Color Scheme

As far as being angry goes, Ron Artest really shouldn't have anything on Donovan McNabb.

From being booed on draft day by an isolated group of brainwashed Eagles fans to being called "overrated" by a political commentator with absolutely no knowledge of the game of football to being ripped in the media by a self-absorbed "teammate" with the people skills of a SCUD missile, it's a wonder the man hasn't snapped, or gotten visibly fed up, or wanted out. It's gone beyond ludicrous.

And now, because McNabb has chosen to take the high road each time and handle these criticisms with class, dignity and eloquence (and apparently also because he's done something as relatively trivial as not scramble as much as he used to) that doesn't make him "black" enough.

By now you know the story: Philadelphia NAACP president J. Whyatt "Jerry" Mondeshire took several shots at McNabb in his Philadelphia Sun column last week, calling him a mediocre quarterback and a terrible leader, saying he's wasting his talent by not running the ball more often, then accusing McNabb of playing the race card when he says "that's what people expect black quarterbacks to do."

Except McNabb was absolutely right. That is what people expect black quarterbacks to do. And even that doesn't mean that all black quarterbacks throughout history have been just runners (I wonder if Mondeshire's ever heard of a guy by the name of Warren Moon.)

There are so many things about this latest controversy that just flat-out piss me off, but the most personal aspect for me is the idea that, if you're black, you have to act a certain way, or talk a certain way, or play a certain way to be considered "black." (Note the distinction I'm making by putting "black" in quotes there.)

Both of my parents are college-educated. My dad spent five years in the Air Force after leaving school, then became a civilian employee and an Army Reservist, working as a flight line mechanic at McGuire Air Force Base. Mom's been a registered nurse for over 30 years. I'm an only child who grew up in a well-established, racially and ethnically mixed suburban New Jersey neighborhood. Does that make me any less black than the guy who grew up in West Philadelphia or Flatbush or Compton with his three siblings raised by his grandmother?

No.

And yet I struggled with this through a decent portion of my teenage years, when rap went gangsta and the images associated with it were all over the place. When you're a teenager and going through all the things mentally that teenagers go through, well, it's just one more major thing to have on your mind. You see that and it's hard not to think that that's the way it should be, that that's the way young black men are supposed to act.

That's a bunch of crap, of course. And thinking back, I think I knew then that it wasn't representative of all of us, which is probably why I didn't try to play the role. It didn't seem natural. It wasn't who I was. And I eventually learned that it didn't matter.

I guess to some people it still does.

The notion that anyone -- regardless of race -- is selling out his race by acting or not acting a certain way is insane. That someone who's supposed to be a leader in the black community is advocating that notion is obscene.

You can criticize McNabb's play all you want. You won't necessarily be right, but that's in-bounds.

But his race doesn't belong in this argument. Or any argument, for that matter.