Jalen Rose and "Uncle Toms"

You may have not heard about the tempest in a teacup surrounding the "Fab Five" documentary about the 1991 University of Michigan B-ball team. The controversy centers around the seemingly gratuitous statement in the movie by Jalen Rose that Duke recruited “black players that were ‘Uncle Toms.’" Rose is trying to spin his comment as something he thought "when [he] was 17 years old" or as meaning something other than what-every-other-American-knows-it-means, but the sad thing is that he is blatantly not backing off of the comment.

Bottom line, those sentiments are racist. It's the whole "acting white" issue, and it's sad that a marvelously fortunate and exceptional black person like Jalen Rose can't grasp that, more often than not, success in life is the result of things like working hard, making wise decisions, and acknowledging time-tested social norms.

Grant Hill, a former player at Duke U. summed it up when he wrote on the NYTimes blog,

To hint that those who grew up in a household with a mother and father are somehow less black than those who did not is beyond ridiculous.

America's in trouble race-relations-wise and in general as long as "being black" means what Jalen Rose seemingly thinks it does.