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By Rickey Hampton, Editor and Founder of The African-American Athlete
You may have never heard of Brandon Mebane. He, and others like him in the National Football League, battle in the trenches, play after play, after play.
Although unheralded, Mebane is a millionaire. The veteran defensive tackle for the Los Angeles Chargers has earned millions of dollars in his 11-years in the National Football League. In fact, he is in the second-year of a $13 million deal he signed with the Chargers, after playing the first nine years of his career in Seattle, where he was taken in the third-round of the 2007 draft.
But when you are black that is what some people see first and foremost. It doesn’t matter if you are worth $13, $13 million, or $130 million, all some will see is your blackness. And they very well may hold it against you.
It is almost certain that is precisely what happened to Mebane, when he looked to move into a new apartment in Irvine, an affluent suburb of Los Angeles. The Chargers have moved from San Diego to L.A. But Mebane, despite his enormous wealth, and sparkling credit score that checks out at more than 800, Mebane’s apartment application was turned down.
He says it is because his family is black.
“We weren’t welcome in that neighborhood,” Mebane told the Los Angeles Daily News. “They chose somebody else because their credit score was four points higher.
“When your credit score is in the 800s, it’s pretty much a wash. But you can’t tell a person they can’t come in your neighborhood because they’re black; that’s against the law,” he said. “They don’t actually say those types of things. But they’ll point out things like those four points. The neighborhood was brand new. There were no black families there.”
Mebane, 32, knows the L.A. area all too well. He grew up in Los Angeles, and attended Crenshaw High School, before heading off to college at the University of California. He understands how race matters in L.A., and everywhere else, for that matter. Perhaps that is why he offered to pay six months rent in advance, and his wife put together a cover letter that their realtor said “was the best application I have seen.”
However, what Mebane couldn’t do is change the pigmentation of his skin. There is no doubt that if he were a white man, the family would have been openly welcomed.
Mebane said he isn’t the only Charger that has been discriminated against in Orange County, where only 1.5 percent of the population is black. He said a teammate offered to pay one year’s rent up front to stay in a home in Newport Beach. But at the last minute, the deal was negated. Eventually, the teammate was told the renter did not allow pets. Mebane thinks that is B.S. “then, they find out the family is black and decide they weren’t accepting pets,” Mebane said.
There is an old saying in some parts of the black community that asks the question. What does a room full of white men, call a rich black man when he leaves the room?
‘Nigger’
Tragically, that is precisely the case far too often.
