So Palmero Used Steriods, Get Over It

Rafael Palmero has tested positive for steroid use, and so he is now the first high profile Major Leaguer to suffer suspension in the league's new tougher testing climate. Congress, of course, wants to waste some more time and money on this issue because we certainly are not at war, everyone in America has affordable health insurance, we have restored fiscal responsibility to the budget, no genocide is currently underway in Darfur, nor a famine in Niger, the nuclear threats of North Korea and Iran have been dealt with, and China and India are not looking to challenge American economic leadership in the world.

Forgive me if I don't take political grandstanding in Congress too seriously. I much more prefer President Bush's not-so-thinly veiled continuation of his policy of being loyal to his friends, though they be crooks, because deep down, I think that even he chuckles when he repeats some rendition of "He's a good man," or "I looked into his soul," or "He told me he didn't do it, and so I believe him."

My bigger problem is not with Congress however. I have a problem with all of the fans who stopped watching baseball after the strike-shortened season in '94 and did not return to being fans until the historic 1998 McGuire-Sosa run at Maris' single-season home run record. Sure the camaraderie was great between the two. You couldn't have picked a better pairing to remind people of what they loved about the sport. But you also couldn't have picked a better pairing to put your money on for poster-children of steroid use. But back in '98, no one wanted to deal with steroid use as a problem - not the majors, not the Congress, not the fans. Everyone was just happy that balls were flying out of the park at record rates.

So now everyone wants to get on their holier-than-thou kick and wag their fingers at players and say shame on you. Well I would like to turn that accusatory, my shit don't stink, finger right back around. When you celebrate home run hitting that is unnatural, denying what your gut and brain tell you to be the case - that these guys are using roids - and when it is that steroid use that brings you back to the game, you are a hypocrite. These players needed steroids to hit home runs at unprecedented rates and the country needed steroids to enjoy the game again. How pathetic.

In other news this year, Ken Griffey, Jr. is playing in his first injury-free season in over 4 years and is showing he still has what it takes. The A-Rod-Sheffield paring have already combined to hit 52 home runs. Braves rookie Jeff Francoeur is second among right fielders in assists with 9 in only 31 games. Roger Clemens at age 43 is leading the majors with an ERA of 1.53, over a run and half better than his career average. Julio Franco turned 47 and might bat .300 again. The Yankees may not make the playoffs.

The Du Bois Society - the Black Hebrew School

Every Saturday morning over my final three years of college, you could find me rising at the ungodly hour of 8:00 AM to dress and catch the Redline into the Dorchester area of Boston. I along with two other classmates of mine was a tutor/mentor for a program called the Du Bois Society. The purpose of the program was to provide academic enrichment for highly motivated and talented black, Boston-area high school students. The kids in the Du Bois Society were mostly middleclass and attended some of the top high schools in the area, both public and private. Given that I had grown up in similar circumstances, being one of a handful of blacks at predominantly white secondary institutions, I had a special affinity with them.

The academic enrichment was not directionless, though. The Du Bois Society had a focused mission to introduce these students the field of African-American studies with reading selections chosen by Harvard professors with whom they had a Saturday seminar one Saturday out of every month. The idea was that it was important to teach these students that they did not exist in a vacuum but were part of a larger community, history, and struggle of black people both in America and globally. Like Du Bois before them, they should recognize their roles as some of the most privileged blacks in the world and the responsibility that came along with it. Because school was not going to teach them, those who ran the program, the Harvard professors who supported it, the students, their parents, and the Harvard teaching assistants saw it as important that before college, these young leaders learn about black history, how race relations differed here and in other countries, religion’s role in liberation, black art history and its role in emancipation, the history of science and racism, and so many other issues that would provide a backdrop and context for the world they live in today and what their success would and should mean.

The Du Bois Society is run in conjunction with Harvard's department of African and Afro-American studies. It is a great example of black academia, both professors and students, leaving their ivory towers and taking an interest in and engaging with the larger black community. Make no mistake; the Du Bois Society was very talented-tenth oriented. Some criticize the program for this reason, but those of us who were a part and devoted time to it, see the importance of renewing the so-called talented-tenth's commitment to the negated-nine-tenths of the community who have been relegated to impoverished, under funded, forgotten urban spaces. It is also a building block for a larger community movement. Just as Jewish parents send their kids to Hebrew school on a weekly basis, it should become commonplace in the black community for parents to send their kids to Du Bois Societies where they will study subjects as diverse as anthropology, political science, economics, and religion all with a focus on Africa and the world of the Diaspora. The end game of a program like the Du Bois Society is purpose. Purpose will provide motivation, fuel that will be guided as young black children mature and find their eventual direction.