'Fab Five' documentary brings black racial divide into focus

There is a racial divide in America, but it's probably not the one you think it is.

It's not just between blacks and whites; it's between blacks and other blacks.

That point was underscored in the new ESPN documentary, "The Fab Five," which tells the story of the Michigan basketball team of the early '90s.

In case you missed the controversy the film has ignited, Jalen Rose, one of the Fab Five and the show's executive producer, called former Duke star Grant Hill an Uncle Tom (and the B-word). Why? Well, as Grant himself explains it, "Jalen seems to change the usual meaning of those very vitriolic words into his own meaning, i.e., blacks from two-parent, middle-class families."

And that, apparently, is a bad thing.

"I hated Duke, and I hated everything I felt Duke stood for," Rose says in the film. "Schools like Duke didn't recruit players like me. I felt like they only recruited black players who were Uncle Toms. I was jealous of Grant Hill. He came from a great black family. Congratulations. Your mom went to college and was roommates with Hillary Clinton. Your dad played in the NFL, and is a very well spoken and successful man. I was upset and bitter that my mom had to bust her hump for 20-plus years. I was bitter that I had a professional athlete who was my father that I didn't know. I was resentful of that more so than I resented him. I looked at it as they are who the world accepts and we are who the world hates."

It is revealing that Grant received a Twittered apology from Rose before the story even aired, according to Grant.

Some defended Rose by saying his quote reflects his beliefs as an 18-year-old. If he hadn't used the Uncle Tom reference he simply would be saying he desired such an upbringing for himself to the point of envy. Notwithstanding, Rose's statement reflects a division in black America. Nearly 70 percent of black children live in single-parent families and apparently that has fomented resentment toward blacks who embrace traditional families, education and success. To listen to Rose, it means they have done it to ingratiate themselves to whites.

All of this is self-defeating since single-parent families are widely believed to foster increased rates for crime, poverty, dropouts, etc. Single-parent families have become so matter-of-fact in black America that Antonio Cromartie, the New York Jets' Neanderthal cornerback, can casually and shamelessly discuss fathering nine children by eight women in six states and forgets to name one of them a TV interview.