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" March 30, 2011 CLEVELAND \u2014 Got my hair cut yesterday. I&amp;#039;m here in my old hometown, and I needed a special cut, something to deliver a message to LeBron James, my nemesis. I&amp;#039;m writing a book about James \u2014 the Whore of Akron \u2014 and the Cavaliers and the Heat played on Tuesday night, their final meeting of the year. Thanks to serendipity, I had a seat three rows behind the Heat bench, so I wanted my head to represent my feelings. Literally. There&amp;#039;s a problem when you&amp;#039;re an old white man looking for that kind of haircut \u2014 several problems, actually. The historical role of the barber shop in an African-American neighborhood is singular, complex in ways I&amp;#039;m too ignorant to parse; I do know enough to say that a strange white man strolling into a black barber shop is a strange white man. So Jimi Izrael, a writer and also an adjunct professor at Case Western Reserve University, took me to his shop and introduced me to his barber, Dmitri Sumbry. Dmitri&amp;#039;s a great barber and a passionate Cleveland sports fan. He shares my disdain for LeBron, and he worked hard, for nearly three hours, to razor QUITNESS onto my pale noggin. But my hair is white, and it was hard to read. Jimi had to run over to a beauty-supply shop and bring back some make-up pencils. Artist that he is, Dmitri went with the blood-red:  It was a great game, the sort of catharsis unique to sports and other fine arts. The Cavs rose up to smite the Heat, Cleveland fans enjoyed a rare and precious swig of vengeance and joy, and eventually \u2014 soon, I hope \u2014 the red will wash out of what hair I have left. All in all, a wonderful night. But something Jimi Izrael said stuck in my brain, and echoes still: &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t make me your Negro tour guide.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;ve spent weeks asking African-American pundits to talk with me on the record about race for my book \u2014 men of national stature \u2014 not because I think race is necessarily crucial to understanding LeBron and The Decision and the reaction to it, but because it would be dumb and dishonest to deny race is some part of it, and a part of how NBA fans, black and white, view the game. So far, I&amp;#039;ve asked six men to speak with me for the book. All six have declined. I think there are various and valid reasons for that \u2014 my public vitriol toward James, my book&amp;#039;s title (The Whore of Akron), a reluctance to cede editorial control \u2014 but I think Jimi nailed it: I&amp;#039;m asking folks I don&amp;#039;t know, folks who don&amp;#039;t know me, to serve as my Negro tour guide. Twenty-plus years of working with some of America&amp;#039;s best editors and writers, yet I still don&amp;#039;t need two hands to count my African-American friends in the business. It takes no hands to count to zero. Whatever this says about American culture or the nature of journalism, it&amp;#039;s a personal indictment first of all, a measure of how walled off \u2014 and how comfy with being walled off \u2014 I truly am. I don&amp;#039;t think about that, and because I don&amp;#039;t, I&amp;#039;m certainly not about to even try to do much about it. After all, without Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Louis Armstrong, and Kanye, I wouldn&amp;#039;t be the writer I am. So it&amp;#039;s all good. I&amp;#039;m cool.  But I&amp;#039;m not, and it&amp;#039;s not. I&amp;#039;m thrilled the Cavs won. I&amp;#039;m grateful to Jimi and Dmitri. But I&amp;#039;m feeling pretty low, too, wondering what any of us can do to break down these walls. All I know how to do is write. -- Writer-at-large Scott Raab&amp;#039;s new book, The Whore of Akron: One Man&amp;#039;s Search for the Soul of LeBron James, is now available for pre-order. In the meantime, click here to follow the @Scott_Raab journey on Twitter and click the tabs above at left for more on LeBron&amp;#039;s flight. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/sports/a9700/lebron-james-race-card-5481203/>