NBA: African-Americans in a White Man's World

Race is always a sensitive subject. But it's apparent in almost everything that consumes modern-day. And the realm of basketball is no exception. As an avid fan and follower of the sport for more than ten years, I'm amazed at how I didn't understand the existence of racial issues in the NBA until recently. It came to my attention when NBA forward LeBron James suddenly welcomed the issue of race into his life and his professional basketball career after receiving significant negative backlash from his decision to air "The Decision" on ESPN that would reveal to the world where he would be "taking his talents to" for the upcoming 2010-2011 NBA season.

Upon hearing this charge, I, at first, could not understand how race had anything to do with the negative publicity that "The Decision" was receiving from the nation. My personal reason for disliking LeBron and his decision to air "The Decision" on ESPN Prime Time was that it showed that he was pompous, arrogant, and overly indulged with himself. And I'm sure everyone else thought along the same lines as I did. But when James accused race as even "a little bit" of the reason during a CNN interview with Soledad Sanchez, I thought to myself, "Is he really trying to dodge this bullet? He's clearly in the wrong, and instead of blaming himself for making an uninformed decision, he's going to accuse race - a very touchy subject to say the least." And many others shared my same initial reaction. Sports Illustrated's Peter King called James' remarks "garbage" on Twitter. Jason Whitlock, a columnist for Fox Sports who even admits that he "pulls out the race card" a number of times to escape predicaments, calls James' remarks shit. Shaun Powell of NBA's HangTime Blog states that LeBron's remarks of race were "stretching it." Even NBA Legend Charles Barkley claimed that James made him and his situtation a lot "stupider."

The point is that a lot of people, including me, dismissed LeBron's accusation of race being the reason for "The Decision"'s negative publicity. But as I questioned why LeBron would be shooting himself in the foot again by claiming something so out of the ordinary and something that only gives more ammunition to his already new-found enemies, I tried to see if there was something truly genuine that James may have been getting at. David Zirin of NPR sheds some light on this topic, stating that we are lying to ourselves if we dismiss race as a primary driver in how we view our "controversial, narcisstic, and outspoken athletes." Zirin takes the Q Score Company's rating of the six most unpopular athletes today: Michael Vick, Tiger Woods, Chad Ochocinco, Terrell Owens, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James. I agree that these individuals have done certain things and made certain decisions that rightfully put them in their place in the public's perception. However, this rating is based on the majority sports viewers, and as mentioned previously, most of them are white. And though it's difficult to bring up, we can't run away from the fact that the white audience is not going to rate Eli Manning, a white NFL quarterback, as more unpopular than Chad Ochocinco, a black NFL running back, or Hedo Turkoglu, a European NBA forward, more unpopular than Kobe Bryant, a black NBA guard. It's all because of what Vincent Thomas of ESPN calls "tribalism" - a tendency for people of the same race to band together against another. For the African-American community, Thomas calls it "black protectionism." I'm not saying that I wholeheartedly agree with this notion of "tribalism" or "black protectionism", but it would be very short-sighted of me to not take them into consideration.

And to illustrate this notion a bit further and to strengthen Thomas and Zirin's arguments, I'm going to revert to an essay that I wrote during my freshman year at NYU. And it had nothing to deal with basketball. It had nothing to deal with sports. The prompt for my writing class was to select a controversial topic and delve into it - the nature, the reason, the opposing viewpoints. Many of my classmates chose the conventional topics, like abortion, legalization of marijuana, and same-sex marriage. I wrote about Detroit rapper, Eminem. Not only is he one of the most successful musicians of all time, winning multi-plantinum awards and Grammy's, but he is also one of the most landmark musicians of our era. The problem the media and almost everyone has with Eminem is his offensive lyrics. And because of this, many critics want to strip Eminem of his awards and ban him from mainstream radio stations. Although his lyrics are harmful, I asked, what about those of Jay-Z, Soulja Boy, Nelly, and other African-American rappers out there today? They utilize the same homophobic, racist, and sexist lyrics that Eminem utilizes to become successful. Is Eminem's being white in a music industry where the majority listeners are African-American a racial issue that may be going unnoticed? Why aren't the black rappers being put to blame by the majority black listeners? The same situation may be going on in the NBA.

I'm not saying NBA viewers are racist. I'm an NBA viewer myself. But it would be very ignorant of us to not take the racial issues that affect the NBA into consideration. I'm shocked how I never found it interesting (or maybe even "odd" is the correct word) that almost all NBA athletes were African-American. And more importantly, these athletes were showcasing their talents in front a majority white audience and an NBA front office that was predominantly white. In fact, Wayne Hodges Examiner Article notes that 80% of the athletes in the "big" revenue sports (NBA & NFL) are African-American and only one African-American is a majority owner, Michael Jordan of the Charlotte Bobcats. The data and numbers are right in front of us, screaming to us that something peculiar is happening. But is the negative publicity received from "The Decision" really and wholly because of the racial issue brought up by James? Absolutely not. But "a little bit" of it may be, and it's something worth pondering over and questioning.

My posts have generally been harmless, comedic attacks at NBA athletes. But let's be level-headed, we have to flip the script at times - we, as viewers and critics of the sport, don't have much to be proud of as well.



- Leather Head