Hopkins loves his own voice
No one doubts the street cred of Bernard Hopkins, who made his living mugging people in the streets before he got paid to do it in the ring. Growing up in the projects in Philadelphia certainly toughened him, as did a five-year stint in prison for his crimes.
No doubt it helped make him the fighter he is, and probably a big reason why he keeps fighting at the advanced age of 46. No one gave him anything, and no one could have predicted when he lost his first fight in Atlantic City in 1988 that he would enjoy a career as remarkable for his achievements as it is for his longevity.
Hopkins is in love with the sound of his own voice. And sometimes he just doesn’t know when to shut up.
He didn’t the other day in Philadelphia, where Hopkins went off on Donovan McNabb for what he perceives as his many failings as quarterback of the Eagles. Nothing new there, since Hopkins has repeatedly criticized McNabb over the years for not leading his team to a Super Bowl title.
This time, though, Hopkins went too far. He implied that McNabb somehow wasn’t black enough to succeed because he grew up in a Chicago suburb instead of the ghetto and didn’t have to overcome some of the hardships faced by many other black athletes.
McNabb, Hopkins said, “got a suntan, that’s all.”
It was, at best, an ignorant statement born of stereotypes. While many black athletes rise out of the ghetto to become stars, many others like McNabb come from more fortunate surroundings and still succeed in athletics.
“There’s nothing about poverty that produces a better athlete,” said Maya Wiley, a civil rights attorney and director of the Center for Social Inclusion in New York City. “The disturbing part of what he said is that blackness equals being poor and aggressive. It’s hard to imagine anyone tougher than Donovan McNabb, who has to face the pressures a black quarterback carries in his situation.”
McNabb certainly has nothing to apologize about for his success. He’s a black quarterback in a league where everything black quarterbacks do is scrutinized closely and he played for years in front of Philly fans known for being demanding.
Like Hopkins, he couldn’t choose the surroundings he was raised in. That it wasn’t in a dismal big city ghetto doesn’t make him any less of a black athlete than the longtime middleweight champion.
Wiley said there are some in poor black communities who refuse to see black athletes as their own unless they grew up in the same difficult surroundings they did.
“There are real issues and class tension in black communities that Bernard Hopkins’ statements reflect,” she said. “But I don’t think many black people would express it in the way he did.”
Wiley said the fighter would be better served taking an example from a loquacious fighter from another time.
“I really wish Bernard Hopkins talked more in the tradition of a Cassius Clay,” she said.
Either that, or just keep his mouth shut.