I want my branch back

LAS VEGAS -- I can't tell you how many times I opened the file to work on this article. Not because I can't, but because I can't remember.

The feelings, emotions, anger, rage, and sadness have twisted my cerebral health to a point where I never know which "lives matter" movement is going to trigger a reaction, good or bad.

As a journalist, you spend most of your observations trying to remain objective. Wait for and examine facts. Never react; well, overreact. Assess a situation and move forward calmly, and with diligence.

Thing is, and I've said this many times and I'm sure will repeat many more, I spent the first eight years of my career learning the media industry by working in different capacities with Nevada's only Black newspaper - the now-defunct Las Vegas Sentinel-Voice.

At 17, my two closest friends at the time were brothers. Their father, Ed, was the general manager of KVOV, the only Black radio station in Las Vegas at the time, before he founded the Sentinel with his wife, Betty. The Sentinel later merged with the Vegas Voice, and spanning the next few decades, the state's only Black newspaper became the loudest voice for Historic West Las Vegas.

One year out of high school, I did odds and ends at the office, banging out copy on an old typesetting machine that printed film we had to wax and spread onto layout sheets. I was running pages to the film room, and on occasion accompanied my boy Willis to St. George to get the paper printed because it saved money on production. Col. Ed and Betty Brown were two of the nicest people I'd ever meet. They'd become family, so much that when I went to their house, it was like visiting the Huxtables since the late Colonel would refer to me as "Cockroach," straight from the family-friend character in "The Cosby Show."

As the Browns took ill, first Ed and then Betty, it was Lee's turn to take the reins and keep the publication going. I grew into the sports editor position, and eventually found myself becoming a pillar for the Black community.

Over the years I saw and heard plenty of similar stories we're seeing and hearing about now. I interviewed many Black men and women and boys and girls, heard countless stories of racism.

I sat on several daises representing the Sentinel-Voice or speaking at forums.

Lee and I created the "Strivin' 2 Stay in School" initiative at the A.D. Guy Boys & Girls Club, and there was nothing better than seeing the looks on those kids faces every time we staged an event, be it bringing public figures to speak to them - former UNLV stars, coaches, reformed gang members, media personalities - or taking them to local games and having them introduced at halftime.

Special times.

I thought we did good being a voice for the Black community, producing a quality product that helped promote the Westside, not to mention a culture that helped mold my hometown of 48 years. We loved, adored, and championed the Black community.

I'll never forget being on a panel at Doolittle Community Center and a member of the audience chirped, "who's the White boy up there, and why is he here?" A Black female radio host from KCEP turned to the person and snapped back, "that's Willie Ramirez, he belongs here. Shake the tree, we're all related and fall from the same branch."

I can't describe the bag of emotions I felt then, for about 6.4 seconds - mostly good - sort of like how I can't tell you how many times I tried starting this article due to the mixed bag of emotions I'm feeling some 25-plus years later. But I've always remembered that moment.

Now, I'm going to try to describe every last feeling I've had while watching the branch I'm not so sure I was ever really on, fall to the ground in 2020.

STICK TO SPORTS

Easier said than done.

So I turned to a true point guard on the journalism court, a leader if you will, who I've established a social-media friendship with over the past 10 years or so.

We've met only once in person, but rest assured, I consider Jemele Hill a friend.

I shouldn't have to tell anyone who she is, but in case you've had your blinders on the past several years, she's only emerged from being an ESPN journalist and on-air personality, to becoming one of the most prolific voices out of sports journalism and into the societal spectrum when it comes to racial and equality issues.

Her voice is deliberate and strong, passionate, and determined, and meaningful. Jemele has become powerful, even beyond her wildest dreams.

"(My career) has taken on many twists and turns that I didn't really anticipate," she said recently during our phone call.

Hill's dream job was to work for Sports Illustrated. She never really had any interest in broadcast journalism.

Complete opposite of me. You're talking about someone who sat in front of a television as a child, tape recording himself doing play-by-play during Monday Night Football while turning the volume down on Howard Cosell, Frank Gifford, and ‘Dandy’ Don Meredith.

If anything, in the 70s and 80s, I was literally stuck to sports.

My mother used to tell me all the time: "there's more to life than sports, William."

Not for me. I stuck to sports until it became a profession.

Little did I know how the phrase "Stick to Sports" would evolve with such vehemence.

"The roots of the phrase were always meant to be an insult, because even before it was the political and social climate that it is now, usually when you got told to stick to sports it's because you didn't know about something else," Hill said. "That was a way of reminding you that you were ill informed."

Thus, she added, when conversations get uncomfortable for one side - especially when talking about race, gender, or politics - people use it as a way to suppress what others have to say, because they don't agree.

"I'm of the opinion, you pay taxes, you get the right to criticize and to speak on the issues in your own country," she said. "It's intellectually dishonest to only say that certain people are allowed to talk."

Besides, how many people do you know who honestly have that big of an issue with sports that it triggers hate?

If anything, every four years (when there isn't a pandemic), doesn't the world come together for sports, connected by five colorful rings?

The Olympics is shared from continent to continent, with countries falling in love with different sports they normally wouldn't root for until the next Olympics. We've even rooted for a Cinderella story from another country.

Nothing changes within those four years, when sports in America takes place. Damn near everybody enjoys some type of sporting activity.

When I expressed my feelings to Jemele during our phone call, taking her back to the late 80s and into the early 90s with me - a timeframe I was contributing to issues during the Rodney King riots that tore through Nucleus Plaza and other parts of Historic West Las Vegas, or was a voice for young, Black student-athletes over the course of an eight-year run at the weekly - she fleshed it out for me, helping me identify that bag of emotions and what's gone wrong.

"I think sports has such a different access point than most things in this country," Hill said. "It's literally one of the few things that we do together. It's through a natural mixing of races, ethnicities, social and economic backgrounds, and I think within your statement you hear what the power of sports can do. It just possesses this natural ability of bringing folks together because (sports) are universally appealing.

"It's through sports that people wind up learning about other cultures because you're forced to be in close proximity - and not just in a superficial way - but in a way that you truly love and get to know one another."

And that is my point of all this.

WHOSE LIVES MATTER?

I've gotten to "truly love and know one another" with thousands of people in a town I've lived in since 1972. Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, White... whatever skin color is appropriately allocated for each race; they're somewhat like the Olympic rings for me, as they all bring us together. Except I'm not celebrating people every four years. I try to celebrate them daily.

Problem is, no matter which side you stand on, empathetically listening and understanding where people are coming from, there are going to be extremists hurting for one reason or another and can't for the life of them understand why you're standing on a side opposite of them.

As a White man, of Colombian and Lebanese descent, I've probably been misunderstood more from red hat wearing folks who resemble me more than anyone else. How dare I hashtag the phrase Black Lives Matter when there are men and women in Blue whose lives matter too.

I've always wondered, though, why when someone says, "Black Lives Matter," those opposed say, "no, All Lives Matter." But when the other side says, "Blue Lives Matter," we rarely hear anyone utter the same response. Why do "All Lives Matter" only apply when someone says, "Black Lives Matter?"

My take, and it's quite simple: Those who say "Black Lives Matter" have never meant that nobody else matters, it's simply the narrative in today's society, hoping to bring awareness to the fact there is inherently wrongdoing toward Black males and females. And to counter with "Blue Lives Matter" or "All Lives Matter" is like being in counseling with your significant other and sharing how you feel when he or she acts a certain way, only to have them snap back with what bothers them about you rather than learning and understanding your narrative.

Jemele tried to help paint the picture of why the BLM movement is so misunderstood, most of which I assumed was the case. But with her statements, I'm all ears. I may not always agree with her narrative, but it's her thought-provoking insight and attention to detail I learn from every time.

"The biggest misconception is that Black Lives Matter supporters are behind a lot of the unrest and violence and looting that you see in conjunction with the protests," she said. "The majority of Black Lives Matter supporters have engaged in peaceful protests, but unfortunately, we have some bad-faith actors who are trying to make it seem that anybody who says 'Black Lives Matter' is a part of the Black Lives Matter movement - and that's not the case. I don't think people can differentiate what that is because they're blaming Black Lives Matter supporters for stoking some of the vandalism and the unrest, when I've seen plenty of evidence that support that it's not only not them, but they've done a lot to try to protect businesses from being harmed."

And it's the frustration from both sides that triggers my cerebral health (I love this phrase more than mental health ever since I heard NFL veteran Brian Dawkins use it during a 1-on-1 Instagram chat with my good friend Vernon Fox), because I've been lumped in at times with groups of people I don't come close to thinking like. 

Radicals from both sides who spew nothing but hate toward one another and erratically use phrases while acting in support of one side, but truly not embracing the meaning of either the Black Lives Matter movement or any form of law enforcement.

"Part of the reason this anger and resentment has been allowed to fester so long is there's been no outlet or sense of justice from Black people," Hill said. “Because many of us feel that anger, and that resentment, is that sometimes we don't necessarily see people - we see groups. Looking at people that way, it can sometimes be hard to separate system from individual, or system from people. And so there is gonna be an automatic lack of trust that's there.

"White people want Black people to give them the benefit of the doubt and they haven't even earned it. And that's why, sometimes, even those who are well intentioned, they may catch the brunt of something and struggle to understand how that happened. And the way that is happened is because you're talking about dealing with a building resentment and general feeling that there's been a lack of justice, and a lack of acknowledgment."

(Deep exhale)

Talk about a vicious circle filled with tumbleweed.

Man, I just want my branch back.