I got all A's and was hated for it; I spoke correctly and was called a punk.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (born April 16, 1947, in New York City, New York) is a successful former high school, collegiate, and professional NBA basketball player.

Quotes

• "It was my first time away from home, my first experience in an all-black situation, and I found myself being punished for everything I'd ever been taught was right. I got all A's and was hated for it; I spoke correctly and was called a punk. I had to learn a new language simply to deal with the threats. I had good manners, and was a good little boy and paid for it with my hide."
  • Giant Steps, 1983.

• In Alan Moore’s brilliant graphic novel, Batman: The Killing Joke, the Joker justifies his psychopathic behavior by philosophizing that every human being is just "one bad day away" from rejecting the polite veneer of civilization’s morality in the face of an indifferent universe. To him, we are all amoral sleeper agents awaiting the secret code word to awaken us to selfish violence.
  Yet, even if the universe is indifferent, most people are not.
  • “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Why the 'Joker' Gun Violence Protests Miss the Mark”, Kareem on Hollywood & Politics, The Hollywood Reporter, (10/2/2019)

• Though movies (Taxi Driver for John Hinckley Jr., would-be assassin of Ronald Reagan), books (The Catcher in the Rye for Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s murderer) and songs (Helter Skelter” for Tate-LaBianca murders mastermind Charles Manson) may articulate specific criminals acts, they don’t inspire the person’s desire for violence. Science has proven that in numerous studies. It’s tempting to blame movies, video games and rap music because they often express humanity’s worst impulses, but impulses are not actions for most of us. And for the mentally ill seeking violence, anything can set them off. Alek Minassian, the self-described incel (involuntary celibate) who deliberately drove his van into a crowd in Toronto in 2018, killing 10 people, said he was motivated by his resentment toward women for having sexually rejected him in favor of giving “their love and affection to obnoxious brutes.” Should we then demand that studios producing romantic comedies and publishers of romance novels be shamed into contributing to anti-incel causes? The 2017 Las Vegas shooter killed 59 and injured 851 during a country music festival. Should country music bear some responsibility?
  • “Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Why the 'Joker' Gun Violence Protests Miss the Mark”, Kareem on Hollywood & Politics, The Hollywood Reporter, (10/2/2019)

External links