There’s a lot of debate about whether Michael Vick should be the captain of the NFL Pro Bowl team. There’s discussion about redemption, time served, and the cultural context of his crimes.There are the questions about viewing what he did as being more significant than if he had simply beat up his girlfriend. There are the issues of how unfairly the deck is stacked against black men in the criminal justice system, and would we even feel the same way about his past if he was white?
I have actually thought about it a great deal. To, on the one hand understand that our criminal justice system is just a legalized means of perpetuating oppression and systemic racism, and on the other hand be unable to see this man as a victim of that system might appear incongruent.
How can I recognize and acknowledge our culture, society and systems as deeply oppressive, but disagree that in this one instance that two of our systems favored a black man? Well, to start, I am imperfect, and have never said that I get everything always right or even fair. I’ve never claimed to be more “woke” than anyone else, or unwaveringly open-minded. Anyone who would say those things about themselves would be inviting ridicule.
There’s a lot to unpack with the significant issues in professional sports and our criminal justice system.
Where money is king—as in professional sports—perpetrators of unforgivable acts are given sanctuary. In our criminal justice system, the average black man who commits ANY crime—no matter what kind or how serious—is punished much more extensively than the average white male perpetrator of equal or far worse crimes.
Both situations are wrong, and both send heartbreaking messages to young black men, and they perpetuate many other wrongs.
I actually hate football, and am indifferent to the majority of sports. I hate animal cruelty, neglect, and abuse. I signed the petition to ask the NFL to remove Vick from the pro bowl team, even though I wouldn’t be watching anyway. So, it’s fair to say this doesn’t directly impact me. But any time I get an email to sign a petition to punish perpetrators of animal cruelty or abuse, I sign it. Same with people who rape, people who abuse children and people who commit acts of domestic violence. And in all of these instances, I don’t stop for a second to consider why someone might deserve a pass in these cases.
For me, this isn’t an issue of black, white, fame or anonymity. I couldn’t care less about those things when it comes to certain types of crimes.
And I have a really hard time accepting the cultural component so many associate with dog fighting. I am not a perfectly “woke” person, but it is not lost on me that our oppression of people of color—especially young black men—often sets in motion realities I will never experience and a life context with which I cannot relate. I have not, nor will I ever have to walk in their shoes, and no matter how much I learn in my life or strive to do better, I will never understand at the level of a person who has been the target of this kind of oppression.
That being said, there are certain acts a person commits that they KNOW are wrong, regardless of whether they end up in the criminal justice system, and regardless of what cultural norms led them to do those things.
When you willfully pick up another living creature, lift them into the air, slam them to the concrete, and you see them bleed, hear them cry out and you are not impacted by that—to the extent that you do it over and over until the animal is dead—the right or wrong of the action outweighs the context of culture. You know you are torturing another living thing, and at some level you are enjoying it.
By the same token, when you beat the crap out of your significant other, and you see their lip split, their eye blackened, or their bones broken, you know you are causing harm and pain.
When you do these things once, it’s unconscionable, but when you do it over and over, you are making a conscious choice to cause harm, pain or even death. It’s no longer an accident of cultural context.
It’s true that it isn’t my right to decide if Vick is redeemed. At the same time, if the NFL or any other professional sports organization glorified him or any other violent offender, I would feel the same way and take the same kind of actions.
In this case, and many others, the message is sent to young black men that you are nothing to us if you cannot provide us with financial gain, entertainment, subservience, and acceptance of your status. It tells young black men that if they make a mistake or commit a horrible crime, they are only worthy of fairness if they are famous and can throw a ball. It also reinforces that any cultural norm is reason enough to justify your behavior, especially if you have something white people want. You aren’t expected to be a good human, because we still believe and treat you like property and a commodity—we still consider you to be less than human.
Vick is lucky. He can do something with a ball well enough to win games and put people in seats. I would even argue that this controversy makes him a MORE valuable commodity to the NFL. He also got an offer in the criminal justice system that no black man in their right mind would ever refuse. He got what almost no other black man would get in the same situation. If the charges of animal cruelty hadn’t been dropped, he probably would have spent a significant portion of his life n prison.
The NFL and its fans glorify this guy and athletes who have beat up their women or worse, but they shun, mock and crucify a man who kneels to honor and fight the struggle and inequities that young black men face in every facet of life, especially the criminal justice system—and especially black men who don’t make millions of dollars playing ball.
Whether Vick has redeemed himself or not, the NFL is treating him and all other black athletes as property. It’s another form of slavery. The NFL treats its players like livestock. It’s culture glorifies a bunch of men intentionally running into each other and potentially inflicting irreparable injuries to themselves for our entertainment. If you perform at the expected level—win games and draw crowds—we’ll turn a blind eye to your failings off the field. If we can’t derive profit from you—you don’t win games, fans don’t like you—we will sell you out. Like an unproductive bull, you will be culled.
I can’t reconcile professional sports or the criminal justice system, because I see both of them treating human beings like animals. And I cannot reconcile that anyone goes unpunished for crimes against the most vulnerable.
I am not Michael Vick’s god. I don’t even know if I believe in anyone’s god. I wasn’t the judge or prosecutor in his case. I am not an arm of the law, and I am not perfectly anything. There are many things that aren’t crystal clear to me and many things that my own privilege won’t allow me to understand the way other people can.
All I can say is that there are some lines that are not blurred for me. There are some lines that once crossed cannot be uncrossed. He cannot “un-torture” those dogs. Spouses who beat their significant others cannot take those punches back. People who rape cannot “un-rape.” People who abuse children cannot “un-abuse” them.
I don’t know what would be enough to right some wrongs or to adequately atone for them. But I do wonder if the things we reinforce by rewarding someone for their ability to make us money are as insidious and terrible as I believe the torturing to death of another living being to be? I wonder if we don’t perpetuate an already destructive set of systems, when we reinforce that the value of a man of color only correlates to their ability to turn a white man a profit, or entertain them on a Sunday? To me, it’s the same game we’ve been playing with race from the start, and in my eyes, no matter the outcome, black men almost always lose.
