Posted on 10/06/2023 6:31:24 PM PDT by where's_the_Outrage?
Michael Lewis and the Tuohy family refuse to acknowledge what’s so clear to Black folks — that white people used Oher for their own benefit.
The most frustrating thing about racism isn’t that it still exists, it’s that so many white people refuse to undeniably admit when it happens. Because if your first instinct was to think that Michael Oher was lying or making something out of nothing, you’re the reason why racism is still thriving.
“What we’re watching is a change of behavior,” Michael Lewis, author of The Blind Side, told The Guardian. “This is what happens to football players who get hit in the head: They run into problems with violence and aggression.”
This is what happens when a man with a slave owner’s mentality writes a “white hero” book about a white family that made money off a “poor, homeless, big, and dumb football player.” To someone like Lewis, Oher was nothing until he met those kind and angelic white folks who saved his life. And ever since he’s come out alleging that the movie and book were based on a lie, as the Tuohy family never legally adopted him, it must be due to football — not the idea that Oher finally discovered the truth.
“Google him now, he’s on the dean’s list at Ole Miss, which says a lot about the dean’s list at Ole Miss,” Lewis told an audience about Oher back in 2007. Ironically enough, for all of those who found Lewis’ joke funny, all it did was show how dumb they actually are. Lewis either thinks Ole Miss isn’t a good school — which wasn’t desegregated until 1962 because white people didn’t think Black people were smart enough to hang at predominately white institutions — or he finds it impossible that Oher has the brains to achieve academic achievement. No matter what side you landed on, Lewis disrespected Black and white people.
Given that we now know that a judge has dissolved the Tuohys’ conservatorship over Oher, that Lewis was childhood friends with Sean Tuohy, and that the adoption wasn’t real, we’re left with directions that point us to just how much of a farce this entire situation has been from the beginning — which is infuriating.
To many, racism isn’t real unless there’s a “smoking gun.” It’s evidence, and white America needs countless examples of it, be it graphs, diagrams, or statistics. It’s what they require to somewhat digest that the people they know and love can be upholders of oppression or supporters of hate. If you get killed for playing with a toy gun, they will ask why that was your plaything of choice. If you die because you wore a hoodie to go buy Skittles, they will wonder why you were out at night. When you lose your life because somebody got mad at how loud the music in your car was, they’ll question why you couldn’t just keep it down. And when the world watches your death on a loop because you allegedly bought cigarettes with counterfeit money, a racial awakening will occur — and then it will disappear less than two years later.
In case you were confused by those examples — or too lazy to click on the embedded links — I was talking about Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, George Floyd, and affirmative action.
History has taught us that White America can only be moved when racism is inescapable. Sometimes, it’s videos and pictures, think police dogs and water hoses in the 1960s, or Rodney King in the 1990s. Other times it takes assassinations, think Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, and Medgar Evers. All of that is needed for the cries of Black people to be heard. Because when the smoking gun is attached, then racism — or the intent of it — can only be validated.
Michael Oher has more than one smoking gun, especially as we learn more about his situation. But when it comes to people like Michael Lewis and the Tuohy family, it still isn’t enough. In court, a jury only needs a shadow of doubt not to convict. In life, Black people need countless examples to show they’ve been mistreated, and even then it can still be ignored.
Racism has never been or will ever be Black people’s problem to solve, given that we didn’t create it nor do we continue to control and refine it. It’s on white people to shut racism down. And while that might sound like a tall task, it’s really not. You can defeat it by doing the small things, like believing Michael Oher and realizing that his skin color is why so many other white people wouldn’t believe what was done to him was what countless white people have done to people who look like Oher for centuries.
Here’s what the judge said:
It looks to me like it was a well-planned scam, but not racist.
From military to University to work, I have purposely chosen a path of as close to exclusively white male as possible.
After public school in Wilmington DE, I never want to spend time around blacks.
I quit basketball and switched to volleyball to avoid blacks.
Besides... how many Black people speak out about the misogyny and violence in rap?
In Michael’s first book, he wrote that it was explained to him that they could not legally adopt him because of his age.
So, giving a good faith interpretation, they may have told him that they were going to adopt him but found out that they couldn’t. So, they did the next best thing they could to adoption.
My point is that I don’t think there was any deception on the Tuohy’s part. They thought they could and they looked into it and did what they could for him. They still treated him as their son.
A scam for what?
The family was worth tens of millions when they took him in.
They should have left this fat **** eating out of the trash.
What would that movie look like?
-PJ
You got an official DNC Race Card there, “Carron”?
“In Michael’s first book, he wrote that it was explained to him that they could not legally adopt him because of his age.”
That is not the law in Tennessee, so if the Tuohy’s told him that they were lying.
They could have actually adopted him — there was and is no age limit on that in Mississippi.
The help they did give him was not legal under NCAA rules unless they had adopted him or put him under conservatorship (which he agreed to).
Did they do it because they were Ole Miss boosters or because they wanted to help him?
were they Mississippi residents or Tennessee residents? I thought I had heard Mississippi.
I am sure the Tuohys will think long and hard about it before they befriend another member of Eternally Oppressed & Offended race again.
There doesn’t seem to be much luck when adopting across racial lines.
TN residents, OleMiss alums.
You’re right on the law of adoption in Tennessee. Did they do him harm because of it?
Their being in his life gave him a life that he wouldn’t have had otherwise.
Everybody is compromised on this life on Earth. Nobody is pure in their intents to do good. That’s just life.
I personally would have been very grateful, if I had been adopted (functionally) by another family and given everything I needed to succeed, including stability and acceptance.
If after going as far as I can with my talents and all that, they cut me off, I probably would have been grateful.
Pretend adoption?
It was always a guardianship so that they could take him in and provide him help with basic sustenance and tutors without incurring the wrath of the NCAA. He even specifically acknowledges, describes, and elaborates on it in his 2011 book.
If he had been adopted, wouldn’t he have taken the Tuohy’s last name?
“A scam for what?”
Fame? If so, it worked.
So they knew some negro eating out of a trashcan would garner them fame eventually?
A family worth millions and millions.
That sounds ridiculous to me.
“It looks to me like it was a well-planned scam”
If you read the book “The Blind Side” the only way Oher got into college was because of the Tuohy’s as Oher did nothing to meet the college entrance requirements. Without college Oher would not have the success he did in the NFL, if he even could have gotten there.
So I don’t see the scam.
A side story by an ROTC recruiter (may or may not be true) at a Mississippi College, he was trying to recruit a black football player and told the kid he had almost no chance of getting into the NFL. But the Mississippi Valley State player did get into the NFL, his name was Jerry Rice. So if Sean Tuohy can know which HS kids will be drafted in the 1st round he should be a billionaire now.
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