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Dr. Darrell White's Personal Blog

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Archive for June, 2020

The American Dream Part 1: The Cardboard in the Shoes Kid

While fooling around on social media I came across a post from a prominent Harvard economist about the American Dream. Now to be honest that’s not a phrase he used in his post, but that is precisely what he was talking about. He lamented the findings in a recent study from Georgetown University that evaluated whether academic achievement or existing family wealth was a better predictor of eventual economic success. https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/schooled2lose/  The study looked at demographic and academic data from publicly available sources for the period between 2002 and 2016. It concluded that existing family wealth was more important than acadeemic achievement in predicting rather modest income and wealth outcomes. https://1gyhoq479ufd3yna29x7ubjn-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/FR-Born_to_win-schooled_to_lose.pdf (See part 3).

While the finding over the period studied does not really surprise me all that much (although I’d love to see the raw data to see if it was cherry-picked to produce the outcome), there was a paucity of deeper inquiry in the downstream responses to the Harvard academic’s post and lament. Indeed, each post clearly either assumed or stated outright that this is, and has always been, the great stain on the American Dream. But is that actually true? Has preexisting family wealth always been more important than academic achievement in determining next generation financial success? Seems like a logical question to ask; our culture, indeed our national personality is deeply invested in the opposite outcome. And so I asked the obvious (to me) question: if this has not always been the case (my premise), at what point in U.S. history did the factor “flip”?

You can imagine the scorn that my question received and the barely concealed contempt with which those who responded held for both the question and the person asking it. But seriously, even if you take for certain the conclusion of the Georgetown study, our history is just filled with both micro and macro evidence that shows that academic achievement was the singular driver of next generation wealth for decades beginning no later than 1920. You need look no further than the GI Bill post-WWII and the explosion of the America’s middle class that followed to see the evidence that family wealth was not the predominant driver. Heck, there just weren’t that many upper middle class families in the U.S. prior to the late 1970’s, let alone truly wealth families. The Doughboys using the GI Bill didn’t get their nickname because they were rolling in it.

Unfortunately companion studies looking at this question during earlier times are proving rather difficult to find. In a right and just world I could go look at decade vs. decade analyses to see if my sense that the traditional notion of the American Dream (do well in school, do better in life) was indeed a real thing. We all know that such a scenario is the best possible one in that we could head off charges of bias, etc. While I will continue to search for such research, allow me to present a couple of examples of why I believe that there was a time when our traditional notion of the American Dream did, in fact, exist, when I think it may have “flipped”, and a hypothesis to explain why.

Absent formal data all we have are stories. One hopes that the stories you choose to tell are indicative of more than just one life’s experience. In this case clearly I feel this is true. My thesis starts where it should, at home, in the history of my own family. In my father’s story. Mind you, this is not only anecdotal, this is coming to you in the classic tradition of oral history passed down through inter-generational story telling. Is it all true? Meh, define “true”. It’s true enough for both our family and for the purpose of placing the American Dream along a timeline. Like most family history it is true in spirit, true in context. The details may just be a tiny bit fuzzy, especially now that all of the principals are gone.

My Dad was a classic child of the Depression, a “cardboard in the shoes” urban (as opposed to “Grapes of Wrath” rural) version. The children of the working poor (and certainly those of the unemployed) rarely got a new pair of shoes unless they’d drastically outgrown the pair they were wearing. If one should encounter the misfortune of a hole in the sole of the shoe one did not replace or resole the shoe, one simply put a piece of cardboard inside the shoe under the footbed. Of course this required a steady supply of cardboard outside of the Dust Bowl, since even the most trivial rain storm was enough to necessitate another “patch”.

Dad was the fourth of 6 children, smack in the middle of the family. I never knew my grandmother, Dad’s Mom. She passed away (we think from Rheumatic Fever) when Dad was around 12.  Some time soon after my grandfather remarried; Kay had at least 4 children of her own to add to the mix. While Grampa White was always employed there is pretty solid evidence that he struggled with the bottle. Payday always seemed a bit more spare than his income should have made it according to family lore; lots of temptation on the walk home. Still, even though it was often nothing more than a ketchup sandwich, none of the kids in the White house ever talked about being hungry.

This being the 30’s and 40’s the children of the working class were placed in the “trades track” in school, my Dad included. The oldest in the family, my Godfather Uncle Larry, graduated from Waltham High and went directly into the Army. He would be on a ship ready to participate in the invasion of Japan when the bombs landed. Going to college was never a consideration for him; not a single teacher was said to have even broached the subject. Dad’s twin older sisters were expected to learn the skills of running a household to prepare to marry and raise the next generation. They, too, gave not a moment’s thought to college.

But Dad was apparently different, talented enough to catch the attention of several teachers early in either high school or junior high. One teacher in particular, Miss Nolan, is said to have literally plucked him out of the trades track and demanded that he be placed in college prep. From what we know from stories told by aunts and uncles Dad thrived in class, and like my Uncle Larry he was a star athlete as well. Armed with his diploma and wearing a pair of new shoes purchased by Miss Nolan for graduation, Dad headed off to the University of New Hampshire on a football half scholarship.

Things get a little fuzzy here to be honest. The mythical version of what happens next goes like this: Dad did great in football, was holding his own in class, but a half scholarship didn’t provide enough support for a kid from a working poor background to pay for school, room and board. Legend has it that Dad essentially starved out of UNH and joined the Army rather than head back to Waltham with his tail between his legs, not able to make it as a college boy. My Mom tells a different story. In her version Dad simply partied his way out of New Hampshire, spending all of his post-football time drinking beer with his buddies.

I like the family lore version way better.

No matter, though. At least as far as proving my point about the American Dream. Dad entered the Army and went on to serve in the Korean Conflict. Battle time promotions come quickly during wars. When he mustered out after his 3 or 4 year hitch (the details on that are a bit fuzzy, too) he had risen from E1 (buck private) to E6 (Staff Sergeant). Now funded by the GI Bill and another half football scholarship he headed off the the University of Vermont to finish the challenge he’d started with Miss Nolan’s help. Those times were still pretty tough. In order to get enough to eat after football season’s training tables were no longer available Dad worked as a short order cook: two squares and a small wage per shift. As a junior and a senior he was the house manager at his fraternity. Pay? Room and board. Not one iota of wealth in his back story.

You know where this is heading. Mom and Dad were married after graduation and they moved to a tiny town in central Mass to begin life together. Dad and a bunch of buddies trucked themselves off to Springfield and American International College. They put themselves through business school. Yup. That’s right. Not only was Dad the only one in his blended family to graduate from college, he also had an MBA. I should note that college was such an unthinkable path for kids from working families that my Dad’s younger brother turned down a scholarship to Harvard despite my Dad’s pleas from Korea. My uncle died a bitter man, resentful of every college kid who joined the company where he worked and become his boss despite my uncle’s superior intellect.

So what happened to my Dad? Well, this is America in the 60’s and the 70’s. My Dad made it. He ended up buying the company he was running, employing at its peak 800 people and setting himself and Mom up to be comfortable even when the strong U.S. dollar of the late 80’s destroyed the entire domestic industry in which he worked. Forced out of the company he owned by an ambitious banker with only ~10% of his loan remaining Dad essentially retired at 58 after raising 4 college grads and sharing parts of his fortune with his siblings and their families.

What’s the point? Simple. It was academic achievement that brought my Dad his financial successes. His siblings lived lives that were slightly better than my Grandfather. My Dad soared. More than that, he was not unique. Not even a little bit. Thousands of working class kids rose to prominence and acquired wealth accessed by attending and excelling in college. Somewhere there is a WSJ article that cataloged the colleges attended by Fortune 500 CEO’s in the 90′ and 00’s. The number one Alma Mater was not Harvard or Yale, not Stanford or MIT, but Wisconsin. Indeed, if memory serves only a single digit percentage of those CEO’s had attended the playground colleges of the wealthy.

No, my Dad was typical of those who grew up during the Depression and went on to acquire wealth. Some how, some way they found themselves in college. This, not preexisting family wealth, was the more important factor driving financial success. Into the 1980’s at least wealth seems not to be the most important factor. It was time when a “cardboard in the shoes kid” could rise through academic achievement.

Next: Post-Baby Boom Academic Achievement in the South.

A Brief Father’s Day Visit From My Dad

Today, Father’s Day, my Dad would have been 89. I think of him often, as I do my Father-in-Law who passed away in 2017. Here is what I wrote after visiting my Dad on Father’s Day, the last time I visited him for his Birthday, re-printed as I’ve done each year since:

 

My siblings and I only need to remember one weekend each year when it comes to celebrating my Dad. His birthday almost always falls within a day or two of Father’s Day. So it was that I found myself in Rhode Island the past couple of days, in the company of my Mom and a guy masquerading as my Dad, a guy who was very curious about the new fella who’d dropped by for a visit.

Getting old is not for sissies, my friends.

Somewhere inside, deep inside, there’s still some of my Dad in the jumbled up connections of his mind, carried by the body that failed him in such spectacular fashion 2 ½ years ago. Dad is extremely intelligent, the only family member in his generation to have gone to college. Quite the athlete, he used football and the GI Bill to pay for school. Like so many in his generation he then worked, raised a family, and put himself through grad school. He won his club championship in golf twice at the ages of 50 and 60. No typo. Beat the reigning RI State Amateur champ on his home course for the first one.

As we sat on the porch of his house overlooking the par 5  14th hole, I had an ever so brief visit from that guy. From my Dad. Like a citizen of Brigadoon he came slowly through the mist of his mind to join me for a bit. We’d always bonded over golf. My brother and I never turned down an invitation to join him on the course, either as partners or as caddies for him and his buddies. It was quite a privilege to do either; my Dad’s most elemental essence was expressed on the golf course.

A light breeze was blowing through the forest in the back yard just beyond the rough. We chuckled at the golfers who failed to take the wind into consideration, sheepishly trying to sneak into our yard to retrieve their out-of-bounds second shot. Dad talked about caddying as a kid in the Depression. We both noted the absence of caddies as the foursomes passed in and out of view. It was really very nice.

I quite like the Dad of my adulthood. Quick to smile, slow to anger, unfailingly loyal and kind. It’s hard to imagine now how distant he was when I was a boy, his friendship as an adult is so easy. I’m not sure how long we sat there to be honest, nor when I noticed that he was slipping away. As surely as the village of Brigadoon disappears, the mist had returned to claim him. I got up, walked over to his chair, held his hand and gave him a kiss. I wished him a Happy Birthday and a Happy Father’s Day, hoping that I’d made it on time. That he was still there. That he knew it was me, Darrell, his oldest child. I told him I loved him.

He smiled and gave my hand a little pat as he disappeared into the mist.

 

I really miss my Dad.

A Brief Father’s Day Visit from my Dad

Today, Father’s Day, my Dad would have been 89. I think of him often, as I do my Father-in-Law who passed away in 2017. Here is what I wrote after visiting my Dad on Father’s Day, the last time I visited him for his Birthday, re-printed as I’ve done each year since:

 

My siblings and I only need to remember one weekend each year when it comes to celebrating my Dad. His birthday almost always falls within a day or two of Father’s Day. So it was that I found myself in Rhode Island the past couple of days, in the company of my Mom and a guy masquerading as my Dad, a guy who was very curious about the new fella who’d dropped by for a visit.

Getting old is not for sissies, my friends.

Somewhere inside, deep inside, there’s still some of my Dad in the jumbled up connections of his mind, carried by the body that failed him in such spectacular fashion 2 ½ years ago. Dad is extremely intelligent, the only family member in his generation to have gone to college. Quite the athlete, he used football and the GI Bill to pay for school. Like so many in his generation he then worked, raised a family, and put himself through grad school. He won his club championship in golf twice at the ages of 50 and 60. No typo. Beat the reigning RI State Amateur champ on his home course for the first one.

As we sat on the porch of his house overlooking the par 5  14th hole, I had an ever so brief visit from that guy. From my Dad. Like a citizen of Brigadoon he came slowly through the mist of his mind to join me for a bit. We’d always bonded over golf. My brother and I never turned down an invitation to join him on the course, either as partners or as caddies for him and his buddies. It was quite a privilege to do either; my Dad’s most elemental essence was expressed on the golf course.

A light breeze was blowing through the forest in the back yard just beyond the rough. We chuckled at the golfers who failed to take the wind into consideration, sheepishly trying to sneak into our yard to retrieve their out-of-bounds second shot. Dad talked about caddying as a kid in the Depression. We both noted the absence of caddies as the foursomes passed in and out of view. It was really very nice.

I quite like the Dad of my adulthood. Quick to smile, slow to anger, unfailingly loyal and kind. It’s hard to imagine now how distant he was when I was a boy, his friendship as an adult is so easy. I’m not sure how long we sat there to be honest, nor when I noticed that he was slipping away. As surely as the village of Brigadoon disappears, the mist had returned to claim him. I got up, walked over to his chair, held his hand and gave him a kiss. I wished him a Happy Birthday and a Happy Father’s Day, hoping that I’d made it on time. That he was still there. That he knew it was me, Darrell, his oldest child. I told him I loved him.

He smiled and gave my hand a little pat as he disappeared into the mist.

 

I really miss my Dad.

Two Tiny Experiences as “Other”

Only twice in my life have I ever noticed that I was different. That I was, or could be identified, as “other”. Now to be sure, at neither time did this realization make me uncomfortable. That’s probably because I was in a relatively familiar setting, just among a rather homogenous group of people where I was the guy who stood out. Being the only person in church or on the basketball court who is NOT of color was for me, a non-large very white male, more a case of “huh, that’s different” than a case of ” be on guard”.

More than anything else, that is likely part of the core of what is meant when we hear talk of “white privilege”: I am only at risk if I actually do something wrong.

Sitting here in suburbia, in middle-age, it’s instructive to look back at how I’ve arrived at such a place. A place where I always feel like I could belong no matter where my place takes me. The town of my earliest youth is probably most responsible for this. Southbridge was a dying mill town in Central Massachusetts, although none of us kids new it was dying at the time. Settled initially by French-Canadien ex-pats, a second wave of migration from Puerto Rico occurred before I went to grade school. 10 or 15 percent of my classmates were children of Puerto Rican immigrants, but I knew them only as kids in school or teammates on the various fields of our youth. We fought side-by-side 100 times more often than we ever fought facing each other. Sure, they were different. Their grandparents spoke Spanish while most of ours spoke French.

Home since childhood has been driven more by economics than any other factor; the job has chosen the towns.  Most of my life since then has been lived in worlds that roughly track the Southbridge of my youth, roughly 80% White/20% Black or Brown. People of color were either there when I arrived (and so belonged as much as I), or arrived the same way I did (and so belonged as much as I). At this point I should confess that I’ve never given too very much thought to the color mix of my surroundings. This may also constitute “white privilege” I suppose, the privilege of not needing to be aware of color at all. What makes that kind of funny is that until the very last major move of my life, each time I’ve moved to a new place, many people assumed that I was Black prior to my arrival. Darrell White the presumably Black football player arriving at a new high school or at college? Nope. Short, skinny white guy. Darrell White the first ever Black med student or Black resident at my respective schools? No again. Still, short skinny white guy. Only my voice is 6’5″, and with no accent whatsoever my voice is colorless.

How about those two instances where I did feel different, in church and on the basketball court? In church it was mostly humorous since the other congregants made such a huge effort to make me feel welcome. Indeed, as the only White family among the churchgoers at the Black Baptist church one Christmas it was more than comical when the pastor, my friend the Rev. Mel Woodard, introduced us from the altar (over my gentle objection) to the congregation. “Please welcome The Whites!” With a twinkle in her eye “Lovely Daughter” leaned over to me in the pew: “Duh!” No, other than the obvious pointed out by Megan, in that setting the group made sure that only the most superficial differences existed for me in that room. I would only be “other” if I chose to be.

The basketball court just down the street from Wills Eye was a bit of a different matter, and because of that more instructive when examined through the magnification of the retrospectometer. The rules of pick-up ball are clear, and they are largely consistent in every park in America. There’s a line-up of who has “next”, and if you are not a regular you just call “next”, wait at the end of the line, and hope that you can assemble enough talent on your team to last more than one game. Here, like in church with Mel, mine was almost the only White face, but here I was “other” in every sense of the word. My turn as “next” kept getting lost on the list, the wait for that one game almost 2 hours before one of the park leaders acknowledged the tiny injustice and put my team on the court simply by joining us as our fifth guy. The other White guy was on the team, of course, and he was a stud baller. I was a bit to the right of average for that park; that game was the first time in my life when I was more conscious of what my game looked like than how I was playing. Who do I pass to? Do I take the open shot?

We lost the game, of course. Not so much because of anything I did or didn’t do during the game as that the other team had Joe “Jelly Bean” Bryant and no one could stop him (NBA vet, pretty decent player; his son Kobe had quite a run in the NBA). In the comfort of not needing to be the least bit introspective, of not needing to learn anything at all from that morning, all I got until these past weeks from my encounter with Philadelphia inner city hoops was pissed off that I only got a single run after waiting two hours for my “next”. It’s only now as I look back that I realize my sense of being scrutinized, of being conscious of how I looked while playing rather than just playing, needing to be much, much better than the other “average” ballers there that day because I was White. This lack of perspective in the moment at hand is also likely an example of White privilege.

The events–church, a pick-up basketball game–are trivial, but the fall-out, however long in coming, is not. The fact that it is now 35 years since my non-battle with Kobe’s dad and I am just now aware of how I felt may be part of what is called “White privilege”, but moments like this are to be encouraged however long they are in coming, don’t you think? My oldest friends of color, roommates and groomsmen, as well as friends of more recent vintage will likely welcome this sense with little more than a playful “what took you so long” wink, and begin the dialogue. They are, to a man, kind and generous people. The Rev. Woodard’s congregants didn’t even need the comfort and cover of friendship to offer a wink (and in their collective case, countless hugs), so aware were they of how it feels to be “other” until proven otherwise.

Sympathy, my friends, is not enough. Sympathy is situational and episodic, and is therefore also transient. After all, who among us but the most hardened bigots or the most unreachable psychopaths cannot find sympathy for the family of the man killed while instinctively reaching for his wallet, or the families of the officers gunned down while on duty? No, sympathy is not enough because it is only something that we feel, and not something that we are, or even choose to be. Empathy is the magic elixir because empathy cannot be set aside. Empathy is to feel with, not simply to feel for, because it is a part of who we are. But empathy is hard, and empathy takes time. No one would wish the loss of a loved one on another in order to feel “with”. Sometimes empathy is little more than a spark, and sometimes that spark is so small that it goes unnoticed or ignored.

There is a bridge, though, between sympathy and empathy, and it is understanding. Like a physical bridge one must look to the other side and seek to be there. Like any bridge one must have the faith that over the crest in the middle, beyond the road you can see, there lies ahead not a gap through which you will plummet to a certain doom, but a clear path to the other side. The trip may be a difficult one, but as with all trips, it will pass much more easily if in the company of others who either seek to understand as well, or better yet, others who already do. Like all those men and women who came up to me in church and hugged me after Mel’s introduction. Like the guy at the park who joined my team, made sure I got “next”, and told me to come back for a run the next Saturday.

Like my old friends Sheldon and Steve, Rasesh and Mel, as well as newer friends like my colleague Quentin. They will hold my hand and guide me as I traverse the bridge of understanding.

Whither CrossFit: Sunday musings…

Sunday musings…

Oh my.

This morning my first outside interaction was a quick note from one of my sons: “CrossFit shit storm”. Though it has been several years since I have had any meaningful association with official CrossFit I did a quick perusal of social media and up popped the story. CrossFit founder and CEO Greg Glassman had replied to an Instagram post about the death of George Floyd and the public health implications of systemic racism with a rather flippant statement combining the two great mega-issues before us today: COVID-19 and the national unrest that has followed Mr. Floyd’s death at the hands of a police officer. Already under fire for not “adequately” publicly responding to the devastating economic effects of the corona virus lockdowns on CrossFit Affiliate gyms, Coach Glassman essentially ladled accelerant on the flames.

Like so many things “CrossFit” over the years, this episode has multiple layers that touch on much more than what we see on the surface. My own CrossFit journey began in 2005, a time in which CF was little more than a tiny underground movement with a equally tiny group of nearly underground fitness “rebels” fighting what felt like a righteous enemy in the entrenched fitness (and nutrition) community, led by a brash iconoclast who reveled in conflict. Conflict that he routinely initiated, mind you. While I have never been employed by CrossFit, Inc. in any manner I was certainly an “insider”, comfortable in the “halls” of CF HQ as well as in the spaces CrossFitters call Boxes, CrossFit Gyms. My role such as it may have been, was to speak as a friendly fellow traveler to those in the CF community. Kind of a “Goodwill Ambassador” to both insiders and outsiders alike.  It was a role that I created, one that was by turns encouraged and barely tolerated by Mr. Glassman and others in HQ, until it wasn’t. A few years ago it was time to step away.

It’s been quite awhile since “CrossFit” has been mentioned in Sunday musings or Random Thoughts. Why now? As a longtime participant and observer who now has literally nothing invested in anything CrossFit (with the exception of several life-long friendships made in my earliest years there) I thought I might add a bit of perspective to what is happening at the moment for the benefit of those who are relatively new to the movement and the business known collectively as CrossFit. In particular I am hopeful that this perspective will be helpful to my fellow physicians, especially those who have recently come to the CrossFit world as part of their personal battle on the front lines of healthcare, fighting one person at a time to keep their patients alive and healthy. Again please note that I am speaking for myself; I do not speak on behalf of CrossFit, Inc.

In order to begin to understand how to interpret this week’s events in the CrossFit world one must first understand and acknowledge that “CrossFit” is not an omnibus term that means or encompasses one single thing. Rather, CrossFit is and has always been three interrelated entities. It is first, and foremost, a fitness methodology. “Constantly varied functional movements performed at relatively high intensity” designed to enhance and increase fitness. “Fitness” in the CrossFit sense is further defined as “work capacity across broad time and modal domains”: how far can you move how much, how fast. Countless trees have been sacrificed and electrons unleashed in debating whether there is anything unique, or even new, about the first part, the methodology. I’ve long counted myself in the camp that the “how” of CrossFit the system is indeed different and new; very smart, kind and considerate people both agree and disagree with me on that, which is more than OK.

Defining fitness was arguably a true “first”, and in so doing Mr. Glassman created a platform of a sort. More than that, by defining fitness CrossFit created a way that fitness might be measured. The CrossFit “Curve” of fitness attributes theoretically gives us the opportunity to measure an individual’s level of fitness by calculating the “area under the curve”. While this has proven to be more challenging than originally thought, this measurement gave birth to the second of the three distinct entities under the CrossFit umbrella: The Sport of Fitness. If you can measure something you can turn it into a competition. With what can only be described as a barbecue at which a bunch of folks engaged in friendly games from the gym was born what we’ve come to know as The CrossFit Games (note: I foolishly turned down a personal invitation to attend, thereby missing what is arguably the most pure expression of the “CrossFit Community” before or since).

While my view of the Games and the “Gamesification” of CrossFit was originally quite contrarian (conventional stance: the Games did more to bring awareness to CF than anything before or since), it was clear to me that the emphasis on competition drove CF away from  what was clearly its early drive to improve health. Indeed, the loud introduction of the CrossFit definition of health (Fitness over time) was drowned out by all things “Games”. As far back as 2010 I publicly (here on my blog) and privately encouraged a re-dedication to the kind of fitness and health discussions and emphasis seen on the CrossFit Forum in the earlier days of CrossFit. The introduction of CrossFit for Health along with a seminar program specifically aimed at practicing physicians was a welcome pivot by CrossFit, Inc. back to its roots.

Which brings us to the third leg of the three-legged stool that is “CrossFit”: CrossFit, the business. CrossFit, Inc. is a combination of an educational business and an affiliate business in which independent gym owners pay a fee to use the “CrossFit” banner as a part of their brand. In return for a relatively modest fee (in comparison with franchise fees) a CrossFit affiliate is enabled to operate with rather minimal rules (in comparison with the franchise model) regarding the actual practice of “CrossFit” the fitness modality. CrossFit the business is a one-man shop when it comes to corporate direction. The face of CrossFit was, is, and will be Greg Glassman until such time as he decides otherwise.

Nothing that transpired this week is new or unique. Mr. Glassman marches to his own drum. More than that, once he has chosen his particular beat he pounds that drum loudly, regardless of how his audience responds. On occasion even his good intentions are drowned out by his drumming; it is often tone deaf and off-key, (if asked my bet is that he truly felt he was being supportive of protesters against racism). Many in the CrossFit universe feel that Mr. Glassman’s views on the national protests about racism and police brutality are flat-out wrong. Disappointment and anger are the public sentiments. A wish to separate from CrossFit expressed. This has happened before, albeit on issues much less global and at times when CrossFit was much tinier in all ways. Mr. Glassman is nothing if not consistent. When his views run counter to prevailing views he has typically doubled down rather than withdraw. I have never seen him back down, no matter how tiny the corner that he has backed into may become. Expecting anything different this week is as fruitful as expecting the sunrise to hold off because you got to bed a bit later than usual and need a few more hours of sleep.

And so, whither CrossFit? It is not my place to suggest to CrossFit, Inc. how it should proceed. It never was. Nor is it my place to suggest to any of you who might read my drivel how you should respond to what comes from Mr. Glassman or CrossFit, Inc. CrossFit, and Mr. Glassman, will address the issue of systemic racism and associated mistreatment of Black Americans by a faction of the police force, or they won’t. Both are incomprehensible to me, a middle-aged white man who has acknowledged (and written) about a lifetime free of the concerns of racism and the likelihood of harm at the hands of a police officer. Like white bread I am of no particular distinction in the eyes of those who would judge one by how one looks. I am bland; I don’t register. I can not empathize, I can only be as sympathetic as possible. And so, like most of White America I struggle with how to actionably express my dismay at such things. To in some way give not lip service but be of real, actionable service in the hard work necessary to effect change here.

As for CrossFit, my views on the gamesification of CrossFit (not a great thing) and the recent pivot back to emphasizing health (a good thing) have been consistent over many years now. CrossFit, the methodology is still, when followed according to its original spirit and intent (and perhaps even better,  how it has evolved in the hands of several OG’s no longer affiliated with CF), the best overall fitness program I have encountered in a lifetime of fitness and athletics. This is the part that I do want to suggest. Constantly varied functional movements performed at relatively high intensity following the progression of form, then consistency, and then intensity, is still transformative, especially if it is accompanied by a diet low in processed foods and sugar, also encouraged by the CrossFit modality. This is separate, and separable, from the business of CrossFit and the public (and private) missives of the founder and CEO of CrossFit, Inc.

Understanding what “CrossFit” is will hopefully assist you in evaluating what it means to you and how you will choose to interact with all three of the very distinct entities that in combination constitute “CrossFit”. One can simultaneously, honorably, both do and disavow “CrossFit”.

I’ll see you next week…

St. bingo of the Sweaty Angel (ret.)

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