The Heart and the Mind Sports: What Drives (me) Sports Fans

The Heart and the Mind of Sports: What Drives (me) Sports Fans

by David J. Leonard | special to NewBlackMan

In the legendary Thanksgiving scene from She’s Gotta Have it, Jamie (Tommy Hicks), Greer (John Canada Terrell), and Mars (Spike Lee) take time away from talking trash, flirting with Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns), and eating their thanksgiving dinner to discuss basketball. Debating who is the best player in the NBA, Mars questions the celebration of Larry Bird by NBA commentators alike. Jamie responds, “Say what you want, the white boy is the best player in the NBA,” to which Mars retorts, “The best? The best? He's the ugliest m'f'er in the NBA!” Five years later, Spike Lee once again took up the issue of race, basketball and fandom with Do the Right Thing. In this instance, Buggin Out (Giancarlo Esposito) confronts Clinton (John Savage), a white male wearing a Larry Bird shirt, who accidentally scuffs his brand new air-Jordans, leading to the following exchange:

BUGGIN' OUT

Not only did you knock me down, you

stepped on my new white Air Jordans

that I just bought and that's all

you can say, "Excuse me?"

BUGGIN' OUT

I'll fuck you up quick two times.

Who told you to step on my sneakers?

Who told you to walk on my side of

the block? Who told you to be in

my neighborhood?

CLIFTON

I own a brownstone on this block.

BUGGIN' OUT

Who told you to buy a brownstone on

my block, in my neighborhood on my

side of the street?

While exploring racial identity, race relations, and the issue of gentrification, Lee uses each characters’ relationship to Larry Bird (and the racial signifiers attached to him as player and narrative script) to explore these issues. In each instance it is Lee at his best, pushing viewers to think about the meaning of/behind our choices as fans.

At an intellectual level I find both these fascinating because of the ways in which Lee connects race, sports fandom, and identity. Yet, my affection for both scenes isn’t simply about Lee’s artistry here or the ways in which he thinks about sports as a racial project/teller of identity, but his visible contempt for Larry Bird and the Boston Celtics. You see, I am Lakers’ fan. I don’t even think fan captures my relationship with the Lakers. I am miserable during the playoffs (especially this year), mentally exhausted before each game in anticipation of my misery during the game. Victories only provide a temporary respite, at least until the next game. In spite of the lack of enjoyment, I still watch each and every game. I am a fan – an irrational person who watches sports.

My love for the Lakers is simple at a certain level. Born and raised in Los Angeles, the Lakers represent my city. In the years since leaving Los Angeles, my relationship to the Lakers has grown as this relationship provides one of the most salient connections to home. First as a graduate student living in the Bay Area (especially during a year living in Davis, CA surrounding by Sacramento Kings fans) and now as a professor in Eastern Washington, my repping the Lakers reflects my desire to establish my geographic identity, to tell others where I am from and who I am.

Yet, at another level, my passion for the Lakers is about my childhood, nostalgia, my relationship to my father, and even my identity. Irrespective of the year or the players on that particular team, the Lakers elicit happiness because of the childhood memories that I associate with them: going to the Great Western Form with my father, the time I met Pat Riley at a wedding, that day I waited for almost an hour at the Apple Pan just so I could get James Worthy’s autograph. At an emotional levels, the Lakers embody the purity and innocence of childhood; the joy that came about with every spectacular play and monumental victory.

Yet, the nature of my relationship to the Lakers and the fandom in general illustrate the daily reconciliation and compromises endured because of sporting cultures. Some weeks back, after my Lakers lost to Dallas in four games (I have finally recovered), I had a brief exchange with Jeff Chang where he explained the basis of his disdain for the Lakers: “I want to qualify that I have loved the Lakers--esp. the glory days of Abdul-Jabbar. (Tho I did root for the Celts during that era, I watched the Lakers with the awe of an admirer,” he wrote. “But my hate for *these* Lakers is deep—more for who Jackson, Bryant, and Gasol have been off the court than for anything else. I've just been aghast at Jackson's vocal support of 1070, Gasol's anti-Asian racism, and Kobe's man issues and that's I guess how I express myself. It's no judgment on any Lakers fan at all . . . because again I definitely know how fandom.”

His comments really struck a chord with me: how could I support a team or players who had done things that in other circumstances I would condemn. His thoughts challenged me not only because it demonstrates the complexity that surrounds why people love and hate teams, how politics, ideology, narrative, and broader issues impact how we approach the game, but how as fans we negotiate these inconsistencies. I continually find myself defending the Lakers (and its players) even when the behavior is indefensible. Whether Phil Jackson’s often troubling comments, Kobe Brant’s past, Pau Gasol or Shaquille O’Neal connection to anti-Asian prejudice, I often find myself reconciling my heart – driven by sense of self, identity, nostalgia – with my critical understanding, politics, worldview, and moral values.

In recent weeks, I have written on the power of sporting narratives as they relate to both Dirk Nowitzki and LeBron James (with Bruce Lee Hazelwood). In both cases, I sought to emphasize the media representations of both players and how the media discourse, alongside of nostalgia, race, and larger social forces impacts the consumption of/reaction to these players (and others).

That is, we as fans don’t simply love or hate players, root for or against teams, in a vacuum. Yet, there is an emotionality in sports, not only for what happens on-the-field but the narratives that transcend the sporting arena. It has personal meaning and it has a connection to something bigger. While difficult at times, we, as sports fans, must continually negotiate the emotional appeals of sports even while we seek to critically understand its broader meaning. Despite the appeals to do so, to be a fan should not mean to turn away from critical thinking, self-reflection, and a moral compass.

Evident in these two articles, it is easy for me to think critically about sports away from the Lakers; reflecting on the demonization directed at LeBron James, Barry Bonds, Tiger Woods or Ricky Williams or the narratives associated with Dirk Nowitzki, Lance Armstrong, Michael Jordan, Marion Jones, Tiger Woods, and Michael Vick is easier to achieve because I don’t necessarily have to navigate the complex and competing relationship between commentator and fan. That doesn’t mean that I don’t navigate this complexity with these athletes (and others) I don’t root (in many instances I root for players who unfairly becomes villains in the national imagination), but my relationship is different. With the Lakers, whether talking about politics, ideology or even their on-the-court performance, I still am burdened by the emotionality, the connection, and the fan in me. I am still able to think critically, but often find myself compromised, forced to think about how I approach the subject, how I don’t want to be critical of their on-the-court or off the court performances because their failure hurts. Isn’t that what being a fan is about?

Being a fan is never just about the heart or even the mind but the ways in which sporting emotions intersect with the more cerebral beauties and ugliness of sports. While writing about food Brillat-Savarin once noted: “tell me what you think you eat, and I will tell you who you think you are." Taking this a step further, Belasco argues: “If we are what we eat, we are also what we don’t eat…Food choices establish boundaries and borders.” The same is true in the world of sports: tell me who you root for, and I will tell you who you think you are. Or better said, if we are who we root for, then we are all what teams and players root against. Sports fandom establishes boundaries and borders for who we are and what we want to be yet in many instances we are forced to cross and navigate those boundaries and borders on a daily instance. Some days, this is easier than others. As I watched the finals, my lack of emotional connection to each team (and its players) – the disconnect between them and me as fan – allows for a critical gaze that would be otherwise difficult to secure if the Lakers weren’t on vacation.

Postscript

I want to give a S/O to Oliver Wang, Jeff Chang, Mark Naison, Wayne Moreland, and the many others whose responses to my past pieces both challenge me and led to this new piece. Thanks as always to Mark Anthony Neal for this amazing platform and space.

***

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).

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).

'Left of Black': Episode #34 featuring David J. Leonard and Natalie Y. Moore

Left of Black #34

w/ David J. Leonard and Natalie Y. Moore

May 16, 2011

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype by Washington State University Professor David J. Leonard, co-editor of Commodified and Criminalized: New Racism and African-Americans in Contemporary Sports.  Later he is joined by Chicago Public Radio reporter Natalie Y. Moore, who is also the co-author of The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of An American Gang.

***

>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).

>Natalie Y. Moore is a reporter for Chicago Public Radio’s South Side bureau. Prior to joining the Chicago Public Radio staff in May 2007, Natalie was a city hall reporter for the Detroit News. As a freelance journalist, Natalie’s work has been published in Essence, Black Enterprise, the Chicago Reporter, Bitch, In These Times, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune. She is co-author of the book Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation (Cleis Press, 2006) and The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of An American Gang. She is an adjunct instructor at Columbia College Chicago and is the former program chair for the Association for Women Journalists.

***

Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

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.

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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.

 

Another Missed Shot: Kobe Bryant and the Politics of Homophobia

Another Missed Shot: Kobe Bryant and the Politics of Homophobia 
by David J. Leonard

Whistled four his 4^th personal foul and then a technical foul, Kobe Bryant headed to the bench.  With cameras focused on him, he shouted “fucking faggot” in the direction of the referee leading to an avalanche of public condemnation, a fine from the league, and ample debate.  As a Lakers fan, and someone committed to social justice, his choice in words was deeply disappointing.  “Homophobic Slurs Are Always Meant to Offend” writes Mychal Denzel Smith.  “The use of this particular word reveals something deeper. It's the belief that homosexuality is inherently inferior and an undesirable trait; therefore, to refer to someone with slurs usually reserved for gays is an attempt to belittle that person further. The quickest and most efficient way to insult a man has become to call into question his sexual orientation.” 

Yet, as someone committed to social justice, I have also been disappointed by the reaction from both his critics and his defenders.  Not surprisingly, throughout the Internet many have used this as an opportunity to highlight their own anti-gay sentiments.  Others, however, have denounced Kobe Bryant, expressing shock at his comments, while focusing on the necessity of a fine rather than education of not only Bryant but also society at large.

Shortly after Bryant slur became a public story, the Human Rights Council offered the following denunciation of Bryant:

What a disgrace for Kobe Bryant to use such horribly offensive and distasteful language, especially when millions of people are watching.  Hopefully Mr. Bryant will recognize that as a person with such fame and influence, the use of such language not only offends millions of LGBT people around the world, but also perpetuates a culture of discrimination and hate that all of us, most notably Mr. Bryant, should be working to eradicate.  Bryant and the Lakers have a responsibility to speak up on this issue immediately. America is watching.

Others followed suit, demanding apologies, questioning what sort of punishment should be leveled at Bryant, and otherwise condemned not only the slur but also the person in Bryant.  Yet, amid all the shock and self-righteousness, John Amaechi attempted to provide context for incident: “I'm surprised that people are surprised. This is common language when I played. It was an everyday word that I heard. I haven't seen anything new put in place (by the NBA) to tackle homophobia. There's no reason for it to somehow get better.”  Hoping to capitalize on Kobe Bryant’s visibility (and possibly his already negative standing amongst segments of society) GLADD and Human Rights Council emphasized the potential here to educate and inform.

The Human Rights Council called Bryant’s situation a teachable moment.  While correct in a sense, unfortunately effective lessons have not been at the center of this pedagogical exercise.  By excoriating Bryant and demanding an apology, by focusing on his being a role model (the consequences of kids using it in their schools demonstrates that this isn’t an issue specific to role models) the issue of homophobia has been individualized and isolated.  Bryant’s multiple apologies are seen as a resolution as the focus rests with his learning a lesson.  Lesson learned, back to the game.  

Likewise, the decision from Davis Stern to fine Bryant $100,000 further illustrates the ways in which Bryant required disciplining and punishment as part of the education process. Yet, another lesson learned.  In fact, the denunciation of Bryant, the calls for apologies, education, penance, accountability, and punishment is commonplace within the NBA.  The culture of the NBA is one of control, disciplinarity and punishment for intruding, transgressing, and rule-breaking black bodies.  It is a cultural platform where respectability and appropriateness, as defined by the white racial frame, govern the day-to-day operations alongside its cultural reception.  This is especially true for African American players who have a responsibility to demonstrate their respectability, something that Kobe failed at this moment.

For example, GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios stated, “Professional sports players need to set a better example for young people who use words like this on the playground and in our schools, creating a climate of intolerance and hostility. The LA Lakers have a responsibility to educate their fans about why this word is unacceptable.” Likewise, Edward Wyckoff Williams, waxing nostalgically about a better era in sports, further emphasized his failure as a role model:

Older fans will remember the days when sports stars were heroes, admired for their talent and stature. They graced Wheaties and Cheerio boxes, encouraging young people to stay in school and eat a healthy breakfast. Now, in an age where headlines show the growing number of gay and lesbian youth committing suicide, Bryant's rant is both disrespectful and potentially dangerous -- sending the wrong message to young, adoring fans -- who may well take it literally. Members of the NBA and NFL should be governed not just by their professional code of conduct, but with a great sense of obligation -- reflecting the often quoted line -- 'with great power comes great responsibility'.  If our athletic icons use homophobic slurs, how can we expect our children to act any differently on the schoolyards and street corners?

The efforts to link Bryant’s slur to heroes through a paradigm of nostalgia reflects the historic myopia here in that homophobia has always been present within sporting cultures (and the larger culture as well).  In fact, (white) heteronormativity is central to hero worship historically and present nostalgia for it.  Homophobia is not new, nor is it reflective of the a new type of athlete.  

The effort to use Bryant’s offensive remarks to highlight the pervasive problem of homophobia ironically erases the ubiquity and the systemic impact of homophobia inside and OUTSIDE of sports.  In effect, the public condemnation, the fine, and the overall discourse effectively isolated homophobia, linking it to blackness and Kobe’s visible signifier as basketball player.  In other words, Kobe gets constructed as the face of homophobia, evidence of yet another example of homophobia within the NBA and black America rather than society at large.  As evidence by Bryant’s deployed slur and the public criticism, blackness is once again marked as essentially disruptive, uncontrollable, as a source of “cultural degeneracy.”  Rhonada Williams, in “Living at the crossroads: Exploration in race, nationality, sexuality, and gender,” reminds us that blackness exists as “a problematic sign and ontological position” (1998, p. 140).   The ways in which homophobia has been attached onto Kobe’s body is evident in both media discourse and reader comments.  Imagined as evidence of his “immaturity” and “ignorance,” linked to culture of sports and basketball, denounced because of his failures to be a role model to kids, the responses consistently focused on Bryant as the beginning and end to the conversation.

To fully understand this situation, one needs to understand it within a larger history of the NBA. In 2007, after former NBA player John Amaechi announced that he was gay, controversy and debate ensued as to whether or not homophobia was particular to the NBA culture.  Such questions increased after Tim Hardaway, responding to a question about Amaechi’s announcement and the surrounding media coverage, told Dan LeBatard, “You know, I hate gay people, so I let it be known,” Hardaway said. “I don't like gay people and I don't like to be around gay people. I am homophobic. I don't like it. It shouldn't be in the world or in the United States.” Hardaway was quickly banished from the NBA’s All-Star weekend, while David Stern dismissed the controversy arguing that “the question of the NBA is always, “have you got game?’”   (Breton 2007).  While the invocation of meritocracy is both instructive and without much evidence (think Craig Hodges), what was most revealing in terms of race and the ongoing culture was the efforts to isolate homophobia within the NBA, with hip-hop culture functioning as the source of homophobia within America’s basketball arenas. 

Efforts to invoke Allen Iverson’s rap lyrics, where he uttered the phrase “faggot tendencies,” or the reactions of many players, who spoke of discomfort around having a gay teammate, served as the basis of a simple conclusion: Amaechi’s decision to remain “in-the-closet” and the firestorm that resulted from his “coming-out-of-the-closet” demonstrate the heightened level of homophobia within the NBA (Thiel 2007; Whitley 2007).  It was not a societal problem, but an NBA problem; it was not an American thing; it was a black/hip-hop thing (if an NBA thing it’s gotta be a black thing).  LeBron James fueled the controversy, offering the following: “With teammates you have to be trustworthy, and if you're gay and you're not admitting that you are, then you are not trustworthy. So that's like the number one thing as teammates . . . we all trust each other. You've heard of the in-room locker room code. What happens in the locker room stays there. It's a trust factor.”. In response, Michael Wilbon similarly confined the issue to the sphere of basketball

Not to be too cynical, but I don't want to pay too much attention to reactions from a 22-year-old ballplayer with incredibly limited exposure, whose life has been little more than a series of tip-offs from biddy ball to AAU to high school to the pros. LeBron's reaction simply reflects the self-absorption of the day when it comes to young athletic gods whose transition from boyhood to manhood is in too many cases put off until retirement from the pros.

If we're lucky, the men and women who are both enlightened and emboldened will not only be supportive but will drown out the knuckleheads and Neanderthals and everybody who wants to slow the march of progress. Even one step away from tolerance, whether we're talking about race, gender, religious beliefs or sexuality, simply slows the march to the day when none of this stuff matters (2007).

Concluding that homophobia and ignorance concerning the GLBT community reflects the culture of basketball, Wilbon unknowingly constructs homophobia as exception, as a problem specific to the NBA.  Even Dave Zirin, often a source of progressive sports commentary, concludes that sports are unique concerning homophobia: “Sports is one of the last grand hamlets of homophobia. Amaechi poses a real challenge to the realities of the locker room, the press box and the owner's box: all places where I have heard homophobic comments used as casually as a comma. I give no credit to Stern's pretension that it just doesn't matter” (2007).  Others similarly wondered if hip-hop contributed to homophobia (Moore 2007; Amaechi 2007) or if other issues – violence, locker rooms – were at work as well.  In a league that regularly reduces women to sexual objects, that celebrates the hyper masculinity of its NBA players evident in the use of gendered/sexualized language (“Pau Gasol is soft”; “Sacramento Queens”), the hypocrisy here is endless.  Within sports culture that works to recode the WNBA as a heterosexual league as a counter narrative to assumptions about its lesbian presence, it is hard to accept the righteousness evident here.

Notwithstanding, the culture and the blackness of the league became a subtextual source of inquiry for the debate about homophobia within the NBA, ultimately exonerating whiteness/American through a scapegoating discourse.  While writing about Don Imus, Michael Awkward is particularly instructive in this case: “Put Simply,” Kobe Bryant “was made to stand in for millions of well-known and faceless” homophobes and other who tacitly protect their heterosexual privilege who GLBT communities and their allies “want desperately to identity, put on trial, and excoriate because of incontrovertible – but to this point often easily dismissed – ‘evidence’ of centuries of anti-gay violence, heterosexism, and homophobia.  With Kobe Bryant, we get a similar reductionist formula, where Bryant and all of his past experiences provide a supposed explanation for his use of this slur. 

The ease to which Bryant was condemned and the perceived self-righteousness reflect the hegemony of the white racial frame.  Bryant’s homophobic slur, his perceived homophobia, his emotional outbursts, and his evidence “childishness” here fit a larger script about black male bodies.  This instance and the claims about uber homophobia within sports culture (usually linked to basketball and football and not say hockey and baseball) and homophobia within the black community thus fit a larger narrative about black dysfunction, pathology and otherness.  “The casual sexism and homophobia reproduce the oppression of straight black men, providing a justification for ‘the denial of manhood to black men within a racialized society,” writes Michael Kimmel in “Toward a Pedagogy of the Oppressor.”  “‘You see,’ one can almost hear the establishment saying ‘those black men are like animals.  Look at how they treat their women!  They don’t deserve to be treated with respect.”  In other words, “the very mechanism that black men thought would restore manhood” – demonizing homosexuals, using anti-gay slurs, asserting and demonstrating traditional male values – “ends up being the pretext on which it is denied.” 

bell hooks takes up this issue with “Homophobia in Black Communities” arguing that “black communities may be perceived as more homophobic than other communities because there is a tendency for individuals in black communities to express in an outspoken way anti-gay sentiment.”  Furthering the distinction between black and white homophobia she writes, “yet a distinction must be made between black people overtly expressing prejudice toward homosexuals and white people who never make homophobic comments but who have the power to actively exploit and oppress gay people in areas of housing, employing, etc.”  Echoing the criticism offered by Dwight McBride in Why I hate Abercrombie and Fitch, I find myself dissatisfied and uncomfortable with the binaries constructed here as well as the tacit acceptance/privileging of one form of bigotry over the other. 

Yet, hooks challenges readers to think about how and why a public discourse around homophobia relies and focuses on the uttererances of Kobe Bryant, Isaiah Washington or Chris Brown, and not the ways in which homophobia is ingrained in our culture, language, and institutions.  Why do these black men become the moments for public righteousness and concerns about bigotry and not the ubiquity of anti-gay slurs at American schools, anti-gay hate crimes, or any number of examples?  Similarly, these spectacle serve not as a means to interrogate homophobia, heterosexism, and anti-gay violence as manifested in a myriad of spaces but as a moment to celebrate “us” (“the normal) as accepting and progressive in the demonization of the other.  It becomes a missed opportunity to interrogate our own language and prejudices for the sake of imagining the Other as the Other. 

hooks’ comments also mirror the hegemonic belief that black males are likely to express and hold onto homophobic beliefs, a fact that is complicated at best and patently without basis in another sense.   In “A Comparison of African American Men and White College Students Affective and Attitudinal Reactions to Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Individuals,” Charles Negy and Russell Eiseman found that blacks were only slightly more accepting of anti-gay sentiments.  These differences, however, disappear when accounting for religiosity.  Noting, “that most ethnic groups are not very accepting of homosexuality,” the authors conclude, “for both African Americans and whites, gender and religious commitment predicted homophobia.”  Despite these findings and ample evidence about societal homophobia, the reaction to Bryant’s comments and commonplace discussions about homophobia within the black community erases the larger issues at hand.  A CNN poll recently found that 48% thought homosexuality was morally wrong.  In 2001, Human Rights Watch reported that 2 million American teenagers suffered because of anti-gay slurs and taunts.  Similarly, according to one study, “Gay students hear anti-gay slurs as often as 26 times each day; faculty intervention occurs in only about 3% of those cases” while another found that 97% of high school students “regularly hear homophobic remarks from their peers.”

Yet, these sort of spectacles that imagine homophobia as unique to the black community, as particular to basketball culture, as reflecting the values and ethos of hip-hop not only furthers the demonization of blackness but in term safely confines homophobia to the dysfunctional Other in need of education and punishment.  By scapegoating homophobia as a sports thing, a black thing, a hip-hop thing, or a Kobe thing, the discourse lets a lot of people and institutions off the hook.

Responding to increasing criticism directed at the African American community in lead up to the November 2008, which put the issue of gay marriage on the ballot with Proposition 8, Ta-Nehisi Coates succinctly highlighted the danger in ignoring or defending in instances of homophobia, yet not using it as a moment to scapegoat and demonize African Americans:

I don't like the idea of being an apologists for homophobes--least of all black homophobes. Also, I'm concerned that my defense not make black folks think that this isn't an issue worth our attention. But sweeping statements like "no ethnic community [is] as homophobic in America as African-Americans" should induce some serious pangs of skepticism. Are African-Americans really more homophobic than, say, Italian-Americans? Are we really more homophobic than Hasidic Jews? Than Caribbean Americans? Than Puerto-Ricans?

As a teachable moment, we must ask what are we being taught and why?  What is it teaching us about society, others, and our self? Does it teach us about a larger issue of prejudice, homophobia or bigotry?  Did it teach us about language and the normalization of heterosexism and homophobia in our everyday life? Does it push us to think about language constructs “normal” and “Other” and the impact/consequences of language as everyday violence?  When a person (Kobe or otherwise) “hurls that antigay slur at a referee or anyone else — let’s call it the F-word — he is telling boys, men and anyone watching that when you are frustrated, when you are as angry as can be, the best way to demean and denigrate a person, even one in a position of power, is to make it clear that you think he is not a real man, but something less,” writes John Amaechi. “It is an indication of the power of that word, and others like it, to brutalize and dehumanize. This F-word, which so many people seem to think is no big deal, is the postscript to too many of those lives cut short.”  Did we learn this lesson or have we been too focused on what Kobe did and not what Kobe reveals?

Amaechi efforts to contextualize, to move beyond the individual, to reflect on the consequences have been unique to the discussion.  Unfortunately, much of the public rancor has “become another spectacle, evidence of ‘deviance’ for a mainstream public condition to think of black people and black men in particular as such”   (Neal, 2005, p. 81).  By focusing on intent, on sports, on Kobe, and the larger discourse about black homophobia, we have missed an opportunity, creating another moment where the wrong lessons are being taught and learned.   Homophobia, anti-gay bigotry and harmful slurs directed at the GLBT community are not a black, hip-hop, or sports thing, but an American thing.  A me and you thing.  

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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.