A Model Worth Emulating

I will admit it . . . I am not much of a sports-page reader. But every once in a while, my practically-perfect husband points me to something there that blows me away.

This is such a piece. In The New York Times, former Duke basketball player Grant Hill responds to disparaging remarks about his background and family made by Jalen Rose, another former college star, in a documentary Rose produced entitled "The Fab Five." In his elegant, eloquent piece, Hill offers an inspiring example for all young men -- of every color -- on what it means to be proud of one's heritage and to live the American Dream.

There is no doubt that African-Americans have confronted some profoundly difficult and ugly historical struggles. But Hill's response -- and his pride in his upwardly mobile, intact family -- is a model of the kind of transcendence that Dr. King repeatedly invoked.

It's a shame that some African Americans try to stereotype certain kinds of family dysfunction as indispensable criteria for genuine "blackness." And if President Obama is going to spend his time on bracketology and golf, rather than leading the free world, this is, at least, a topic upon which he could properly weigh in.