Richard Sherman’s journey from Compton to Stanford University......Sherman pushed back on the media and the public’s view of him as a “thug,”....Sherman earned a 4.2 GPA at his high school in Compton.

Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman pushed back on the media and the public’s view of him as a “thug,” saying “stop trying to label people” and using his own background as a Stanford-educated black man from Compton to illustrate his point.  

Richard Sherman

“I’ve kind of had to be a chameleon of sorts because you walk, I mean, you drive from Compton to Stanford and you’ve got to be able to flip the switch. The culture’s too different to treat them both the same and I think it’s not right to treat them both the same,” Sherman told msnbc’s Chris Hayes on Monday, describing his first encounter with Stanford as “culture shock.”

“Where I’m from, there isn’t a lot of culture, a lot of diversity,” Sherman said of Compton, a rough neighborhood in south Los Angeles. “I was kind of shocked [at Stanford]: shocked at the way they’re talking, the conversation, the dialogue.”  Sherman earned a 4.2 GPA at his high school in Compton.

“A kid from Compton who hadn’t seen too much outside the city, to tell you the truth, had to really adjust and really acclimate to that environment,” Sherman said. more