Dirk “Legend”? Race, Nation, and the NBA

Dirk “Legend”? Race, Nation, and the NBA

David J. Leonard | special to NewBlackMan

On the eve of the 2011 NBA finals, Professor Walter Greason asked the readers on NewBlackMan: “Can Dirk Save the NBA?” Citing the NBA’s history, its efforts to court white fans from “middle-America,” the centrality of racial meaning to its marketing strategies/popularity, Greason concludes that Dirk Nowitzi has the potential to “save the NBA.” He writes, “If Nowitzki overcame James, especially in a series of emotionally draining, well-played games, a new version of the Larry Bird-Magic Johnson rivalry of the 1980s would be born. It was that era that created the possibility of Jordan's global appeal. If the NBA hopes to create a global sensation that will extend its reach for new generations of fans in the twenty-first century, Nowitzki must defeat James in this year's Finals. Dirk may be the last chance to save the NBA.”

At one level, the argument about the NBA’s desire to produce white superstars to cater to white fans otherwise uncomfortable with a largely black league erases the NBA’s global turn. With a league increasingly reliant and interested on fans from  Latin America, Asia, and Europe, the necessity for a Larry Bird in the twenty-first century has weakened. According to a 2007 study, 89 percent of Chinese between the ages of 15 and 54 were “aware of the NBA,” with 70 percent of youth between the ages of 15 and 24 describing themselves as fans. With 1.4 billion viewers watching NBA games during the 2008 season (up through April 30th) on one of the 51 broadcast outlets in China, and 25 million Chinese visiting NBA.com/China each month, basketball and the NBA are cultural phenomena within China. 

If we take China as example, the NBA has been tremendously successful marketing the game through the likes of Bryant, James, and Iverson, whose talents, racial bodies, and whose markers of hip-hop/youthfulness/ have rendered them as authentic basketball commodities. As of 2010, Kobe Bryant possessed the top-selling jersey for 4 straight years in China. That year, LeBron James, Dwight Howard, Kevin Garnett, and Derrick Rose founded out the top-five. Yao Ming wasn’t even amongst the top 10. His absence can be partially attributed to injuries but for several years he has been outside the top 5. A similar circumstance is evident in Europe, where Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Dwayne Wade were the top selling jerseys in 2010 (10 out of top 15 were African American players; 5 European players) All that being said, in a cultural sense, in terms of image, and in terms of the NBA’s relationship with corporate America, there remains an effort to both conceal its blackness all while selling its whiteness. 

As such, Greason’s article rightfully elucidates the ways in which, as noted by Todd Boyd, the NBA “remains one of the few places in American society where there is a consistent racial discourse,” where race, whether directly or indirectly, is the subject of conversation at all times (2000, p. 60). He connects to a larger history that leads us back to the Palace Brawl, to Jordan, to Magic v Bird, and even into the 1970s. Yet, the NBA’s effort to re-brand itself racially most recently started around 2003, with an increased emphasis after the Palace Brawl.

The 2003-2005 seasons was a “low point” for the NBA, when it saw a sharp decline in fan support. Television ratings were down, while complaints from corporate sponsors increased. Opinion polls consistently ranked NBA players as the least liked professional athletes in American sports. In response, the NBA hired Matthew Dowd, a Texas strategist who had previously worked with George W. Bush on his reelection campaign. Having successfully helped Bush find immense support within Middle America, Dowd was brought in “to help” Stern “figure out how to bring the good ‘ol white folks back to the stands” (Abramson 2005).

In this context, you would think there would be a significant marketing appeal or potential for Dirk is this regard. He offers a white body and ample skills that purportedly provides something different from the NBA’s African American superstars. Yet, despite success on the court, despite an MVP and appearance in the NBA finals, Dirk has not to-date emerged as the NBA’s great white hope. A championship in 2011, a final’s MVP, and even his postering LeBron (not gonna happen) aren’t going to change this role.

Its not like Dirk is new to the league; he hasn't captured the national imagination to date (even though he won an MVP), so it wouldn't seem like a championship will result in a dramatic increase in popularity. While Dirk has "whiteness" he doesn't offer the narrative central to white racial framing. The power of white sporting narratives focuses on a fantasy about bootstraps, hard work (think Hoosiers), and players that come out of European system don't fulfill these narrative fantasies. Moreover, in the national imagination, whiteness and American-ness functioned interchangeably so that neither Dirk nor LeBron possess the requisite identities to function as white in an American context.

While commentators often assume that the yearning for white superstars reflects a desire of white fans to “root for someone who looks them,” the incentives here are a bit more complex. The popularity of Larry Bird, for example, rests not simply with his whiteness but in the narratives, tropes, and ideologies embedded within his body; a body that pivots around national, class, and racial meaning. Bird reinforced hegemonic frames concerning whiteness and working-class masculinity. Notions of teamwork, intelligence, hard work, and determination, all of which play through ideas of white (American) masculinity, help us understand why Bird (and to a lesser degree other white Americans) captured the white basketball imagination. In other words, Bird provided a certain amount of nostalgia for a time in sports. He provided an alternative white male hero to “African American professional basketball players who are routinely depicted in the popular media as selfish, insufferable, and morally reprehensible” (Cole & Andrews 2001, p. 72). Yet, Dirk isn’t able to function as such a binary.

Dirk can’t save the NBA (for whom; from whom?) because he doesn’t offer the desired narrative; he doesn’t embody nostalgia for basketball of yesteryear, to small-town basketball played on dirt courts in America’s heartland – he, like, LeBron has no possibility of ever playing for Hickory.

In turn, he doesn’t reinforce dominant narratives of white success as a result of hardwork, determination, bootstraps, and intelligence. Dirk, the child of a professional basketball playing mother and an accomplished handball player, joined DJK Würzburg, a renowned basketball club in Germany, at the age of 15. Dedicating himself to basketball, Dirk was a quasi professional until he joined the NBA ranks in 1998. Six years later, despite amassing All-star numbers on the court, the NBA’s global turn had not produced a marketable white (European or otherwise) baller to fill Larry Bird’s shoes. Nobody had filled his does. Some cited this failure as part of the NBA’s ongoing image problem.

In June 2004, Larry Bird sat down with Magic Johnson, Carmelo Anthony, and LeBron James, and host Jim Gray to discuss the state of basketball in a symbolic passing of the torch from the NBA’s past to its future. The  “2 on 2 sit down,”, aptly taking place at the gym used as the home court for Hickory High school in Hoosiers, a film that celebrated the era of whiteness (Jim Crow) as the era of basketball greatness, sparked controversy when Larry Bird lamented the declining presence of white athletes in the NBA. Responding to Jim Gray’s question as to whether the NBA needed more white superstars Bird offered the following assessment of the racial landscape of the NBA: “Well, I think so. You know when I played you had me and Kevin (McHale) and some others throughout the league. I think it’s good for a fan base because as we all-known, the majority of the fans are white America.” He further disrupted while simultaneously legitimizing the hegemonic logics of race and sports when he argued, “And if we just had a couple white guys in there you might get them a little excited. But it’s a black man’s game and it will be forever. I mean the greatest athletes in the world are African American.”

While the media feigned a certain amount of shock, denouncing the comments as extreme, racist, and hateful, his rhetoric merely reflected the commonsense logic of a broader discourse. On one level, Bird seems to be giving voice to the longstanding presumption regarding black male athletes possessing a genetic advantage over white male athletes in that the absence of whites in the NBA is a result of natural selection.

On another level, Bird’s comments are not simply about the dialects of race, genetics and sport, but about the financial, spiritual, cultural and racial loss felt (or imagined) in the face of the declining presence of whites within the NBA. In other words, the purported and assumed declining interest in the NBA, the declining quality of play, the diminished “respectability” of players (what happened to the role models), and most importantly the cultural importance of the game are in deadly decline because the white NBA players are an assumed “endangered species.” For example, in 2004 ESPN.com “Black History Month” article entitled  “The Technicolor Sports Hero” that documents the increased visibility of black athletes within sports marketing, Darren Rovell begins his discussion by pointing out the declining importance of white athletes:

To silence the most glib sports executives, ask them who they think is the most marketable white athlete today. It usually does the trick. A chorus of “umm's,” “huh's” and “give-me-a-minute's” are used to bide for time before they finally spit out names like Lance Armstrong, Tony Hawk and Andy Roddick. Yet ask for their assessment of the most marketable black athletes and the names just flow off the tips of their tongues.

In other words, racial progress, the breakdown to the walls of segregation, isn’t merely providing opportunities for black athletes, but has lead to not only a diminished importance for white athletes on-the-court, but within the cultural imagination. Again from Rovell,

And active white athletes are becoming less recognized among sports fans. On its top 10 list of marketable athletes in America, Marketing Evaluations, which produces the Sports Q Ratings, has Brett Favre at the highest active white athlete on the list at No. 9. That's the lowest that first white athlete to appear on the list, says the company's executive vice president, Henry Schaffer. Will it come a day when no white athlete appears on the list? Or could the pendulum of marketing trends someday reverse itself, and white athletes begin to dominate in the advertising arena again?

As such, Bird’s comments and the yearning (that Professor Greason critically elucidates) for Dirk to “save the league” reflect the broader fears, panics and anxieties that define a post civil rights America. It isn’t simply a yearning for a white (American) superstar, but the presumed narratives that because of white racial frames are restricted from today’s NBA stars. Although Michael Jordan penetrated the narrative colorline through embodying “the American Dream [as] a matter of personal perseverance,” race is central to the cultural meanings of the NBA, yet that transcends skin color. Jordan as “Africanized Horatio Alger” (Patton quoted in McDonald, 2001, p. 157) reaffirmed a narrative so often reserved for white American athletes: the story of the “army of athletes who possess the (new) right stuff with modest beginnings, skill, and personal determination” (McDonald 2001, p.157). 

While Dirk will certainly be celebrated through these rhetorics (while LeBron won’t), his whiteness notwithstanding, the 2011 NBA finals will not lead to the crowning of a “German Horatio Alger.” There is no French Lick in Germany and therefore no Dirk Legend.

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums.  His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. He is the author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop (SUNY Press).

Decoding the Curse: The Racial Subtexts of the new Face of Madden Football

Decoding the Curse: 

The Racial Subtexts of the New Face of Madden Football

by David J. Leonard and C. Richard King

Ladies and Gentlemen, we are pleased to announce this year’s cover for Madden 2012: Peyton Hillis. Who? Peyton Hillis. No, not Peyton Manning.  He’s a great player, but didn’t have his greatest year in 2011. Right, the running back. No, not Walter Payton (RIP).  Not Sweetness; not Gary Payton; Toby Gillis, or any other sport celebrity that might immediately come to mind. 

Peyton Hillis, drafted in the seventh round of the 2008 NFL by the Denver Broncos, had a break out season after being traded to the Cleveland Browns and stepping up to replace the injured rookie Montario Hardesty.  He rushed for 1,177 yards and scored 11 touchdowns in the 2010 NFL season, becoming a cult hero for many fans.

Following in the footsteps of Eddie George, Michael Vick, Ray Lewis, Donovan McNabb, Shaun Alexander, Vince Young, Brett Favre, Larry Fitzgerald, Troy Polamalu and Drew Brees, Hillis will become the latest NFL player to appear on the cover of this flagship game.  Unlike his predecessors, Hillis is neither a perennial star nor a household name.  His selection, however, speaks volumes about sport celebrity, new media, and old racial politics.

In a canny marketing campaign, EA Sports teamed up with ESPN to stage its own “March Madness,” a 32-person bracket that allowed fans to select the athlete to be featured on the cover.  This system played to national fantasies about meritocracy and free democracy.  The Bleacher Report described the approach in the following way: “Each player will go against an opposing player to see who gets the most votes. The one who gets the most votes will move on to the next round and face another player. The selection process with go under those terms until a winner is chosen. Be sure to vote each week for your favorites to find out who will be on the Madden 12 cover.”  After successive rounds that saw several potential NFL stars, including Adrian Peterson and Drew Brees, lose their bids to appear on the cover, voters were left with two choices, Peyton Hillis and Michael Vick. 

At a certain level, the differences between these two men wrote the narrative itself: Vick, the former first-round pick who has long dazzled fans with his brilliance on the field; Hillis, a relative unknown drafted in the seventh round out of University of Arkansas; Vick, the odds on favorite, against Hillis, the underdog, seeded tenth in the bracket, who had already beaten Matt Ryan, Ray Rice, and Aaron Rodgers; Vick, whose legal troubles made him a media pariah; Hillis, described as “the common man.”  Yet, each also fit into the media’s narrative obsession with redemption with Madden affording Vick the opportunity to solidify his comeback and Hillis the chance to prove himself. 

In the final vote, Hillis dominated Vick, securing 64% of the vote.  While it may be tempting to see the results a mere popularity contest, they say more about the significance of race today than the appeal of individual athletes.

At a certain level, it is easy to think about Vick’s loss in the final (he had won in previous rounds) as confirmation of the difficult path toward redemption for contemporary black athletes.  Like Vick’s persistently low-q score, Hillis’ annihilation of Vick suggests that he may be branded forever as a convicted felon, thug, dog fighter and gangster.  It demonstrates that whereas whiteness in a sporting context continues to reference the hard-working, cerebral hero, blackness exists as “a problematic sign and ontological position” (Williams 1998, p. 140).  In this regard, Vick is unable to transcend the scripts that limit his public identity.  As such, many fans took to the Internet to confirm that this was a referendum on Vick, underscoring that he did not deserve the cover because of his past behavior.  For example, the following was posted on ESPN.com:

Vick is scum! Vick's dog fighting was the least of it. Vick killed thirteen dogs by various methods including wetting one dog down and electrocuting her, hanging, drowning and shooting others and, in at least one case, by slamming a dog's body to the ground. He forcibly drowned a pit bull! Can you imagine the struggling dog in his hands, drowning?!?! What kind of person does this? A sick, evil person, who is now free in society. Vick also thought it "funny" to put family pet dogs in with pit bulls to see them ripped apart. Is this a man you think should be free to roam in society? He didn't make a mistake. He did this for five years! He is the scum of earth. Think of what's in his brain? He is beyond evil. If a person had done these same things to a human, we would say that they are beyond help, and would never be allowed back into society, but if you do it to a dog, then rehabilitation is fast and easy, and all is forgiven and forgotten very quickly. He's healed? Is he eff !!!!

Many others followed suit, taking this as an opportunity to further punish and discipline Vick for his past.  Yet, to reduce Hillis victory to the disdain for Vick/unredemptive possibilities for transgressive black bodies is to ignore the broader issues at work here. 

At one level, the arrival of Hillis illustrates the celebration of whiteness and nostalgia for a different era in sports.  It represents a moment where sports fans symbolically took the sport back.  He was the underdog who miraculously beat Michael Vick.  This evident in comments like this: “Peyton Hillis is a monster! Who doesn't want a white guy at running back in the NFL, goes back to the old days of football.”

In reading website comments and reviewing various commentaries, it becomes clear that many fans find in Hillis an opportunity to reengage the NFL through what Joe Feagin dubs the “white racial frame.”  To this constituency, following C.L. Cole and David Andrews (2001, 72) take on the NBA in the closing decades of the 20th century, Hillis offers football fans in the 21st century a “breath of fresh air for an American public ‘tired of trash-talking, spit-hurling, head-butting sports millionaires.’”  He provides a racial time machine to an imagined period of sports where (white) male heroes played the right way; he is constructed as a clear alternative to “African American professional basketball players who are routinely depicted in the popular media as selfish, insufferable, and morally reprehensible” (Cole & Andrews, 2001: 72). 

At another level, Hillis’ victory can be read as something of a triumph for the backlash against racial justice and for the usefulness of sincere fictions in a society of spectacle.  When asked about whether or not other players used race as part of trash-talking Hillis stated: “Every team did it. They’ll say, ‘You white boy, you ain’t gonna run on us today. This is ridiculous. Why are you giving offensive linemen the ball? All kinds of stuff like that you hear on the field, but I use that to my advantage. I kind of soaked it in, ate it up a little bit, because I enjoyed it.”  Despite his focus on racially-based trash-talking, the media discourse pivoted, focusing on reverse racism and systemic racism. 

In “Racism Alive and Swell in NFL,” LeCharles Bentley, a former NFL center, argues that Hillis, who isn’t the prototypical “chocolate bruiser” is the latest victim of the color bar of the NFL.  “Apparently a white running back who struggled because he was pigeon-holed as a fullback isn't as valued as a black running back with multiple knee injuries. This is eerily similar to the early years in the NFL when black players struggled with typecasting but kept their mouths shut for fear of being labeled a ‘troublemaker.’  The argument here is simple: Not only did Hillis face difficulty in securing a job because of prejudice, but compared to backs like Knowshon Moreno and Correll Buckhalter, among others, he received little recognition and media exposure despite his success.  And while Bentley links the positional segregation to a larger history of anti-black racism, the linear narrative offered reinforces that idea that the tables have turned and now it is white players that suffer because of racial stereotypes.  

Similarly, Josiah Schlatter, takes up this question in “Was Peyton Hillis subjected to reverse racism for being a white running back?” He thinks so,” gives voice to the problems faced by Hillis because of race.  Focusing on “racist linebackers,” and while arguing that the racial epithets directed at Hillis are little more than trash-talking, the premise/title of the argument reinforced the idea behind the discriminated white athlete.  Add to this, many of the comments focused on the double standards and how racism directed at African Americans would never be tolerated.  It was yet another example of how the system was rigged against white men.  In a world that purportedly privileges and benefits black athletes, the recognition afforded to Hillis represents a victory for the white minority in football.  Indeed, many of the online comments celebrating Hillis and his victory underscore Kyle Kusz’s findings in his monograph, Revolt of the White Athlete: white masculinity is framed as battered, besieged, and belittled by the media, black athletes, and the masses; this marginal position affords white men an alternative space in which to recapture the center under the cover of victimization as it encourages the formulation of romanticized identities and seemingly revolutionary images that counter progressive reframings of race, gender, and sexuality.

This past season, Derron Synder took up the debate surrounding white guys in the NFL, interrogating the arguments put forth by caste football, a website connected to the white nationalist movement.  He noted the pride white players in the NFL evoke in white fans in oddly empathetic terms:

Nonetheless, I understand why some white folks lament the NFL's lack of white halfbacks, receivers and defensive backs while championing the select few that exist. That's kind of like black folks complaining about the NFL's lack of black quarterbacks while cheering on the handful who make it. I certainly also understand the sense of pride that (white) New England Patriots halfback Danny Woodhead generated with his breakout game against the Miami Dolphins on Monday Night Football. Likewise, I understand why (white) New England Patriots receiver Wes Welker fosters the same feeling. I'm sure that Woodhead and Welker are inspirations to every young (white) football player who is being conditioned to believe that certain positions at the major-college or NFL level are beyond his capabilities.

The problem here is that the history of white and black football players, just as in the larger society, are defined by racial segregation, inequity, and privilege. The instances of primarily white coaches and general managers converting white running backs to fullbacks or tight ends because of stereotypes about black and white physicality is not the same as these same gatekeepers questioning the intellectual readiness of black players to excel at quarterback or middle linebacker.  Likewise, the celebration of Danny Woodhead, Wes Welker, or Peyton Hillis means something different than Warren Moon, Doug Williams, or Donovan McNabb, precisely because such celebrations occur in a social milieu anchored in and animated by white supremacy.  Even conceding certain elements of physical prowess (such as speed) to athletes of African descent only affirms the superiority of EuroAmericans--fans and athletes--whose intellect, culture, and character transcend the banality and vulgarity of the body.  As such, celebrating Woodhead, Welker, and Hillis is to celebrate the core values of white supremacy, while championing Moon, Williams, and McNabb calls into question those values and the regime of racial discrimination that still favors the commodification and criminalization of black bodies to the recognition of shared humanity.

***

C. Richard King is the Chair of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University at Pullman and the author/editor of several books, including Team Spirits: The Native American Mascot Controversy and Postcolonial America.

David J. Leonard is an associate professor in the Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University at Pullman. His next book (SUNY Press) is on the NBA after the November 2004 brawl during a Pacers-Pistons game at the The Palace of Auburn Hills He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums.

 

LOS ANGELES: Hate On Valentine's Day

special to NewBlackMan

LOS ANGELES: Hate On Valentine's Day
by Kevin Powell

Those of you who know me or my work know that I am anti- all forms of hatred and bigotry, be it racism, anti-Semitism, sexism, classism, homophobia, religious intolerance, or a reckless disregard for the disabled or handicapped. That at this stage in my life, and for the rest of my life, I am a firm believer in nonviolence, love, and forgiveness, even of those who have wronged us in some way. That, as evidenced by my life journey as an activist, writer, and public speaker, I truly do love all people. And mean it—

Nor do I believe in ever viewing myself solely as a victim these days, either, because of my race, or my past class background of poverty. I am with bringing people together, with our communicating with each other through our differences, with our healing that which separates us due to our differences, whenever and however possible.

So it takes a lot for me to write a blog asking people not to support a business. But in the early morning of February 14, 2011, after leaving an amazing post-Grammy party with two female friends, we waited for the available shuttle service to get us from the top of the canyon to the middle of it where we and other party attendees had to park our vehicles.

We remembered the long walk from there to the event and opted to use the shuttle service one of the security personnel suggested we wait for. We were under the assumption the shuttle van would take us and other passengers to wherever our cars were parked along the canyon route. Instead the driver, a very young man, did not announce until the van was in motion that he would not stop until we were at the Beverly Hilton Hotel (fyi, I am not staying at that hotel, but one in West Hollywood). This meant many of the passengers, including the three of us, would have to pay for taxis to get to our cars back in the canyon.

When we got to the hotel's parking lot, we asked the driver if he could take us back up the hill, since he was returning to get more passengers anyhow, so we could retrieve our car. He refused. I attempted to reason with the driver but he would not budge. At that moment a tall (about six feet two inches) man, with thick jet-black hair combed backwards and wearing all black, stepped to the shuttle van's driver's door, spoke in a language I did not understand, then rudely told the two women and I that he was the owner of the company, that we had to get out of the van, that there would be no ride back up the canyon route. I attempted to explain our situation to this gentleman, who said he was the owner of the company, but he cut me off repeatedly, and threatened to physically remove and harm me if I did not get out. Not once did I raise my voice, curse, or disrespect this man in any way. He went a step further, coming around to the passenger side once the women were already out, saying that I "should go back to the jungle" (a reference to one of L.A.'s poorest and most violent communities of color), that he didn't like my people, and that he was a real African (I would learn later the man is from Tunisia, the northernmost country in Africa and is essentially an African Arab). It did not matter who or what I was, not that I am into status or anything of the sort. But it was clear this man had a deep disdain for Black people, and he had immediately reduced me, in his mind, to the worst imaginable stereotypes without even so much as allowing me to complete a full sentence.

Thus in the matter of just a couple of minutes I was physically threatened and racially insulted a few times as my women friends witnessed very clearly. Still, no raising of my voice, cursing, or disrespect towards this man. I told him I was going to call the police to deal with this matter and his hyper-masculine attitude kicked in with the response "I don't care, call them." So I did. And about 15 minutes later two Los Angeles-area officers, a female cop and a male cop, and I were walking from the lobby of the Beverly Hills Hilton to the parking lot to have a talk with this gentleman. I did this because I wanted to obtain, with the help of the officers, his name and the name of his company:


Moncef Said Abbou
President, M&S Valet Parking
Los Angeles, CA
www.msvaletparking.com


And because it was my hope that with the police officers there as mediators, I would not need to file a complaint or write a blog, even. But Mr. Abbou could barely contain his venom and arrogance even in the presence of the police officers: he lied to the male cop who pulled him aside about what happened, and walked away and returned to his car when the officers asked him to listen to what I had to say one final time. This from an individual who runs a business that is completely dependent on its interactions with other human beings. And this behavior to a person, me, who will always have a need to hire or refer companies like his, since I do business in Los Angeles, which is quite a bit.

According to its company website, M&S Valet Parking provides these services: parking management, valet parking services, and shuttle service. And its very prominent quote reads

"We pride ourselves on upholding the highest standards of customer service and efficiency."

Yet even with the police present the man was rude, because he knew the police could not do anything to him other than say I could file a civil complaint against his business. And I can tell people like you, who frequently rent or lease these types of companies in Los Angeles (or know people and companies who do) that you should not support such a company or its owner any further. I am not seeking nor want an apology. And I’ve already forgiven the man in my mind and heart. But if he talked to me in this manner, imagine how many past, or future, passengers have experienced similar behavior from this gentleman because of his bigotry and lack of humanity.

Furthermore, as you can see, I am writing this piece in the wee hours of the morning, because the incident occurred around 4AM PST.

So I have not gotten to sleep as yet. But I feel very strongly that people who express this kind of hatred toward another human being should be exposed and their businesses should not be supported. I happen to be a writer, a public speaker, and a very well-connected political person, so I have a platform. But imagine the people who do not.

And outside my hometown of New York City, Los Angeles is one of the most culturally diverse communities in America. Like every other American city I know L.A. has its share of racial divides and prejudices, in spite of its great multiculturalism, and it is, like New York, still very segregated in many ways. But I think the least we can expect after a Los Angeles-Hollywood awards ceremony such as the Grammys, where people from varied backgrounds perform and are honored (with the Grammys creatively connecting artists who usually do not share the same stage), is a basic level of respect and civility by companies shuttling us from one place to another.

This incident is especially ironic for me for a few reasons. One, long before the party my day had begun with my very first visit to Los Angeles’ Agape International Spiritual Center, a church, led by the brilliant Rev. Michael Beckwith, famous for its message of love, inclusion, and diversity. And that is exactly what I received from the service on this day, and from a short private meeting with Rev. Beckwith afterwards. Indeed, he talked about people like me, who he calls “social ministers,” who must have consistent spiritual paths given all the slings and arrows we deal with in our daily interactions with people, as activists, as community leaders, as agents for change.

I thought of Dr. Beckwith and Agape, for sure, as Mr. Abbou was insulting me inside and outside of his van. I thought, in a very quick instance, all I had to lose if I responded with the same kind of ugliness being hurled my way. I thought of Egypt, another nation with African Arabs, one where Mr. Abbou could have easily been from, and one that many Americans, including Black Americans, are very much supporting at this time of change. And I thought, later, how what transpired between Mr. Abbou and I is so remarkably similar to what far too many Black males, myself included, have experienced from Middle Eastern or African Arab cab, car, and shuttle drivers in my beloved New York City. That is the reason, in fact, so many years ago, I made a conscious decision to rarely take yellow cabs in New York, to just roll with private car service when necessary, because who is going to tolerate being humiliated, disrespected, lied to and lied on, simply because of someone else’s fear and ignorance? Suffice to say, I will never use a shuttle service in Los Angeles again—

And this sort of thing will go on if we allow it to go on, if we do not use our individual and collective voices to say enough, once and for all, and to say, loudly, ain’t I a human, too?

***

Kevin Powell is a nationally acclaimed public speaker, activist, and the award-winning author or editor of 10 books. He resides in New York City, the borough of Brooklyn, and was a 2010 Democratic candidate for Congress there. Follow him on Twitter @kevin_powell

John Edgar Wideman: The Seat Not Taken

from The New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor

The Seat Not Taken
By John Edgar Wideman

AT least twice a week I ride Amtrak’s high-speed Acela train from my home in New York City to my teaching job in Providence, R.I. The route passes through a region of the country populated by, statistics tell us, a significant segment of its most educated, affluent, sophisticated and enlightened citizens.

Over the last four years, excluding summers, I have conducted a casual sociological experiment in which I am both participant and observer. It’s a survey I began not because I had some specific point to prove by gathering data to support it, but because I couldn’t avoid becoming aware of an obvious, disquieting truth.

Almost invariably, after I have hustled aboard early and occupied one half of a vacant double seat in the usually crowded quiet car, the empty place next to me will remain empty for the entire trip.

I’m a man of color, one of the few on the train and often the only one in the quiet car, and I’ve concluded that color explains a lot about my experience. Unless the car is nearly full, color will determine, even if it doesn’t exactly clarify, why 9 times out of 10 people will shun a free seat if it means sitting beside me.

Giving them and myself the benefit of the doubt, I can rule out excessive body odor or bad breath; a hateful, intimidating scowl; hip-hop clothing; or a hideous deformity as possible objections to my person. Considering also the cost of an Acela ticket, the fact that I display no visible indications of religious preference and, finally, the numerous external signs of middle-class membership I share with the majority of the passengers, color appears to be a sufficient reason for the behavior I have recorded.

Of course, I’m not registering a complaint about the privilege, conferred upon me by color, to enjoy the luxury of an extra seat to myself. I relish the opportunity to spread out, savor the privacy and quiet and work or gaze at the scenic New England woods and coast. It’s a particularly appealing perk if I compare the train to air travel or any other mode of transportation, besides walking or bicycling, for negotiating the mercilessly congested Northeast Corridor. Still, in the year 2010, with an African-descended, brown president in the White House and a nation confidently asserting its passage into a postracial era, it strikes me as odd to ride beside a vacant seat, just about every time I embark on a three-hour journey each way, from home to work and back.

I admit I look forward to the moment when other passengers, searching for a good seat, or any seat at all on the busiest days, stop anxiously prowling the quiet-car aisle, the moment when they have all settled elsewhere, including the ones who willfully blinded themselves to the open seat beside me or were unconvinced of its availability when they passed by. I savor that precise moment when the train sighs and begins to glide away from Penn or Providence Station, and I’m able to say to myself, with relative assurance, that the vacant place beside me is free, free at last, or at least free until the next station. I can relax, prop open my briefcase or rest papers, snacks or my arm in the unoccupied seat.

But the very pleasing moment of anticipation casts a shadow, because I can’t accept the bounty of an extra seat without remembering why it’s empty, without wondering if its emptiness isn’t something quite sad. And quite dangerous, also, if left unexamined. Posters in the train, the station, the subway warn: if you see something, say something.

***

John Edgar Wideman is a professor of Africana studies and literary arts at Brown and the author, most recently, of “Briefs.”

Race and the French Soccer Debacle

France's soccer empire in ruins?
by Laurent Dubois, Special to CNN

The world watched with awe and derision this past week as the French national soccer team, boasting a roster of star players, imploded on and off the field at the World Cup.

In case you missed it, here's the play-by-play. At half-time during the France-Mexico game, striker Nicolas Anelka insulted French coach Raymond Domenech in the locker room.

Such words, of course, are heard frequently in the half-time locker rooms of losing teams the world over -- though not so often spoken to a coach's face. They don't, however, usually decorate the covers of newspapers.

But there was a leak, and in a gesture that was extremely profitable (if of questionable journalistic integrity,) the French sports newspaper L'Equipe published Anelka's insults as their headline. Anelka refused to apologize for the outburst, and the player was sent home.

It might have ended there, except that the French players did what all self-respecting French workers would do in the situation: Led by team captain Patrice Evra, they went on strike, refusing to practice last Sunday.

Their action incited a wave of anger in France. President Nicolas Sarkozy rapidly criticized the players, and right-wing politicians did so even more harshly. Both Anelka and Evra are black, and there was racist vitriol hurled at them online.

The intellectual Alain Finkielkraut -- already well known for having derided the French team as being "black-black-black" in 2006 -- lambasted them on primetime television. The players, his argument went, were "hooligans," raised in the banlieues (French projects,) with no sense of dignity and no patriotism, and lacking proper respect for authority.

For years, many in France had stridently complained about the French coach, Raymond Domenech and the French Football Federation that kept him in his post through one failure after another. Suddenly, though, a surprising number of people seemed ready to scapegoat the "spoiled" and ungovernable players, particularly Anelka and Evra, for the failures of the French team.

Read the Full Essay @ CNN

***

Laurent Dubois is the Marcello Lotti Professor of Romance Studies and History at Duke University. He recently published "Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France," and is founding editor of the Soccer Politics Blog.

The Myth of Black on Black Crime?

As we head into another long, hot summer, the media -- and black folks -- need to retire this loaded term.

The Myth of Black-on-Black Violence

by Natalie Hopkinson

This year's Black History Month was a particularly bloody one in Shelby County, S.C. Sergio Leary, Ja'cole Wilson, Karon Barrow and Leon Thurman Jr., all young people in their 20s, were all shot dead, according to local news reports.

The Shelby Star's analysis of the burst of violence, hit on all the usual crime reporting clichés: ''black,'' ''at-risk youth,'' ''subcultures that don't value'' life. And then, there's the clincher. ''Despite overall crime numbers falling in recent years, black-on-black [emphasis added] violence remains a prevalent issue,'' the newspaper reported.

You can expect to hear these key phrases on a local television news report near you as temperatures--and tempers--rise this summer. Black clergy like Al Sharpton, prominent black thinkers like Kevin Powell, and writers at black journals like the Urban Politico will shake their heads at this ''black'' scourge, self-flagellating that ''we gotta do better.''

Of course, any loss of life is cause to scream from the mountaintops. But explaining the tragedies by using loaded phrases like ''black-on-black'' violence is dangerously wrong. First, in a country that is essentially still segregated (and not necessarily by black people's choice) what race do you expect for both victim and perpetrators to be? Language like ''black-on-black violence'' effectively smacks a racial label on problems that are socioeconomic and thus the collective, moral responsibility of every American.

At this particular moment in our history, it is more important than ever to reject these kinds of racialized explanations. They are being used to slander public school children as incapable of learning; to deem affordable housing a hopeless cause. In gentrifying cities, ''black-on-black crime'' is used as a weapon to encourage public policies that treat black people as blights on the new urban aesthetic. There is a moral imperative to challenge these assumptions.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root

Natalie Hopkinson is a media and culture critic based in Washington, D.C. Follow her on Twitter.