Ray Lewis didn’t really want to go there. You could see it in his eyes, his expression. He’s a smart man, so he knew what it meant to put it out there like that. He was careful.
Say whatever you want about The Man. Make any claims, any accusations, about his actions, his motivations, his reasons for doing what he does on any given day, every day. But when you go there and, as white folk say, “play the race card,” well, it makes the national news.
Lewis, the venerable linebacker and soul of the
Baltimore Ravens
-- and the most recent
Sports Illustrated cover boy -- was asked recently by ESPN why he thought Ravens quarterback
Steve McNair was barred by his previous employer, the Tennessee Titans, from working out at the team’s training facility during off-season contract negotiations.
Before Lewis responded, his face bore that expression we all know, the one that says, “Do I say what I’m really thinking?” Do I go there?
Then Ray Lewis decided to do it.
"I don't ever want to turn it into a black-white issue," he said, the look in his eyes growing clearer, more confident. "But it would really puzzle me, seriously, if anybody would ever tell Brett Favre ... if anybody would ever tell
Peyton Manning not to walk into the Indianapolis facility.”
He didn’t stop there.
"No. I can never understand that, and I never will, because it's heartless," he said. "It's heartless to do a man like that without an explanation."
Ray Lewis is a smart man. He didn’t just go there blindly. He never uttered the r-word. And he didn’t use the phrase that resides in the recesses of our minds like that spot in the back of our heads that we just can’t see in the mirror: If he’d been white …
Ray Lewis played the race card, but he didn’t smack it on the table like the ace of spades or the double-sixes in dominoes. With a wry smile and knowing expression he just slipped it onto the table like something special from the chef. But we all knew what he meant. He was not saying that Steve McNair was
Brett Favre or Peyton Manning, although, like them, he should someday end up in pro football’s Hall of Fame. He was simply saying that if McNair had been white ….
The reaction was swift and comprehensive. McNair was asked to comment and his response did not douse the brewing swale. He said he tries "not to get into that racial statement…I'm all about giving people the benefit of the doubt.”
But in a cryptic response that said nothing and everything, McNair continued: "I always say you can't mix personal feelings with business, and I always feel like if you do that's when these things like that happen. That's why it would never happen to Brett Favre or Peyton Manning and it probably would never happen to those guys, but it happened to me."
By this weekend, pundits from all corners were debating Lewis’s claim. It was actually pretty entertaining to watch Fox’s all-white NFL Sunday crew --
Joe Buck, Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long and Jimmy Johnson -- uncomfortably twist while each dismissed the notion that the Titans’s actions had anything to do with McNair’s race.
The
Tennessee Titans, who traded McNair to the Ravens and long ago admitted that they could/should have handled their contract matters with McNair better than they did, issued a statement denying that racism played any part in their misdeeds. They even played their own race card, claiming no other NFL franchise had done more for “the African-American quarterback.”
Huh? How do you even measure that claim? Not like it’s a very high bar. So just a few seasons after one black QB (McNair) led them to the Super Bowl, the team drafted another (Vince Young). Does that trump the Washington Redskins, led by
Doug Williams to a Super Bowl triumph? Or the
Philadelphia Eagles
, led to the Super Bowl by
Donovan McNabb? Or
Jacksonville Jaguars, whose No. 1 (
Byron Leftwich) and 2 (
David Garrard) QBs are black?
But I digress…
In the scheme of things that merit going there, this was not even close to important. Steve McNair is still getting millions to play football while African Americans and other people of color in all industries are truly getting jacked in ways that make you wonder if they’d be getting the same treatment if they were white.
Playing the r-card too often can undermine its effectiveness or dilute its impact. (See: Chicken Little) But I’m not mad at Ray Lewis. Despite the obvious progress and the gains that make us proud, you sometimes still have to go there. So many black NFL QBs keep cropping up under center these days, for instance, that I’ve never heard of many of them. And who would have thought five years ago that the NFL would have more black coaches (five) than major league baseball has black managers (two)?
And still sometimes you just have to go there. Subtly, of course. But go there -- play the race-card -- nonetheless. If for no other reason than to simply let them know we have it in our deck, and are still willing to play it, just to show how far still we have to go.
