By Efrain Nieves
Aaron Hernandez’s life and upbringing, in many aspects, is similar to ours with his stellar athleticism being the one variant setting him apart. From early on, he had all the numbers to beat the odds: he was ahead of the pack. For those reading this blog, that like me grew up poor, forgotten and marginalized in all ways possible, perhaps can relate to why for many boys that grew up in the hood, Aaron Hernandez gave us hope. Particularly for those of us that are of Puerto Rican descent, like him.
Without any intent of generalizing, if we ask boys growing up in the inner cities what success means to them chances are that they will answer “playing football like Victor Cruz, Ray Lewis and Lawrence Taylor or playing basketball like Dwayne Wade and Carmelo Anthony. But yet there are some boys whose role models are not…
Great article. It’s bad that we still live in a time when so much is put on the shoulders of a non Caucasian. Yet, the media still bombs us with Caucasian Caucasian Caucasian. You’d think at least in science fiction, we’d see that it’s not only Caucasians we can look up to. Out there in space, I doubt that the main biped characters are always Caucasian.