LeBron is Human.

The King shows us greatness
By Matthew Bright

LeBron James found himself defending more than his title this past weekend. King James found himself a victim of racial hatred and vandalism last week with someone spray painting "NIGGER" on his home in L.A. 

Here's a link to his comments: 

Some of you are thinking that with his millions of dollars, his acclaim in the media, and his mantle of championships he'd just brush this off right? How could that bother him? He's a millionaire. Those types of thoughts cement the racism spray-painted on his house. 

When you say, it wouldn't bother me. Well, you're probably not black, nor had to deal with your right to be human put in question. 

The "get over it" mentality when it comes to things like this, it's a luxury. 

It's really only applicable when you're denied some inanimate object or item you desire. You don't get to tell a victim of racial hatred like a patronizing parent in a grocery store this: "I know you want equal treatment as a human, and yes I know Becky and Chip have it too. Yes I understand how badly you want it, look we will come back for it tomorrow I promise. Dry up those tears, suck it up, and let's go. You'll be fine. I'm going to be late to the 5:00 showing of Get Out." 

It's tone deaf and common of the "woke" crowd.

This implies we need our hand held with backhanded sympathy when we analyze society as it pertains to racism that we are far to accustom to internalizing. It comes off as: it's terrible but this isn't enough reason to take steps towards equality. We'll just stay right here. Stay. Right....here.

We started defining equality parameters with things like this well before history continued to repeat itself. We'll define our equality and all that needs to be done further is listen, respect, and accept it. Do not partially acknowledge it to appease us. We are not children. Let us go forward together and do not try to hold us back. 

Speaking out against micro-aggressions is usually met with minimizing the issue at hand. Here's a few examples of common statements thrown at people who stand against verbal racist abuse; 

"Gotta grow thick skin."

This is used usually for criticism, however when Nigger is spray-painted on your home that's not a criticism. It wasn't an artistic choice by an independent contractor with creative control over a project where LeBron is upset he didn't use an "A" or add "Please" instead. He's an athlete, he's paid literally to grow thicker skin. 
Funny how a 6'8" 260 Lb. frame still felt the weaponization of language to devalue him. Thick skin isn't the problem, it's the diet racism that ends up attempting to make people like LeBron James docile and silent about these issues. 

"Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me." 

Something tells me one day someone was really hurt by words, otherwise how does such a phrase become common? A person ages ago clearly noticed that words really hurt an individual and thought to themselves: "What's a phrase that sounds catchy that totally enables a person's threatening rhetoric and language? A short little ditty that says hey! Verbally abuse that person, they'll be fine." Truly, this type of narrative only shows up when a victim stands up against the perpetrator, or in this case, the racist. 
Black Americans can be killed by made up words from White Americans and by not saying words at all. Emmett Till's Mom for sure gave that phrase the world's largest fuck you. 

LeBron James was rightfully concerned for his family and followed with saying "it is hard being Black in America." There's no dissonance in his statement, it's not that he isn't aware of his class status, it's the fact that he's more than aware of his blackness. That this event does affect him, and that fucking matters. 

All this ever does is remind us that you're not safe anywhere in America from some shape or form of racism. No matter how rich, how dignified or well spoken. It doesn't matter how polite or kind you are. It finds you. You'll think about it for days as the world moves forward. 

When this does happen, you get reminded of when racism was in your face more than usual. A few years ago I started creating content for the inter-webs. On January 15th 2017, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday, 

I got a friend request with the profile picture below

Screenshot of Matt Bright's phone

Since the request was sent the profile has been removed. I took a screenshot of it to remind myself, that there's nowhere racism doesn't reach, the constant reminder that hate is alive. What happened to LeBron reminded me of this. As I'm sure it reminded others of moments in their lives. 

I would like to encourage anyone whose had these kinds of micro-aggressions enacted upon them to share their story in the comments.