Enough

I hardly feel like I have standing in this matter, but you know me; I'll weigh in on it. It's just that the matter of race relations here in America '17 is kinda...bad.

And when you have a guy like LeBron James, basketball star, with money, fame, power, prestige and a physical presence like few others in the world, and he can be shaken by the cowardly actions of some bigot with a can of spray paint, then something is way out of whack.  Not that it's ok to spray-paint racial slurs on anyone's property, you know? But someone did that to a house LeBron owns in Los Angeles.

And what can he say, but, "being black in America is tough" to that?

James went on to say, "As I sit here on the eve of one of the greatest sporting events we have, race and what is going on comes again. On my behalf, family's behalf, I look at this as if this sheds a light and keeps the conversation going. My family is safe, that's most important."

"Just shows that racism will always be a part of the world, part of America. Hate in America, especially for African-Americans, is living every day. It is hidden most days. It is alive every single day... No matter how much money you have, how famous you are, how much people admire you, being black in America is tough."

And it's not just whoever attacked LeBron this way. It's the noodniks who hung a noose off a middle school lamppost in Maryland. It's the human slug who left a noose behind as he oozed out of a display room at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC.

I read that LeBron paid $20.9 million for this house in LA, 9400 square feet of a domicile that his ability to play a sport bought him.

And yet, he can't buy - at any price - the peace of mind that he and his family will not be abused in this way, or have a bag of peanuts thrown at him, as the Orioles' Adam Jones did, or be murdered, like the man in New York who happened to cross paths with the guy from Baltimore who went to Gotham for the sole purpose of killing a black man.

I understand that anytime you have a nation of 300+ million people, you are going to have some people who are just plain vicious, just plain insane, just filled with ten pounds of hatred in a five pound bag.

And I realize that a certain amount of those people who are not bundled up just right have a lot of jealousy for guys who earn a king's ransom for playing a game while they're sweeping up at the cereal factory (not that there's any shame in that).

But your envy of LeBron and Adam, and your dislike for the people who fought and died to bring equality to a country that still needs a heaping helping of same, does not mean that you get to act this way, so please, knock it the hell off.