But, as with The Blind Side, the story often becomes about how it takes a village of white people to transform a troubled kid by means of civilizing leisure. There’s the white adoptive family, the white coaches, the white private-school teachers, the white personal tutor. (At the same time, the idea of “leisure” is misleading. It’s also true that these are young people playing in sports with short career spans that still often destroy their bodies.) The “fuller humanity” that black film critic Armond White applauds in the movie sounds a lot like white humanity.
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The Black Athletes Who Don’t Play Basketball
I fuckin’ love reading The Awl. It’s got that The Moth or This American Life thing, where a story about something I couldn’t care less about makes me have to stand up and take a breather because I am amazed, informed, and interested.
