Sneakers and the fabric of democracy

...Sure, having a black star shows we're the best at this particular gig, we define what the top is and how it looks...

...Still, Malcolm changed our attitude forever, and you can't say for better or worse, because, when you think about it, the change was inevitable...

...Of course everyone's feet are different, and some other brand might fit you better...

...But if you need a pair of shoes, I hope you'll try on some Nikes, and if not the Air Jordan line, whatever style you can afford...

...Shoes really aren't that important, and neither is anything else that money buys unless you need it to survive or think it's beautiful...

...528 • DISSENT...

...They want to give kids passes to go to private schools, when the public school system is already falling apart...

...He got the Nike people to make some new stuff where you see black gym rats jiving with white gym rats, calling each other names...

...You see, the problem about African Americans began with slavery...

...It seems Michael knows me: he reads Dissent from cover to cover and secretly agrees with the democratic left perspective...

...He wanders past banks of refrigerators, among indoor jungles by pools and waterfalls, freezing in pockets of social control as if caught in a series of stop-frames, observing personalities posed in tableaux which he could join simply by kneeling in the phantic position...

...You write culture notes," he said...

...Your choice is, you study the asses of every shape and color on the ladder FALL • 1992 • 525 above you, walk their walk and talk their talk, with an eye to rip off their gear when you get the chance, show how hot you are and get people glad to throw more stuff at you just for the chance to hang out—just like they do with you, Michael...

...One summer, he tells me, he didn't touch a basketball, dressed every day in chinos and a white shirt and went around to young people's workshops at community centers...

...Till then, Michael and I wish to remind you, it's definitely not the shoes...

...But you can't help it, you a slave...

...Some of the others are just as good, and anyhow, I'd play as well in almost any shoes...

...We freed the slaves, but we didn't close all the slave markets...

...He was thinking not only of black slaves, but of the Israelites and the Pharoah, the Roman slaves, the Russian serfs, the Europeans faced with Hitler and Stalin, etc...

...Martin Luther King, among others, and the people who followed him, black and white...

...A tall black man wearing rubber shoes the size of ski boots, baggy black shorts and a crimson singlet stares out the window, murmuring to himself...

...Retreating to the playhouse in the children's wing, we create something like the following: Hello, people...

...And for making distinctions: he splits up answers into a lot of questions, then finds subtle ways of answering that suit the inequalities people really face in various societies...

...You probably won't wind up as famous or rich as me, but you can do even better in ways that are emotionally richer, deeper, and give you more privacy to decide for yourself what's worth living for, and what we might do to bring about a better, fairer world to live in...

...I've wondered," I say, "what are the political accomplishments of Malcolm X?" "Zilch," says Michael...

...They can do this because they have learned how to think, how to make an argument and test it, how to get data and analyze it, how to give your reactions free rein while at the same time examining them, discounting for your own prejudices...

...For Spike, it's part of his trip, getting out his own clothes in his own store for black people...

...What he's found is he likes to sneak off and hang with the unknown and unsung, people who don't give a damn about what's being worn or bought or watched, people who know the books that give the all-time thrills, people who love what they learn and new ways of putting it together...

...Not...

...For most young black people, survival and self-respect require that they study hard every night, develop computer skills and good work habits, practice safe sex with safe partners, postpone marriage and children, avoid alcohol and drugs, get transitional jobs and save their salaries in lowinterest insured accounts at banks not run by big-time looters, not buy things they can't afford, get regular health check-ups, be active in their neighborhoods, vote, and keep informed...

...Now and then he is beckoned, offered a line to chant...

...I go into flight patterns, do dunks, and fool around with my buddy Spike Lee, who does the comic number and pesters me— 'Is it the shoes?' Then Nike gets out these big fancy shoes in ten colors with all kinds of straps and innersoles and adjustments, plus a line of fancy workout clothes under my name, showing the kids you can succeed in this world and buy your own stuff made first of all for blacks, with the white folks following—at least, that was what we told each other for a while...

...I helped design 'em, I like 'em better than any other shoes, and I think they look the most cool...

...He goes through all these stages—pimp, Muslim, black nationalist—and in every one of them, he got a fast set of answers, like a number one street hustler...

...He was one brave guy...

...They just don't see me," he murmurs, "for who I am...

...Congress in restructuring our educational and economic systems...

...They glance beyond him, alert for the advent of status in a style so new he wouldn't know it...

...frissons of scorn and delight lick playfully across his lips...

...I 526 • DISSENT remember Walzer says the one time murder is justified is to escape slavery...

...To maintain his privilege of speaking and being heard, he has to carry out the expectations of black jock hero in the consumer society...

...That's what I live for, not the money, the cheers or the clothes, though I like that stuff too...

...Malcolm taught black people it was OK to stand up and say how it was, tell their hate if need be, make their demands, defend themselves 'by any means necessary.' That was a big relief to a lot of us, even though it backfired in the streets, even though it FALL • 1992 • 527 drove off well-meaning whites and their politicians, even if it's not clear where the process is going to lead us...

...We want to open them to the experience of the most ordinary beauty, beauty you can spot on every block walking through downtown New York or Chicago...

...Would that be a first, the biggest and newest...

...But hell, I'd take a lot less if they lowered prices—and if the bosses didn't insist on cities building them stadiums with public money...

...Nike has responded favorably to our new script, and has scheduled it for shooting right around the time President Clinton leads the U.S...

...What's frightening is not the violent, hateful lyrics, so much as the real people out there who feel that way and can't cash in on it like the record companies...

...Just because I'm better at basketball, make money, and look sharp at all times, don't mean my look or my way of doing things is any better than yours...

...How to make distinctions...

...Then Spike comes along with a special effects gym, where everything is in day-glo computer colors, and he say, In Spike's gym, you have to play with all the colors.' So they start in playing together, and they're grooving, and their Nike shoes got new hot colors you never seen before...

...Such a look he gives me, full of humor and sadness and wonder, just the way black ballplayers used to look at me back in Indianapolis, their eyes fond with indulgence for a white boy born hundreds of years younger than they...

...And the Nike slogan, dig it, is 'Just do it!' But Walzer says only slavery is worth killing for...

...Nike tries to support good stuff with some of their profits, gives equipment to the needy, and puts me on TV to show you at least one African American success story...

...You can imagine Spike and me had quite a go-round about this...

...His mind fumbling among half-digested bistro reviews, he seeks egress, wondering if he dares eat at a restaurant that will seat him...

...I thought how no black star would turn down the chance to make millions from Nike—no white star would either...

...Right on...

...Shoes and stuff like that are never worth killing or dying for...

...And they get to know his face on TV, he gets money to make his movies, which get into the conditions of black folk in America...

...He knows it's silly and degrading to think that young inner city kids prefer a ballplayer as a "role model," but the silliness and degradation were not invented by him, they are the conditions of his life, the only materials with which he has to work...

...Everyone under the age of 40 could spot a TV stunt to let the Pres be one of the guys, and he's not...

...And I thought some more about Michael Walzer...

...But then we find ourselves co-opted to stand behind some killing...

...You might even have your own look that's just as good as mine...

...Not much of a lesson, but it's the most I can get away with at the time...

...No, what occurred to me is these Nike commercials I'm always thinking about and trying to get straight on in my head...

...Even white people get no jobs unless they're connected...

...I fill my place on the court...

...the young folk sneered...

...We got the same problem, baby...

...That's why we have to retrain our work force, to teach them ways of personal satisfaction...

...But what tears us apart is that, for the people Malcolm came from and talked about, things haven't changed, they've only gotten worse...

...That's why I cut out when they brought the Chicago Bulls to appear with Bush in the Rose Garden to celebrate our championship...

...His so-easy movements always hold the hint of a joke...

...Let the teams take care of themselves with their own earnings, while city people get their share of the pie through better schools and teachers, parks, hospitals and like that...

...What keeps me, finally, from losing my mind is the state of grace when I can lose myself in what I'm doing—and I think anyone could feel that, one way or another...

...To be almost any type of American-type TV celebrity is to be a slave...

...These people can earn enough because they can get into new fields when old ones wear out, or make up jobs of their own to meet the world's needs...

...Thank you...

...Now the other guys on the Bulls needed that, for them it was one of those times when you have to dance the game to get the prize...

...He told the kids they had to face the fact they were still behind, even though their ancestors were brought to this country two or three hundred years ago...

...He stumbles into the game room, where a clutch of cloned young women coolly shoot pool, arranging each shot to show their sexualized accessories...

...He's proposed a new deal to the Nike company...

...Walzer's the Michael Jordan of political-ethical theory, you might say...

...As he speaks Michael's eyes spark with ferocity, but at bottom I can see the vast amusement of a man who knows he will die someday...

...Work on your own, think things through for yourself, and don't forget the really best books in the world are the ones that will be the strongest to read, and will get you thinking...

...You're saying, you can't help it, you got to load up the people with all kinds of falseness that degrades them and keeps them from ease or beauty or real learning, and that can even set them killing...

...And when I can't sleep at night, I think these kids still be killing one another for the shoes...

...he sings out...

...We have to show our kids we hold out for what we're worth, and we don't let the bosses take all the TV money and treat us like field hands...

...What he did was all psychological, except for some good stuff like organizing Muslim prisoners and getting them into a clean life...

...How to refine a problem by asking better questions...

...If I could work out that deal, hey, I'd drop down to the same salary the owner gets...

...What a jive example for kids...

...And that's why us black celebrities hold down our own in the TV commercials and sit-coms, that's why there's some jobs for us in the army, the government bureaucracy, the corporations...

...But I don't know if this solves the problem...

...He say, for example, Masons got only thirty-three degrees of the truth, but Allah put 360 degrees into a circle...

...This is what the American Dream has amounted to, Michael told them, for most people who've worked up into it, seen their children prosper and been in a position to spoil their grandchildren...

...There are only so many slots open in the NBA, MTV, or on the Arsenio Hall show...

...I want you to know, whenever you see me doing my thing, I'm wearing Nike Air Jordan shoes...

...They ain't no jobs except sweeping up at Burger King, and that's where they keep you too...

...He can see the grounds outside through a window, but can't get the window open, nor tell if what he sees is the real outdoors or a backdrop...

...So I skip the White House to play golf, which shows the kids I can keep on doing stuff that's creative for me, and no one else has to profit off it...

...Yo, Jeremy...

...It's all around us, only it's rare for people to feel it, and they can't describe it in the language of competing and winning, whipping ass, scoring drugs or designer dresses or showstopping spouses, vintage wines or appliances...

...His great problem in life is that the unreal commodities of tube-recognition and tube-approval are what enable him to speak to black children coming up without much help in the city...

...Then I read your column in Dissent, Jeremy, and I see how Spike half shows the real thing and half keeps woofing the violence commercial number...

...Michael says...

...It gets back to the thinking stuff again...

...I am wakened by a melodious voice...

...In the commercials, I have a good time, and never do anything that's not me...

...It's tongue-smacking delicious, the thought that he and I could have anything in common, other than the assumption I would have more fun in life if I, too, were Michael Jordan...

...They had to work harder just to get an even chance...

...It's like bucking for a $4 million salary, because guys not as good as you get three-and-a-half...

...Just getting up there we saying shoes worth killing for...

...Maybe it's like what's happening with the Gangsta Rap groups...

...He will reduce his commercial fee to $1 million, if only they will let him speak in his own words, without cuts or changes...

...Sometimes I think they just found a fancy way to use racism to sell shoes...

...And besides, who else accomplished anything politically for the black man in this country...

...They want to get tough, like so many Clint Eastwoods, give every kid the same tests...

...All the charity stuff Nike started doing don't quite erase this in my mind...

...Were we teaching them that material stuff is more important than thou shalt not kill...

...This cat went to Princeton, and he never learned the difference between a teacher and a drillmaster...

...But it bother me, when I read Malcolm's book, about the thinking problem...

...I dig it that one of your Dissent editors writes books about when violence is and is not justified for political ends...

...How can there be any lasting culture, how can culture draw out what's best in us, let alone provide jobs and make arrangements for useful, playful lives, without respect for the creative act of thinking, for learning to take joy in your mind the way an athlete takes joy in his body...

...You catch George Bush in the middle of the '88 campaign, when the Times ask him what book he read most change his life...

...Malcolm gave us names and sayings, but in a way he was like the white preachers getting across on TV...

...But that tends to take black people away from the country around them, see, not to change it...

...So it occurs to me all the stars doing TV ads are slaves...

...Hey, this Michael Walzer is a good role model for thinking...

...my team and I invent new patterns, new possibilities that did not exist before...

...If you get my shoes that way, something in you dies like it dies in the souls of rich guys who loot corporations and suck old folks' savings out of banks and sell arms to third-world dictators...

...Hey, I saw one liberal senator on the tube talking about saving money by demobilizing the army, and putting the NCO's to work in the schools...

...Remember: no one has the answers, that's why living the good life in America depends on equality, opportunity, education, and tolerance...

...Can't give that up...

...How to sleep on a notion, let it evolve, put it aside and come back to it...

...He wants me to help him with a brief statement, which will put shoes and black superstars in perspective, without offending anyone or closing doors...

...He say, he had to read War and Peace in prep school, they made him read the whole damn thing, and that taught him the meaning of hard work...

...I'm not in control of Spike, but he's trying...

...But largely he glides by as if invisible, preoccupied with the illusion of hunger, or is it simply psychic space to be decorated...

...But you won't catch them rapping about what education should be in a democracy, and what it might cost to pay teachers a self-respecting wage and create the conditions where you help students develop as thinkers...

...But no...

...That's why I get so turned off watching politicians talk about education...

...I bring this up not to say African Americans are still slaves, or entitled to vigilante violence, though some do think that, and I'll get to that in a moment...

...When I work on the fundamentals, I get easy with my techniques—and then this dazzling array of options opens to me...

...For the masses of black people, all they got is the American Dream life they see people like me leading on TV...

...He didn't leave any questions open, didn't leave room for people to think about what's happening in this country or work out what to do about it...

...Trouble is, it turned out kids with not much money were killing other kids to strip their shoes...

...Well, that's what America is all about, and maybe you either play or don't play...

...Now my cousin in the Air Force say, hey, the Pentagon got 540 degrees...

...You, too, can go for the good things...

...He pitches upon a couch, glancing about wildly for some printed matter to seize and stay afloat with, and finding none, drops like yesterday's pop charts into the oblivion of sleep...

...Which brings Michael to the reason he sought me out in California...

...It might help my fans to see you can reach a level where you can't be bought except when the price is right for you...

...Spike got the money to do the first feature on Malcolm X, because Malcolm is 'our black prince,' as Ossie Davis said...

...In 1965, they got equality and integration written into federal law...

...It's like saving your family's life, like lots of us really have to do in the projects...