You make choices in life, you can either grab the negative out of everything or you can look a deeper and find the positive. I use to get really upset and bothered when people use to have negative things about me until someone much wiser than I sat me down and said.
“If you separate the white noise, you will always hear the proper message.”
Sometimes you have to look beyond the words to see the bigger meaning and you also can’t project your meaning into someone thoughts.
That is the problem I have with Jason Whitlock’s interpretation of Deion Sander’s Hall of Fame speech here is what he had to say.
My mother worked on an assembly line at Western Electric for 32 years. During my childhood on the east side of Indianapolis, depending on how much overtime she could finagle, she earned between $18,000 and $28,000 a year checking the ringers on telephones.
When things were tough, she took a second job, working a cash register at a local grocery store. On some weekends, she moonlighted as a kitchen beautician, giving her girlfriends perms. She drove a used, beat-up Mustang, and the few nice clothes she had, she bought from the “hot” clothes lady out of the trunk of a car or van.
As a child, I spent a lot of time wishing my parents had never divorced, wondering why my brother and I couldn’t have the same life as Wally and Beaver Cleaver, occasionally embarrassed by our circumstance in comparison to some of my friends in our working-class suburb.
As an adult, I take great pride in my mother’s work history and ethic. She retired from Western Electric at age 53. She never quit working. She’s 71 and works every tax season for H&R Block. My father is 75. He still works at his bar. My parents set a standard for work ethic that my brother and I try to meet each day.
I’m glad Deion was able to take care of his mother. I’m glad I can provide for mine. But there is great honor and dignity in work, no matter how menial the labor.
This is in reference to Deion’s motivation to be great after being embarrassed by a teammate after finding out that his mother cleaned at a Hospital.
The one thing Whitlock fails to understand which makes sense is if you are just looking at it on a surface level is that at the time Deion was a child.
When you are a kid you can’t be expected to understand the same things that an adult would. I don’t think Sanders was proud that he was embarrassed about his mother’s place of employment, on the contrary you could see that it hurt him that he couldn’t help but feel that way. The easy way way out for Deion would have just to said he did it for his mother, but the message is stronger when you put it in context of why he did it for his mother.
He made a choice, which Whitlock, Shannon Sharpe and a lot of people had to make. A choice to figure out how to make sure your parents who took care of you lived a better life.
It doesn’t matter if that meant becoming Primetime or working for Fox Sports, you just did what you had to do.
By finding and emphasizing the negative in Deion’s speech all Whitlock is doing in perpetuating the stereotype no matter what black men do there will always be another black man that will try to rain on their parade and be another crab in a barrel.
I am sure Whitlock’s mother wouldn’t condone that.