Black Cop's Kid, a short essay published by Amazon, took my breath away. I remember Kareem Abdul-Jabbar when he was Lew Alcindor, New York City high school basketball star, and I followed his 20-year NBA career with the Milwaukee Bucks and LA Lakers. Turns out he is an eloquent story-teller, too, as evidenced by this excerpt from a Substack post he wrote.
"My father—Lieutenant Ferdinand Alcindor of the NYPD—was a transit cop working out of the 145th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue station who patrolled the subways, trains, and platforms to keep people safe. He was dedicated to serving all the people of New York City. But he was also committed to being a role model in the Black community, to being seen as someone who recognized the inequities of being Black and who silently bore that burden with dignity and purpose. Many of the principles I hold dearest about justice and activism are the result of his noble example, even though he definitely wouldn’t agree with all my public political stances or the steps I took to promote them. He didn’t support my boycott of the 1968 Olympic basketball team or my participation in the Cleveland Summit, nor would he have endorsed my criticisms of the police after the murders of Michael Brown, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor or my enthusiastic agreement with the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. But he certainly would have agreed with my desire to serve my community. This is the story of how my father’s role as a Black cop gave me a unique perspective on the front lines of activism, how it inspired me to action, and how it shaped the form that action would take. Not just as a Black activist, but as a student, an athlete, a writer, a man, and an American."
From Kareem.substack.com.
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