Earvin “Magic” Johnson Awarded for His Community Efforts
By: Carla Morrison
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I recently caught up with Mr. Earvin “Magic” Johnson during the Hennessy Privilege Awards Ceremony in Los Angeles, California, where Magic Johnson, along side three African American newspaper publishers: LA Watts Times’ Melanie Polk; The Herald Dispatch’s John Holoman and Los Angeles Sentinel’s Jennifer Thomas, were given the Hennessy Privilege Award; which was recently created to honor those who have made extraordinary contributions to their communities.

The event took place at Windows Restaurant in the Transamerica building, owned by Magic Johnson in downtown Los Angeles. Although the LA Lakers were playing across the street at the Staples Center, it didn’t keep Magic, his staff nor media and entertainment types from attending this awards program. Drinks provided by Hennessy, were flowing, and appetizers were being passed around, as actresses Lisa Raye and MC Lyte, Comedienne Earthquake and up & coming singer Anthony Hamilton mingled with the crowd of business people and community pioneers.

Prior to our interview, Magic thanked his staff in front  of the standing only crowd, and said, “I’m only as  good as my staff. And I have a wonderful staff of  people.” Magic went on to say, ”you know   this  award must be special, because I’m missing the   Lakers tonight; Especially with Kobe playing. But   the one thing that I did get out of this besides the award is you chose my building and you paid for it and that’s good. So at the same time, I say thank you to all of you. When you look around at this building, this is something that a minority can own and operate.”

During our interview, I found out Magic’s thoughts on the lack of other black millionaires investing in the black community, big business in Urban America, Magic’s plans for the future and his take on this years LA Lakers.

Magic

We make millions of dollars. We have our families and we have many other families. When you grow up in Urban America, you just don’t have one mother, you have a lot of mothers. And the shameful thing about it is those players and those people who make it out of the neighborhood, don’t come back and invest their money and that’s the shame of it all. But I know that I have just a wonderful time just going back into the communities and bringing the Star Bucks and the different things, to not only create economic development but also to bring pride to our community and also bring jobs to our community and that’s what we need. So, we need to invest our money back into our community and make sure those dollars recycle within our community.

How do you feel about receiving this award?

It feels super, but again at the same time, I shouldn’t get honored for something that I should be doing. When you are a black man growing up in a black community, in Urban America you should, if you make it, come back and invest in your people and in your communities and I’m hoping that others will follow my lead in what I have done.

Why do you think a lot of players are not following your lead? Are there others following your lead?

Well, not as many as should. I think there should be a lot more doing what I am doing. And I hope that we wake up soon. The problem that we have is our dollars don’t recycle in our own communities and what happens is other groups of people own businesses in our community so what they do is take the money from our community and spend it in their own community, so we must some how get these young athletes as well as entertainers to say ‘hey look, I grew up in this community, there’s a great opportunity for me to now come back do some good, in terms of putting a business there, put some people to work and you have a great chance of making some money at the same time.’”

Why is it so difficult to get them to follow your lead?

Either a lot of times they have managers or agents who tell them not to. Or it shouldn’t be a reason they should not know, they gotta see the success. We’ve been around now for twelve years and I started with 3 Star Bucks now I have 54. And we are going to build another 100 / 200. So they see the numbers everyday. Star Bucks wouldn’t invest that many if they weren’t making money and if I wasn’t making money. So it’s a right time to be a minority and put your money in to Urban America because now everybody else is coming in now. Where they were scared to come before, companies are not scared, because they know the growth of their company depends on Urban America. 700 billion spending power with African Americans another 600 billion for Latinos and they’re moving up fast. So with that being said, your opportunities to be successful is really high now. And so you just have to come in and put your money where your mouth is and do the right thing. It’s so unbelievable that we are sitting here in 2003 and we still don’t own the majority of our own community. We probably own 1, 2, 3 percent of our own community, but we get mad when somebody else comes in and we don’t have to do that anymore. Right now is the most black millionaires that we ever had, so right now we should just be owning our own community. You look at what happened in Harlem now. Harlem is back. And now, not only blacks want to live in Harlem, whites want to live in Harlem. And if you see what’s going on now, you use to get a brownstone before for $100,000. Now you can’t get one less than $750,000 to a million dollars. We have to look up, wake up and invest in our own communities and in our own people.

How do you do it all?

I don’t think I do it all. I just do my part. I see opportunities, I do my homework, I do my research, I know that there’s an opportunity to make some money and do some good at the same time and just like this building, it was a great opportunity. Now I have all these companies trying to buy this building from me, because they know this is a gold mine. I see something, I go for it. I’m an aggressive businessman. When I see there is a chance for me to be successful and make some money, I jump on it. I don’t wait, I don’t talk. Our people gotta stop talking and be about action.

Do you get any sleep at night with all the things that you are doing?

I don’t need that much sleep. I’m happiest when I’m working. And I work all the time. I love it. When I wake up, I do my jogging, I work out and then I’m ready to go. My wife always criticize me, Cookie says ‘you know what, we are on vacation but your body is here, but your mind is somewhere else.’ This is what I do and this is what I enjoy doing. And again, it’s is a blessing from GOD.

LAKERS
I think we are looking forward to the Lakers. They got to be right there to play San Antonio, Sacramento and New Jersey. I feel good about the season; we are happy Kobe is back. Now that we could put all the pieces together and look forward to hopefully a successful season. Now we know it’s going to take some time for those four guys (Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Karl Malone & Gary Payton) to get to know each other, but we feel confident that once they do play for about two months together, that by that third month, they should develop. It’s going to be fun. The key player to this whole situation is Gary Payton, because he changes the tempo for us. Karl Malone has the brut strength, the size that we didn’t’ have last year at the power forward, plus he can score. And then when you mix those two with our other two, you got the four Hall of Famers, it’s just going to make life easier for Shaq and Kobe. We feel good about it, the whole country is buzzing about this team and we’re just looking forward to them getting out there and having a successful and healthy season; because everybody in the basketball world and not want to see what this team is going to do.

Magic encouraged the standing room only crowd to think big and pursue your dreams. “We have to think big, we have to go after our dreams and continue to work together.” Johnson also suggested when choosing your liquor, to select a brand invests in your community and Hennessey has done that. He concluded, “and make sure at the end of the day you pray, not only for yourself but for others. May God bless you.”