The Race Card

It's been more than a week since Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson waded into the stands at the Palace in Auburn Hills, Michigan, swinging at anyone who breathed, and by now everyone who has seen the video footage has expressed an opinion.

In the minutes immediately following the melee, as the shocking clips were first spilling across the airwaves, ESPN's studio crew of Tim Legler, Greg Anthony, Steven A. Smith, and John Saunders took the suprizing opinion that the players had done nothing wrong. They were merely defending themselves.

Predictably, there was an immediate backlash. Rob Parker of the Detroit News criticized the players turned analysts, and labelled them as part of a new jockocracy -- players who have gained positions in the media based solely on their athletic experience as opposed to any journalistic training.

While Saunders, Smith, and the two jocks may have reacted a bit prematurely, they also missed a big part of the story since they were apparently reluctant to raise the issue of race. Allow me.

One of David Stern's great accomplishments has been his ability to sell the NBA to every corner of America. He had help, of course. Michael Jordan was a perfect ambassador -- that rare individual who cuts across all segments of society regardless of race, age, or gender. In recent years, however, Stern has had to deal with several other less savory players, people like Latrell Sprewell, Allen Iverson, and the recently besmirched Kobe Bryant.

As the league's popularity continues to fall amongst white fans, the last thing the league needed was what happened on the weekend before Thanksgiving. The incessantly spinning video has burned an image into our minds -- a group of enraged black men climbing into the stands to beat on some white folk. It could be argued that David Stern's suspensions were as excessive as they were because he needed to send two messages: one to the players, and one to the league's fans. Make no mistake, race is an issue here. Michael Wilbon even argues that the NBA's choice to embrace the hip-hop culture is partially to blame for all of this. (Of course, there are those who disagree.)

If we've learned one thing over the past several days, it's that the sporting world is not quite the meritocracy that it might seem. Consider:

• When New Mexico State University fired head football coach Tony Samuel last week, it brought the number of black head coaches at the Division I level down to three of 117 schools. (Tyrone Willingham, Notre Dame; Karl Dorrell, UCLA; and Slyvester Croom, Mississippi State.)

• Just a week previous to that firing, the University of Central Florida's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport released a comprehensive study on minorities coaching in college football. The study found that most university presidents and athletic directors are white males, and that they tend to hire coaches who look like them.

• Even the recent controversy surrounding the "Desperate Housewives" skit leading into Monday Night Football last week had racial undertones. Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony Dungy criticized the spot for casting Terrell Owens in the stereotypical role of the black sexual predator along side Nicolette Sheridan. The interracial aspect of this can't be ignored, either. Josh has a nice take on this at UndertheBleachers.org.

Ten days have passed since the ugliness in Auburn Hills, but the effects will linger for quite some time. The players will obviously have to live with their decisions to take the fight to the fans, but it's up to the rest of us to decide whether or not we're willing to accept the current inequities in the sporting world.

Comments

[josh]

I think overall, race relations in this country are taking steps backward. What we're seeing in sports is just a small symptom of macro-level societal shifts toward more isolated and less integrated communities all over the U.S. You've done a good job of enumerating many ways in which this has affected the world of sports.

[jdg]

I don't know. I think professional sports are one of the few venues where you can see a black man and a white man working together, as equals. I get warm fuzzies when I see a team celebrate and people of different races are jumping into one another's arms in joy after a fumble recovery or something.

It's hard to say race relations are getting worse. Worse than what? When were they better?

[EJ]

I'm skeptical that race is as big a deal here as the Cowboy has suggested. This isn't OJ. Artest and Jackson (and Wallace, for that matter) behaved like imbeciles; I don't really care one way or another about their suspensions, but if the fans behaved like idiots, the players were worse.

Institutional racism pervades many aspects of society; I won't dispute that. But to tie the lack of black head coaches to the reaction to the Artest incident is a reach. The argument that the punishments were excessive because the offenders were black seems to lack any merit. And the NBA's popularity is declining because the level of play has declined, not because most of the stars are black. Most of the stars were black in the '80s, too, and there didn't seem to be an issue then.

And as far as Terrell goes, I have heard no one blaming him. Mostly, the reaction in that case seems to be awe that ABC -- nine months removed from Janet Jackson's Super Bowl -- thought this was a good idea. That one is about corporate stupidity, not race.

It seems anytime a black person and a white person are involved in a dispute, racism is inevitably cited. Sometimes it's appropriate, sometimes it isn't, but it's always wrong to assume it's always present. And it's simply wrong to say race relations are getting worse. There's room for improvement, to be sure, but racially-based crime is WAY down in the US; blacks and hispanics run more Fortune 500 companies than ever before; the Secretary of State is and was black. For folks in those last two examples to have succeeded, they had to get along with plenty of whites, and vice versa. More importantly, there had to be societal acceptance for those folks to be promoted; I don't remember Time Warner's Board of Directors fighting a huge public relations scandal when they nominated and approved Parsons to run the company.

So let's agree that racism still exists. Let's also agree to disagree that it doesn't have a whole lot to do with Artest getting suspended.

[Mark J]

Gotta agree with EJ on almost all his points. Except...
...outside of the general condemnation of the acts taken by Artest, et al, the primary thing I've heard about this is race, race, and race. Perception then becomes reality and race takes center stage that this incident revolves around instead of the general imbecility of the athletes involved.
And although NBA hoops is, as Bill Walton would say, "Horrribblle" to watch most nights, the popularity the league enjoyed in the '80's and early '90's had a lot to do with the presence of a white superstar -- Larry Bird -- on equal footing with Magic and Jordan. There is no dynamic like that today.