Dirk Scribbler's Guide to Being a 97 Percent Raiders Fan, Part 2

As explained in Part 1, part of what drives my love for the Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders is my subconscious infatuation with California.  However, my conscious decision to make the Raiders my AFC team ran even deeper than Tecmo Super Bowl, fierce team colors or the love for anything Compton native Kendrick Lamar laid out in "The Recipe".  From a social and political standpoint, neither Oakland nor Los Angeles have not been kind to people of color, especially in regards to police brutality.  The Black Panther Party, who were formed in Oakland in 1966, served as enforcers of justice specifically for Black and Brown people around the country against systemic racism despite perceived and actual controversy.  Although I've never seen any of them in Raiders paraphernalia, they wore all black as a sign of solidarity and empowerment.  So in Part 2 of "Dirk Scribbler's Guide to Being a 97 Percent Raiders Fan", I dig deeper than football to speak about how the Raiders became the inadvertent symbol of a new era which included yours truly...

In 1988, the anti-establishment attitude of West Coast hip hop "gangsta rap" group N.W.A. and their iconic (and controversial) album, Straight Outta Compton, embodied the "take no prisoners" mantra of the Raiders franchise and its loyal fan base.  Ice Cube, who is one of my favorite rappers primarily for his work after N.W.A., has not only continued to be the most notable Raiders fan from the hip-hop quintet, particularly since they beat the Eagles in Super Bowl XV, but one of the most vocal supporters  of the squad from the entertainment community overall.  In an April 2010 interview with Sam Alipour, Cube spoke about the natural gravitation of the group toward the Raiders and being uniform in their approach:

We had to dress like a group.  We wasn't with that, like some of the other groups back then. So we was like, "Yo, everybody just wear black."  Then I started wearing my Raiders hat.  More and more, when it was time to do a photo shoot or whatever, it was like, "Yo, grab your black Raiders stuff."  Now fans are buying Raiders stuff, and the logo and image is feeling like us.  We're the Raiders.  We're pirates, which was our attitude...they moved to our backyard.  The Coliseum is in South Central Los Angeles.  They moved the baddest team with the baddest attitude into one of the baddest cities in America.  It convinced the world that this kind of LA really exists.

Before I even read one word of this article, I understood this mentality even as a young kid.  To one extent, the Raiders seemed like a more accessible team behind which to rally than most teams: "It seemed like my uncles played for the Raiders," Cube said.  To a greater extent, N.W.A. as well as Cube's role as Darrin "Doughboy" Baker in John Singleton's Boyz n the Hood (1991) gave a voice to the younger section of the Black community living in the most dilapidated and dangerous sections of our society, many of whom resorted to the most desperate means to survive because of the lack of opportunity and sustained support.  When those parts of a community are forgotten about and cast aside, being raider-like seems like the natural order of progression regardless of how wrong it is or seems to those outside of it; hence, an unscripted oneness came together and the Raiders became the banner team.

While the organization at-large didn't necessarily turn down the free publicity, not everyone was amused.  Former Raiders linebacker Rod Martin, who notched a record three INTs in that Super Bowl XV win, echoed the sentiments of the incensed section of America including but not limited to White people and older generations of Black people who wrote off the general genre as "that hip-hop, be-bop stuff".  He called N.W.A. "too hardcore" and felt their image wasn't "a good advertisement" for the franchise, despite the team developing their own "thuggish reputation".  In "The Birth of Gangsta Rap" episode of Netflix's Hip-Hop Evolution, MC Eiht spoke about the proliferation of White kids gravitating toward the music and imagery associated with N.W.A.: "When White America was like, 'Oh, my kids are putting on Raiders hats and they're going out striking up walls,' and you know, being somebody that they're not...that sh** will scare you."  Despite being the "safe" guy who many would've assumed was a bigger fan of MC Hammer, surviving Ward Eight D.C. during the drug epidemic and rampant violence of the 80s and 90s aligned me more with a group like N.W.A. and driving/walking/breathing while Black is something to which I could relate even at a young age.  Although I didn't desire to artistically or literally follow in N.W.A.'s footsteps, I subconsciously chose the Raiders and the "all black everything" mantra as a form of protest against expectations--something I have subtly done my entire life in one way or another.

The brash and rebellious persona of Al Davis and the Raiders reached other sections of the East Coast and signaled my gravitation toward another iconic hip hop group, although unbeknownst to me at the time.  When you sift through several throwback pictures of Black power sound bombers Public Enemy--one of my top five hip-hop groups of all time--you'll see several photos of Chuck D wearing Raiders hats and jackets--including a vintage Los Angeles Raiders hat on the cover of their groundbreaking 1988 album, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.  In a 1991 Village Voice interview, heralded music critic Robert Christgau asked P.E.'s frontman how he liked to visually present himself and Chuck offered the following perspective:

Well, out of strength.  Back in the day, I was like the first to put on a black Raiders hat, because it was a black hat.  One of the few black hats you could find.  The Raiders had kind of silver and black, and I said, "Well, why not, kind of dope."  They didn't make Raiders hats, I would've been in trouble.

Although they were more progressive in speaking about the Black struggle than N.W.A., Chuck D and Ice Cube--who would eventually work together once Cube went solo on "Endangered Species (Tales from the Darkside)" and "Burn Hollywood Burn", a video in which both Chuck and Cube wore Raiders snapbacks--showed love for the same team for one main reason: the colors and the attitude represented something no other team in the NFL did.  Instead of accepting the negative connotation behind the color black, Chuck D reconstituted it into a social statement to speak truth to power among our people and strike fear into those who vehemently oppose our causes.

Even deeper than music, The Silver and Black also has connections to the fallout from the 1991-92 trial involving the beating of Rodney King by four LAPD officers and the 1992 L.A. Riots.  Seeing various specials over the past year made me recall being twelve years old and dumbfounded at how police officers could brutally assault and Taser a man, get caught on camera doing it, but still get off scot-free.  I vividly remember the hurt and disappointment on the faces of Black folks in Cali--many of them wearing Raiders hats--as well as my bewilderment at how my brothers and sisters could destroy their own community, despite understanding their frustration with the "legal" system undermining our rights.  There wasn't much difference in "uniform" during O.J. Simpson's murder trial as Black folk erupted in jubilance once the football star was found not guilty--a celebration neither in which I have ever joined nor with which I have ever agreed, but I comprehend the logic once again.  Mind you, this is all happening while the Raiders ironically packed up and went back to Oakland after the 1992 Riots decimated South Central L.A. and Davis and the city failed to agree on improvements to the L.A. Coliseum.  For better or worse, the colors and the Raider mentality once again resonated with and encapsulated the battered spirits within L.A.'s Black community and beyond--many of whom were patiently waiting for their moment to rebel.

Fast forward 20 years and my favorite hat is a conversation piece beyond people giving my team props for finally shaking their playoff absence.  One night at America's Best Wings in Silver Spring, a fellow customer asked me, "You wearing that hat because of Straight Outta Compton or are you actually a fan?"  I swiftly responded, "Nah bruh, I'm wearing this hat because I'm a fan.  I haven't even seen Straight Outta Compton yet."  What seemed intended as a shot at some sort of bandwagoning turned out to be a good conversation about Bo Jackson as well as about N.W.A.  A year later while looking for a new winter coat, a guy working at Sbarro in Arundel Mills tried to come at my fandom as well as how "woke" I was.  He saw the hat and said, "So the Raiders your team for real?"  I answered, "Yeah...I was a Skins fan, but the Raiders have always been my AFC team."  Then he saw an ankh around my neck and smirked, "What you know about that right there?"  With a responsive smirk, I said, "I know a little something about that."

Bottom line, the Raiders have consciously and subconsciously represented more than an NFL team.  The Silver and Black began in Oakland amidst racial unrest in a city where Black and Brown people were harassed and brutalized by police officers, many of whom were strategically shipped from the South; moved to Los Angeles during one of the most infamously drug-ridden, violent and racially-charged times in American history; and back to a not-much-safer Oakland where law enforcement is still problematic as evidenced in the 2009 shooting death of Oscar Grant at Fruitvale Station.  Much like the Black Panther Party in the late 60s and 70s, what is actually the absence of color in a football team's color scheme unintentionally and ironically became the presence of power for a significant section of a younger, "angrier" community in the 80s and 90s.  While the likelihood of acting like a raider to the most extreme and unsavory extents is unlikely, the synonymy between my new favorite NFL team, the genre and culture of music in which I thrive the most and the multilayered struggle of my people is undeniable and has become an unexpected propellant in my own visual presentation and train of thought.

Due to recent developments, the love fest for The Silver and Black is not over yet!  Please come back next Tuesday for the third and final installment of "Dirk Scribbler's Guide to Being a 97 Percent Raiders Fan", which will discuss the Raiders' plan to move to Las Vegas by 2020.  In the meantime, if your Raider Nation story is anything like mine and if you simply have a few memories of these times, then please feel free to drop a comment or two!!!