Paternalism: It's Good for the Kids

If you haven't read Michael Lewis' "Ballad of Big Mike" in The New York Times Magazine you really ought to stop reading this blog and go read the article. It's a longie but a goodie that, like the best feature writing out there, leaves one pregnant with somewhat inchoat thoughts on the matter. I will say that I think concerns voiced by Ezra Klein and Jason Kottke about how the various adults depicted treat Mike are kind of off-base. In essence, they're concerned that Mike's autonomy isn't being respected. And, it's true, it isn't. And I also think the anti-paternalist biases of contemporary liberals exist for some pretty good reasons.

Then again, it's called "paternalism" for a reason -- this is how you're supposed to treat children. Mike's a kid -- 16 years old -- at the start of the saga, and with a level of mental development more like you would expect from someone quite a bit younger. There's a lot more to be said about this article, and I'll have to say it later if ever, but this particular thing isn't really what should trouble us.

Comments

I thought that "The Ballad of Big Mike" was one of the best pieces of magazine writing I've ever seen (the only one better that I can think of offhand is the Great Zuccini in the Wash Post a few months back).

Posted by Darren | September 27, 2006 6:55 PM

So often do I here from a blogger who, unable to bring up words to describe the significance of what he has read, simply admonishes his viewers to "read it now". Never have I found that admonishment more appropriate than in this case. It stirs so many thoughts while so easily evading summary.

Posted by nelziq | September 27, 2006 7:28 PM

i don't understand the assertion that liberals are "anti-paternalism" (i get that it's conservatives who want to regulate who can get married, have an abortion, etc., but liberals seem to want to regulate who can smoke, who can say what hateful things, etc.) put another way, is there a difference between conservative paternalism and the liberal nanny state?

Posted by dj superflat | September 27, 2006 7:46 PM

btw, great article regardless (also very much liked the zuchinni article).

Posted by dj superflat | September 27, 2006 7:48 PM

Reading Kottke wasn't very illuminating. He doesn't seem to have figured out what to think about Michael Oher's story but it obviously bugs the heck out of him in ways he can't seem to squarely justify, squarely reject or even squarely define. I think the following thought experiments might prove helpful in clarifying matters for Mr. Kottke.

1) Assume Michael Oher was white, not black. Would you still have the same inchoate sense of possible wrongness about the story? If not, why not?

2) Leave Michael Oher black, but assume the white family who adopted him were secular liberals, not evangelical Christians. Same questions as for 1).

Posted by Dick Eagleson | September 27, 2006 8:31 PM

Then again, it's called "paternalism" for a reason -- this is how you're supposed to treat children.

I disagree. I don't think the concern is that kids shouldn't have their choices heavy influenced, even to some degree chosen, by their parents.

It's that parents should recognize at least the existence of agency in their kids, particularly teenagers. Parents tell their kids to study and work and all that that, and it's generally good paternalism. But in this case, there doesn't really seem to be an acknowledgement of a person behind the football skills and academic struggles.

Posted by DivGuy | September 27, 2006 8:49 PM

A well-written article, but it struck me as vaguely fishy. I don't think we're hearing the full story. But, I could be wrong...

In any case, even if it gives us an accurate view of this one player's story, it's a man-bites-dog story that's unrepresentative of how the modern sports-industrial complex normally works. Most high school sophomores who are 6-5 344 pound hunks of solid muscle aren't mysterious Chauncey Gardiner characters that nobody has ever heard of before.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 27, 2006 9:35 PM

It seems to me that as far as the paternalism angle goes, there are just so many better examples of that than we're seeing here. Paternalism with children is only an issue when your paternalism conflicts with that of someone else--like the actual parents. Missionaries have for ages used the promise of a better life to usurp some share of authority over children away from much stronger families and cultures than those of Oher's. And to the extent that they actually *do* offer a better life, such undertakings are morally ambiguous. Consider this case of a Mormon program with Navajo foster children, and the varied reactions of the participants decades later. Now THERE is a place for your inchoat discomfort to sink its teeth into.

Any vague discomfort I feel in this case isn't from the "There but for the grace of God/Whitey" side, but the "There but for the grace of football" side.

Posted by Consumatopia | September 27, 2006 9:43 PM

Just so clear we're clear as to what "paternalism" means...

Posted by Wade | September 27, 2006 10:13 PM

I don't share the concern that Oher's autonomy wasn't being respected. The kid was virtually catatonic when he was brought into this new situation. He wasn't in a position to really express what he wanted. I can definitely understand how, if this were a normal kid, questions of autonomy and choice might be appropriate. But here, giving him some direction seems like a rational response. I think I would have also tried to provide him with therapy of some kind, but even so, I can't fault the adults in this story too much. The porblem isn't that a damaged kid like Oher was placed into a very regimented sort of life; the tragedy is that so many equally damaged kids grow up with hardly anyone lifting a finger to help them.

Posted by RWB | September 27, 2006 11:54 PM

Isn't the disquiet people feel a function of the ease with which we can see Oher as standing in for a poor, less-functional African-American community, his parents as stand-ins for the richer, more-functional White community, and their story--with its paternalistic overtones--as standing in for what a "good" story involving those communities may have to look like?

OTOH, I just find Lewis a little creepy when he writes about Southern sports.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | September 28, 2006 12:25 AM

This time I agree with Steve Sailer...the story seemed a little fishy to me, too.

Posted by ed | September 28, 2006 1:41 AM

I'm with Sailer, there was something off about this article. And it wasn't so concealed, either. Reading between the lines, some rich white people spotted this kids sports talent, cooked his grades, and supported him financially all for that reason. I didn't see any evidence that any of those people were doing performing even vaguely similar acts of altruism for skinny, slow ghetto kids. Not that I resent them for doing this, I like football, I'll be happy to see the guy play in the NFL, and they genuinely did help him. But there was something skeevy about the whole thing. If a black operator in a ghetto high school had done the same thing, would the tone of the article have been all huffy and disapproving about "exploitation", etc.?

Posted by MQ | September 28, 2006 1:43 AM

Here's the rub. As far as Oher is concerned, those people rescued him from a miserable life. He received an education and the opportunity to attend college. He got a family of sorts. It is an uplifting story. I found nothing disturbing about what those people did for him.

The problem is that it is that sort of commitment of time, money and effort that is required on a society-wide scale to help lift kids out of poverty. The disturbing part is that you see a success story like that and realize that nobody is doing anything about all the other poor kids who are not physical specimens and will not become pro football players. Those kids are left to rot.

Posted by blah | September 28, 2006 3:07 AM

Kottke writes: "Taking a potentially valuable black man from his natural environment...."

Oher's natural environment was a disaster. Not just black and poor, he was apparently destitute, without a family, and almost homeless. Some degree of paternalism was apparently needed.

The concerns about football-obsession and paternalism have validity, but Oher wasn't immediately stuck on the football team and, despite the cooking of grades, apparently really did improve academically.

An odd part of the story: Oher ignored the Defensive end's taunts through something like half the game before he got a chance to take him out. That shows an ability to understand and follow instructions that the rest of the story wouldn't make you think he had. And he also apparently doesn't have a bad temper at all, which makes his life prospects quite a bit

Posted by John Emerson | September 28, 2006 9:57 AM

better.

Posted by John Emerson | September 28, 2006 9:58 AM

A lot of things bothered me about this. The most obvious was that this kid got rescued because he was an athletic freak -- the next hundred kids who are just as needy but aren't 344 lb sprinters are screwed. He was worth saving because he was a useful piece of meat, not because he was human.

Second, I don't believe the educational part of the story. No one goes from not understanding how school works to A's and B's in a year, regardless of the support they're getting, and particularly no one who isn't eager and interested, which this kid isn't. He didn't get rescued, he's just being groomed for a career as a useful piece of meat. If he makes it to the NFL, he might end up rich enough to be comfortably taken care of for the rest of his life, but his odds of that still aren't all that good. If he doesn't make it to the NFL, he's going to be left just about as screwed as he was before all the nice people figured out that he was worth using.

Posted by LizardBreath | September 28, 2006 10:02 AM

Lizard Breath is missing the point. First of all, I looked at some scouting reports on the guy, I'd say his chances of making it to the NFL are pretty damn good. As a freshman he is a starting right guard right now. Thats pretty impressive and everyone still describes him as a very raw talent. Thats actually very good. If he is a starter on a team that early and is still unpolished, it suggests his upside is really enormous.

I'll agree with you for the most part on the education angle. Even if we are to believe he got no special consierations, the BYU classes are pretty fishy. Cleary, this guy really shouldn't be going to college and it suggests that there is something pretty wrong with a system where to suceed in athletic careers, guys who have no particular interest in academics have to go to school. Wouldn't it make more sense if he went to some kind of NFL development league where he could get some life management type classes on the side and mostly just learn to play football?

But all that aside, its a bit much to claim that Oher was used like a "piece of meat." It would probably be more appropiate to say that he had inherent physical gifts that made it possible for people to help him. The problem of course is that if you take some similar, but much smaller guy, you might improve his life somewhat by doing all of the things that were done for Oher, but sucess is going to be much more modest. You would be happy if a guy with that kind of past got a decent job making 25k a year. With Oher, because he happens to be a freak of nature, if it all works out, the guy is going to be rich. Of course, thats hardly a model that is going to work very broadly.

I agree, it is a sort of unsettling story, but I think your take on it is pretty shallow. If Oher, doesn't get this kind of help, what do you suppose his chances of making it to 25 are? Leading any kind of decent life? Questioning motivations is pretty easy, but I don't think it is really a sufficient response here.

Posted by Gabe | September 28, 2006 10:44 AM

It's important not to miss the fact that being a professional athlete is objectively awesome and better than anyone else's stupid job.

Posted by JP | September 28, 2006 10:59 AM

It seems pretty simple. But for the Tuohy family, there is a pretty good chance that Oher would still be kicking around from couch to couch, or even worse, sleeping on the streets. According to the article, while their intervention was most intense when it comes to Oher, they had quite generously subsidized some poorer (and black) students who had no real chance at becoming wealthy professional athletes and apparently intend to look into fostering more troubled children in the future. Mr. Tuohy is a former college athlete and apparently is quite wealthy, which would appear to diminish the notion that the Tuohys are jock sniffers or are in need of Oher's possible NFL money. It also seems clear that at the time they befriended him, Mr. Tuohy, whose athletic expertise is in basketball, didn’t realize that he was looking at a kid who had the talent to be the next Orlando Pace.

It’s racist to think that most or all black people need this sort of paternalistic intervention. It’s not racist to think that paternalistic intervention with this particular black person was the right thing to do and probably saved his life.

Posted by John M | September 28, 2006 11:06 AM

It’s racist to think that most or all black people need this sort of paternalistic intervention. It’s not racist to think that paternalistic intervention with this particular black person was the right thing to do and probably saved his life.

I'm not sure where you're seeing a suggestion of racism in the comments or the post.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | September 28, 2006 11:21 AM

According to the article the boy's I.Q. score was 80 when he started at the religious school but had risen "20 to 30 points" by the time he graduated a couple years later. If a rise of that magnitude really occurred, it would change much of what we know about intelligence and education. Unfortunately, the author doesn't give enough details.

Posted by Peter | September 28, 2006 11:23 AM

I saw this movie, only the people who saved the kid were a fields medal winner and his college roomate. And the kid wasn't big, he was doing a math problem. And he didn't go to the NFL he went to some math think tank. It was ok, Mork ruled.

Posted by crack | September 28, 2006 11:23 AM

"is there a difference between conservative paternalism and the liberal nanny state?"

In the former, you die in a car crash for lack of seat belts, or from lung cancer, or a handgun discharge. In the latter, you die of a sexually-transmitted disease or a drug overdose. Pick your poison.

Posted by CJColucci | September 28, 2006 11:43 AM

I'm not sure about the data on IQ tests but I think its generally agreed that in extreme cases, environment does matter. You would have to assume that if you don't know what an ocean is, thats going to be a problem on a test like this. Beyond that, I think most clinicians think that certain learning disabilities like add can impair performance. If you can't concentrate on a test, your score is probably going to suffer. IQ tests get held up as some sort of absolute standard, but of course, they aren't. The test isn't sent from above, its something that phychologists put together to measure specific attributes. It does a better job than most tests at filtering out environmental influences but how could it possibly filter out all of them?

Posted by Gabe | September 28, 2006 12:15 PM

"is there a difference between conservative paternalism and the liberal nanny state?"

Generally speaking, the liberal "nanny state" regulates interactions in the public sphere, particularly economic interactions, where individual choices can cause actual harm to other individuals. It's focused on protecting people from the world.

Conservative paternalism is more insidious, because it seeks to regulate individual actions in the private sphere, regarding choices that often cause no tangible harm to anyone (except possibly to the individual himself.) It's focused on protecting people from themselves.

There are plenty of exceptions, naturally.

As for the article, it reminded me of nothing so much as the old Reader's Digest article about how a rural, white, conservative family saved Dennis Rodman from poverty and despair, taught him family values, and helped him realize his potential. A real gem of the genre, especially in retrospect. Sadly, this article is not online and seems to have completely disappeared into the mists of time, but the same basic tale is recounted in the book Rebound: The Dennis Rodman Story by Alan Steinberg.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | September 28, 2006 12:20 PM

I liked how the guy was poor and sad and then the nice people took care of him and he got a million dollars.

Posted by Dan | September 28, 2006 12:55 PM

But seriously, is there no irony that these conservatives are sending Big Mike to the NFL? I mean, if one wants to find debauchery and scumbaggery one doesn't have to look further than a Ramada filled with visiting pro ball players.

Posted by Dan | September 28, 2006 1:09 PM

No one seems to be talking about the fact that the article is just an excerpt from Lewis' forthcoming book "The Blind Side." SI had an excerpt of the more football-oriented portions of the book (about how left tackle became one of the most important positions in the sport) and it was just as phenomenal as this excerpt. Additionally both Malcolm Gladwell and Bill Simmons are raving about it... should be a phenomenal book.

Posted by right | September 28, 2006 1:45 PM

I don't think the article is really about Mike Oher and it is definitely not a character study of him. Lewis' real subjects are the values and world views of the school, the Tuoys and the culture of football. I don't think Lewis set out to accurately depict Oher---rather he wanted to show how people reacted to him. And Lewis does a marvelous job of that. Think of all the little heart breaking ironies: (1) Mrs. Tuoy thinks that Quinterio's home is too filthy for Mike but never bothers herself over Quinterio, (2) The Tuoys---who see themselves as Mike's family to some extent---convince themselves that it is not important to understand where Mike has come from or what he has experienced; (3) Briarwood was founded as refuge for white students following the integration of the Memphis school district; (4) The Tuoys have a $10,000 couch but only buy Mike a futon. It goes on and on. I think what is consistent is that no one in Mike's life (at least as Lewis depicts them) considers him to be a real subjective person. They all just see him as a potential football player and a project for them and a symbol of their christian charity. I mean have you ever read a story where parents (or at least guardians) do not talk about the likes, dislikes or personal quirks of their child? The absence of any detail is striking. Two other things seem clear. First, if it wasn't for his football-potential, Mike would be absolutely invisible as a poor black kid to Briarwood and the Tuoys. Second, the Tuoys pride themselves on an empty, unreflective, self-congratulatory christianity. I mean how can a serious Christian own a $10,000 couch, much less whine that a destitute child who they have taken in is ruining it, or comment matter of factly about who God will condemn to hell?

Posted by FTJ | September 28, 2006 2:31 PM

Somecallmetim, Kottke says as follows: "So what you've got is a story about rich white people from the American South using religion to justify taking a potentially valuable black man from his natural environment and deciding the course of his life for him. Sound familiar?"

The words "sound familiar" are a link to the wikipedia entry for slavery. I think that's a pretty clear suggestion that the people who helped Uher were racist.

Posted by John M | September 28, 2006 3:01 PM

FTJ @ 2:31
You are probably closer to the truth. I don't know if it's in the book and got edited out of the magazine article, but consider this:

Michael Lewis and Sean Tuohy were classmates from kindergarten through 12th grade. They were high school basketball teamates (Sean being the star point guard, Michael a backup) and Michael wrote an article published in the NYT magazine about their coach, Billy Fitzgerald. Sean Tuohy's father was the previous basketball coach at the same high school which was decidedly non-religious and attended by very well off children (certainly from wealthier homes than the Tuohys).

I know I was quite surprised when Sean Tuohy was first mentioned in an article by Michael Lewis.

Posted by milo | September 28, 2006 3:34 PM

The Tuohy's took a homeless, young man into their lives, gave him a room in their home and made him part of their family. It seems to me to be rude and uncharitable to imply that these people are racist because the didn't do this for everyone or because they have a very expensive couch. Not that there aren't some fishy bits to this story, but the Tuohy's almost certainly saved Oher's life. Call me a racist, but that seems laudable to me.

Posted by Chuchundra | September 28, 2006 3:49 PM

Chuchundra,
Maybe its rude of Lewis . . . but it sure makes for a fascinated, well-observed story. And there is certainly precedent for critiquing people who performed good works or followed ethical rules for shallow and selfish reasons. I believe they are commonly called Philistines.

Posted by FTJ | September 28, 2006 4:54 PM

There's plenty of unsettling stuff in the story, but it's worse than rude to cast aspersions on the Tuohys here. It's horribly judgmental and self-righteous.

No, the Tuohys are not perfect. Their charity is tainted by selfishness and inconsistency and maybe even a little racism. But the same is true for 99% of people who act charitably, even educated Northern white liberals. You don't think there are any white liberals trying to help poor minorities, who do so with self-congratulation, even narcissism? You've never met any fellow liberals who also happened to be total assholes?

I have no problem attacking Southern conservatism or Christian conservatism as a movement, or attacking conservative politicians and other influence-makers. But the Tuohys are just regular people doing the best they know how, and even if that falls well short of some standard of moral purity they don't deserve the likes of you smirking at them from up on high. Do you really think you're any better? What have you ever done to help anybody? When you have helped people, were your motives completely pure? Seriously, get over yourself.

Posted by JP | September 28, 2006 5:29 PM

At the very end of the article, Lewis claims, offhand, that Oher's IQ has improved 20 or 30 points (from 80 to 100 to 110). This is by no means impossible if he came from some kind of extremely deficient, chained-to-the-hot-water-heater-in-the-basement background.

The important point, however, to get away from the man-bites-dog aspect of this odd story, is that high-potential football players with IQs of 80 are extremely common. (Look at all the NFL prospects with Wonderlic test scores of 10 or less.) And very, very few of them suddenly improve to 100 or 110. And yet there is no path to the NFL that doesn't go through college, even though 80 IQ individuals aren't going to get much of anything out of college.

A more broadly valuable article could be written about a more common high potential athlete -- a kid with an incredible body who is just not very smart. Should he be kept from doing the one thing he really does well in life -- play football -- just because for historical reasons the only road to the NFL is through college? It's like asking chemistry majors to benchpress 200 pounds before they get allowed into the lab.

Posted by Steve Sailer | September 28, 2006 6:19 PM

I don't know the Tuoys and I have no idea if Lewis' article is accurate. I'm just reading the article and interpreting the details that Lewis chose to include. If I am interpreting those clues wrongly please tell how. Now, there isn't any question that the Tuoys did an objectively good deed. But I feel fairly confident in saying that the "characters" depicted by Lewis: (1) treated Oher as a good work rather than a person; (2) only "saw" him because of his football potential; and (3) wore their christianity as a badge of pride while living an indulgent upper class life. This is not a horrible portrayal along the lines of, say Roger Chillingsworth, but its very cutting. And I don't think its rude to address the fact that Lewis has created a fascinating portrayal of a number of flawed characters. I want to address another vignette in the story that crystallizes for me (like the story about Quinterio) how much Lewis meant to undermine the virtue of the characters surrounding Mike. Remember Mike's admission? Lewis is very careful to state how Mike's admission was part pressure from the football coach and part guilt on the part of the admission officer, who had initially tried to make Mike go away only to realize that he had mislead this poor boy into not attending school at all. Lewis even subtly minimizes the admission officer's motivations---he felt only a twinge of guilt (Really? Causing a poor boy to leave school because you're too wishy-washy to reject him outright only causes a "twinge" of guilt. Thats pretty weak.) So Briarwood has done an objectively very good deed---they've admitted a poor, homeless African-American boy to a school that might make a significant difference in his life. But Lewis portrays the doing of that deed as a series of missteps coupled with the self-interest of the football coach. I think Lewis takes the same critical approach to the Tuoys and their "objectively good deed."

Posted by FTJ | September 28, 2006 7:32 PM

I don't know about all of them considering him an object...Its kind of hard to tell because the article focuses so much on Big Mike when he was this completely stunted, zombie like kid incapable of normal interaction. Apparently he isn't like that anymore but Lewis doesn't let us see much of that. One of the weird things about the piece is that Oher's voice is completely missing. I don't know if thats because he didn't want to talk to Lewis or because the Tuoy's didn't want him to talk to Lewis or whether its because of the way Lewis is putting together his story, but it ends up leaving a hole at the center of the story. That might be the idea, but I don't know.

Posted by Gabe | September 28, 2006 8:11 PM

The book has added plenty of extra attention to Oher, who seems much more comfortable out of the spotlight. Oher has taken part in a photo shoot, which will appear in the New York Times Magazine. He also has been interviewed by other national publications.

I asked Oher about the book Monday. There wasn't much to say. He remembered doing several interviews with Lewis and called him "a good guy." Oher said being the central figure in the non-fiction book is "something special," but added, "I've just got to live like I've been living." If he wants to succeed at Ole Miss and carve out a career in the NFL, like the book suggests, Oher said he has to ignore everything else. The book included.

“I can’t allow myself to get off track by anything," Oher said. "I’ve got to play football and go to class.”

Posted by blah | September 28, 2006 10:19 PM

Here's the link:

http://www.clarionledger.com/misc/blogs/rneiswanger/2006/08/michael-oher-character_29.html

Posted by blah | September 28, 2006 10:20 PM

Hector: The premise of your new book The Blind Side is fascinating. How did you come across this story?

Michael: I knew the father - Sean Tuohy - who adopted Michael Oher. Sean Tuohy and I had been classmates for thirteen years at the Isidore Newman School in New Orleans, La. When very young we'd been good friends - there was a stretch between the first grade and the fourth during which I routinely followed him out of school to a dirt basketball court behind his house, to see how long it would take for him to score one hundred points against me. (Not long, usually.) But I hadn't seen or heard from him in twenty-five years when I called to tell him that I was writing a magazine article about our former high school baseball coach. That evening I heard about Michael Oher, who was quickly becoming a member of Sean's family - and paid almost no attention. I wrote the article about our coach for the New York Times magazine, which became a book, called Coach, in which Sean appeared, briefly, and moved on.

A few months later, kicking around the NFL for another magazine piece, I learned that the left tackle had become much more highly paid than other offensive linemen and wondered how that happened, and what the left tackles themselves made of it. Then I learned from Sean that Michael was now being hounded by college football coaches who saw in him a future NFL left tackle. Now I was paying attention. Shortly thereafter Sean came to visit me. We went to dinner again, but this time my wife, Tabitha, came along. When we got around to the subject of Michael Oher it took Sean about ten minutes to get her laughing, twenty to get her crying and thirty to ruin the meal. But it was worth it, because in the car on the way home she said, "I don't understand why you are writing about anything else." I had the same thought but dismissed it, as it seemed somehow unsporting, like hunting in a bated field, to turn to one's kindergarten classmates for literary material. It was one thing to include Sean as a foil in my memoir; it was another to ransack his life for a book. My wife pushed me over that little hump, and I soon moved into both the Tuohy's life, and the history of NFL strategy.

Hector: How has the Tuohy family changed since the adoption?

Michael: Well, it's 6' 6" 350 pounds bigger. It's more conspicuous in other ways, too. I love the little story about the first time Leigh Anne Tuohy sent out the family Christmas Card, with Michael included. She hadn't bothered to mention to many of her friends and relatives around the country that she had adopted a giant black kid; they just got this card with two little white kids on either side of a black giant. It was greeted with stunned silence. Three weeks after she sent it she had a call from a cousin in North Carolina. "Alright, I just had my fifth beer," he said. "Who the hell is this black kid in y'all's Christmas card?"

More generally, I think that Michael has changed the Tuohys as much as they have changed him. A great deal of their lives is now lived on the border of white and black America.

Hector: What was it about Michael Oher that made the Tuohy family want to adopt him?

Michael: I think it has something to do with the combination of size and manner. You meet him and you think he must be a brute; and then you instantly discover he is this extremely shy and private and kid. He was also as poor as a human being can be. Sean once said to me that "when you meet him you just want to do something for him."

Hector: What is the Tuohy family doing now?

Michael: Michael was a freshman All-American at Ole Miss and is now the football team's starting left tackle. His sister, Collins, is in his Ole Miss class, and an Ole Miss cheerleader. Sean runs his chain of fast food restaurants but spends more of his time thinking about how to extract black kids from the ghetto and hook them up to the larger society. Leigh Anne is actually creating an institute for the inner city athlete, to do just that.

***

Hector: What do you want the reader to come away with?

Michael: A sense of how arbitrary and changeable are the values we place on human beings. A child the world valued at zero was, inside of two years, transformed into one of the most highly valued teenagers on the planet. Had he remained in his old environment hi value would never have been appreciated How does that happen?

***

http://hedgestop.com/books.php?show_book=yes&book_id=41

Posted by blah | September 28, 2006 10:26 PM