LaVar Ball's Commentary is Not Uncommon

LaVar Ball decidedly ungrateful response to Trump's intercession on his son's behalf underscores an unfortunately not uncommon attitude towards crime in too many black communities:

"As long as my boy's back here, I'm fine," LaVar Ball told ESPN. "I'm happy with how things were handled. A lot of people like to say a lot of things that they thought happened over there. Like I told him, 'They try to make a big deal out of nothing sometimes.' I'm from L.A. I've seen a lot worse things happen than a guy taking some glasses. My son has built up enough character that one bad decision doesn't define him. Now if you can go back and say when he was 12 years old he was shoplifting and stealing cars and going wild, then that's a different thing.[my underlines]

This "i've seen much worse" attitude is exactly why so many black communities have unacceptably high crime rates. While I'll agree that I think 10 years in prison is over the top for sunglasses, I don't think one should downplay the fact that someone thought it was OK to steal. Period.

This reminded me of the case of Cory Stingley (2). Corey's father reached out to me after finding my blog entries and was upset that Corey was responsible for his own demise. He said that it should be expected that young (presumably black) men to steal shit at some point in their life. When I read that, I completely understood why it was that Cory thought it was OK to steal. For the record I have never shoplifted, attempted to shoplift of even thought about shoplifting. Period. And I find it insulting that a person would think that taking any of my property, regardless of it's value is something I should overlook.

Many Black people claim to be Christians so let me put it to them like this. In the Bible there is a parable about talents. Three people were given talents. Two did stuff with them and one buried his. End of the parable was that the two who had invested their talents were rewarded with even more while the one who buried his was scolded as being lazy, etc. The lessons being that those who are faithful in small things get rewarded with bigger thing. That is, if I can trust you to NOT steal some $5 sunglasses, then I can trust you around things of far higher value.

When we fail to teach our children and hold our children to account for the small things, then we set them up to FAIL when bigger things are placed in their care. LaVar Ball's attitude about "seeing worse" is the same as the servant who buried his talent. LaVar failed his son and for those who understand what I speak of, he has shown himself to be an embarrassment. But the Trump hatred knows no bounds and no ends, that folks will even defend a thief and theft.