I LIKE MIKE
[Col. Writ. 6/6/02]
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
A mere mention of the name, Mike Tyson, is all that is needed for snorts to erupt, guffaws to sound, and curses to flow. It is the result of a media that has taken a perverse delight in tormenting the life and legend of the remarkable boxer from Brownsville, the gifted knock-out artist from the gritty ghettoes of Brooklyn, a man destined to become the youngest heavyweight champion of the regal world of boxing.
As these words are written, approximately 50 hours remains until the fight between Tyson and Afro-Brit boxer, Lennox Lewis. No matter the outcome, the writer remains a Tyson fan. There is surely something remarkable about a man who sports a tattoo on his right shoulder of the late Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Tse-Tung, and a tattoo on his abdomen of the martyred Argentine of the Cuban Revolution, Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
But there is more. Few public figures have borne the brunt of such public (read media-driven) antipathy, vehemence and ridicule. Nor is this merely this writer's opinion, as seen by the words of a journalism professor and former reporter, Jack Lule, who seems hardly a Tyson apologist:
Not a defense of Tyson, this chapter nevertheless
will pursue the charge that the Time's response
to Tyson was ugly and flawed by its reliance upon
racist imagery .... I start from the assumption that
the news must find other means to depict such
sordid lives, means that owe nothing to racist
archetypes and images. Indeed, on a larger
level, I hope to suggest that the perpetuation
of racist stereotypes, particularly in such high-
profile cases as Tyson's, can be especially
debilitating to a press that struggles daily with
its representation of people of color. [from Lule,
J. Daily News, Eternal Stories: The Mythological
Role of Journalism. (New York: Guilford Press,
2001) pp. 123-124]For millions of people in America, it matters little what the media reports about Mike Tyson. It is not their media. Mike's swagger, his determination to speak his mind, and his refusal to sweeten his tongue, coupled with his clear and distinct contempt for much of the media, makes him a man admired by many.
For them, Mike is able to do many of the things, and say many of the things, that they themselves wish to do, and say. For them, the relative silence (on political, social matters) of Black athletes and other cultural leaders represents their fear to offend their white constituencies or the white majoritarian, corporate media. Mike's lack of fear of them makes him refreshing.
Decades ago, a powerful, talented fighter appeared on the scene, and beat virtually every man who stood before him. The media reviled him because he was bold, dominating and black. Both the press and police converged to threaten him with American dungeons. No matter the charge, his real "crime" was he was too black and too strong. His name was Jack Johnson.
Johnson, for the high and terrible crime of loving and marrying a white woman, was run out of the country of his birth, to scrape for a miserable living among foreigners.
Decades later, a man called Muhammad Ali, for the treasonous 'crime' of refusing to join in a genocidal war in Vietnam, was hounded out of the boxing profession and threatened with years in federal prison.
Tyson, a boxing historian, knows what those who came before him experienced.
It is a shadow of what he experiences today.
Text © copyright 2002 by Mumia Abu-Jamal.
All rights reserved.
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