Tennessee Titans quarterback Vince Young is not having a good season.  In the first game, against the Jacksonville Jaguars, he was booed by the hometown crowd for throwing his second interception.

Nothing too unusual about that, except the fact that these boo birds apparently sent Young into a tailspin;  he looked so depressed about it even Jaguars players started trying to console him.

Then:

On Monday, September 9, 2008, a distraught Vince Young left his home without his cell phone. After speaking to members of Young’s family, [Titans Coach Jeff] Fisher called Nashville police. After a four-hour search, they found Young, who agreed to meet with Fisher and police at the team’s training facility.

Vince Young is African-American.  That doesn’t have much to do with the above story, but it does have much to do with what’s to follow.

Jason Whitlock’s brilliant piece about the whole ordeal.

Vince Young, like a lot of young African-American men, desperately needs to hear the truth from the people who love him. Too often we pave the road to failure for black boys by believing the cure for bigotry — and there is still plenty of bigotry in America — is the ability to recognize it in (and blame it for) everything. That cure has more negative side effects than most of the drugs trumpeted by the pharmaceutical companies in television commercials. That cure serves as a convenient crutch, and turns a talent such as Vince Young into a quitter the moment adversity strikes.

…

No one revolutionizes the starting quarterback position. The position revolutionizes the person playing it. Just ask Donovan McNabb. He figured it out and changed his game. Over the objection of idiots, McNabb developed his skills as a pocket passer. He concentrated on becoming a student of the game. If he can stay healthy over the next three or four years, McNabb will surpass Warren Moon as the best black quarterback ever to play the game.

Unfortunately, there are still people, especially black people, who don’t appreciate McNabb. They think he let “us” down by de-emphasizing his athleticism, and they criticize him for being cozy with his organization the way Peyton Manning is with the Colts and Brady is with the Patriots.

McNabb doesn’t get to enjoy the luxury of being a company man the way other franchise QBs in their prime do.

But McNabb has never threatened to quit or asked out of a game because the Philly fans were too rough. McNabb understands that in some instances the scrutiny of a black quarterback might be a tad more intense than that of a white one. He also understands that the best way to combat it isn’t whining. It’s performance. It’s work ethic. It’s professionalism.

It’s not a coincidence that McNabb comes from a supportive, two-parent household.

…
It’s not about color. It’s about fitting the profile of someone who can handle all that goes along with being an NFL quarterback. If I’m an owner, I spend my quarterback dollars on young men who were raised by strong fathers. It wouldn’t be an infallible system, but on average I bet I’d hit more winners than if I turned over the leadership of my team to a kid who isn’t used to having a strong male authority figure.

As black people, we need to ask ourselves whether we are doing a good job preparing our boys for positions of immense leadership, responsibility and scrutiny.

Whitlock makes a good point about using bigotry to rationalize every problem away.  It’s not whether or not there actually is bigotry – and I’m sure there is – it’s about your attitude and how you’re handling it.  If every negative thing happens because people are bigots, what does that say about you?

Where else do you see this kind of “either I conquer or you’re racist” attitude?

Hmm.

Where indeed.