Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Political Figure

Click here for an article in Time entitled "The Coming Race War Won’t Be About Race," by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (ne Lew Alcindor).

First, some information about Kareem. Time's blurb says:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is a six-time National Basketball Association champion and league Most Valuable Player. He is also a celebrated author, filmmaker and education ambassador.

Wikipedia goes into a little more detail. Here's a section on his basketball career:

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (born Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, Jr.; April 16, 1947) is a retired American professional basketball player who played 20 seasons in the National Basketball Association (NBA) for the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers. During his career as a center, Abdul-Jabbar was a record six-time NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), a record 19-time NBA All-Star, a 15-time All-NBA selection, and an 11-time NBA All-Defensive Team member. A member of six NBA championship teams as a player and two as an assistant coach, Abdul-Jabbar twice was voted NBA Finals MVP. In 1996, he was honored as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History. NBA coach Pat Riley and players Isiah Thomas and Julius Erving have called him the greatest basketball player of all time.

I was aware that he was more than just possibly the best basketball player ever; I was even aware that he was a pretty good writer. He's also been expressing his political views for a long time, as Wikipedia says:

Alcindor boycotted the 1968 Summer Olympics by deciding not to join the United States Men's Olympic Basketball team that year, protesting the unequal treatment of African-Americans in the United States.

I first noticed his writing during the notorious L.A. Clippers/Donald Sterling controversy. Here's an entry from an ABC News blog at the time:

Basketball legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar said today that Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling’s derogatory remarks about blacks are more evidence that racism is still part of American culture, but “things have to change.”

“This is a problem. I did a little bit of research, more whites believe in ghosts than believe in racism… That’s why we have shows like ‘Ghostbusters’ and don’t have shows like ‘Racistbusters,’” Abdul-Jabbar said today in an interview with George Stephanopoulos. “It’s something that’s still part of our culture and people hold on to some of these ideas and practices just out of habit and saying that, ‘Well, that’s the way it always was.’ But things have to change.”

In the linked article, Kareem says the roots of the present class conflict can be found in May of 1970. Everyone knows about the killing of four student protesters at Kent State, Ohio, on May 4, 1970; who knows about the events ten days later, on May 14, at Jackson State University, Mississippi? Kareem:

On May 14th, 10 days after Kent State ignited the nation, at the predominantly black Jackson State University in Mississippi, police killed two black students (one a high school senior, the other the father of an 18-month-old baby) with shotguns and wounded twelve others.

There was no national outcry. The nation was not mobilized to do anything. That heartless leviathan we call History swallowed that event whole, erasing it from the national memory.