Put Vick on the Field, Not on a Pedestal
By
Glenn Minnis TheGrio.com
Like most fair-minded and even moderately temperate souls, I am of the
unwavering belief that Mike Vick has now paid his debt to society, served his time, and should again be free to live his life
in the most upwardly mobile fashion he's blessed enough to navigate.
Being convicted of a crime, in and of itself,
should in no way result in an automatic death sentence. Some of those who've sought to bury Vick by mercilessly stripping
him of his already earned riches and NFL livelihood struck me as hypocrites of the highest degree
in their straying beyond the law by insisting that Vick's transgressions not only be punished by the legal system but that
his world forever be left in ruins.
That doesn't strike me as justice, but rather vengeful persecution. And yet, I
couldn't help but feel as if the Vick Express on the road to redemption veered recklessly off course this week when he was
to be honored in his Virginia hometown as something just short of a demigod.
'Celebration for Mike Vick' event organizer
and Southern Christian Leadership Conference chapter president Andrew Shannon intimated that hundreds of youths were expected
to be on hand to cheer Vick on and hear him speak before an unforeseen scheduling snafu caused the entire event to be scraped.
I'll call it divine intervention.
Admit it, in a world where black and minority men make up far to high of a
percentage of those incarcerated, the image and implications born of Vick being paraded as some sort of cause célèbre
of indisputable virtuosity before so many impressionable minds could be more than just a bit dysfunctional for its audience.
Idolatry, you see, can be a form of imprisonment of its own.
Certainly, Mike Vick has every right to reclaim his own
life, though too date, far too much of it has been about involving himself in matters no child should ever be encouraged to
strive to emulate. Before the dog-fighting charges that landed him in prison for nearly two-years and cost him to forfeit
the remains of a king's ransom, there were widespread rumors of his rampant drug use and various blog postings calling into
question his rather cavalier sexual meanderings.
As is the case for all of us, nowadays you simply pray that Mike
Vick is finally standing face to face with all his demons. And at times, you even get the real impression he's finally put
the breadth of his many missteps far behind him, a stark testament indeed to the uncanny resolve and reinvigorated sense of
purpose that made him such a huge star athlete to begin with. And still just at 29-year-old, you get the sense time is yet
on his side.
I wish him Godspeed in conquering what has now become a never-ending battle for him. I'm just not quite
ready to worship him yet.
Shots
Fired in Chicago
By: Glenn Minnis
TheRoot.com
My teenage son is a college student in Chicago, where so far this school year at least 36 children and teens
have been murdered, a rate of about one a week. It is a sad story only made sadder because the hopelessness of the situation
shares the same geographic and psychic space as the enormous hope that Barack Obama represents. Chicago gave us Obama, and
now it’s taking away our children.
More sobering than the macro-ironies, of course, are the
facts that there is no real, or reasonable, explanation for carnage, and that no one is immune. My son, a second-year, dean's
list student, is so terrified by the violence that he worries about going to visit his grandmother (and my mom) in
the South Side neighborhood where he spent so much time as a child.
Indeed, these are times and concerns
far different from what I experienced on those same streets as a free-spirited, do-as-you-please, high school athlete who
freely roamed the city in search of the best pickup game the season might bring. It makes one fret about whether there's
any place where a kid can still really be a kid and live to talk about it.
I live in Brooklyn
now, thousands of miles away from protecting my only son. I worry that when Glenn Jr. travels to visit my mom, he has to make
a point of being back home before nightfall. “I still know pretty much everyone in the neighborhood, so once I'm on
the block things are pretty much as they've always been,” he insists. “It's all the travel it takes to get there
that makes things so hard.”
The mean streets of the city are suddenly becoming even meaner.
“For whatever reasons, in different neighborhoods certain guys feel they own the streets," adds Glenn Jr. "Then
there are all the followers—guys who, although they don't know me or anything about me, are more than willing to make
a name for themselves at my expense. That's where all the senselessness comes in.”
With former
Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan now the secretary of education, the Obama administration should be well aware of the
deadly dilemma. Still, others are starting to wonder aloud just why its response to the outbreak has been so tepid.
Had 36 kids died of swine flu in a single city, "There would be this great influx of resources that
say, 'Let's stop this, let's deal with this,' " the Rev. Michael Pfleger told CNN recently. But because the epidemic is being driven by violence, “We're hiding it. We're ignoring it. We're denying
the problems." Pfleger ordered that the American flag be flown upside down at St. Sabina’s parish, where he is
the pastor, as a symbol of distress.
Symbolism aside, the reality remains that since 2007 a monument
erected by Kids Off the Block to honor slain school-age children is now engraved with 153 names. And some of the victims have
been as young as 10.
“President Obama can't walk the streets with us,” said Glenn Jr.
“The sad reality is, even in this time of Obama, the only people that can govern our streets, make them safe for all
of us to come and go, are the people that live there.”
Glenn
Minnis is a New York writer.
