LOVERS AND HATERS

Tim Hardaway, in his time in the NBA, was one of the most fierce competitors and clutch perfomers in the modern era. He willed Miami to victories and ended many a game with a last second jumper or dribble drive to the hole. Some of these I witnessed personally. After his anti-gay comments folks are saying they cannot believe an NBA representative, who is a role model, would say such things. Why not? Basketball players, auto mechanics, politicians, lawyers, homeless; all of these various professions with one underlying truth. That truth is that each position is manned or womanned, if you will, by people with their own personal foibles, beliefs and objectives.

Tim Hardaway was a great player, but not a person with a record of saying anything worthwile, outside of basketball analysis, to the general public. His comments are hateful, hurtful to a large number of people, but no, he should not have to apologize for them. The reasons that he feels the way he does about homosexuals can be contested, dismantled and studied, but it is the way he feels. It is his right. He is entitled. The apology should come, if the pain his comments caused, was not his intention. Tim Hardaway is not the only person to feel the way he does and it is a good thing he said what he said in that it brings the discussion of discrimination against a group of people to the forefront and reminds America and the world that hatred, it's speech and the possible actions that speech can cause, still exists. Many people have correlated the remarks of Hardaway to the discrimination faced by black people through the years. This is where I check out on this issue.

Although a life in the "closet" has its pain, no one must know the sexuality of a person if they so choose. A black man or woman have no choice, anywhere in the world. Permanent tans give us away, even in the winter time when the cold tries its best to chip away at the robustness of melanin. John Amaechi is not Jackie Robinson. He is a man who chose to reveal a facet of who he is to the public. He chose to do this. I never entertained any thought of John Amaechi's sexuality until he presented it for media consumption. Jackie Robinson had no such option. He was a negro by law and a nigger by hatred and there was no other choice than to live with it. There was no way to hide skin that told on your heritage in whatever space he breathed in at any given time.

Now, I agree that black American's should be the last group of people to willingly discriminate or abide by discrimination of any other group. Discrimination is nasty, ugly and bares reprucussions that damage the spirit and the mind. However, this is not to say one cannot have a disconnected feeling from another person's sexual orientation, religion or any of the various other things that can come between people. What it does say is that people need to abide by a respect for every living person's humanity and accept them for who they are without attempting to disparage and discriminate against their right to live fully in the world. Love is the message.