Quit Frontin': Stop Pretending You're Not Role Model

And then you realize we don't care
We don't just say no, we to busy sayin' yeah!

To drinkin' straight out the eight bottle
Do I look like a mutha fuckin role model?

To a kid lookin' up ta me
Life ain't nothin but bitches and money.

From "Gangsta Gangsta" from the album
Straight Outta Compton by NWA, 1988

"I think the media demands that athletes be role models.... And what they're really doing is telling kids to look up to someone they can't become, because not many people can be like we are. Kids can't be like Michael Jordan.

"I am not a role model."

Charles Barkley
Professional basketball player, 1993

Here's our problem: Individuals have absolutely no direct control over whether they are or are not role models. Like it or not our behavior are constantly scrutinized, judged, and evaluated by everyone we come into direct and indirect contact with. People--particularly children--innately and unconsciously compare themselves, that's what we do. That's how we learn. We compare ourselves with people whom we do and don't want to be like, with whom we want to directly emulate and those we want to do just the opposite.

I don't want to be the guy who wipes trays for a living at the mall food court. So I do things to prevent being that guy by the actions I take in the present. But people, kids specifically, are always looking for and toward "reference groups" of others who occupy social roles to which they aspire. Rapper. Baller. Politician. Actor. Cop. Blogger. Professor. Yes you are a role model. Start acting like one (Except these "birther" clowns. Brithers are just stupid and nobody should emulate).

As U.S. Americans who want to help make the future of U.S. America great, we have a great responsibility to model ourselves after people who make U.S. America incredible. We should strive to be more like Barack Obama and less like...Plaxico Burress.

Most American whites have already figured this role model bit out given the robust history of incredible whites to look up to. Black kids generally live in poverty though and have been "historically under-represented" in the role model department. Slavery and oppression kind of left blacks with a false start at the starting blocks. That's just a U.S. American fact.

Poor/black people/kids in U.S. America have learned that rich people have more opportunities to possess things, live in comfort, eat well, and have lots of hot sex, just like their heroes: rappers & ballers. That's what they strive to be like even though the odds of success at those endeavours are very slim. But it's not just comfort, food, and hot sex with much of the white population. It's history. It's the foundation of all reference points that shape who we are and want to be. Two words: George Washington. White guy.

Unlike hardworking Koreans who toil for 20 hour days so their kids can go to M.I.T., black kids would rather rely on the natural abilities that made them terrific slaves: physical abilities & singing. Hard work and Intellectual Superiority don't seem to be a hardwired "virtue" in the brains of many U.S. American black kids although many of these same kids will skip all the math and science to devote hours and hours and hours to singing and dribbling (or maxing the efficiencies of drug sales).

One of my main half-breed contemporaries, Malcolm Gladwell says:

"Success is seen as a matter of capitalizing on socioeconomic advantage, not compensating for disadvantage. The mechanisms of social mobility—scholarships, affirmative action, housing vouchers, Head Start—all involve attempts to convert the poor from chronic outsiders to insiders, to rescue them from what is assumed to be a hopeless state. Nowadays, we don't learn from poverty, we escape from poverty."

Why isn't Malcolm Gladwell more of a role model for black kids? Is he acting too white? Is he a sellout like Oprah, Fresh Prince, Halle Berry, and, Deval Patrick, Tiger Woods, and Tony Williams?

Indeed, as he said himself, Charles Barkley the basketball player is not a feasible role model for most black children. But, in my opinion, Charles Barkley the smart, opinionated, hard-headed, ambitious self-promoter, businessman, honest broker is a great role model.

Kids, listen to Uncle Tom Ty for one moment: Read a book. Write a poem. DO SOME MATH. Study the trajectories of Oprah Winfrey, Corey Booker, and Shane Battier. That's less acting white then it is acting smart. It's not selling out, it's an investment in EVERYTHING!

Want to escape poverty? Read Blink, Tipping Point, and Outliers. Take the whole summer...you will be a different person in September than you were in June.

Quit frontin'!