High Price (8 page)

Smart black people tell their children that they have to be twice as good as whites to get half as far. While this is unfortunately still true for academic and business success, I think it’s equally if not more applicable to social skills. A white kid might get away with being a socially clueless snobby nerd—but a black child who acted that way would get ridiculed and demolished. Especially among the poor, social skills make a critical contribution to success, one that is often overlooked.

Louie and I both paid heed to these unwritten rules, something that would ultimately cost him a great deal more than it did me. I liked hanging out with him, playing catch and climbing that sapodilla tree in Big Mama’s yard. But if our mothers and grandmothers had understood more about what education really meant, we might have also batted around math problems. We would have seen homework as practice—as necessary for school as we knew it was for athletics.

Instead, the adults around us saw school as a quest for a certificate, a stamp of approval you could show around later in life. Rather than valuing the process of education itself and the essential critical thinking skills that can be gained from it, they saw school as a means to an end. Because their opportunities had been limited, because the people they knew who were educated hadn’t actually been allowed to move up in management or become anything better paid than a high school teacher or licensed practical nurse, they saw a focus on academic achievement as a distraction, one that would more likely lead to disappointment and bitterness than it would to real success.

They’d never seen academic success genuinely rewarded. And as I eventually learned in behavioral psychology, if you have no experience with a particular reinforcer, it isn’t likely to drive your behavior. If you’ve never tasted chocolate, you’re not likely to be especially driven to get some, since you don’t even know if you’ll like it. Similarly, saying “you gotta get that education,” if you have no experience (even vicarious) with its beneficial effects, will not carry much conviction. It certainly won’t be anywhere near as compelling as telling your friends about how good chocolate looks after you watched a friend enjoy some—let alone as compelling as if you were extolling its virtues after becoming a connoisseur of high-end chocolate treats.

Consequently, as a result of their lack of experience with true educational success, most of my relatives saw doing anything more than the minimum required in school as a waste of time.

I know I could have been far better at math—a subject that would later be critical in my work as a scientist—if I’d been encouraged in it at home. Math was one of the few subjects that I actually liked. It didn’t rely on words I didn’t know or terms that could be twisted. It didn’t require exposing yourself to correction by the teacher for speaking in vernacular or mispronouncing words the way that reading out loud or being called on in English or history class did.

You could just write the problems out and show how you solved them on the board. Even better, the answers were always clearly right or wrong. I liked that and my teachers soon saw that I was good at it. My math skills were reinforced.

Indeed, my earliest experiences with school were actually pretty positive. Although officials in charge of the Miami-Dade public school system had fought hard for decades to maintain school segregation and our schools were some of the last in the United States to be integrated, busing was finally instituted in 1972, the year I started first grade. My sisters and I were bused.

My school was located in a working-class white neighborhood that didn’t look too different from where I lived when my parents were together, with swaying palm trees and well-mowed lawns. And when I started first grade at Sabal Palm Elementary School, there was no obvious resistance to integration. The four or five black kids in my class of twenty-five or so weren’t greeted by demonstrators, dogs or fire hoses, or even dirty looks. Nonetheless, some de facto resegregation did begin almost immediately.

Although we started our day with Miss Rose—a young, very nurturing white woman with sandy blond hair, and whom I really liked—for much of the time, all the black boys in my class would be sent to the “portable.” This was a small, supposedly temporary outbuilding at the back of the main school. Inside, it looked like a playroom with blocks, trains, and other toys. But most of our time there was spent in small groups, being drilled with flash cards on basic skills like letters and numbers. We were supposedly sent there because we had “learning difficulties.”

Soon, though, I was bored out of my mind. Despite the fact that my parents never read to me as a child, I did know my ABCs and 123s. My older sisters had taught me about letters and numbers. I had also been sent to preschool and some kindergarten in a church basement when I was four and five. Because of all that—and because I was an avid watcher of public television’s
Sesame Street
and
The Electric Company
—I already knew the alphabet and how to count. But the school assumed that because I was black, I must be behind. So, off to the trailer I went.

One day, however, Miss Rose took me aside and told me that I didn’t have to go with the other black boys anymore. She gave me a choice, saying that if I wanted, I could stay with the rest of the class. Someone had apparently recognized that I actually didn’t need extra help. Since all my friends were in the trailer, I was torn. It would not be the last time that I had to make a choice between friends and what might make me successful in school.

And, as I would do repeatedly during my childhood, at first I chose my friends. I happily accompanied them to the trailer, always hoping that this would be the time when we would get to play with those enticing toys. Sadly, it never happened: it was always drill, drill, drill. Soon the boredom proved unbearable. For the first few days, I told Miss Rose I was going to the trailer. When I got out into the hallway, however, I found that I couldn’t make myself go. I wasn’t going to sit through another second of that deadening repetition, not if I could find a way around it. So, I wandered around the halls, cautious not to get caught.

I discovered that the classroom next door to Miss Rose’s was empty. I ducked in there. I stared at the walls. I counted the ceiling tiles. I looked out the window and searched the desks. However, that, too, got old really fast. When I found myself listening to Miss Rose teaching through the wall, I decided that I might as well just stay in class. That’s what I did the next day—and kept doing. My grades were all either S for satisfactory or O for outstanding. I didn’t get any U’s.

My grades would fall over the years, particularly because I refused to do homework. Unfortunately, in my family and in most of the neighborhoods where I grew up, school was seen as a burden to be borne, just like work was for my parents. At home, doing homework wasn’t reinforced. Academics and book learning weren’t seen as a source of meaning and purpose and future growth. School was just a set of tedious tasks to be endured and got round and through, ideally with the least effort possible. It was an arena for covert resistance.

Today, of course, like other academics, I bring work home because I enjoy the challenge and want to stay ahead of the game—and so do my children. They know they have to do homework to please their parents and do well in school. They get rewarded for doing it and punished for avoiding it. Like I did as a kid, they see school as their job—but for them it’s not a meaningless burden, but rather a path to a desirable future.

Of course, they also know that they still face far greater challenges than their white classmates. And they see the downside that comes from bringing too much work home and not being able to truly participate in family life. Nonetheless, they’ve seen education pay off for their parents and they don’t live in a world where all the adults they know who look like them have been thoroughly beaten down by a world that doesn’t want them.

D
espite all of this, there was a place where black people were allowed—indeed expected—to excel. That was athletics. In my neighborhood, we’d often have impromptu races down the streets or in yards. From early on, I could always outrun all the boys my age and sometimes a few of the older boys, too. Once I started playing organized sports, I most enjoyed football practice. There, for the first time in my life, I felt a real sense of mastery and dominance. I could do virtually all of the drills better than my teammates, especially speed drills. I knew I would be a star, with that cocky certainty that sustains millions of black kids across the United States, facing improbable odds.

Sometimes, not surprisingly, I came across kids who were better than me. But even when I couldn’t initially outperform them, I knew I could outwork them. It was written in my name: I had heart. Moreover, up until junior high, desegregation gave me the odd advantage of being just one of only two or three black kids on my teams. I was virtually always the most driven.

Football was my first love. It is Florida’s religion, and has probably never been more so than when I was coming up during the Miami Dolphins’ perfect season of 1972. I remember becoming a Dolphins fan the year before that, while listening to the games on the radio with my father. Later, I’d watch them on TV with my brothers, cousins, and uncles. Everyone crowded round the huge color Magnavox as the excitement rose with each victory and the tantalizing prospect of an undefeated run to the Super Bowl came closer and closer to reality.

My idol was Eugene “Mercury” Morris. He was the running back who rushed for a thousand yards that year. He ultimately played in three Super Bowls and was selected for the same number of Pro Bowls. Mercury was quick, fast, and sharp—just the way I wanted to be, like his elemental namesake, quicksilver. Unfortunately, he would ultimately develop a serious cocaine habit, and a 1982 conviction for dealing (later overturned) put him in prison for a mandatory fifteen-year sentence. He served three years.

But for me, watching him was bittersweet long before that ever happened. I could see clearly in his experience how race had an effect on the careers of even the most talented athletes. Although sports are the most meritocratic pursuits I have ever known—sadly, science is still a bit more marred by racism
¹
—even someone as profoundly hardworking, talented, and proven as Morris was not unscathed.

For example, it was clear by 1971 that he was Miami’s best halfback. He could obviously outplay his teammate, the white Jim Kiick. Nonetheless, it was Kiick who started at halfback that season. Kiick and Larry Csonka, another white guy and Miami’s star fullback, were not only teammates but also best friends and roommates. They were known for hanging out together off the field, picking up women. Their drinking and carousing was so notorious that they were soon labeled by sportswriters as “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (Kiick was Butch). Not surprisingly, they wanted to continue their on-field partnership the next season, even as Morris’s performance clearly showed that he was better for the team.

The rivalry and the obvious racial undertone to the choice of starter was a huge topic of discussion among my male relatives and friends that year. Morris would have led the NFL in rushing yards average per attempt with his 6.8 and 5.5 yards in 1970 and 1971, respectively—but he didn’t get enough playing time to attain the needed number of carries to qualify. His performance in training camp was so outstanding, however, that coach Don Shula finally moved him up to sharing the starting halfback position in 1972. That year, he and Csonka became the first two players on the same team to rush for a thousand yards in a season. All of the brothers were cheering him on. His persistence in being the best and its ultimate recognition on the field, where it really mattered, had a huge impact on me.

I knew that I’d never be the biggest guy—but like Mercury, I could aim to be the fastest and the smartest. I might not ever be able to overcome race entirely, but if I worked hard enough, those problems could be minimized. I’d been taught that practice and grit mattered above all, whatever sport you played. That was another lesson that translated into success for me far beyond athletics. I always pushed myself to do more. Unlike genetic factors like height or size, practice was something over which I had total control.

I’d heard NBA Hall of Famer George “the Iceman” Gervin talk about shooting at least five hundred shots a day—that was practice, not some genetic quirk. Larry Bird also mentioned working till he hit one thousand free throws exactly the way he wanted them every day, not stopping until every one of them landed perfectly to return to him at exactly the angle he desired. And Magic Johnson said that when he heard that Bird did a thousand, he’d be sure he did at least two thousand. I could see that the more I practiced, the better I got, and the more time I put in, the better I was on the field when the pressure was on.

Data now confirms that believing in the importance of practice, rather than innate ability, gives people an edge. It turns out, in fact, that some of the praise that parents give their children is not simply benign. When children believe that they were “born smart,” they may actually take on fewer intellectual challenges or risks. They become afraid that if they fail, it will prove that they were incorrectly labeled. For example, Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck and her colleagues have shown repeatedly that children praised for natural intelligence perform less well after failure, are less persistent, and choose to take on fewer challenges, compared to those praised for hard work. When they are taught to value practice, however, these differences disappear.
²
I have no doubt that my belief that practice mattered most was a critical part of my success.

Athletics was also one of the few areas where I’d allow myself to fully experience and sometimes even show emotion other than anger. In 1974, I remember actually crying when the Dolphins lost to the Oakland Raiders in a playoff game, which left them unable to defend their title in the Super Bowl. I didn’t let anyone know or see that, of course, but even now I can vividly recall every detail of the final play—the so-called Sea of Hands catch. On his way down, after being hit by a Dolphins defender, Raiders quarterback Kenny Stabler tossed the ball toward the end zone and in the direction of Clarence Davis, who caught it for a touchdown in between three Dolphins. Just thinking about it still crushes me, to this day. And every time they lost, which, fortunately for me, was rather infrequent, I would be completely emotionally drained.