That’s not going to change. I’m never going to change my culture. Yao has played with a lot of black players, but I don’t think he’s ever played with a black player that really represents his culture as much as I represent my culture.

I think this is the meat of the quote here. HIS culture versus MY culture. Ron Artest has shown that he is consistently selfish and fundamentally at odds with the world around him. You can’t really take what he has to say seriously.

You just completely plagarized that post from the closing argument in ‘A Time To Kill,’ you racist bastard.

I’ll be curious to see who is more black when the regular season heats up – Rafer Alson or Ron Artest.

And does Bobby Sura still play for the Rockettes? If so, I nominate Sura for most black player on the Rockets prior to Ron’s arrival.

So beating up fans is black culture?

I’m a black man and I don’t have any clue of what Ron is talking about. Growing up in a particular neighborhood or rushing into the stands to attack fans doesn’t represent a culture. To truly represent a culture you have to know what you are talking about and you have to carry yourself with a certain level of class in my opinion. Ron is just batshit crazy. Nothing more and nothing less.

...as someone who believes that most people these days are all too willing to accept whatever the mass market labels them as, I tend to be really cynical whenever somebody declares themselves to be of a certain identity. I’ve found in my short time on the planet that most people stress their individuality, then immediately follow their declaration up by doing something that lumps them in with a group of people I like to call the “lowest common denominator”, or people who behave how marketing dollars say they should.

Without leaning too far on the racial spectrometer, I will say that I’ve never understood people feeling the need to represent their race or ethnicity, as it is something that you don’t get to choose when you’re born. Most people fail to realize that they could have just as easily been Irish, or Portuguese, or Black, or Rich, or what have you. So to me, feeling the need to identify yourself and your assumed prerogatives concerning your racial identity is stupid, and borderline racist in and of itself.

While I can understand Ron Artest’s desire to defend his past and future actions, I find the fact that he does it by saying it’s defined by something as arbitrary as his ethnicity to be shortsighted and ridiculous. Ron’s attempt to equate his often ludicrous behavior with his race shortchanges the many black people I know who feel that actions and justifications such as his only perpetuate an assumption held by many racists. He would be doing himself and many others a favor by not blaming his own past stupidity on some phantom ethnic disposition.

Again, I don’t want to make too many assumptions, as I am a white male, but I feel like the blacks’ struggle over the past century and a half to be viewed as equals could be equated to building a house of cards. What has been achieved thus far has taken much due diligence and patience, but a wrong move here or there can set the process back quite a bit. As I mentioned, there are many ignorant people out there, and for Ron to act this way only throws fuel on their fire, and in the big picture does not make the world a better place.

Way to go Ron…. dumbass…

artest still has not learned a single thing from his suspension.

another example of when keeping it real, goes wrong

I don’t think Ron Artest represents black culture any more than Matthew Powell does (after all, he calls me Stampizzle) so yeah, I guess basically I agree with most people here that he’s a batshit crazy psychopath, a guy we need to ridicule from afar and be terrified of up close.

I would say that if Ron Artest were speaking for me or my race I’d probably be fairly annoyed with him, but he doesn’t, so I can’t really speak for other people and how they feel about it. I mean, how many African-Americans would need to be polled about these comments to get a fair sample size? A thousand? Ten thousand? Wouldn’t the overwhelming runaway number one response be “Who the hell is Ron Artest?”

I will say, as a Turkish person who moved to California in 1984, that I find the whole concept of black culture in the U.S. absurd, just like I do white culture, or Latino culture or gay culture or whatever. The country is too freakin’ big and each state is like it’s own mini country. To say the U.S. is one culture would be like saying Europe is one culture. I’m fairly certain “black culture” in Bumfuck, Alabama means something entirely different than black culture in Michigan which means something entirely different in New York, San Francisco, what have you. Black people are different from state to state and from generation to generation, same as white people, and every other ethnic group. We have so much immigration and change in this country that norms and fashions and styles are constantly changing.

What I think about social behavior in general are that people, for the most part, are products of their environment and that shapes the way they think and act more than their skin color does. Generally one does what one is thought to do. One’s values come from the values of their role models. Regardless of ethnicity, people who grow up with a strong support system, in an environment where education is stressed and children feel safe and nurtured will be better off than people who grow up alone or in single parent homes, in neighborhoods with bad, overcrowded schools, and where danger is ever present 24/7.

While Artest’s comments seem on the surface both ignorant and racist to the extreme, we have to take them with a grain of salt. To say that he doesn’t represent black culture is a no-brainer. The sad thing is he doesn’t even represent himself. The guy is so bi-polar that he constantly changes his mind, contradicts himself, and flip-flops his opinions. He’ll probably make a statement two days from now stating that he misquoted himself and that the media (THE EVIL RACIST WHITE MEDIA) took the quote out of context.

At the end of the day, what are we talking about here? This is a guy who is defending his actions at the brawl, even though he went after the wrong fan. The guy he ended up confronting wasn’t even the one who threw the ice at him. His whole philosophy and rationalization about being “disrespected” comes from an assault against an innocent man. And if Artest really cannot grasp the basic concept that the guy he went after didn’t do anything to deserve it, if he really feels the entire Detroit fan base as a whole disrespected him and was thus deserving of his wrath, then he truly is a sociopath and is probably not someone who should in any way be listened to, let alone be involved with professional sports.

Congrats on your post, very well done. I totally agree with everything you just put. Don’t buy too much into Ron Artest. After all, he’s Ron Artest. As we all know he does and says things he shouldn’t.