Chapter 10:In Their Own Words

In our day and age we see our athletes as either cry babies or assholes in the media. It’s been awhile since we have seen an athlete like Muhammad Ali who is not afraid to speck his mind. Athletes now are too concerned with how big there rims are or when their rap CD is coming out or what team will give them the most money. With all the bad publicity that we see in the sports page. Its hard to see the good positive things that some athletes do for society. There are some diamonds in the ruff of the sports world who have fought the norms of society. The reasons most athletes don’t use there voice for good is because they think like us and think there voice won’t be heard. Another reason that athletes don’t help society is they don’t want to be look at as out castes by the sports world. Two athletes that were highlighted in this chapter that stood out to me. Although these athletes are one that stand up for the good of the world they also keep up some sort of popularity in the sports world.
Etan Tomas a power forward for the Washington Wizards plays aggressive basketball but has words are even more aggressive. Etan writes poems that have meaning behind them with topics ranging from the war to death penalty. It talks about how Etan was just doing this poems in small coffee houses. Etan has expanded his crowd base and has a published book of them. Because of Ethan topics many people have turned heads to realize that things in our country are turning bad. The other athlete that is highlighted in this chapter is Sheryl Swoopes who has openly come out as being gay. The fact that Swoopes came out was a controversy because of how easy it was for her to come out. If it had to be a man from the NBA the story would have been all over the news. When we see female athletes the stereotype of America is that they are gay so when she acme out it wasn’t a big shock to America. It shows that we do have athletes that aren’t afraid to come to the public with issues that they believe in.