it's an honor and a privelege

The world cup is soon upon us. I absolutely love soccer and the world cup in particular. The Olympics are cheesy, over produced, and mostly composed of sports and people you've never heard of. Unless I'm in the Olympic Village, partaking in the true "Games" I really have no interest in most of what goes on. There are just two teensie, tiny, little, problems that exists for me here.

1) I have no one to root for.

2) Soccer doesn't love me back.

My soccer career was short lived to say the least but the sport captured my imagination and every time I would pick up a new game I'd still look back on soccer with reverence. The reason I have no one to root for is because American soccer is by and large shitty. "100% Rat Ass" as they say. The ODP program in the states is meant to glean the best talent we have and turn it into the future of soccer here. Like most national programs in any country this one is by all accounts corrupt and largely useless. What we need is for all of our best talent to FIRST stop playing baseballbasketballfootballhockeyortrack and then we can talk about soccer. Right now simple market forces draw any talented young man into team sports like football and basketball because they have proven to be great ways for some kids to get to go to college for free. Soccer is the opposite. It takes a lot of time and money to support a burgeoning soccer star and even with success the payoff is minimal in comparison. I'm shocked even $250 million was enough to lure David Beckham stateside. If I was the British Michael Jordan of soccer I'd be DAMNED if I was going to sully my good name for less than a Billie.

Anyway American soccer in my eyes is cool except the star player is Landon fucking Donovan, the poster boy for entitled, boring, $50,000 a year HIGHSCHOOL soccer. I can't root for that. Clint I-Grew-Up-In-A-Trashcan Dempsey I can root for but Landon Timothy Donovan...? Naw man, cain't do it..that's right I caIn't.

The other issue, is one I can never seem to get away from. It is after all Happy Black Girl day and though I haven't even scratched the surface of my thoughts on race, this story works out perfectly for the occasion. There have been oodles of new posts popping up across the Net talking about the World Cup and trying to sell it. This one in particular caught my eye for obvious reasons, but it wasn't until I was done reading all the way through it that I realized why it was so eye catching. Now the title DOES say 7 women, 7 titles. But when there is that much pootie-tang staring me in the face I am even less want to read than I already am. So I perused the pages of the post linked above and finally got to the last page.

Perhaps the most gorgeous woman I've seen ever let alone the most gorgeous of the 7 was there staring me in the face alone...all by herself. Now I understand that there are those who could contend they were saving the best for last or that this was simply a matter of mathematics but I've seen plenty of ad campaigns and this is clear.

EVERYTHING in an ad campaign is planned out. You'll notice in the group shots Charlene is the only one who doesn't really overlap. (Read: crops out easily) She also happens to be one of only 4 women that represents a country whose won the cup in the last 50 years. So how is it she is a perfect pair for contemporary champs but gets left out of the greater display? I mentioned to start that this was a well thought out ad campaign and maybe now you're thinking it's simple matching. "She happens to be the only dark skinned women and so to match her up with a girl who looked so different might have thrown of the look of the shoot." Yea thats possible but why is that important? These girls are just eye candy we can drape jerseys and socks over. How they look should really be secondary and to be honest I'd be more concerned with the jerseys clashing than their hair or skin. Calling out racism is hard because it is so ingrained in the way we do things here on Earth that people can look right at it and not see it for what it is. It's sad really and the malice here is of the most benign sort. I'm sure the models were all treated equally well and they all had fun supporting their men and countries. What does suck is that someone at the back end of the process thought it to be more profitable to downplay the appearance of this one girl in particular because for some reason seeing an unimaginably beautiful woman who is a bit darker than your average European apparently might turn people away.

Happy Black Girl Day

A blogger who's stature and cachet I have only begun to aspire towards started something she terms, "Happy Black Girl day". Here at OneChange of Heart we definitely like to support, and permeate that which is socially remedial and/or positive. Here is a quote I pulled from last month:

"Happy Black Girl Day: National is not big enough. International is for chumps. We are interplanetary, baby. If Pluto was still a planet, they would be in on it too. The original intent was to celebrate Happy Black Girl Day on the 7^th of every month. But the 7^th fell on a Sunday for the past two months, which reminded me why celebrating holidays on number days doesn’t always work. We don’t even celebrate Dr. King’s birthday on the real date, so who is HBGD to ask for special treatment? ...Every second Wednesday of the month will be Happy Black Girl Day."

I definitely want to support a fellow blogger with positive intentions and I surely need the exposure to new topics, so joining the movement for me was a no brainer. This month I'd like to take a look at a hero of mine who just so happens to be married to a HBG of his own. I'm not yet ready to start making any deep and insightful remarks on the state of Black women, or ANY women for that matter so for starters we are going to give a shout out to my man Roger Ebert and hopefully I can learn something about what it takes to be as successful in all phases of life as he has been.

Roger Ebert is more than just a writer or a film critic to me. He's been successful as a professional and still today even at his age has a sharp mind. I don't think anyone born before 1950 has a better handle on twitter than he does. That alone is homage enough to the great mind he has but there is something else about him that intrigues me. In a contemporary world that thrives on selling images, no matter how flawed or broken they may be he of all the people is the shining example to me of love at it's truest. His words in response to an Esquire interview about his wife Chaz absolutely astound me. "Chaz is always my protector. She had her doubts. She worries that I'm too impulsive and trusting. She is correct. Left entirely to my own devices, god knows what I might be capable of." I can only hope that one day I'm lucky enough to find a woman who can protect me the way she does him. Thyroid cancer has ruined the body lorded over by his still capable mind but their love for one another remains the same. She was a divorcee and he already exactly one month past his 50th birthday when they wed, so the maturity displayed is no surprise. Yet even still, in the climate we live in now it seems amazing any two people could find such love. While not many kids grow up saying they want to become a Critic, I don't know anyone who wouldn't be proud to raise a strong, free thinker, like Ebert. Another oddity about him is that his love for Chaz has a twist I think more people are focused on. Chaz is black, Ebert of course is white. Unlike the fetishized love of the black woman, or any other ethnicity for that matter, with whatever anatomical specialities they are deemed to have, Ebert's love seems purely about his affinity for her person. They are both intelligent, he the Pulitzer winner, she the Lawyer. I think it's an honest assertion that if a poll were taken of whom society thought a man in his position would have been likely to be romantically involved with; Black woman would finish somewhere commensurate with either Gay man or distant cousin. As a man raised by two black parents, dating black women has never seemed like any sort of great big deal, but I am not so naive as to think what Ebert is doing is something insignificant.

I applaud Mr. Ebert firstly for all his work on the behalf of thinking people in America. I secondly would like to give my well wishes to a man who's voice has been taken, but remains unsilenced. Lastly I would like to simply remark at the great love affair between these two people and ponder for later the implications of what it means for him to share this love.

I of course would like to thank @sistertoldja for allowing me to take part in the movement and I look forward to building on this post and using the space to open a dialogue about the issues facing women as a minority and minority women especially. You can find her at: http://thebeautifulstruggler.com/