Becoming Kareem

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  In July 1973, I was twenty-six years old and spending my summer break from the Milwaukee Bucks letting my nerd flag fly by traveling throughout the Middle East learning Arabic. On my way home, I decided to stop off in Hong Kong to visit Bruce. We had recently done a movie together called Game of Death, in which I played someone wearing awesome sunglasses who gets killed by Bruce. I think my sunglasses turned in a better performance than I did, but Bruce was his usual dynamic, funny, and cocky on-screen persona that the world so loved to watch. And we had great fun shooting that scene together.

  When I landed at the Singapore airport, I saw the headlines that Bruce had died. I was stunned, of course, and saddened that I had lost such a good friend. But I was also aware of how profoundly his death would affect the rest of the world. He was only thirty-two when he died, but he had already revolutionized the way the world saw martial arts, both as a form of entertainment in movies and on TV and, more important, as a philosophy and way of life.

  Despite having had many ups and downs in his life, despite having been poor and rich, despite being snubbed and internationally acclaimed, he lived by a simple guiding principle: “Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.”

  I was twenty when I met Bruce Lee, but his teachings, both in his studio and by his example, have stayed with me the rest of my life.

  34.

  Why I Didn’t Play in the 1968 Olympics

  In 1960, an eighteen-year-old Cassius Clay walked into a Louisville, Kentucky, restaurant wearing the Olympic gold medal in boxing he had just won for the glory of the United States. He was aware that restaurants in his hometown were segregated, but he was so optimistic after winning the gold medal that he thought the world had changed. “Man, I know I’m going to get my people freedom now,” he later recalled thinking. “I’m the champion of the whole world, the Olympic champion. I know I can eat downtown now.” But when he sat down, he was refused service and told to leave. “I had to leave that restaurant, in my hometown, where I went to church and served in their Christianity, and fought—my daddy fought in all the wars. Just won the gold medal and couldn’t eat downtown. I said, ‘Something’s wrong.’”

  In 1968, I was asked to join the men’s basketball Olympic team. I was twenty-one years old and well aware that whatever choice I made would send a message to black and white Americans. I was torn. Joining the team would signal that I supported the way people of color were being treated in America—which I didn’t. Not joining the team could look like I didn’t love America—which I did.

  Complicating my thinking was that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the cheerful, optimistic man, had just been assassinated by a white man with a rifle.

  Three of my heroes—civil rights activist Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr.—had all been assassinated within five years. Two months after Dr. King was shot, Robert F. Kennedy, who was running for president with promises to advance the cause of civil rights, was also gunned down. It seemed that anybody who spoke publicly in favor of civil rights was a target for assassination.

  What is difficult for many white people to understand is the extent to which black people go through each day fearing for their lives. In the 1960s, white people could get away with discriminating against black citizens in jobs, housing, and education without much fear of government intervention. Because the government wasn’t doing that much to prevent it, racists felt emboldened to act out their hostilities by committing violent acts against black people. Racists often take their cues on how to act from the way the government behaves. If the government is actively campaigning against racism, they hide their feelings and do nothing. If the government is indifferent to racism by not prosecuting it, then they feel it’s okay to come out of hiding and attack.

  In 1968, we felt under attack, and we couldn’t go to the authorities because they were the ones attacking. That year, there were riots in more than one hundred cities across the country, and the image many people saw on their televisions every night was of police beating black protesters and students.

  Whatever Coach Wooden’s political beliefs were when I played for him, he never openly judged my beliefs. In April 1968, just after Dr. King had been assassinated, I joined in a silent campus demonstration in support of his political agenda. This was as laid-back as a protest rally could get: a bunch of students ambling around Bruin Walk carrying signs for an hour. We were so polite and unaggressive, we could have been gathering for a tie-dye demonstration. Still, we enraged some people who felt compelled to ask me what I was doing. “You’re going to play in the NBA some day and make millions! Why aren’t you more grateful? This country gave you everything! You’re gonna be richer than most white people!” I tried to be patient and explain that my own success had nothing to do with the issues, but they didn’t want to hear it.

  Coach Wooden knew all about my participation at the protest, but he never said a word to me. No dirty looks. No biting comments in passing. He acted as if he didn’t know about it, which I chose to take as approval. Not that I needed his approval. I was already committed to becoming more openly active.

  A few months earlier, the sociology professor Harry Edwards had gathered together a group of black athletes who had been invited to compete in the Olympics to discuss the possibility of boycotting it.

  “Why should I bring home a medal for a country that won’t make sure I can vote?” asked one angry athlete.

  “Look, man, you’re right,” said another, “but I may never get this chance again. I’ve been training my whole life to compete in the Olympics. I deserve my shot.”

  “Maybe we can do both,” suggested another athlete. “If we win a medal, we can make some speech about racism at home.”

  “They’ll take away your medal and kick you out.”

  “Yeah,” he said, “but at least I’ll have won it.”

  And so the discussion went. At the end, we couldn’t all agree to boycott, but I decided I would not go. I felt my presence would be an endorsement that everything was okay. Instead, I returned to my summer job from the previous year, teaching kids in New York City how to play basketball and why they should stay in school. My decision not to play resulted in hate mail calling me, among other things, “an ungrateful nigger.”

  Among our boycott discussion group were the runners Tommie Smith and John Carlos, who decided to travel to Mexico City to compete in the Olympics. They won the gold and bronze medals in the two-hundred-meter sprint, but when they stood on the platform after receiving their medals, they raised their black-gloved fists over their heads in what was then called the “Black Power Salute.” They wore black gloves showing unity with all African Americans, black socks with no shoes to symbolize high poverty rates among black people, and a scarf (Smith) and beads (Carlos) to symbolize the history of lynchings. They were immediately suspended and kicked out. They returned to the United States as heroes to many African Americans—myself included—and rabble-rousers to many white people. They received numerous death threats. But their gesture sparked a national discussion of racism in the United States.

  That summer ended with the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, three days in August that were so violent, so contentious, and so chaotic that books, movies, and even songs have been written about it. While Democrats inside the convention were choosing their nominee to run for president against the Republican former vice president, Richard Nixon, outside there were ten thousand protesters, mostly students, being beaten by twenty-three thousand police and National Guardsmen. So much tear gas was dispersed that it wafted throughout the city. The Walker Report, a study issued later by the panel established to investigate the incident, described it as “unrestrained and indiscriminate police violence… made all the more shocking by the fact that it was often inflicted upon persons who had broken no law, disobeyed no order, made no threat.”

  This was what was going on in the country in the summer months before my senior year at UCLA. Their voices were speaking out against injustic
e, and they were being silenced by violence.

  Given all this, going to Mexico to win medals didn’t seem to be the highest priority for me. What became a priority, as it had been since I’d participated in the Cleveland Summit, was adding my voice to those who were trying to explain why black Americans were in such pain. Watching Smith and Carlos on TV with their fists raised defiantly, I realized that even though I was only twenty-one, I still had to speak up. Sometimes it felt as if we were at the bottom of a well, shouting up to a crowd of people dressed in white summer clothes and having a garden party. Their laughter and conversation and music drowned out our cries for help, so we had no choice but to shout louder and louder, hoping someone would hear us.

  35.

  Why I Converted to Islam

  That summer, while I was wrestling with forming my political beliefs, I was also examining my spiritual beliefs. The biggest challenge of growing up is sifting through all the unasked-for influences that push and pull you in different directions and deciding for yourself which ones you will follow. Like every other kid, I had many influences: what my parents wanted, what my teachers wanted, what my religion wanted, what society wanted, what my peers wanted, and what my coaches wanted. There were so many that I had to examine each one to figure out which ones were what I wanted.

  I had already decided on my political beliefs by publicly supporting Muhammad Ali and by publicly boycotting the Olympics. And that summer I also decided on my spiritual beliefs by converting to Islam.

  I had been interested in various religions since arriving at UCLA and deciding to abandon my Catholic upbringing. I still had a deep desire to understand what God meant to me and how that understanding would affect my actions. I read extensively about Buddhism, Taoism, existentialism, and various Protestant beliefs. I kept an open mind about each as I also delved into the godless void of Friedrich Nietzsche and the multi-god universe of Hinduism. I didn’t really connect fully with any of them. All I knew was that I wasn’t an atheist—I believed there was a God, and that God wanted us to do good.

  “Man, just pick one,” my friend Jimmy Johnson said, pointing at the stack of religious books on my desk.

  “I will,” I said. “When I’m ready.”

  “Opium of the people. That’s what Karl Marx called religion. Makes ’em all sheep.”

  “People just want to do the right thing,” I said. “This helps them.”

  “If they all just want to do the right thing, then what’s the difference which one you pick?”

  Good question. I wasn’t looking for just a set of heavenly ordained rules, I was looking for a religion that I identified with culturally as well as spiritually. Which is why I chose Islam.

  My interest in Islam began while reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. The religion gave him strength to completely transform himself from illiterate street hoodlum to articulate spokesperson for hundreds of thousands of black Americans. I started to read many books about Islam because of his inspiration, but my continuing interest was based on my own needs and observations. I was looking to connect not just with the religious teachings but with the heritage of the people who followed Islam. I knew there were a billion or more Muslims divided mostly among the two largest sects: Sunni Islam and the far smaller Shia Islam. I knew most Muslims lived in Central and South Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa. I knew that many of the slaves brought from Africa were Muslims.

  I knew enough to know I wanted to learn more. So instead of going to the Olympics in Mexico City that summer, I began attending a Sunnite mosque on 125th Street.

  I’m often asked why I picked a religion so foreign to American culture. Some fans took it very personally, as if I’d firebombed their church while tearing up an American flag. Actually, I was rejecting the religion that was foreign to my black African culture and embracing one that was part of my racial heritage. Fans also thought I had joined the Nation of Islam, the American Islamic movement founded in Detroit in 1930. I didn’t join them; I rejected them emphatically. Instead, I studied the Sunni sect of Islam.

  My parents were not pleased by my conversion. Though they weren’t strict Catholics, they had raised me to believe in Christianity as gospel. But the more I studied history, especially of the church, the more disillusioned I became with the role of Christianity in subjugating my people. I knew, of course, that the Second Vatican Council in 1965 had declared slavery to be an “infamy” that dishonored God and was a poison to society, but for me, it was too little, too late. They came to that conclusion a hundred years after the Emancipation Proclamation! The failure of the church to use its might and influence to stop slavery made me angry. And while I realize that many Christians risked their lives and families to fight against slavery, and that it would not have been ended without them, I found it hard to align myself with the cultural institutions that had turned a blind eye to such outrageous behavior in direct violation of their most sacred beliefs. I also knew that the slave owner named Alcindor who owned my ancestors was Christian.

  That summer before my senior year, I walked into the mosque wearing my bright African robe that I had worn only once before, after defeating Houston in the semifinals. Everyone else was wearing white. My big show of cultural unity was a major fail. I felt like the teenage nerd in a movie who shows up at a party wearing a clown outfit because he’d been told it was a dress-up party, but everyone else is in tuxedos and formal gowns.

  One man approached me and asked politely, “Are you looking for the African Cultural Center? It’s downstairs.”

  “No,” I told him, “this is the right place. I’m here to worship.”

  He handed me a prayer booklet that contained several chapters from the Quran translated from Arabic. “You must memorize them,” he instructed.

  I took the booklet home and memorized the chapters. I learned that memorizing a couple of the 114 suras (chapters) of the Quran is a goal of many adherents, and that millions have done so. I realized that this was the spiritual equivalent of my “muscle memory” training from both Coach Wooden and Bruce Lee. The athletic world encourages repeating a movement until the body reacts without hesitation; the spiritual encourages repeating the 6,236 verses of the Quran until you do good without hesitation.

  I returned to the mosque when possible, immersing myself into the people and the religion. Each visit reenergized me as if at last I had found my place, my people, and my path. Finally, one Friday, before witnesses, I pronounced my shahada, which is the proclamation: “There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” I was a Muslim. As such, I was given a new name by my teacher: Abdul (“servant of Allah”) Kareem (“generous”). I kept the name secret from everyone but my closest friends and my parents. Everyone still called me Lew.

  My reluctance to proclaim my new name wasn’t just shyness or the need for privacy. Part of me recognized a contradiction. I was on a spiritual quest to define who I was and what I believed in—to forge my own identity. I had chosen my political positions. And I had chosen my religion. But in neither case had I chosen my name. My parents named me Lew, and a slave owner in Haiti indirectly named me Alcindor. Now my Muslim teacher named me. I was still too naive and too new to the religion to argue about my name, but I knew that my journey of growing up was still not quite over.

  Which is why I was relieved to find a new coach, Hamaas Abdul-Khaalis, who would shepherd me through the intricacies of becoming a more devout Muslim.

  Hamaas was born Ernest McGee. He had been a drummer and knew my father from their days running in the same musician circles. Here was yet another man who had changed his name on the path to becoming the person he wanted to be. I had started to understand that all these name changers were following the example of the very first immigrants who founded America. They had come here to reinvent themselves according to their own beliefs rather than someone else’s. Now I was a part of that sacred American tradition.

  After my first meeting with Hamaas, who was very learned about Islam,
it became clear just how ignorant I was and how much I had to learn. He agreed to mentor me, so for the rest of the summer I got up every morning at four thirty in order to be at his house by six o’clock. Then I’d hurry off to my job by nine. He instructed me on every aspect of Islam. He had very strict ideas about everything Islam demanded from true Muslims, and there was no bending these rules. He also knew of my political disenchantment with the United States, having heard me state with youthful arrogance that though I lived here, America wasn’t really my country.

  “Don’t ever say that this isn’t your country,” he instructed me very firmly. “Your ancestors lived and died in this country and this is your country. You have to get all your rights as a citizen. Don’t reject it, affirm it.”

  I was stunned. If anyone knew the horrors this country had put black people through, it would be him. I had expected him to be on my side. But the more I studied with him, the more I understood that rather than sit around complaining about what the country wasn’t doing, he wanted us to work hard to help the country do what it should be doing. He talked about the many white Americans who wanted to make things better for everyone and suffered personal sacrifices to make it happen. We owed it to them to show compassion and kindness. That was the Muslim way; that was the American way.

  That summer, Hamaas’s teachings about Islam brought me closer to being an American.

  At the end of the summer, I once again pronounced my shahada, this time before Hamaas. I shaved my head and shared a ceremonial meal, akikat, with the community. Hamaas then decided I needed to be renamed; Abdul Kareem wasn’t enough. Kareem means “noble” and “generous”; Abdul means “servant.” “But we’re missing your spirit.” He smiled. “Jabbar. That means ‘powerful.’”