Harlem Globetrotter Curly Neal to be honored Feb 15th - 2.12.2008.2

For a bit of positive news I want to mention the Harlem Globetrotters. On the 15th they will be retiring the 5th number of a Globetrotter in the 82 year history of the basketball team. This honor will be going to Fred "Curly" Neal who played with the team for 22 years and played 6,000 games and whose number is 22.

Curly Neal is one of the most famous Globetrotters, starting with the team in 1963, he has been highlighted along with other members on television and cartoons. He was part of the teams 38 year winning streak, which is unprecidented in any sport to my knowledge.

For those that think the players on the Globetrotter team are just entertainers and not highly skilled basketball players, I suggest these facts.

The Globetrotters membership includes:

• Wilt Chamberlain (played number 13 that was retired as well)
  
• Connie "The Hawk" Hawkins (Hall of Fame 1992)
  
• Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton (first African American to sign a NBA contract)
  
• Marques Haynes (the possibly best ball handle and longest proferssional career in basketball ever)
  
• George "Meadowlark" Lemon (played with Curly Neal for 22 years, and recipient of the higest honor of the Hall of Fame – the John Bunn Award- and is a member of the Hall)
  
• Jerome James (who currently plays for the New York Knicks)
  
• John Chaney (a Temple University coach)
  
• Reece "Goose" Tatum (a WWII veteran and inventor of the sky hook that Karem Abdul Jabbar – an honorary memeber after 1989 - is famous for).
  

That’s just a few of the members that are known in basketball. Baseball Hall of Famers Bob Gibson, Ferguson Jenkins and Lou Brock were also former Globetrotters.

The Harlem Globetrotters hit 22,000 wins in February 2006 (not that the major media covered it much as I recall) and have a current winning percentage of 98.4%. Oh and back when the NBA was still segregated (a mere 58 years ago) the Globetrotters beat the league leading Minnesota Lakers (an all-white team) 2 years in a row.

Curly Neal has played in 97 countries of the 118 that the Globetrotters have played in, before a good number of the 125 million fans that have seen this team, of which I include myself as a fan. This is an honor I am happy to hear of, and it’s hard for me to imagine a Globetrotter team that does not include him. I’m also happy to mention that later this year Curly Neal will be inducted into the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame.

I congratulate him on these honors, and thank him for the performances and joy he provided me and so many others with.

We have different laws down here

**This post and others can be found at All American Blog, where I am a contributing author.**

As I post various thoughts over the last several years I’ve come to a couple of understandings. One of the most prominent is the fact that there is a huge disparity between what African Americans and Whites think of the legal system. While both respect the police, there is also an obvious distrust of them among Blacks. And few Whites truly understand the reason why, in my experience.

Don’t get me wrong. I think the police are in general good people, doing a difficult job, with the best intentions. But as the quote goes

The path to hell is pave with good intentions.

I say that because I’ve lived through too many situations were officers have approached me, with little or no cause, with guns drawn. I have watched as officers have allowed crack houses to exist without interruption. I have seen the use of violence in response to legitimate questions of what officers are doing. And I am not nearly alone in this.

But perhaps the difference in how officers react when they are not dealing with a White person is the experience that Mr. Solomon Moore recently had. His article was reported in the New York Times on Sep 30, 2007. The experience came to him in a small town Salisbury, N.C.

Mr. Moore is a reporter for the NY Times, 37, drives a Volvo station wagon, and has 2 children in soccer leagues. Perhaps the one element that makes Mr. Moore appear like a gang member is the fact that he is Black. That is, looking like a gang member to police officers. The actual gang members thought he was a cop.

What happened is directly connected to the fact that a gang member might wear a T-shirt and jeans, but it is just as likely a Black guy in a shirt that is blue, is not because he’s a member of the Crips, but because he’s a Dodgers fan.

Mr. Moore was investigating anti-gang measures being taken in the nation. As a reporter he went to speak with actual gang members in North Carolina since it had instituted strong anti-gang laws. He met the gang members at night, when they are out in the open, and where they were actively selling drugs. He observed the drug sales prior to speaking with them. It was that obvious.

The next thing that happens is not what you might expect. The police arrived as this reporter was trying to convince the youths he was not a cop. In his own words

“Without so much as a question, the officer shoved my face down on the sheet metal and cuffed me so tightly that my fingertips tingled.

“They’re on too tight!” I protested.

“They’re not meant for comfort,” he replied.“

This minor experience is nothing new. I’ve had similar experiences as have my brother, friends, and often most African Americans I’ve spoken to since I was a teenager. But when I speak to my White friends, regardless of age, they stand amazed. Even worse are the one or 2 times that I was treated in a similar manner in front of my White friends, because I was deemed a threat to them by police officers of their own volition. They were stupefied to imagine that people can be treated in such a manner. And I honestly was annoyed at their naïveté.

Of course cases like Rodney King, or Amidou Diallo, or Sean Bell garner some news. But many feel those are extreme situations. Unique things that sometimes happen in big cities. Mr. Moore, who was released without an apology or explanation, was in a town of 30,000. No one was arrested. The police just went away. And the gang members stated

“Man, you know what would have happened to one of us if we talked to them that way?” said one disbelieving man as he walked away from me and my blank notebook. “We’d be in jail right now.”

We need to realize that this is not unique. It happens often, daily. It happens in big communities and small ones. It happens near your front door as much as it happens in Los Angeles and Chicago. And it adds to the problem, not resolves it.

As long as the following kind of conversation can occur there will be inequality in America.

“This is America,” I said angrily, in that moment supremely unconcerned about whether this was standard police procedure or a useful law enforcement tool or whatever anybody else wanted to call it. “I have a right to talk to anyone I like, wherever I like.”

The female officer trumped my naïve soliloquy, though: “Sir, this is the South. We have different laws down here.”

That benefits no one. But now that you know, what will you do?