Carter Did Have Priorities Straight

Someone once said if you live long enough you will see and hear it all. I don’t know if that is an argument for longevity or euthanasia.

Reading the article on the front sports page of the L.A. Times about Vince Carter attending his college graduation before an NBA playoff game made me lean toward the latter. For Diane Pucin to call the symbolic gesture of Carter going to his well-earned graduation at University of North Carolina as an act of “irresponsible selfishness” and that we should “dishonor him for being a bad employee” and “not worthy of being a role model” are the most shallow, knee-jerk and ignorant statements I have heard in a long time.

Those statements reflect mottos of athletics-before-academics, game-before-graduation and franchise-before-family plague that hollows out our communities. It is what I and many other coaches, teachers, athletic directors and parents, be they black, white or anything else, fight against every day.

Carter is an elite professional basketball player and I guarantee you that he played that decisive game against Philadelphia with more energy and vigor than had he not gone to his graduation; primarily because his conscience was free to do so. I have never met Carter, but if I did I would shake his hand until his arm falls off. Unfortunately I have witnessed hundreds of children sacrifice their academic priorities for their athletic dreams. Too many young, bright African-American children look at the word student-athlete with dyslexia, putting the word athlete ahead of student. It hurts me to hear the criticism that Carter is being faced with. Sometimes even courageous acts are misinterpreted as acts of selfishness.

Sure, Carter could have waited until the summer or asked someone to videotape the ceremony as Pucin suggested, but who is she, or anyone else for that matter, to place what value attending a college graduation has on a family. Maybe Pucin doesn’t realize historically the hundreds of African-Americans who were lynched trying to educate themselves and others.

Maybe one of my students, who idolizes Carter, might now put his own education a little higher on his priority list. If Carter’s actions encourage just one, maybe my son or yours, I say “thanks.” Thanks for putting education and your family before all else. It took 30 years for the media to understand the “selfish” gesture made by Tommie Smith and John Carlos during the 1968 Mexico Olympics. It took 20 years for society to understand Muhammad Ali’s “selfish” refusal to be drafted. I guess I should give society time to understand Carter’s “selfish act.”

One out of every four African-American males are in jail, on parole or awaiting trial. African-American males make up 6% of the nation’s population yet 60% of the prison population. In layman’s terms, more African-Americans graduated from the state pen than from Penn State. Carter’s accomplishments should be celebrated, even if it might’ve put his championship at risk.

The Brown v. Board of Education decision of 1956 allowed me, my children and their children to legally receive an equal opportunity for an education. Thirty years after that decision my father, with a fifth-grade education, watched me graduate from college. He couldn’t even read the words on the diploma but he knew what it meant more than the people who wrote it.

Simply put, it means a new type of freedom. No championship, no Olympic glory and no amount of money could ever give my father or me that satisfaction. Can you understand that Diane Pucin?

FLUKE FLUKER

Athletic Director, Chatsworth High