Stuff Black People Hate

For anyone that hasn’t heard about this, Vince Dumb-Fuck Carter donated (recently, I think) $2.5 million to his old high school in Daytona Beach to build a new athletic center.

Vince and other hyper-wealthy dumbass professional athletes all over the country just loooooooooove to give ridiculous sums of money to schools, usually predominantly black schools in shitty neighborhoods, which is a great thing. Unfortunately, they almost invariably funnel the money into athletics which is just about the most retarded and irresponsible thing I can think of*.

Figure 1: Moron

Athletes donating money to athletics is stupid for at least three reasons

1.) Athletic scholarships (typically) lead to people majoring in something useless. I’ve been cursing the black emphasis on high school athletics** for years, and always get the argument that athletics are the road to college scholarships. Ignoring the main macro-level flaw in this argument (the fact that even in college athletics, there aren’t anywhere near enough slots to accommodate all comers), I’ll offer this one up: way too many people going to colleges on athletic scholarships are majoring in useless shit: communications, psychology, english, etc. Once they graduate, they do virtually nothing with these degrees…except in some cases pile them on (there are some motherfuckers running around with THREE english degrees.) Personally, I’d rather my children had an associate’s degree in auto mechanics or HVAC repair than a four year sheepskin in communications***.

Aside: Useless Majors – Read this before you get indignant

My stance on these majors is complicated. I tend not to have a problem with these majors when they’re used as a stepping stone to, for example, a law degree or a graduate degree for someone to become a teacher or professor. I do have a problem when people use these majors to ‘find’ themselves or just coast through school, because I believe these are luxuries that, at the moment, only white people can afford.

Here’s a tip: if you don’t know what the fuck you want to do with your life, major in something useful like math or engineering or business just to hedge your bets, and pick up the useless-but-interesting shit like philosophy or african-american studies as a minor. That way when your lost and confused ass graduates, you’ll actually be taking a decent amount of money from white people that you can reinvest into your community. Be a producer, not a consumer, goddammit.

End Aside

2.) The most reliable studies show the odds of success of any person who wants to become a professional athlete at about 1 in 50,000. 49,999 out of 50,000 pro-athlete hopefuls, after having their dreams curb-stomped, are going to have to fall back on something else, and it for damn sure isn’t going to involve athletics.

Figure 2: Would you bet your livelihood on finding this needle?

3.) You don’t need expensive athletic centers to produce top-flight athletes. Extremely talented athletes are going to get good no matter what. You don’t need futuristic weight equipment and state of the art basketball courts – good old fashioned shitty dumbbells and barbells and old ragtag hardwood courts have been producing superstar athletes for decades. If the law of diminishing returns had a leg, it’d be kicking Vince Carter in the ass for the next ten years.

Listen well, black athletes – WE DON’T NEED HELP IN ATHLETICS, GODDAMMIT! Black people need ACADEMIC help. Donate the $2.5 million to teacher salaries to attract more talented instructors and reduce class sizes, or to buy new and updated textbooks, or to fund study abroad programs so black kids can see some of the world. Put the money into private tutoring or remedial education in impoverished neighborhoods. Pour the money into state of the art libraries or computer labs. Use it to set up an academic scholarship fund.

But the last damn thing we need is more athletic centers. It’ll have more and more black children chasing a proportionally shrinking number of slots in professional and college athletics, leaving them with nothing to fall back on when 99.998% of them fail.

Figure 3: We don’t need Globo Gym to be able to do this. The Slave Trade took care of that.

I’m sure there are some people thinking “but it’s Vince’s money! He can do whatever he wants with it!”

I disagree.

When you make $18 million a year in salary and endorsements to put a ball in a hoop, Karma insists that you have a responsibility to the greater good. Given how insanely lucky and blessed you are, you have an obligation to lift up others around you – and though it’s wishful thinking, I hope this obligation is one of the first things President Obama signs into law. Yes, it’s Vince’s money. Yes, it’s his to use as he pleases. Yes, he has the right to turn a blind eye toward or remain ignorant of the real issues facing black children.

But having the right to do something doesn’t make it the right thing to do.

Figure 4: I hate myself

*Except, of course, for the life-sized bronze statue of Vince Carter commissioned to be placed in front of the gym. It’s being paid for by Vince’s asshole of a mother, who is too much of a selfish bitch to put that money to better use for the greater good, like maybe a new science lab or library renovation.

**Notwithstanding it’s value as a tool for keeping kids, particularly boys, engaged at school (in an academic capacity or not) and off the fucking streets.

***These careers are not to be slept on, especially if the person going into them is ambitious and entrepreneurial. I have a cousin who owns a five bedroom house with a pool, tennis court and full-sized gym, a Viper, an immaculately restored Corvette from the 1950s, has three kids, and a wife who doesn’t work. My cousin is a plumber.