Oppressed Millionaire

Hey, Eton Thomas of the Washington Wizards has an op-ed in WaPo. It's in the Marcus Garvey vein:

I'm often slapped in the face with harsh realities about perception. Like when I'm driving in a nice car in a white neighborhood in Virginia, and I get pulled over pretty much for being black. Or, when I walk past a white woman and she thinks I want to snatch her purse, and becomes all nervous to the point where I get uncomfortable myself. Or when I have to ask a white person to hail a cab for me and then quickly jump in the back -- a little trick I had to learn because I can't get cabs to stop for me.

It's unfortunate, of course, but he doesn't mention the millions he receives for playing basketball. Surely that's a product of an imperfect culture, too, right? But perhaps he raises these points because of the effect these perception have on the regular African-American, the guy who gets the nasty looks but not the millions of dollars. Nope. He raises them, in part, as a lead-in to the NBA's new dress code, another form of oppression, of course. If only I were so oppressed as those "ballers."

For those who don't know Mr. Thomas, he's a center in the NBA and a poet. From the TDE archives:

Now I look upon my culture,
I see ballers, sure I do
Hard corers in Haute Couture, in furs
Enough to make my ancestry - stir

My brothers among me,
Kwame a black walnut tree,
Lorenzo in his Benzo, give Stevie Blake his Vitamin D
Gheorghe, the Great White Way,
My endocrine Giant is dying on the parquet

My soldier in hardwood war, Haywood
I ask: “What sound is made from the clapping of one small hand?”
A heart bigger than the prostate gland of Abe
Honest, Master Pollin, an ego so kingly swollen, let me go,
Because the Foggy Bottom Metro is still an underground railroad.