My intent is not to make this a sports blog, but as a sports fan often the connection between broad culture and sports can’t be denied. This week Brian Flores announced a suit against the NFL for racist hiring practices of head coaches.  The NFL has attempted to resolve this issue by the Rooney Rule. This is a rule which requires a team with an opening for head coach or general manager to interview at least two minority candidates for these positions.  The logic here was two fold. Point one was to find someone that you might  have considered and hire them either for the exact position or for another position which places the candidate in a better spot to become a head coach or general manager in the future.  The more problematic piece of logic was to give minority candidates practice in interviewing. The difficult portion for me is that this is assuming that a minority can’t express themselves in an articulate manner.  This program has had limited success and the number of minority coaches is three with only one of them being a Black American. This number has changed to five with two African-Americans and one bi-racial (black father). 

Black coaches have been fired under strange and questionable circumstances. The most recent was the Houston Texans  firing David Culley after one year. Culley was a career assistant coach who was not considered a candidate by most teams because he was 65 years old and he had never been a coordinator, although he did hold the position of Asst head coach. This distinction is important because the hunting ground for NFL head coaches is generally successful offensive or defensive coordinators.  After a season with the Texans, Culley was fired because of “philosophical differences,”  essentially in the manner in which offseason changes to improve the team would be made. The Texans replaced the relatively inexperienced Culley with the overqualified Lovie Smith, who is an African-American. Interestingly though, Flores was also a candidate for the  Texans job. Through his legal representation , Flores thanked the Texans for a fair interview, but then criticized them for not hiring him because he has a pending lawsuit. 

My personal reaction to Flores is well, of course, the Texans are going to deal with you and the case you have against the NFL in general. And yes, hiring another black coach with experience sort of takes them out of the loop of the legal ramifications.  The Rooney Rule itself does not solve the problem of the owner and upper administration at least being personally biased  if not further down the racist trail.  In some ways, the rule attempts to use race as a method of combating  racial bias. From the standpoint of an individual black in the so-called perfect world two things happen. The first is that the individual is judged on his own merit without regard to  race.  The second thing the heart, soul or inside of the person has the ability to unbiased judgment from the previous sentence.  How this is accomplished is the part which I have no ability to change on any sort of massive scale even if I knew what worked for masses of humans. In the end , it starts with one person at a time. 

A few weeks back NFL player, Antonio Brown,  did not like the conversation he had with his coach on the sidelines of the Tampa Buccaneers football game.  If  you are not a sports fan, meaning you have no idea who the Tampa Bay buccaneers are, much less a clue of who Antonio Brown is, this incident is all over the internet, but it manages not to break that same internet. More importantly, a friend of friend,  a female of color, said that she was ashamed of the behavior of Antonio Brown when he reacted to the coach by taking off the top half of football gear, handing it to the crown and made a spectacle of his quitting the team in the middle of the game. My hope is that I reported this with some level of objectivity.

The important thing is not the action of Antonio Brown. People of all background colors and races have moments where their behavior is not optimal. The issue is that Black individuals (and maybe other minorities) carry the burden of behavior from individuals they have no relation to accept that their skin color is the same. What type of historical programming  has been imprinted on  those of us who   survived the American slave experience makes us believe that isn some way I carry burden or worse a responsibility for the actions of some dude I am likely to never interact with on even the most superficatal level?  And not having this guilt is not the same as disowning my race nor not consciously unifying with other individual Blacks when it is called for.  Calling for means  when the action of the other , interferes with individual Blacks living in America in a sovereign state.  Honestly it even means when the rights of Black individuals may have committed a crime are violated. The point here is that  no individual should carry the burden for the action of another individual without those parties unifying in some direct and consensual manner.  

Over time this is an issue that will probably repeat itself over the course of this blog. As a person, I simply cannot carry a beast of burden that claims the negative action of one simply has a similar paint job or drops of so-called black blood engenders the idea that I should be embarrassed by that person’s negative actions.  In short, it is enough for me to carry my own negative actions or miss the mark mistakes, I can only truly be responsible for my behavior and possibly the behaviors of minor kids I have responsibility to raise in forthright manner. Shame for Antonion Brown is more that I should be bearing. 

At the moment I don’t wish to rehash the specific tenets of black Individualism. Partially, because I can’t recall them not currently locate the  newsletters. I think that both of those methods of recall are available to me, but really I don’t wish to see how well the mind of twentysomething failed in his understanding of the world. Like many people of my age, I am more likely to say, “I don’t know” now that I was when I had it all figured half a lifetime ago. 

That said, one thing that I wish to explore at this time is the power of words as it relates to the authority that an individual person has. For those familiar with the Christian Text the early account of  the earth and humanity is the words that spoke the world into existence and the way man was most like GOD was in his ability to use words to speak things into existence.  So how do we use words in the modern world to gain authority.? People consume words through texts and media. The words that we absorb influence or actions.  To this one of the most powerful things that we can do is read books , but books I mean difficult books which help us live in a manner that is excellent or in the biblical sense pleasuring to God or more secualrly pleasing to our higher selves.  In the modern world,  reading a text may mean listening to a podcast or lictere posted through youtube or any other of the podcast homes. Or simply listening to a word for word reading of the book.

To that end, a part of Black Individualism going forward will be  my speaking of words. Sometimes it may be a random thought that I start and continue or often just a reading of this weekly essay. The point is for me to share words first to myself then to an audience.  I don’t know if they will always have the power to change, but the goal is to be useful.  And I say useful over entertaining. I hope to entertain as a means of attraction, but not as a goal of this work. There are those that are meant to entertain. I am closer to the information and may entertain a long way. 

This is an example post, originally published as part of Blogging University. Enroll in one of our ten programs, and start your blog right.

You’re going to publish a post today. Don’t worry about how your blog looks. Don’t worry if you haven’t given it a name yet, or you’re feeling overwhelmed. Just click the “New Post” button, and tell us why you’re here.

Why do this?

• Because it gives new readers context. What are you about? Why should they read your blog?
• Because it will help you focus your own ideas about your blog and what you’d like to do with it.

The post can be short or long, a personal intro to your life or a bloggy mission statement, a manifesto for the future or a simple outline of your the types of things you hope to publish.

To help you get started, here are a few questions:

• Why are you blogging publicly, rather than keeping a personal journal?
• What topics do you think you’ll write about?
• Who would you love to connect with via your blog?
• If you blog successfully throughout the next year, what would you hope to have accomplished?

You’re not locked into any of this; one of the wonderful things about blogs is how they constantly evolve as we learn, grow, and interact with one another — but it’s good to know where and why you started, and articulating your goals may just give you a few other post ideas.

Can’t think how to get started? Just write the first thing that pops into your head. Anne Lamott, author of a book on writing we love, says that you need to give yourself permission to write a “crappy first draft”. Anne makes a great point — just start writing, and worry about editing it later.

When you’re ready to publish, give your post three to five tags that describe your blog’s focus — writing, photography, fiction, parenting, food, cars, movies, sports, whatever. These tags will help others who care about your topics find you in the Reader. Make sure one of the tags is “zerotohero,” so other new bloggers can find you, too.