Re: “Many Going to College Are Not Ready, Report Says” (New York Times column, August 17, 2005)

The ACT, created in 1959 by E.E. Lindquist and Ted McCarrel was initially designed to compete with the SAT exam. According to the ACT webpage, the ACT Assessment tests are curriculum based and are not an aptitude or an IQ test. Instead, the questions on the test are related to what is learned in high school courses in mathematics, English and science.

Regardless of what the ACT “assesses,” the bottom line is that you cannot attend an accredited college unless you pay to take the ACT and then pay to have the scores sent to each college which you plan on attending, not including of course college application fees, postage, etc. You cannot mail the scores yourself as they are not “official.” Multiply this by hundreds of thousands of potential college students and you have yourself a rather handsome profit. Does the agenda of the ACT then really concern measuring college readiness?

Studies suggest otherwise, as the ACT does not predict college achievement. Certainly then it is problematic that we place such an enormous emphasis upon standardized test scores like those derived from the ACT, as the ACT exhibits low levels of predictive validity.

Thus, blanket generalizations that purport “many” high school graduates as not ready for college are questionable at best. Instead, and as one might expect, high school grades are often, but not always, the single best predictor of first-year performance. Perhaps then the ACT is just a payola “necessity” of the college application process.

I took the ACT twice, initially scoring a 17 and 19 respectively. Both scores are below the national average. Accordingly, I was and am not prepared or ready for college. However, not only did I graduate college, I received my BA degree summa cum laude. I also hold a MA degree and currently am entering my second year as a fully funded doctoral student. Am I the only exception to the ACT “college-readiness benchmark?” I think not.

What’s In a Name?

This country and our legacy of overt instances of racism, sometimes resulting in acts of atrocity and genocide (e.g. extermination of the Native population) still haunts us (in a variety of ways) but overwhelmingly in some of our grossly stereotypical sports symbols, which were in part this week condemned by the NCAA.

Concerning racism, in the United States at least, we receive a plethora of mixed messages. On the one hand, we publicly condemn racism and racist beliefs and ideologies, but sports team names that are often demeaning accompanied by their often racist characters and logos are still as much a part of American culture as apple pie, regardless of how historically inaccurate they may in fact be.

Nevertheless the symbolic terrain/landscape has been distorted by the varying contemporary degree of the detachment of symbolic signification from the symbols themselves, in postmodern jargon this is referred to as the floating signifier. Human beings act toward things on the particular basis of the meaning that certain things have for them. The meaning here is derived from social interaction and such meanings are always modified through an interpretive process used by the person when dealing with the things s/he encounters (Blumer 1969).

Thus, generations of young sports fans, who are always historically removed (whether mindful or not) from the blatant injustices suffered by historically marginalized groups of people, often understand such symbols (e.g. sports names and logos) very differently than those who are and often continue to be subjected to a historical trajectory dictated to them (e.g. in classrooms, textbooks, etc.) by others, most notably white people.

Consider for instance the “Redskins” a current NFL football team. Most people are of the belief that the term “redskin” simply relates to the color of Indian skin, which in and of itself is certainly derogatory. However, Suzan Harjo, who heads a national Indian rights organization aptly points out that the historical use of the term “redskin” is actually more macabre the one might think.

Most concede that it is no secret that the United States government sanctioned bounties upon the heads of Indians. Allegedly to ease the burden of carrying around rotting heads or corpses of Indians the U.S. government relaxed the bounty to include just the scalp or skin of an Indian. Trappers, who would hunt Indians along with wild game reportedly begin using the term (much like bearskin, deerskin, etc.), in crude reference to the bloody mess that accompanied the scalp or skin of the Indian (Wiley III, Ed 2005).

Interestingly enough, although few would refute the grossly stereotypical nature of the Cleveland Indians logo, e.g., "Chief Wahoo" (pictured above), the story behind their name is not necessarily. Louis “Chief” Sockalexis is purported to be Baseball’s first American Indian player, some refute this claim, however most agree that Sockalexis was among the very first few professional American Indian ballplayers.

Sockalexis was born on the Penobscot Indian Reservation in Maine in 1871 and attended the College of the Holy Cross. At 5’11” 185 pounds, Sockalexis was considered a rather large man by early twentieth standards (http://www.baseball-reference.com/). Although it is often hard to accurately cite early “official” baseball statistics, (e.g. stats were often kept very crassly), by all accounts "Chief" was, for a brief time, a standout ballplayer (the Cleveland Indians webpage refers to him as a “supreme baseball talent”).

It is alleged that the Cleveland ball team (formerly the Cleveland Naps) changed their name to the Cleveland Indians in honor of Soxalexis two years after his death. The Cleveland organization however after the 1914 season prompted a name change for the Cleveland franchise. On January 17, two Cleveland based newspapers (The Leader and The Plain Dealer) reported that the “Indians” had been chosen to replace the Naps, in reference to the club when Sockalexis played for the team from 1897-1899 (http://www.cleveland.indians.mlb.com/).

The degree to which a team name or logo is racist varies considerable depending on the context (as the above examples illustrate). In this regard, some professional sports names, I contend, are not necessary demeaning or racist (e.g. Warriors, Braves, etc.) however I also believe the NCAA made the correct initiative in their assertion that certain names need to be changed, and other organizations (e.g. MLB, NFL, etc.) should follow in good faith.

Works Cited
Bloomer, Herbert. 1969. Symbolic Interaction. Berkley, CA: University of California Press.
Wiley III, Ed. 2005. “Honoring Native Americans with Disrespect” http://www.bet.com/

Steroids: To Consume or Not to Consume, That is the Question!

"Baltimore slugger Rafael Palmeiro tested positive for steroids a few months after telling Congress, "I never took steriods, period." Then today, Palmeiro said, "I mean to say, 'I never took steroids, question mark.'" -Conan O'Brien

For the past few days I have been mustering over the recent steroid controversy that is currently clouding major league baseball; regarding my recent thoughts, the catalyst is of course Rafael Palmeiro who is currently the highest profile player to test positive under the new drug testing guidelines adopted by Major League Baseball.

Palmeiro was drafted by the Chicago Cubs in the 1st round (22nd pick) of the 1985 amateur draft (The Cubs decided to retain Mark Grace at first base and traded Palmeiro in 1988 to the Texas Rangers). Throughout his carreer, Palmeiro has had some amazing accomplishments. Most notability, he is one of only four players (the others are, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, and Eddie Murray) in the 3,000 hit, 500 home run club which surely would have gained him a first ballot entry into the holy shrine of baseball, the Hall of Fame. However, a long shadow of doubt has not only been caste upon his legacy as a player, but now there is speculation on whether or not he’ll even enter the Hall of Fame.

After much consideration, my thoughts in part concerning the matter are informed by strain theory. Strain theory, initially conceived by Robert K. Merton (1938), focuses on explaining why some groups or individuals in a society are more likely to engage in crime than others.

The crux of the theory presented by Merton argues that individuals are pressured into crime (e.g. illegal steroid use) when they are prevented from achieving such cultural goals as monetary success through legitimate avenues. The idea here is that lower class individuals are often blocked legitimate access to opportunities to attain a middle class lifestyle or monetary success, as they often reside in disadvantaged neighborhoods, receive inferior education, cannot afford college, etc.

Merton contends, that certain “social structures exert a definite pressure upon certain persons in the society to engage in nonconformist rather than conformist conduct…[thus]….[f]raud, corruption, vice, crime, in short, the entire catalogue of proscribed behavior, becomes increasingly common when the emphasis on the culturally induced success-goal becomes divorced from a coordinated institutional emphasis.”

Palmeiro was born September 24, 1964 in Havana, Cuba. In 1971, his father Jose Palmeiro a construction worker, immigrated to Miami with his family from Cuba. Rafael was just seven years old. One can speculate that had Palmeiro not fled the bleak economic conditions of Cuba, he probably would have remained just another sandlot ballplayer and most likely would have ended up working a menial job just as his father had.

With the vast economic incentives that professional sports especially baseball in the United States accords, is it really any wonder or surprise that people are ingesting steroids and any other substance for that matter, legal or not, to give them a competitive edge on the playing field? If you were competing for a $20 million dollar a year job, would you not do the same?

Such substances however don’t make a ballplayer any better at what they do. For instance, Albert Einstein drank coffee, which contains caffeine, a stimulant, which allowed him to stay conscious longer thereby allowing him to produce more scholarly material than he otherwise might have. Does drinking coffee make you smart? Certainly not. Does taking steroids make you a professional ballplayer? Certain not.

The solution to the problem is quite simple, however impossible in our market driven economy. If we made professional sports a 20 thousand dollar a year job the pressure (aside from the resultant fame amplified in part by the media) to succeed in such a market would be minimal at best. Why not make teaching a 20 million dollar a year profession? I guarantee coffee as well as other illegal stimulant consumption would skyrocket!

Perhaps Palmeiro should run for office, as he is already a liar, a skill no doubt needed as a politician. When he gets out of jail for perjury, he can run on a “read my lips” campaign.


Works Cited
Merton, Robert K. 1938. “Social Structure and Anomie” American Sociological Review
3 (October).

Manny Ramirez a “Gangster?”

“I’m just here to play and win. I’m a gangster.”
Manny Ramirez (Boston Red Sox)
New York Times 08/01/05

Just what this quote means, is certainly open to interpretation. One thing seems certain, rap music and its subsequent discourse, continue to leave an inevitable imprint on contemporary pop culture.

At best, the correlation between gangsters and baseball stars can be expressed in dollars and cents as the only thing that gangsters and baseball stars seem to have in common is their bankroll, they get paid, and they get paid extremely well.

Maybe the term “gangster” has some sort of hidden meaning that we are not yet aware of. For instance, the term “thug” (a common euphemism among “gangsters”) has roots in Sanskrit, an ancient language that is considered the classical language of India and of Hinduism. In Sanskrit, to thug (as a verb) was to trick, deceive, or (and this is the shocker) to charm. Is Manny trying to convey to us some sort of trickery or charm through his thuggish use of the term gangster?

I think not. Manny Ramirez, who is currently among the cohort of largest paid “gangsters,” makes a reported 20 million a year. Ramirez I contend rather is a professional crybaby, so his self proclamation as a “gangster,” I would argue, is certainly without merit. Stated politely, Rameriz is just another selfish overpaid crybaby wankster.

The catalyst for Rameriz and his recent remark concerns his trade request as he wanted out of the Red Sox organization citing “privacy issues.” Privacy issues? Are you kidding? Get real Manny.