The Tight Rope

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As we navigate the balance between hope and uncertainty, we invite you to join Dr. Cornel West & Professor Tricia Rose on The Tight Rope, a weekly program where we welcome listeners and guests as thought collaborators. The Tight Rope is rich in creative, unfiltered dialogue on topics ranging from culture, art, and music to the contours of systemic racism, philosophy, the power of Socratic self-examination, and the possibilities of a peaceful and just world. Our innovative and interactive format will highlight the professors’ combined expertise to encourage critical thinking, self-reflection, and human connection as we navigate The Tight Rope.

Episodes

Thursday Jul 23, 2020

Beyond Basketball with Isiah Thomas

Thursday Jul 23, 2020

Episode Summary

In this episode of The Tight Rope, Dr. Cornel West and Professor Tricia Rose extol the excellence and creativity of Black athletes, along with their special guest NBA legend Isiah Thomas. They discuss the role of education in and out of the home and how to bequeath to younger generations the tradition of having the courage to be the best. Thomas shares his experiences growing up in the 60s in the West Side of Chicago and the spirituality of taking care of people. Dr. West, Professor Rose, and Isiah Thomas take this episode of The Tight Rope back to the neighborhood with this “lane-crossing” conversation you won’t want to miss.

Cornel West

Dr. Cornel West is Professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard University. A prominent democratic intellectual, social critic, and political activist, West also serves as Professor Emeritus at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. West has authored 20 books and edited 13. Most known for Race Matters and Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, West appears frequently on the Bill Maher Show, CNN, C-Span, and Democracy Now. West has appeared in over 25 documentaries and films, including Examined Life, and is the creator of three spoken word albums including Never Forget. West brings his focus on the role of race, gender, and class in American society to The Tight Rope podcast.

Tricia Rose

Professor Tricia Rose is Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She also holds the Chancellor’s Professorship of Africana Studies and serves as the Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives. A graduate of Yale (B.A.) and Brown University (Ph.D), Rose authored Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America (1994), Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk about Sexuality and Intimacy (2003), and The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters (2008). She also sits on the Boards of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Color of Change, and Black Girls Rock, Inc. Focusing on issues relating to race in America, mass media, structural inequality, popular culture, gender and sexuality and art and social justice, Rose engages widely in scholarly and popular audience settings, and now also on The Tight Rope podcast.

Isiah Thomas

Isiah Thomas is a 12-time NBA All Star, 2-time NBA Champion, and NBA Hall of Fame point guard, who played his entire career with the Detroit Pistons. Born and raised on Chicago’s West Side, Thomas is not only known for his contributions to the NBA as player, coach, manager, executive, and analyst, but also for his successful business initiatives and philanthropic endeavors. Named one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History, Thomas also earned a Master’s degree in African American Studies from Berkeley.

Insight from this episode:

Reasons why we must not forget the importance of Black athletes, with their inspiring moral courage, in social justice movements.
Explorations of the mind, time, and body connection athletes must harness in their pursuit of excellence.
Secrets into the science and music of high-performance athletes.
Personal reflections from Isiah Thomas on the “absence and presence” of growing up on the West Side of Chicago.
Strategies on creating structures that provide more access to stories and critical historical frameworks.
Strategies on “crossing lanes” in an effort to build up and fortify communities, individuals, and our oral histories.

Quotes from the show:

“Black athletes and artists have been so important in coming out of the community and giving people a sense of hope and possibility, but they understand fully the struggles that Black communities face.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #6
“I always try to situate our precious Black athletes, male and female, within the context of the Black freedom struggle, [which] tries to convince us to love truth, love goodness, love beauty, love excellence, and myself as a Christian, to love God. Now we think of the athletes, they love beauty, they love truth, they love excellence. And many of them who are religious, they love God, they love goodness.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #6
“The status quo does not want to connect athletic excellence to moral courage, to spiritual engagement, to political activity.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #6
“The presentation looks so effortless that people think it’s just some natural talent. Part of that is one of the ways that these creative individuals and community members are not just discredited but devalued, even as they’re celebrated.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #6
“It’s in athletic context that Black people for the first time in the history of America could be in a structure of fairness, given the fact that every other site in the society was a structure of unfairness… Black excellence could flower and flourish because finally we had a structure of fairness.” –Dr. Cornel West The Tight Rope Episode #6
On growing up on the West Side of Chicago: “If you couldn’t find a meal, there were always people to give you some good advice and to always give you some good music.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6
“The things that you weren’t learning in school, you were actually learning in music.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6
“Most of the gangs, when you read their charters and you read what they were established for and brought into existence for, it was to protect against police brutality, which we’re still dealing with today, and it was also to educate and teach you about civics and constitutional rights. That’s why the gangs were formed, and they were community based organizations trying to move away from racism but trying to also build up our communities.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6
“When you talk about the love on the West Side, what I grew up in is a spirituality, and I really didn’t realize it, a spirituality of just people looking out for each other. In particular in the sports world... the athlete, he or she who happened to make it or be a champion, their responsibility was to speak for the voiceless.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6
“We were taught to look within. When you look within, then you can rise above.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6
“What they would describe as instinct, my father would always tell me, no, you just think faster than the average person.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6
“As we've moved away from our base, in terms of our roots and our foundation, we’ve gotten singled out into one lane. We may just go strictly into the academy, we may just go strictly into sports, we may just go strictly into music. We do not have the well-nurtured or well-rounded embrace of all the lanes.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6
On his decision to return to graduate school: “Knowing what my mom and dad and that generation before me and all of us had truly sacrificed… they would not pay the rent, so you could go to school. They would not eat food, so we could go to school. That’s how important education was to that generation.” –Isiah Thomas The Tight Rope Episode #6
“When we think about the 60s, we think about just very visible leaders. We don’t think about this deep infrastructure of love, support, re-education, and commitment on the ground that really is the source of the survival.” –Tricia Rose The Tight Rope Episode #6