Dear Lebron “Global Icon” James:
Four years ago, while you were still in high school and hadn’t formally announced your entrance into the 2003 NBA Draft, Ralph Nader wrote you a letter that ultimately found its way into my inbox. In it, Mr. Nader urged you to consider using your impending status as Nike’s (or Adidas’) next one-man marketing machine to do something your esteemed predecessor, MJ, never did: advocate for sweat-shop reform. Granted, Mr. Nader came off a little high-handed, condescending—self-righteous if you will. (For instance, he never once requested your input in creating a list of reform demands that you, ultimately, would’ve been responsible for in his letter.) In fact, part of me even wondered then, as now, if he wasn’t scapegoating you as a means of mending his maimed status. In light of the 2000 presidential debacle, and the then imminent Iraq War, I don’t think I’m too far afield when I say Nader wasn’t the most popular political figure at the time. In other words, there’s ample circumstantial evidence on the record to suggest his letter wasn’t entirely altruistic, so I don’t blame you for ignoring it outright and signing a $90 million dollar deal with Jordan’s former employer. (I just thought of something. You should think about switching your nickname to “G.I.”James. Has a ring to it, doesn’t it? That way the next time you and Allen Iverson decide to throw an All-Star shindig together, you can call it a “G.I./A.I. Collaboration.”) Anyway, as I was saying, Mr. Nader’s approach might’ve been a little off-putting, not to mention indifferent towards the issue of extortionate sneaker prices (big ups Starbury!), but he meant well, and I sincerely believe he had the interests of exploited sweat-shop laborers in mind. Even you have to admit, he raised some important points, which, in light of your recent remarks on ESPN – “I’m trying to be a global icon...on the level of Muhammad Ali” – need to be re-considered and brought up to date. In a nutshell, that’s why I decided to write you this letter.
While His Airness’ place in the pantheon of professional sports figures and marketing trailblazers can, and most likely never will, be questioned, his apathetic approach to the plight of the Asian laborers and inner-city kids, who at one time were literally killing each other to get his gear, has been duly noted as a glaring frailty (the Wizards fiasco notwithstanding) of an otherwise olympian career. Walter LaFeber’s account of MJ’s and Nike’s ascent in the eighties and nineties in Michael Jordan and the New Global Capitalism should be required reading for budding superstars such as yourself. As early as 1992, LaFaber notes, MJ was being attacked for 1) failing to address the Third-World labor issue, 2) failing to understand the status anxiety of inner-city youth hungry for his sneakers, 3) failing to keep it real with black kids about the odds of them making it to the NBA (roughly 140,000 to 1), 4) failing to take any political stands, and 5) failing to ensure that a portion of the profits made from the sales he generated were recycled back into black communities, which was the most dangerously pedestrian and economically backward criticism of Jordan, since it suggested black business should get rich off sweat-shop labor as well as white business simply because Jordan was black.
In the book, LaFeber recounts a particularly telling episode concerning Jordan’s refusal to support a popular black candidate (and former Charlotte Mayor) against the virulently racist Jesse Helms in the 1990 North Carolina US Senate election. Not only was history at stake (at the time there had only been one black Senator since Reconstruction and none [still!] from a southern state), but the black candidate, Harvey Gantt, had a real, honest to goodness chance of winning, and was in fact leading in the polls, until Helms unleashed his infamous “white hands” commercial decrying, “You needed that job. And you were the best qualified. But they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota. Is that really fair? Harvey Gantt says it is.” Helms’s “dirty trick,” like Bob Corker’s race-baiting, “Harold, call me” ad against African-American Senatorial candidate Harold Ford this past November, worked masterfully.[1] Helms went on to a comfortable victory that year, one pundits credited in large part to the ad. Jordan’s mother and tennis champion Arthur Ashe were among Gantt’s contributors, but Jordan chose to remain silent, and to withhold any financial support despite his professed love and loyalty to the Carolina Blue. Even amidst criticism from his own mother (according to LaFeber she wanted him to do more than he was doing) and in spite of his various charitable endeavors, MJ chose to remain politically inert. Jordan also chose to play it safe culturally. He set a standard for political correctness by shedding his gold chain and fur coat early in his career, and by ignoring hip-hop culture in favor of corporate culture (before the two became entangled, that is), even though from the very beginning he was one of it principal reference points.
You, on the other hand, have benefitted substantially from the generation of players that entered the league in the middle and late nineties. Just as they, the Bryants and Carters and Hills, profited handsomely from “Jordan Inc’s” global marketing strategy, your generation – players who’ve entered the league in the last five years – have been culturally emancipated by one player in particular: Allen Iverson. Iverson was a direct response (answer?) to Jordan. Just as Jordan entered the league rocking gold and fur only to shed those accouterments for $1,000 suits, Iverson made his entrance on a comparatively conservative note only to explode into a tatted-up, corn-rowed-down, rap-sheet-having, rap record producing cloud of controversy. A.I. brought street credibility to the league and showed the marketing gods that thug imagery, along with a ton of heart and talent, was still a viable marketable commodity. (Incidentally, Lebron, the top three selling jerseys in China are Yao’s, his teammate T-Mac’s and, you guessed it, A.I.’s.) What’s my point here: you owe A.I. a few mil. Because of him, the radical omega to Jordan’s conservative alpha, you can tat yourself up and still sponsor Microsoft; you can get shouted out on hardcore rap records and still be considered by at least one reporter “stunningly vanilla.”[2] Lebron, you seem to have chosen to follow Jordan’s blue-chip blueprint while at the same time appropriating some of Iverson’s street swagger stylistics, a move that ultimately runs the risk of gutting you of any real substance, and might even partially explain the recent hell you’ve been catching in the media. According to that same reporter quoted above, your news conferences are “about as interesting as an actuary's day planner,” and you display “no visible ideological promiscuity or publicly discussed thoughts on topics of importance.”
And you want to be a global icon on the order of Muhammad Ali?
Now, to be fair, you’re smart not to go around shamelessly courting controversy. I honestly believe that’s beneath you. You are, as practically every commentator alive has gone out of their way to point out, exceedingly intelligent. That’s not in question, though. What’s in question is whether you can continue to pull off the balancing act you’re attempting. In the ESPN interview you said you wanted to be respected “not just as a great basketball player but as a great person.” You went on to add that you wanted to be an “ambassador to the world.” I admire that. I really do. But it’s one thing to say it, quite another to actually make the choices that warrant it. Your predecessor will never be mistaken for Muhammad Ali and I think you already know that, which would explain why you chose not to compare yourself to him, even though he was your avowed hero growing up. Indeed, you know all of the right things to say. But, and please don’t take this as a diss, do you always know what you’re saying?
I ask that question because Muhammad Ali made difficult choices, took unpopular stands, was castigated, alienated and race-bated before he was exonerated. Even Jim Brown and Bill Russell were criticized and labeled “radicals” when they came to his defense. He lost nearly three years of his boxing life, not to mention hundreds of thousands of dollars in purse and endorsement money. Ali went through hell and had to lose his gift of gab to Parkinson’s before he was granted global iconic status. On a similar note, I happened to catch the February 28th episode of commentator Tavis Smiley’s show on PBS. His guest was Tommie Smith, one of the two young men whose “silent gesture” protest at the ‘68 Olympic games in Mexico City helped shaped the consciousness of the Black Power movement. Smith, who won the gold medal in the 200-meter dash that year, had been a founding member of the Olympic Project for Human Rights, and was among a cadre of athletes threatening to boycott the games in protest. They ultimately chose to participate but to make a statement to express their dissatisfaction with the system and their solidarity with their black brothers and sisters. Immediately after the gesture, Smith and Carlos were suspended from the Olympic team and summarily sent home. When they arrived back in the United States they received countless death threats. There’s no telling how many “opportunities” Smith, whom many say was the original Michael Johnson and is still the only man to ever hold eleven world records simultaneously, gave up in the name of a cause that was bigger than him. We could go on and on about Smith and those like him, but it suffices to say that the iconic picture of him standing on the podium with his gloved fist raised is one of the enduring images of the 20th Century. Sadly, the French noted there accomplishments before any American institution when in 2004, thirty-six years after the silent gesture rocked the sporting world, the gymnasium of the college Michelet became the Gymnasium Tommie Smith, the first place in the world to bear his name. In his inaugural remarks, the mayor of San Quen said, “I sought, for the name of the gymnasium, a man or a woman obviously known in the sporting medium but which carried also strong humanistic values.” A year later, and likely out a sense of public embarrassment at having done nothing to honor the men, Smith’s alma-mater, San Jose State, unveiled a statue of Smith and Carlos. They were your age, Lebron, when they took a risk on the world’s biggest stage, and while they didn’t have millions of dollars at stake, no one can ever question whether they put their lives on the line.
I hope you don’t think I’m suggesting you go out and search for a cause because I’m not. Believe it or not I’m not even one of those holier-than-thou critics like Tavis Smiley, who at the end of his interview with Smith smugly accused today’s black athletes, albeit respectfully of lacking “courage and conviction and commitment.” I generally think we live in times of great apathy and waywardness that cuts across all walks of life, but that’s not why I brought that up. I brought it up because implicit in any claim to greatness on the order you are suggesting – to be a global icon that is – is the challenge to do something worthy of that mantle. The eminent 20th Century social theorist and author C.L.R. James, once wrote of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the leader of the world’s only successful slave revolt against colonialist (French) forces, he “did not make the revolution. It was the revolution that made Toussaint.” The same could be easily said of Muhammad Ali and Tommie Smith, as well as countless other male and female athletes who broke down barriers and caught hell for doing so. They were made through and by their moments of crisis. They did not rise merely because they were great and had been anointed by the powers that be. They rose because the times demanded it of them. The question for you, Lebron, must be are you willing to struggle for something larger than yourself, whatever that may be.
Make no mistake, the times you are coming of age in are not the times Muhammad Ali came of age in. Although no one would argue that prejudice still exists and plays a crucial role in our society, we would also be grossly naive to say the conditions today mirror those of the 1960s. Nevertheless, as evidenced by your ambitions, the militant forms of protest Ali and others engaged in are still seared into our collective consciousness as symbols of The Struggle. The trouble, though, is that those heroes of bygone eras set the bar so high and shined so brightly in their moments of glorious sacrifice that today’s athletes either don’t even bother trying to live up to their predecessors’ legacies or they can’t see how the more mundane work yet to be done in the name of “Justice” is equally necessary and therefore worthy of engagement.
Lebron, G.I., King James – whatever it is you wish to be called these days – I need clarity. I need to understand what you mean when you say you want to be an “ambassador to the world” in one sentence and one of the “richest men in the world” in another. So far as I can tell you’re headed to perhaps the mot illustrious NBA career of any man ever to play the game. You will undoubtedly earn more in your lifetime than hundreds if not thousands if not tens of thousands of hard-working everyday people will collectively. There isn’t any question that yours will be a face recognized throughout the world. But to achieve global ambassadorship you will need to do more than be a great marketing machine. You will need to be more than a spectacularly well-poised young man. You will need to do more than become rich beyond your wildest dreams, more than win rings and medals. While you speak of being an icon on the level of Muhammad Ali, the course you’ve taken so far underscores an ambition to be a global brand, which shouldn’t be mistaken for the same thing. Ali inspired oppressed people all over the world to stand up for themselves. Even his most memorable moments in the ring were when he was the underdog. Similarly, part of A.I’s appeal to fans from Spain to China rests on our collective identification with the David’s of the world. You, I’m afraid, are not an underdog. You, with your millions in endorsements and imposing physical gifts, your seemingly smooth ride from the cradle of your mother’s Humvee to the star spangled lap of luxury, are the Goliath, which makes your path to glory that much steeper and treacherous. It is your fortune and misfortune to have arrived in the post-Jordan era. He has paved the road to wealth and fame for you, but he’s also made us all aware of the soul-destroying costs (indifference in the face of human rights injustice, silence in the face of political backwardness) of walking that road. You don’t have the luxury of apathy and passivity if you sincerely expect to win the hearts of the world. We admire you. We are in awe of you. But we are reluctant to identify with you for those very reasons. Yours is a challenge few human beings would accept and even fewer would see through. My only hope is that the G.I. doesn’t just end up standing for Lebron “Good Intentions” James; we already know whose road is littered with such estimable designs.
A sincere supporter and fan,
Dax-Devlon Ross
[1] Although Ford admittedly visited the Playboy Mansion, the commercial’s insinuation that he’d fooled around with a “white” playmate set off a maelstrom of racially charged mudslinging.
