 
|
||||
              
|
Tuesday, March 10, 1998 By Tony Norman
Last week, boxer Mike Tyson did something absolutely amazing . . . for him.
After rolling out of bed, the former heavy weight champion surveyed his life and decided boxing promoter Don King had robbed him blind before leading him down the road to perdition.
The round of "duhs" circling the globe at that revelation was deafening, I know, but for many young black men and women, the image of Tyson walking up the steps to Manhattan Federal Court to slap his former mentor with a $100 million lawsuit was unprecedented in their experience.
Reality wobbled oh so slightly on its axis last Thursday as Tyson admitted that functional illiteracy limited his understanding of the "complex, convoluted" legal documents he signed during his decade-long association with King.
God knows that for the streetwise, but "education optional" nouveau riche who've come into their own with the rise of hip-hop, black entertainment moguls and sports free agency, an admission of "getting ganked" by a lawyer with a piece of paper ranks high on the list of all time great primordial fears.
But in an era when folks like like MC Hammer, Leon Spinks, TLC and Toni Braxton are turning their pockets inside out and crying poverty, its surprising how little discussion there is of a particularly embarrassing phenomena: black-on-black crime in the suites.
Don King epitomizes this problem.
King is a man who would sell greasy fried chicken to a stockbroker emerging from quadruple bypass surgery if he had the chance, yet he's successfully maintained the trust of the hip-hop generation.
Much of his success is directly proportional to the naivete and race consciousness of his clients. Why sign with Bob Arum when a larger than life brother is standing right there? Oh, Muhammad Ali sued him for fraud once? So what?
It's the same racialist appeal former huckster turned respectable politician Al Sharpton made when he blackmailed Michael Jackson and his brothers into hiring him as one of the promoters for their disastrous tour in the late '80s.
"The black community made you," Sharpton's minions shouted. "Now it's time to pay back. Hire Al and prove you remember where you come from."
Still, Tyson's complaint against King could be very instructive in this area.
When Tyson was released from prison two years ago after serving time for a rape conviction, King stage-managed a triumphant rally for him in Harlem that only grew in tackiness and cynicism the more people cried out against it.
Wrapping themselves in the flag of oppression, both Tyson and King complained of a "conspiracy against black males" that sent both to prison at various times in their lives.
They vowed to overcome the plotters and return Tyson to his place at the top of a blood sport that had become considerably less bloody in his absence.
Of course, the crowd of disaffected Harlemites ate that crap up.
Even black intellectuals celebrated Tyson's having "kept it real" in prison by reading Mao, Machiavelli and Clausewitz, those homeboys of the Chinese and European Enlightenments.
But Tyson now concedes he should've been studying something a little closer to home like where the hell his money was.
Now the notorious ear biter wants King to be held accountable for various conflicts of interests that stripped him of a sizable percentage of his wealth.
With any luck, a whole generation of millionaire wannabes will take the Tyson-King imbroglio to heart. The rebellion, as it were, already has begun on a smaller scale with marquee name rappers like Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg who left their former label in the name of self interest (and self-protection).
Last week, Snoop Dogg, the last jewel in Death Row Records' tarnished crown, defected from the label.
In a cover story in the rap magazine "The Source," Snoop came right out and accused Suge Knight, another great hero of the hip-hop generation now serving nine years for various parole violations, of robbing him blind.
It's a compelling read, but it raises more questions than it answers like: Why don't grown men and women demand an accounting of their finances before millions of dollars have flown out the door and into the pockets of duplicitous promoters and shady record company presidents?
Snoop is practically apologetic for being so stupid, echoing Tyson's contention that sometimes poor people don't know how to act when somebody waves money under their noses.
This is a slanderous cop-out of course, but what else can these two symbols of '90s profligacy say.
With any luck, black folks will come out of this with a greater willingness to count their money before there ain't none left to count.
|
|||
