeBron's shortcomings can prove to be a valuable lesson to our youth.
This past semester, I took a class that changed my outlook on the future of Black youth in America for the better. The course, Interdisciplinary Approaches to African-American Studies, really opened my eyes to what is known as "the Black experience in America." Every Thursday morning at 9:25, three close friends and I would trudge to class to contribute to discussions that usually lasted for two hours or so. From resulting discussions emerged a concept that deeply touched me and spoke to my experience in the poor public schools of Southwest Georgia.
In my opinion, the period between fifth grade and seventh grade is the most vulnerable period in a student's development. Given the shift in academic difficulty combined with the changes that adolescence presents to children, this is the period where the A students usually separate themselves from the B students, who separate themselves from C students, who, along with the rest of the bunch, eventually separate themselves from opportunities for higher learning. It's been said for years in academic circles that in the US, public schools' fourth and fifth grade standardized test scores are used as a factor in determining the capacity of state prisons.
This thought doesn't shock me as much as it did when my mom first told me, but the fact that prisons remain overcrowded is still sickening to me. In one of those late-night discussions that college friendships are built upon, me and three or four friends spoke on the topic: the breaking of the spirit of the Black student. One by one, each of us recounted our experiences, which were all eerily similar despite coming from four different states and backgrounds.
One of my friends attended a Detroit Catholic school for two years, where he recalled the feelings of stress and disbelief he felt at the hands of his teachers, who seemed hell-bent on lumping him into the B-C student group, when the only factor that would separate his work from what was considered A-quality by the assignments' rubrics would be infuriatingly miniscule, like "It's really good, but not just there yet." After countless occasions like this, and tense meetings between him, his parents, and the teachers, they decided the school just wasn't for them. He would go on to graduate and is now a History major.
What will happen to the kids who don't have the supporting cast that my friends and I have? Most of them tend to settle for their assumed mediocrity, languishing until they couldn't even convince themselves that they had any sort of talent to begin with.
After attending public schools in five different counties in South Georgia during this period, I've seen the aftermath of the broken spirit in each school system: contagious apathy, defensiveness that morphs into bull-headedness, rooted in a fear of rejection and failure that paralyzes students until they settle for giving just enough effort to get by. It's not that these students lack the ability; they just have been deprived of sources of positive affirmation in the areas that will allow them to prosper in the future.
The part that annoys me the most about this is that a lot of the kids I went to school with were in denial in regards to their responsibilities as students, and only seemed to think that the schools owed them. This problem is not strictly racial; the handful of white students I went to school with exhibited the same symptoms, because they too came from poor, ‘dysfunctional’ families.
These atmospheres nurture the stagnancy. School systems in impoverished communities with virtually no job opportunities aren't able to hire competent administrators or qualified teachers, the teachers they do hire have no passion for the job or concern for the students’ well being, and as a result the children suffer. My parents were two of five teachers at my high school that I can say genuinely cared about their jobs and the students’ well-being.
While watching LeBron’s performance in this series and post-game interview last night, I noticed that he shared many traits with my former classmates. Even though James expressed disappointment, he seemed to shake off any regrets about his performance as well as criticisms of his game. This stubbornness and denial will only impede his progress in years to come. Even though a great deal of his lackluster performance can be attributed to the Mavericks’ defensive efforts, it looked downright shaky and uninspired. At this time, it seems that LeBron is afraid to make the effort to break into next level of success.
There’s a bevy of factors that could’ve played into this conclusion. It’s obvious at this point that LeBron is getting the full wrath of sports media at this time. He’s been trashed at no end by sportscasters, in some cases, obsessively. He’s been ridiculed by fans for the past ten months for attempting to improve his chances of getting a ring. He’s had to deal with the media unfairly scrutinizing the sex lives of the two women closest to him. We know by now that his family situation, as well as the media circus surrounding him isn’t ordinary by any stretch of the imagination. The immaturity in regards to the media is obviously a direct result the lack of a true supporting class, his comprised mainly of childhood friends and family.
The eager anticipation of his failure in this series is disconcerting to say the least, but the reaction of the public is even more disturbing. Everyone’s content to say “he knew this would happen” as they stand back and throw dirt over his name, feeling their sentiments are justified since LeBron sacrificed his humanity once he signed a ultimillion dollar contract.
At this point, it seems LeBron’s spirit is broken and that he’s the only person who can quiet his critics. He can’t prosper by freezing up in crunch time, he’ll remain a slave to public opinion and self-destruct, as we saw Terrelle Pryor do, unless he comes to terms with the fact that he needs help and accepts the constructive criticism that members of the media like Mike Wilbon are trying to give him. Likewise, students will continue to shun their potential if they remain blind to the fact that they’re settling for being mediocre in fear of failing.
Friedrich Hegel and Frederick Douglass both stated that what separates a slave from a free man is the acknowledgement of their own capacity of reason, and the willingness to pay the ultimate price for their liberation, which in this case is not premised in the oppression of others, but separation from an earlier version of oneself. It’s hard enough for someone to become accountable and receptive to criticism at a late stage in life, but without a stable supporting cast, it may be virtually impossible to place this task on a teenager.
There are millions of LeBrons in public schools across America. 99 percent of them weren’t blessed with the freakish athletic ability that will render academic success a secondary priority, and even more of them have even less stable supporting casts than James. When these kids’ don’t receive positive affirmation for showing maturity, accountability, and a desire to better themselves, they eventually fail. And though we won’t be informed of it each time we turn on our TVs, but we do see the results every day. The proliferation of an increasingly immature, unaccountable, defiant and mistakenly entitled culture will only result in more athletes being eviscerated by the popular media, more children coasting their way to mediocrity, and otherwise intelligent human beings continuing to fall short of the greatness they could attain.
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