#318. Sportsmanship

Sports. The final frontier for Black people. Sports offer "a way out" for Black people who live in broken home without fathers, or in the ghetto surrounded by misery, and the possibility of riches and fame comes with this promise.

In 21st century America, professional and collegiate athletes enjoy not only vast quantities of fiat money, but also fame, endorsement money and the adulation of millions, if not billions of people.

Black people are on the top of the list of highest paid athletes (in numerous sports) and best compensated in terms of endorsement dollars as 60 percent of the top 10 earners in 2008 are Black people.

Sports Illustrated, the most widely-read magazine devoted to sports in the world, routinely puts Black people on their cover:

Athlete	Number of covers
Michael Jordan	56
Muhammad Ali	38
Tiger Woods	30
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar	22
Magic Johnson	22
Jack Nicklaus	22

The adulation and notoriety that follows being on a Sport Illustrated cover is immense and solidifies in the general publics mind the superstar status of these athletic Black people.

Even though obscene amounts of money and fame are bestowed upon Black people who have the uncanny ability to entertain the masses through the cognitively difficult task of shooting a ball through a hoop or running with the football, an aura of bitterness surrounds them.

Take Tiger Woods, the highest paid athlete in the world and arguably the biggest Grouch in the world this side of Sesame Street:

"Tiger Woods has outgrown those Urkel glasses he had as a kid. Outgrown the crazy hair. Outgrown a body that was mostly neck.

When will he outgrow his temper?

"The man is 33 years old, married, the father of two. He is paid nearly $100 million a year to be the representative for some monstrously huge companies, from Nike to Accenture. He is the world's most famous and beloved athlete.

If there were no six-second delay, Tiger Woods would be the reason to invent it. Every network has been burned by having the on-course microphone open when he blocks one right into the cabbage and starts with the F-bombs. Once, at Doral, he unleashed a string of swear words at a photographer that would've made Artie Lange blush, and then snarled, "'The next time a photographer shoots a [expletive] picture, I'm going to break his [expletive] neck!

It's disrespectful to the game, disrespectful to those he plays with and disrespectful to the great players who built the game before him. Ever remember Jack Nicklaus doing it? Arnold Palmer? When Tom Watson was getting guillotined in that playoff to Stewart Cink, did you see him so much as spit?

Despite his pension for using profanity, Tiger Woods was recently rated America's favorite athlete:

Harris surveyed 2,177 U.S. adults online June 8-15. The Harris top five:1. Tiger Woods
2. Michael Jordan
3. LeBron James
4. Kobe Bryant
5. Derek Jeter

LeBron James, one of the worlds best tippers, also is one of the worlds worst sportsman, as he failed to shake the hands of the team that beat him in the NBA Playoffs in 2009:

"All athletes are taught from a young age to be good sports and shake the other team's hands, even if you lose.

LeBron must have skipped that part.

Professional athletes are supposed to be role models for young athletes all over the world. What is a young, aspiring LeBron fan suppose to think when he sees his idol storm off the court without shaking anyone's hand after losing?"

Serena Williams, who looks like the sister/brother of disgraced South African hermaphrodite Caster Semenya, is a superstar tennis player. She was famously disqualified in the 2009 US Open for threatening the judge with bodily harm after the judge awarded a point to her opponent:

"Williams’ subsequent outburst -- during which she glared at the linesperson and reportedly said, among other things, “If I could, I would take this fucking ball and shove it down your fucking throat” -- represented a regrettable loss of composure, but one that, under the circumstances, was somewhat understandable."

Here at SBPDL we have recently discussed the Boise State-Oregon football game, when a Black player- Lagarrette Blount - punched a white player after his team lost 19-8; the Miami-Florida International college football riot; the 2008 Montgomery Riot at a high school basketball game, and we will continue to discuss events that highlight Black people in situations that fit a clear behavioral pattern.

After all, who can forget the infamous incident between Latrell Spreweell (Black player) and his white coach PJ Carlesimo, when the basketball player went UFC and tried to choke his coach out?

A cursory glance at ESPN provides a cornucopia of highlights for the masses to indulge in and also provides the masses with incredible examples of Black people acting like the kid whose parents refuse to buy him a new toy:

"Brandon Marshall, openly unhappy with the Denver Broncos, was suspended by the team through Sept. 5 for what coach Josh McDaniels called "detrimental" conduct."

Black people have a profound ability to display selfishness, unsportsmanlike conduct and fascinating indifference to the rules and we must always remember young people believe that sports and the athletes who participate in these games set a wonderful example for young people to emulate.

Charles Barkley, a former professional basketball player turned perennial DUI suspect, had this to say about athletes being deemed role models:

"I'm not a role model... Just because I dunk a basketball doesn't mean I should raise your kids."

Barkley is wrong. Kids (and adults sadly) are greatly influenced by what they see on television and Black people know this very well. Perhaps that is why COPS, a long running television show about real-life police officers, has aided Black people in helping them craft their criminal vocations?

Sportsmanship is defined as:

"conformance to the rules, spirit, and etiquette of sport. More grandly, it may be considered the ethos of sport. It is interesting that the motivation for sport is often an elusive element. Sportsmanship expresses an aspiration or ethos that the activity will be enjoyed for its own sake, with proper consideration for fairness, ethics, respect, and a sense of fellowship with one's competitors. Being a "good sport" involves being a "good winner" as well as being a "good loser"."

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes sportsmanship, for only Serena Williams would threaten a judge with a tennis ball being shoved down her throat; Tiger Woods can enthrall millions with precise shoots, but cause everyone to wince when in earshot of his famous profanity-laced tirades that would make even George Carlin blush.

And to think, we didn't even mention Michael Vick in this post. Oops.

#6. Tipping

One of the many secrets that Black people never wanted to be shared with the masses is their complete and utter disdain for tipping. Black people are intrinsically opposed to parting with their money - one of the reasons they love to shop for the elusive 100 percent discounted item - and find it deplorable to have to leave a gratuity for the menial vocation of fetching and serving them their food and beverage.

Black people have developed these views from the many centuries of slave labor they were forced to perform, not only for White people in the United States, but for Muslims in the Ottoman Empire and for their fellow Black people in Africa - of which, many Black people profited enormously by selling their fellow Black people to White people.

Historically, being a slave meant doing horrible jobs for long periods of day and Black people were never tipped for their services rendered to their owner. Thus, Black people have formed an evolutionary hatred of parting with any money above the designated amount due for their meal.

Tipping is antithetical to Black people's eating out habits. Evolutionary psychology has produced an entire race of people who are incredibly parsimonious with their money and are niggardly when it comes to dispensing even five percent to a hardworking server.

One of the most prominent Black people , basketball player LeBron James, epitomizes the Black person who leaves porous tips. He makes roughly $15 million a year, but for a bill that came to $800, he left a mere $10 dollar tip.

The story goes as follows:

"It went down like this: LeBron pulls up in his Mercedes outside XO. People stop and try not to stare, but c’mon, it’s LeBron James. He enters the restaurant with a group of friends. On this special occasion, the King decides to dine late. He keeps his group there until around 3:45 a.m. During this time the waiter obsequiously pours drinks and fetches anything else His Greatness needs.

The final bill comes to $800. By the feudal laws of decorum, which stipulate that the affluent should administer a 20 percent gratuity, staffers figured they’d be pocketing an extra $160. But when they fetched the autographed bill after His Heinousness bolted back to Akron, their expectation turned to disbelief, then anger.
LeBron stiffed them with a meager $10 tip."

This is not an isolated incident. Jeff Large, a Black columnist in lily-white Seattle, wrote a column about Black tipping and the reality of the problem. He too realizes that his fellow Black people are horrible tippers.

Large writes:

"It wasn't long ago that laws changed to allow black people into businesses that would not have permitted us before, and we weren't always welcomed warmly.
Many black folks weren't up to speed on the culture of restaurant dining as it is practiced in more affluent communities. Surveys find an attitude difference too, as black folks wonder why restaurants don't just pay their help a decent salary to begin with."

He goes on to add:

"...One waiter said, "... all the servers I work with hate having to wait on minorities, Black people, in particular, (and over half or our wait staff is Black!!!)."

Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration did a study on tipping and found that a major divide in tipping between Black people and White people does exist.

NPR reports that:

"The study found that 63 percent of blacks and 30 percent of whites didn't understand that the standard restaurant tip in the United States is 15 to 20 percent."

Those who work in the service industry and come upon a group of Black people in your section are forewarned: Stuff Black People Don't Like includes tipping. Regardless of your serving skills, even LeBron James might stiff you. Odds are, like all Black people and their reluctance to leave a gratuity, he will.