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Sunday, July 27, 2025
Saturday, July 26, 2025
And Still We Rise
An excerpt from Level.com
Why They’re Scared of Black People
From Ghana to George Floyd: the tale of Black resilience
By Jeffrey Kass
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| Photo Credit: Author |
As I walked barefoot along the same dirt path that once led kidnapped Africans to the Assin Manso River in Ghana, I felt the weight of history in every step.
When I finally placed my feet in the cool, flowing water — where European traders forced enslaved Africans to bathe before sale — I began to understand something that had long hovered just outside my comprehension.
The world’s fear of Black people isn’t just about skin color. It’s about strength. It’s about resilience.
That fear goes back centuries.
After enduring long, punishing treks — sometimes as far as 1,000 miles from inland villages across West Africa — captives were brought to this river. Shackled and exhausted, they were made to wash in the Assin Manso. Not out of care or dignity. But because slave traders didn’t want them to appear as “damaged goods.” They were prepared for market.
Once cleansed, their skin was rubbed with shea butter to shine — literally — to look appealing to buyers. Then, they were forced to march another 20 to 40 miles to slave castles along the coast. Places like Elmina and Cape Coast, where they were held in dark, airless dungeons for weeks or months until European ships arrived to carry them across the Atlantic.
I stood in these musty dungeons on the same floors where Africans were forced to sleep on top of each other in their own feces and blood. Most people wouldn’t last a day.
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Slavery in the United States wasn’t just about labor. It was about the complete dehumanization of a people — systematic violence, forced illiteracy, broken families, and stolen futures. And even when the Civil War ended slavery in 1865, freedom didn’t follow.
Instead, it gave way to nearly a century of Black Codes and Jim Crow laws. These were not simply “segregation” laws. They were legal frameworks built to criminalize Black existence, to re-enslave Black people through prison labor, and to suppress every attempt at political or economic empowerment.
There was also the era of racial terror — lynchings, white supremacist massacres like Tulsa (1921), Rosewood (1923), and Wilmington (1898) — when Black communities that dared to thrive were burned to the ground.
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And yet — in spite of all this — Black people rose.
Black people built businesses. Composed symphonies. Wrote novels. Led freedom marches. Won Nobel Prizes. Became mayors, governors, senators, and yes — a President.
How Basketball Rules Impacted Chamberlain & Jordan
An excerpt from FadeAwayWorld.net
Wilt Chamberlain Once Told Michael Jordan: They Changed The Rules To Stop Me... They Changed Them To Help You
Wilt Chamberlain reminded Michael Jordan: NBA rules were changed to stop me.
By Vishwesha Kumar
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| Credit: Fadeaway World - Michael Jordan & Wilt Chamberlain |
During the 1997 NBA All-Star Game luncheon, a legendary moment unfolded between two of the greatest basketball players ever: Wilt Chamberlain and Michael Jordan. According to numerous reports, Wilt leaned in and said something to MJ that struck like a thunderbolt of historical truth.
"Just remember, Michael, when you played, they changed the rules of basketball to make it easier for you to dominate. When I played, they changed the rules to make it harder for me."
That wasn't just a bold claim, it was a fact rooted in decades of basketball history.
Wilt Chamberlain, one of the most physically dominant athletes the sport has ever seen, faced an NBA that scrambled to level the playing field during his reign. In contrast, Michael Jordan played in an era where several rules were adjusted in ways that coincidentally or not enhanced perimeter scoring and protected stars like him from physical punishment.
Let’s start with Wilt. The NBA literally altered the rules because of his dominance. First, the lane was widened from 12 feet to 16 feet in 1964, the infamous “paint” to push Wilt further from the basket. It was informally called the "Wilt Rule." Before that, he would simply park himself near the rim and score at will.
Second, offensive goaltending was strictly enforced to prevent him from tipping shots off the rim, something he excelled at.
Third, the league revised the inbounding rule: when the ball was being thrown in from the baseline, Wilt was banned from leaping over defenders to grab it mid-air and dunk it. And finally, they even created rules preventing free-throw shooters like Wilt from leaping over the line, since he used to take a step and dunk the free throw. These rules didn’t just slow Wilt, they rewrote the geometry of the game to limit his impact.
Now contrast that with the Jordan era. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the NBA began enforcing hand-checking rules more strictly, particularly on the perimeter. This gave guards like Jordan more space to operate and less physical resistance from defenders.
By the mid-90s . . .
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