When I was younger, I played basketball and baseball. I was never hazed, thankfully, although I'm sure I was the butt of some practical jokes and pranks from time to time. Anyone who's been in an athletic locker room is familiar with the hijinks that go on there. From what I remember, our high school's hockey club had a particularly aggressive hazing ritual that involved dragging the newbies out in the snow buck-naked and then over bushes that were exposed. We had no such rituals.
Professional football and baseball are notorious for their hazing of rookies. From what I've seen, football rookies are made to sing their alma maters' fight songs in training camp cafeterias, buy donuts for practice and carry the veterans' equipment off the practice field. They may get taped to the goal post, too. Baseball rookies are made to wear outlandish costumes on team flights, carry the veterans' bags and engage in vandalism in cities they visit during the season. One such example of the latter involves getting rookies to paint the testicles of the horse on a statue along Chicago's lakefront just south of Wrigley. It's tradition, and everyone is expected to participate. It's a right of passage, a way of making sure the rookie joins the brotherhood of the team. Outsiders will see it as infantile and immature, and to a certain extent it is. But unless and until critics have been in the locker room, they really don't know of what they speak.
Of course, nowadays the talk is about the ongoing scandal with the Miami Dolphins. Rickie Incognito, a veteran, used coarse and racist language with a teammate, Jonathan Martin, both to haze him and to toughen him up, according to some reports. Incognito may or may not have had the support of the coaching staff and management. Martin may or may not have been too soft. In an odd twist, reports indicate that other players actually support Incognito, not Martin, even though Martin left the team because of Incognito's actions.
Beyond the alleged bullying, the sophomoric attempt to toughen Martin up and sundry other issues, the use of nigger is troublesome for so many different reasons. First of all, the word is repugnant. It brings up a past that is vile and murderous and wrong by any standard. Yet, blacks use the word almost with impunity. Therein lies the problem: Among blacks the word is somewhat acceptable, a badge of honor that only those baptized in the struggle can claim. And to an extent, I can appreciate that. But it becomes murky after that.
Within professional sports, the notion of a brotherhood develops, especially in football. Units, such as the offensive or defensive lines, the defensive backfield, or the kickers, tend to hang out and work out together. They endure many of the same challenges and hardships equally. As a result, certain teasing or kidding that would be intolerable in pleasant society is acceptable within these hermetic groups. Allowable, apparently, within these groups is the use of nigger by black and white athlete alike...provided it is used in a certain way. It isn't necessarily condoned so much as allowed, with the apparent understanding that the word will not be used outside the group or in an offensive manner.
To be honest, I haven't followed the Incognito-Martin brouhaha that closely. Each day new revelations whipsaw my attention. Some players accept what Incognito was doing or trying to do. Coaches apparently encouraged him. Ex-players have condemned not only his behavior, but also his use of the word nigger.
Professor and legal scholar Randall Kennedy wrote the book Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. Professor Kennedy gives a historical view of the word's origins, its development as an epithet and its acceptance within the black community for use by blacks to other blacks. Somewhere along the line, whites have been allowed to use the word, but always in the very narrow and limited context. Professor Kennedy, that I recall, addressed this phenomenon briefly, if at all.
Over the years, white celebrities have run afoul of this opaque area of linguistics. Gwyneth Paltrow, not exactly my idea of a person with whom I'd like to share an airplane much less share drinks, once ran afoul of this unwritten rule when she tweeted Ni**as in paris for real while at a Jay-Z concert in Paris. Ms. Paltrow caught a lot of flak for this, even after claiming that she was merely repeating the name of a song. Ms. Paltrow is close friends with Mr. Z, allegedly, so she meant no hostile intent. But it did raise the question of when, if ever, a white person can use the word.
Seven years ago Damon Wayans wanted to trademark Niggaz for a clothing line. Fortunately, Mr. Wayans saw reason and withdrew his application, if he ever filed it. No matter what license blacks have to use the word among themselves, putting such a label on clothing only invites trouble.
The Incognito-Martin kerfuffle involves more than just the use of an incendiary term. It involves bullying, threats and other things in which grown men should not engage. What Incognito -- who apparently is quite the boor, no matter how well he cleans up -- did was sophomoric at best and actionable at worst. To blame this in Martin is idiotic. But it brings to the fore the nettlesome issues of use of the word nigger and black-white relations tied to that word.
There has to be a better way to discuss this.
(c) 2013 The Truxton Spangler Chronicles
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