Discover more from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shares thoughts about sports, politics, and popular culture
and how they define America.
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Ask Kareem Anything
Post your questions about sports, pop culture, politics, or social issues and I will answer as many as I can.
Every once in a while I do this “Ask Kareem Anything” feature for paid subscribers only. I’m so appreciative of subscribers because they make this whole community possible.
You can ask me anything about sports, pop culture, politics, social issues, relationship advice. How I keep my head so shiny. My plan for world peace. Pretty much anything. If I can answer it, I will.
The offer is good until I run out of steam . Also, if there are more questions than I can get to, don’t be offended. Just ask the next time.
Tip: Please ask your questions in the Comments section, NOT via email.
Ask Kareem Anything
Dear Mr. Abdul-Jabbar, I just transitioned to a paid subscriber. I'm around your age, and have been a huge swooning fan since your graceful skyhook days on the Lakers. (Your retirement from basketball marked that moment when I first thought, "gosh, I'm not young any more!") But since then, I've dipped into your tour-de-force second career as a writer. I have found your written works to be even more elegant, intelligent, graceful, and powerfully incisive than your work on the court.
An early autobiography that I believe you may have written with a co-author was out in publication back in the middle 1980s when I was in graduate school in Developmental Psychology. My recollection is that it recounted your ancestry and upbringing as well, how it impacted your identity, and how that related to your Blackness. I read it in tandem with "All God's Dangers," the biography of the son of an enslaved African, actually an oral autobiography narrated to a White journalist. These two works formed the beginning of this White woman's journey toward understanding racism and working to be anti-racist.
Can you please help me to remember the name of your book, which now seems to be out of print? My old paperback copy has been lost. Now that I'm in this season of life, it's important to me to recall what's made me who I am.
Kareem. You seem to be such a kind soul. In Milwaukee the big man Giannis seems to following you in both humility and revolutionizing the game. What does kindness mean to you?