Sports couldn’t save Bryce Gowdy, and his suicide shines a sad spotlight on an ignored crisis

.....It is unfortunate that it takes the death of blossoming black athletic bodies to heighten awareness of the demise of young black bodies not necessarily part of our sports industrial complex. But that has become our value system. We pay attention to the black boys who entertain us. Others may as well be invisible. No matter that all of them suffer the same troubles, such as the trauma of racism, chaotic home lives, unstable finances and, Lindsey added, a barrage of news reports about their lot that has engendered a sense of hopelessness....

.....The story that was supposed to be written about Bryce Gowdy — and Zachary Winston — was one you have read a dozen times over. It was supposed to be how sports rescued them from a bad-luck situation, the vagaries of growing up poor, having to survive a violence-ridden neighborhood where its most prominent members are kings and queens of a lumpenproletariat.