Black Cop's Kid by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Author:Kareem Abdul-Jabbar [Abdul-Jabbar, Kareem]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-09-28T04:00:00+00:00

On the Ball

Becoming a professional athlete was my roundabout way of going into the family business. To me, the family business wasn’t law enforcement, it was fighting for justice.

Being a cop, my dad instilled in me an appreciation for the power of the law to protect people and bring justice. Being a Black cop, my dad made me aware that bad laws can be passed and good laws can be unfairly enforced. Being a Black cop’s kid made me especially sensitive to injustice. Especially the injustice caused by people judging others based on the color of their skin, nationality, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. As a child, it was difficult to understand the logic of demeaning, beating, even killing another human being simply because they didn’t look like you. I found it especially strange since most of those expressing their prejudice came from ethnic or national backgrounds that had also endured extreme prejudice. That’s when I understood that prejudice was the result of emotional brainwashing of children from birth and that without rational thinking to break that Pavlovian conditioning, the world could never be fair, or just, or good.

Part of what drew me to sports was that there was a clear and fair set of rules that everyone had to follow and that an individual’s success was based solely on merit. It didn’t matter who your parents were, what religion you were, or the color of your skin. Your upbringing, beliefs, or popularity weren’t a factor. Either you could perform or you couldn’t. Referees were like cops, making sure everyone followed the rules, and if they didn’t, they were penalized. Teammates overcame personal biases to work together for a common goal. Most of us became more empathetic and better people because of that. It seemed like a utopian model for an equitable society.

Throughout my teenage years, as the Civil Rights Movement became more urgent and the white pushback became more vocal and violent, the basketball court was an escape into a more controlled and fairer world. The more I practiced, the better I got. The better I got, the better our team did. It was a world in which I had some control over how I was treated. On the court, I was cheered as a hero. On the street, I was in mortal danger, and nothing I could do would change that.

My success as an athlete at UCLA and in the NBA brought me opportunities to speak out against injustice, and I seized those opportunities with a renewed purpose. It became part of my mission as an athlete to promote not just my beliefs about civil rights but also to shatter the stereotyped notion that athletes were just dumb slabs of beef with no commitment to their communities or thoughtful opinions about their country. I hoped that the more I spoke out, the more other athletes would be inspired.

My first major opportunity came in 1967 when I was only twenty and a sophomore at UCLA. NFL legend and civil

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