Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: belief

Transcript context

…When I prepare for these talks I do some background reading. Some of the reading I did for this — I read biographies or works on Charles Barkley, Magic Johnson, Jackie Robinson. Robinson, early on, he even endorsed Richard Nixon, which he later regretted. He learned Nixon was a liar and a fraud, but that he even had that inclination. Arthur Ashe, yourself. I wondered if there isn’t a pattern where African-American athletes are, in the way that you are, actually somewhat conservative. If I compare that to African-American intellectuals, people like Cornel West, they seem to be more radical on average. Whether you would agree with that characterization. If so, what do you think accounts for it? I think people like Cornel West, I wouldn’t necessarily say that they were radical. But they keep having to deal with the failure of any sincere efforts by the people in power in this country to do something meaningful about these problems that we’ve been talking about. The people who can do something about it just want to serve their communities and let everyone else suffer. I think people like Cornel, their frustration and anger at that type of hypocrisy and betrayal is really what motivates them. In terms of the athletes, again not being Republicans in the sense of today’s Republican Party but a kind of conservatism. Do you think that’s there in a lot of them?…

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