African-American men still get “branded”. It’s just voluntary these days

Christopher DeGroot writes:

Ordinary people, of course, also bear out human nature’s powerful inclination to idolatry. Playing basketball over the years, I have encountered numerous black men who had tattoos of certain rappers on their bodies. These are the sort of men who, though they may not even have a bank account, dealing as they do with the local cash-checking businesses, will still spend hundreds of dollars on a pair of sneakers whose value resides in their being another man’s brand: Kevin Durant, Paul George, or whoever. When it comes to people who are famous, most humans betray a reflexive slavishness, akin to their manner with authority: Being so little in themselves, and so incapable of self-reliance, they consider it valuable indeed to meet or have some indirect association with a celebrated figure, even if he has no real merit,