Vivian Stringer is the head coach of the Rutger’s women’s basketball team, so many of you may have heard her name in the wake of Don Imus’s racist and sexist comments. However, her story and her influence as a pioneering woman extends well beyond the Imus controversy. She has an amazing biography, and she is undoubtably a pioneering African American woman. Her influence as a role model extends well beyond her coaching background, as revealed in the press surrounding the book:
A gifted athlete, she had to fight for a place on an all-white cheerleading squad in the sixties. In 1981, just as her coaching career was taking off, her fourteen-month-old daughter, Nina, was stricken with spinal meningitis. Nina would never walk or talk again. Still grieving, Stringer brought a small, poor, historically black college to the national championships—a triumph hailed as “Hoosiers with an all-female cast.” In 1991, her husband, Bill—her staunchest supporter, the father of her children, and the love of her life—fell dead of a sudden heartattack, but that same year, she led yet another young team to the Final Four. Through these dark times and others—including her bout with cancer, shared here for the first time—Stringer has carried her burdens with grace. Given her history, it was no surprise that she led her team to respond to Don Imus’s slurs with dignity and courage.
Standing Tall is a story of quiet strength in the face of punishing odds. Above all, it is an extraordinary love story—love for the game, for the players she has coached, for her close-knit family, and for the husband she lost far too soon. It will resonate long after the last page.
Stringer releases her autobiography today and I encourage everyone to check it out. It’s often that I put up stories about the mistreatment of black women in the US, so it is nice to have an occasion to celebrate some one who helps challenge those images of black women.
I thought that the Rutgers Women’s Basketball team took exactly the right approach with regards to Don Imus’ remarks. Instead of playing the victim card and running around with the poverty pimps, they acted with self-possession and dignity and inner strength and showed him up for the punk he is. Now we see that it was no accident; the young women involved had a good role model.
“Playing the victim card” and “poverty pimps” are terms white people use to say “anyone who has been hurt by racism or poverty should shut up and stop whining.” Those are certainly not terms used by anyone who wants to have a reasonable discussion with anyone outside of right-wing circles. I’m surprised at you.
That said, I agree that Stringer provided strong and astute leadership to her team. Thanks for these links, Rachel.
It’s funny that you think that, RonF. During the whole Imus debacle, a lot of folks did see the Rutgers team and Stringer as “oversensitive whiners who can’t take a joke and who choose to wallow in victimology”. After the Virginia Tech incident, people were saying things like “See, Rutgers girls, THIS is a big deal!”
Here’s a quote from Imus’s wife, who seems like a very sweet woman, for the record.
“I want to say the hate mail being sent to them must stop,” Deirdre said. “If any one has hate mail, send it to my husband. … You’re doing the wrong thing here.”
So, if a target of something like the Don Imus slam does anything short of laughing it off, they will be accused of playing “the victim card” and demonized by a substantial amount of people.
Well, I actually paid attention to that whole thing. There were numerous people who tried to gain some kind of political advantage out of it. But people directly involed with the team (members, coaches, etc.) didn’t whine and didn’t engage people like the Rev. Al Sharpton (my poster child for the term “poverty pimp”, I have no respect for the man at all) to speak for them. And they didn’t run around talking about how they’d been victimized by Don Imus or how this shows how racist American society is; they didn’t act like victims at all. They also certainly didn’t laugh it off; they concentrated on how despicable and low class Don Imus had acted. They made it clear through both public statements and their example that Don Imus had not damaged their dignity or image, he had damaged his own.
But what does it mean, exactly, to “act like a victim”? I imagine there’s as many ways to deal with victimization as there are people who’ve been victimized…. *scratches head*