Kareem fails to hook small audience

He may hold the most NBA MVP awards. He may be the NBA's all-time leading playoff scorer. And he may have been selected for the All Star game a total of 18 times. But none of that seemed to matter last night. What mattered most to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the Connaissance featured fall speaker, was reading aloud from his book, Profiles in Black Courage. Unfortunately, his audience didn't seem to feel the same way. Addressing a noticeably small crowd of about 200 students and community members at the 1,100-seat Irvine Auditorium, Abdul-Jabbar read excerpts from his book, which sheds light on the lesser-known African-American figures in history who have been left out of America's history books. "History books still don't portray African Americans as fundamentally American," Abdul-Jabbar said. "Too many youngsters today, particularly African Americans, feel disconnected from their country." Abdul-Jabbar, who converted to Islam over 30 years ago after being inspired by The Autobiography of Malcolm X, attributed this disconnect to what he identified as white historians' efforts to "keep revising history to diminish the accomplishments of African Americans." Abdul-Jabbar's message was clear: America needs to acknowledge the contributions of all its citizens, not just whites. But while the message may have been valuable, its delivery disappointed many in attendance. "I expected a lot more of him getting out from behind the podium," College senior Cassandra Georges said. "I think he did a great job reading from his book, but as far as getting the Penn students to stay in their seats and not leave in the middle, I think we're both at fault." Indeed, it was apparent throughout the evening that what most students came to see was not what Abdul-Jabbar ended up offering. The event had been publicized as "Black Profiles in Courage," but nowhere was this specified as the title of his book. Past Connaissance speakers, such as Conan O'Brien and Benjamin Netanyahu, have packed auditoriums and drawn rave reviews. In addition to the students' unfulfilled expectations last night, the speaker's inability to draw a large crowd contributed to what many felt was an awkward atmosphere. College junior Dimitri Dube said the lack of ticket sales could most likely be attributed to the fact that "[Abdul-Jabbar] is an athlete, and people refuse to see him as more than an athlete.... In fact, he's an articulate, intelligent man with a lot of opinions on a lot of matters that are important for people to hear and understand." College senior Nishchay Maskay, co-director of Connaissance, which sponsored the event, could not pinpoint the reason for such low attendance. "It was disappointing that there weren't more people.... But I think the people who did go got a lot out of it." This was more apparent during the question-and-answer session that followed Abdul-Jabbar's reading, when audience members got a chance to address issues absent from his talk. One question addressed the NBA's lack of efforts to engage African-American youth, and here Abdul-Jabbar did not hesitate to scold the NBA for its "rather limited outlook on this." Responding to another question regarding Philadelphia 76ers superstar Allen Iverson's upcoming release of a controversial music album, Abdul-Jabbar said that while he had not read the lyrics to Iverson's songs, "the macho posturing of some of our young people gets to the point where it is a problem."