NFL pundits forecasted the Las Vegas Raiders release of second-year cornerback Damon Arnette in the wake of a controversial social media tirade before he arrived on a professional football team. NFL scouts have come forward and revealed that there were grave concerns about Arnette’s character. The Raider organization investigated and ultimately decided to select the uber-talented defensive back from The Ohio State University. Arnette’s character flaws were fully displayed in a video of him toting a gun and threatening to kill an unidentified adversary for an unspecified reason.

I am unsurprised by Damon Arnette’s behavior and illogical decision-making. Such evils have become standard operating practices for far too many Black men who mistakenly equate manhood with uncivilized behavior. Manhood constructs resting on undisciplined, unpredictable, and illogical principles guide this segment of Black males.

Arnette’s recorded explosion is a relatively standard fare for unanchored Black males. Those I speak of believe that manhood is an uncontrolled rage capable of destroying all it encounters at its best. Young Black men learn aberrant behavior from Black men broken by a hostile white society dedicated to blocking their success.

Unfortunately for the Las Vegas Raiders, no amount of oversight, a euphemism used by professional sports teams to babysit grown men, can change a person’s core beliefs and behaviors. Damon Arnette is the most recent example of this belief.

Let’s be clear on this matter: Damon Arnette was not born with a predisposition for guns and uncivilized behavior. They were socialized to adopt such things during traumatic childhoods. Much like Bigger Thomas, the protagonist in Richard Wright’s Native Son, a hostile society seemingly opposing the Black world forged Damon Arnette into a Negro brute. Although difficult to accept, not even a million-dollar windfall corrects a flawed moral compass like Arnette’s.

There is no more disturbing aspect of Damon Arnette’s fall than what it yet again proves about Black America’s continuing failure, or is it an inability to intercede decisively on behalf of young Black men. The main lesson of this sad saga has less to do with Damon Arnette and more to do with what happens to Black males reared within a disassembled Black American community incapable of providing a reliable path to success.

The above failure to create a worthy socialization process and steer young Black males away from a host of societal ills toward success is possibly Black America’s most impactful shortcoming. A failure that guarantees that we will see future Bigger Thomas’ and Damon Arnette’s in our midst sooner than later.

James Thomas Jones III, Ph.D.

©Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2021