local news
Sports
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my aunt who was a bit distraught.
Previously he had been an honor student,
but his grades had slipped. He’d decided
that sport was going to be his route to a pro-
fession. So I wrote this letter for him and for
all the other young people of all back-
grounds. And I should also say that right
now, today, he is finishing his last semester
of his Masters degree in Engineering.
The Skanner News: What do you want to
tell Black teens?
lewis: I want to tell them that I under-
stand the pressures they are under. That they
are grappling with what it means to be an
African American male, to be a male in
America and dealing with the fact that it is
not that cool to be smart, but it is really cool
to be a jock. There’s so much coming at
you. So I’m just saying: Don’t forget you
can be involved in this in what I call ‘the
sweat free zone’ – which is administrative,
management, ownership,
sales or writing about
sports.
So what does it mean to
be male, but also a “baller”
someone who’s living life in
a certain way and they’re in
control. And to really be a
baller, is to be a person who
has political consciousness,
who is intelligent and is a
Renaissance person. Those
people are really positioned
to have really have their
voice heard and to make an
impact.
The Skanner News: Your book is taking a
hard look at how race and masculinity and
sports impact African American men and
women.
lewis: The book is about race and sports
in American culture, so it is a vehicle to
engage in a conversation about the nature of
race progress. It explores what is valued in
American culture, and looks at our notions
of masculinity, particularly Black masculin-
ity as reflected in sports. I look at some true
and false ideas we have: the notion of sport
and that upward mobility narrative that too
many young folks see as their best opportu-
nity. I pull the covers off that.
I’m saying, let’s realize that’s a long shot.
I’m also saying you have a better chance of
becoming an English professor, a physician,
a nurse or a lawyer than you do of becom-
ing a professional athlete because it’s such a
minute pool of individuals
who make it to that level.
The Skanner News:
‘Ballers’ questions a lot of
what we accept without
much thought?
lewis: Yes. How are peo-
ple of color represented in
sports culture? How are
women represented? What
does that say? Are they in
positions of leadership,
power? What does that
show us? So that’s what I try
and do.
I try to offer solutions as well. Because
there is a movement to change these things
– to change these images, to change how
intellectuals are seen. ‘Ballers of the New
School” is really about a movement to
address these things.
So what I’m also doing in the book is
examining how racial images can be good
and how they are cast in negative ways in
contemporary society. And we have do
some control over this. We can change that
by spinning different narratives. My projec-
tion is optimistic. How can we use sport to
really take us toward the post-racial society
that we would like to see? To do that we
have to get past – we have to get post-
racism and here’s how we do that. And then
we can be post-racial
The Skanner News: Where did you grow
up and how did you begin thinking about
how our culture views Black men?
lewis: I’m from St. Louis Missouri. I was
writing a column there while I was at uni-
versity, but once I finished my doctorate I
began to think about putting the things I’d
been writing about into the book. I’m lucky.
I was a good athlete, so I was socially
accepted and it was permissible for me to be
a pretty good student and show my intellec-
tual ability. So I have been there. I went to a
high school that had the worst football team
so I refused to play because I had standards.
I am very honest about my own experience
in the book. The only way to look forward
is to be honest.
Thabiti lewis
The Skanner News: You have two daugh-
ters, so you are having to practice on other
people’s sons. You are welcome to work
with mine.
lewis: I’m trying to clear the social land-
scape so that they are dealing with young
men who are confident and unwed to
notions of patriarchy. How about that?
(Laughs.) Can’t raise them to be different
sorts of women, and face men who aren’t
prepared or ready for such women.
If you miss Dr Lewis at Reflections, you
can also see him speak at noon in the library
at Washington State University, Vancouver.
Exclusion
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garage one block down on Fourth Avenue,
something he’s been doing since the late
’90s.
On Dec. 28, when he went for his regular
exercise session after work, he decided to
park on the street.
“Regardless, I was in the midst of my
workout and decided I needed some cardio
so I went to run the stairs,” he said.
Crenshaw says he was running the stairs
when he noticed two Clean and Safe offi-
cers on one of the levels. He continued to
the top, crossed the garage and returned
down the other side.
“About one story from the bottom, I heard
‘Excuse me sir, can we talk to you?’” he
said.
Crenshaw stopped, they asked what he
was doing, and he told them he was work-
ing out.
“I said ‘Is there a problem?’” he said.
They asked if his car was parked in the
garage. Because it wasn’t, they accused him
of trespassing.
“I said ‘Well I park here all the time, just
not tonight. I’m already checked in at the
gym, if you want to walk over to the gym,
we can do that,’” he said.
They asked for identification, to check to
see if Crenshaw had already been “exclud-
ed.”
“In my mind, if I didn’t give them my ID,
they’d escalate the situation and call the
cops, and accuse me of being uncoopera-
tive,” he said.
They proceeded to write him an exclusion
notice. But they told him not to worry, “This
is no big deal.”
At that point, Crenshaw demanded his ID
back. They had already recorded his name
and Crenshaw wanted to remove himself
from the situation. But they wouldn’t let
him, he said, until a senior Clean and Safe
officer arrived 15 to 20 minutes later.
“As I’m waiting near the stairwell, hella
White people are walking up the stairs, but
Mic Crenshaw’s latest album “under
the Sun” released in 2010. Visit his
website at www.miccrenshaw.com.
they’re not f*cking with them,” he said.
According to Crenshaw, after the senior
officer showed up, one of the officers said,
“We saw this subject walking in the stair-
well and the stairwell smelled like marijua-
na and then he ran from us.”
“I said ‘This is bullshit, you just lied to
him to justify this harassment,’” Crenshaw
said.
a Mixed Bag
The Clean and Safe officers you see walk-
ing around downtown are contracted by the
Portland Business Alliance through
Portland Patrol Inc., a private security firm.
According to Shane Abma, vice president
of downtown services for the Portland
Business Alliance, Clean and Safe officers
are allowed to write anyone a trespassing
exclusion for breaking any of the SmartPark
garage’s rules —and being in a SmartPark
while not being parked there or a passenger
of a vehicle is breaking rule number 2.
In 2010, Clean and Safe officers wrote
1,176 exclusions for SmartPark Garages in
the Clean and Safe District.
Abma says these officers only have the
authority to issue trespassing exclusions –
to parks and SmartParks in the downtown
Clean and Safe business district. Other than
that, they are like any other private security
– observe and report. They are not allowed
to detain or arrest suspects. They are
allowed to ask for ID, but …
“If they (a private citizen) asks for it
back,” he said. “I would suspect they would
hand it back.”
But they do differ from other security
services.
Their uniforms are very
similar to Portland Police
Bureau uniforms, some-
thing that does cause con-
cern from the ACLU.
Those officers that patrol
downtown carry firearms
– although the officers that
only patrol the parking
garages do not. And the
trespassing exclusions are
sent directly to the
Portland Police.
Abma says exclusions
can range from 30 to 180
days. There is no record
kept of how many were
issued to people by race,
gender, age or reason for the exclusion, says
Abma.
Cheryl Kuck, of the Portland Bureau of
Transportation, told The Skanner News that
“Standard operating procedure is to issue an
exclusion to anyone violating the rules of
conduct, which are clearly posted in the
garages. We have no reason to believe that
the individual about whom you inquired
was unfairly targeted for the exclusion
issued to him.”
appeals
While the officers told Crenshaw he
would be able to appeal the exclusion with-
in five days of receiving it, he says he did-
n’t have the time.
“Between getting up at 6 in the morning
and get home around 5, and I’m a father and
a husband and have a music career and free-
lance education career to maintain, so the
fact that I get harassed for walking down-
town in a parking garage because I fit a pro-
file, that they lie and say where I was
smelled like marijuana when I don’t smoke
marijuana, and that I ran from them when I
didn’t run from them,” he said.
“You could even say I waited for them
and walked to them … that I would take
The whole time I was sitting
there watching all these White
folk walk up and down the stairs
and not be bothered, I was
aware, that to some of those
people I had look like the same
criminal that these security
guards profiled me to be.
more time out of my schedule is an insult
after they already harassed me. The whole
time I was sitting there watching all these
White folk walk up and down the stairs and
not be bothered, I was aware, that to some
of those people I had look like the same
criminal that these security guards profiled
me to be. And they probably assumed
because of the way the situation looked, I
was up to no good, but in actuality, they (the
security guards) were up to no good.”
January 26, 2011 The Portland and Seattle Skanner page 3