More than a Ball Player: The David West Interview

More than a Ball Player:  The David West Interview

by David Leonard | NewBlackMan

One of the more thoughtful and socially active professional athletes, David West, a forward for the NBA’s Indiana Pacers talked with NewBlackMan regular contributor David Leonard, about the current NBA season, the residue of the NBA lockout, the stereotypes of NBA players and what he’s reading these days.

***

DJL – How has the compressed season been physically and mentally?

DW: The games are just coming.  It becomes a grind.  4 games in 5 nights.  12 games in 15 nights.  This is physically taxing.  There have been injuries around the NBA.  You do what you can to get your body prepared but sometimes the body won’t respond.  It is not going to get better.

DJL: How does the compressed season impact family

DW: Families are rarely taken into account in a regular season and that is even more of an issue this season.  There is really no time.  Guys make sacrifices in a normal season and that is even greater right now.  There is less time to do anything outside of practice and games.

DJL: Describe your assessment of lockout looking back in terms of relationship between players and owners, how race played out

DW: I went to a few meetings and there was some cryptic language that was used.  I was offended by the idea we may not understand certain things.  Beyond that, when you are dealing with a certain amount of money in business, there has to be a middle and level ground.  In the media, we were portrayed as not knowing anything, as greedy and selfish – to just shut up and play basketball.  We expected that. 

I always tell people that we very fortunate to be in the NBA but there are a lot of personal sacrifices.  So during the lockout guys were able to invest time in themselves, something that often went under the radar.  This generation of athletes is a bit more conscious than they get credit for, how they spend and invest their money.  I have been in the league for 9 years and when I started out there were high-end cars every where in the player parking lots and now you see less of that.  That goes unnoticed.  The lockout was a personification of that because guys were prepared to miss paychecks, to miss games.  This is a change in the mindset of players.

DJL: It seems that one of the struggles was battling the caricature of today’s NBA player

DW: Every guy doesn’t have the machine behind them.  As an individual, it is hard to fight the assumptions made about us.  When I first entered the league, people were like “David, what are you talking about” because I wasn’t talking about basketball and I wasn’t talking about mundane things that people expected from me.  That puts into perspective what people expect of you; people don’t expect athletes to have anything to offer other than being a source for entertainment.  The mind is seen as 2^nd or 3^rd rate.  So often the conversation starts and ends with sports.  You find yourself boxed in.  I have been labeled as stand-offish because when people engage me they often just want to talk about basketball, and that is not what I always want to talk about.  Most guys deal with it and just walk around in a bubble because there is no space for original thoughts from athletes within sports.  

DJL: What are your passions, what drives you?

DW: I am passionate about knowing more.  Every day I wake up, I want to learn something new.  I read a lot on African American history, African history, and history in general.  I love to read; I want to be engaged with what is going on socially.   I love music, the language that is inside the music, what guys are trying to say, especially with hip-hop.  It doesn’t have to be the “conscious rap.”  All rappers are conscious because they have the wherewithal and freedom to say something.  Regardless of what you hear, even the most childlike rapper or those who rap at the highest level, there is a message there.  I like to speak to young people; I don’t like to box myself in just because I have been successful as an athlete. 

DJL: You mentioned that you like to read, what are you reading right now

DW: Right now, I am reading Cheikh Anta Diop’s Pre-colonial Black Africa.  I think it is important to know that we in the African American community have a history before America.  As an athlete what we do is so routine, so there is so much time for the mind, time to engage your brain and your thought process.  That is why I read. That is why I am who I am; that is why I do what I do.  People who have power, read.  People who have power to be engaged and who can control their own movements, read.  If you don’t read and if you don’t have the ability to think critically, people are going to dictate what you do for the rest of your life.  They are going move you how they want to move you.

DJL: While you love basketball, it doesn’t seem to define you.  Talk about that

DW: It can’t because the average career is 3.5 or 4 years.  A few guys are going to play 12-15 plus years but not most.  At the end of the day, when you retire you are 32 or 38, there is a lot of life left.  You have to start preparing for your life after the NBA as soon as you enter the league.  It is not going to be there forever.   That is why you can’t let this life consume you; you can’t let the NBA be the end all, be all, of who you are as a person.   

DJL: Since we connected via twitter, I am curious how does twitter fit into your efforts to expand your reach and connection. 

DW: I read your material from Professor Neal.  When I became twitter literate, I found that the people that I wanted to follow were professors and educators, people I didn’t know.  I follow a lot of History and Africana professors, cultural critics, and news organizations, because that it is what I am interested in. Whether it be from Professor Neal’s posts, Left of Black or a professor who posts questions via twitter about the subject matter within their classroom. I also like the immediacy of the news as it comes in through twitter.

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race 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.  Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness will be published by SUNY Press in May of 2012.

Emancipate the NBA: Struggling for Justice in the NBA

"Basketball and Chain" (2003) Hank Willis Thomas

Emancipate the NBA: Struggling for Justice in the NBA

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

I have been trying to write this column for several days.  I have thought and thought, and spent several hours writing, resulting in nothing.  I am just too angry.  My anger about the NBA LOCKOUT has nothing to do with the players.  I am actually proud of their courage and their refusal to kowtow in the face of pressure to accept an unfair proposal.  I am happy they told David Stern to file his ultimatum under “U” for unacceptable.  In fact, when I heard the news on Monday that the players indeed rejected the proposal, I found myself giving a little fist pump.  The prospect of a lost NBA season is disheartening at one level, yet I am encouraged by their refusal to accept an unjust economic arrangement. 

Despite a public narrative that continually focuses on money as the only issue of contention, the LOCKOUT isn’t simply about how to split NBA pie.  It isn’t about greedy, out-of-touch players that already make millions for playing a game (this idea is so disrespectful to not only their talents but their hard work and dedication).

Players have already given up billions of dollars when they apparently agreed to a 50/50 split (or thereabouts).   Yet that wasn’t enough for the owners.  Their proposal would dramatically restrict player movement, ostensibly ending much of free agency.  The LOCKOUT in many ways is an effort to roll back free agency, to overturn the legacies of Curt Flood and to create a system where owners don’t have to compete for the services of all players (Ric Bucher made this point eloquently). 

The proposed structural changes would dramatically alter the landscape of the NBA, severely limiting the options and free agency potential of NBA players.  In 2010-2011, where the players received 57% of basketball related income, the salary cap was $58.044 million; that year teams paid a tax at $70.307 million.  If the owners have their way, these numbers would fall to $50,915,789 for the cap and $61,672,807 for the luxury tax.  So what does this mean?  It means, that only 10 teams would be under the salary cap (these calculations include potential rookie salaries).  It means that 14 teams would be paying a luxury tax, which would be higher in the new system.  It means that the many teams that have empty roster spots would have little or no money to spend on free agents.  Faced with a luxury tax and only able to use a reduced exception that allows teams to exceed the salary cap, the new system is an assault on free agency and “free-market capitalism.”  It allows teams to ostensibly eliminate player leverage in getting the most possible money.      

Imagine if this system existed in other industries.  Imagine if every company in your respective field was restricted in how much money they could spend on salaries.  Imagine if these companies were taxed if they spent over a certain threshold.  How would it impact your ability to garner employment?  How would it impact your ability to move from one company to the next?  How would it impact your ability to increase your salary because two competitors were forced to compete for your services?  What the owners and David Stern are trying to do, through the reduction of the BRI, through the changes in the mid-level of exception, and the tax structure is to limit the power and choice of the players.  It will invariably depress wages, bolster profits for owners, kill the NBA’s middle-class, and otherwise limit player power.  

The owners’ proposal will likely HURT many teams and the quality of their basketball.  Look at the Boston Celtics: they have 7 players under contract for the 2011-2012 year, meaning they would need 5 more players just to get the 12-person minimum (teams often carry 15 players).  Based on estimates of a 50/50 BRI split, the Celtics would be roughly $15 million dollars over the cap, meaning that in order to fill out their roster they would be limited to minimum veteran salaries and one exception (unless they sign players previously under contract in 2010-2011).  They would be forced to pay a tax for every dollar they spend.  How do you think that will impact player movement?  How will it impact jobs?  What team will be willing and able to sign players beyond 12-man roster?  As much as it pains me to say this (as someone born and raised in Los Angeles), the proposal would be horrid for a team like the Celtics.   

The NBA LOCKOUT is not about fans, despite claims that it is about helping the small-market teams and their fans.  As I have said before, I don’t buy the parity argument.  I buy it even less as it imagines the LOCKOUT as a struggle to protect small market teams from future player exodus. Focusing on LeBron James, Deron Williams, and Carmelo Anthony, all of whom left their teams for “greener” pastures in big markets, this argument focuses on the lack of fairness to the fans in these respective cities.  They cite the potential exits of Chris Paul and Dwight Howard as further evidence that the NBA needs structural change.  I am angered that anyone accepts this seriously flawed argument.  Whether thinking about the success of the Mavs or Spurs, or the failures of the Clippers, Knicks and the Warriors, market size does not guarantee success or failure.  It isn’t about the fans or fixing a broken system, but enhancing owner profits and further creating a league where players are     treated as “the help.”  It is about owners asserting their power to control the players.

While clearly a struggle that is difficult to connect to because of the money earned by all involved, it is a struggle that connects to each and every one of us.  That is clear from the writings of people like Michael Tillery, Marc Lamont Hill, Etan Thomas, and Dave Zirin, who brilliantly described the lockout in the following way in his essay "Occupy the NBA!":

"Maybe they’re fighting for a reason so basic, we’ve missed it. Maybe it’s because they overwhelmingly come from the ranks of the working poor, have career lengths of six years and have been facing off against the ranks of true generational, aristocratic wealth in all it’s arrogance, personified by the snide, oozing contemptuousness of David Stern. Maybe they’re just tired of being treated as less than men by the people who write their checks.

Maybe they just hate to lose. NBA players: welcome to the 99 percent."

Thinking about their struggle in relationship to broader fights for economic justice contributes to my solidarity with the players.   The players are part of the 99%.  In the NBA, the 1% is trying to enhance its profits, to control its workers, and to impose restrictions that undermines worker power; its trying to destroy the middle-class and the union; its trying to curtail collective bargaining all while demonizing the players.  Their fight is similar to those that took place in Ohio, Wisconsin and the Occupy movement.   Their fight is our fight.  Their fight is against corporate power and power that seeks to dismiss, dismantle, and demonize the power of the people.    As Dave Zirin reminded us, there is a lot at stake here: “I want my basketball, and I know I’m not alone. Let’s Occupy the NBA.”  Like the players, I don’t want basketball at any cost, hoping the players continue to fight so that we can have an NBA that is both just and fair to all parties involved.  Emancipate the NBA!

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race 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). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.

NBA Impasse: Owners & the 'Help'

NBA Impasse: Owners & the 'Help'

by Marc Lamont Hill | Philadelphia Daily News

On Monday, the NBA Players Association formally rejected the NBA owners' most recent offer and unanimously agreed to dissolve the union and take the owners to court.

The decision virtually guarantees a protracted legal battle and places the 2011-2012 season on the verge of disaster. As this news settles into my brain, and with games already canceled through at least Dec. 15, I feel overcome by a range of emotions.

As someone who studies inequality, I can't help but resist the popular "billionaires vs. millionaires" narrative that has been attached to the labor dispute. That allows us to ignore the fact that the NBA (like America itself) is an institution built upon the exploited labor of black and brown bodies.

Despite agreeing to reduce their revenue share from 57 to 50 percent, the owners are still trying to squeeze more money from the players, not to mention compromise their long-term security by reneging on the owners' promise to yield on systemic issues.

The players might be rich, but the owners are wealthy. And they're committed to keeping it that way.

As a black person, I can't help but feel sickened by the tone of condescension that spews from the mouths of NBA owners.

As Bryant Gumbel accurately pointed out, the owners speak with the indignation of plantation owners who are outraged that their "uppity" slaves are acting in their own best interest.

From their commitment to restricting the freedom of players to their arrogant "take it or leave it" ultimatums, the owners have committed to treating the players not as partners, but as "the help."

No, these uber-rich players aren't slaves. But the owners damned sure have the slave/master routine down pat.

As a labor advocate, I can't help but sympathize with all of the working-class people hurt by the lockout. Even if you can't side with millionaire players, it's easy to connect with all of the parking attendants, vendors and ticket takers directly affected by the work stoppage.

It's also easy to see the impact of the lockout on local restaurants, bars and other institutions that make income from game-day traffic. These are the people who will be most profoundly and irreversibly hurt by the labor impasse.

As an avid basketball fan, and Sixers season-ticket holder, I feel indifferent to the details of the negotiations. I just want to return to my courtside seat, waiting to see if Elton Brand can keep drinking from the fountain of youth that revived his career last year. I want to continue watching Jrue Holliday gain confidence and blossom into an elite point guard. I want to find out if space cadet Evan Turner can change the collective opinion that he is the worst Sixers draft pick this side of Leon Wood and Al Henry.

And while I don't have any illusions of a championship run, I can't wait to watch Doug Collins' young team give fits to elite squads like Dallas, Miami, Oklahoma City, Chicago and Los Angeles that enter our home floor.

I want to see basketball - desperately. But things aren't looking good.

Unless the players and owners can make serious headway within the next few days, we likely won't see a regular season game until next November. If that turns out to be true, my next feeling may be to boycott the NBA for a while.

And I won't be alone.

***

Daily News editor-at-large Marc Lamont Hill is an associate professor of education at Columbia University and host of "Our World With Black Enterprise," which airs at 6 a.m. Sundays on TV-One. Contact him at MLH@marclamonthill.com.

Putting the “Run Away Slaves” Ahead of the Plantation: Parity, Race and the NBA Lockout

"Basketball and Chain" by Hank Willis Thomas

Putting the “Run Away Slaves” Ahead of the Plantation: 

Parity, Race and the NBA Lockout

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

In wake of LeBron James’ decision to take his talents, along with those of Chris Bosh, to South Beach to join forces with Dwayne Wade, the NBA punditry has been lamenting the demise of the NBA.  This only became worse with the subsequent trades of Deron Williams and Carmelo Anthony to New Jersey and New York respectfully.  Described as a league “out of control in terms of the normal sports business model” where player power “kills the local enthusiasm for the customer and fan base,” where superstars leave smaller markets with no hope of securing a championship, where manipulating players and agents have created a game dominated by “players whose egos are bigger than the game,” much has been made about player movement.

Commentators have lamented how players are yet again destroying the game from the inside, thinking of themselves ahead of its financial security and cultural importance.  In “NBA no longer fan-tastic,” Rick Reillylaments the changing landscape facing the NBA.  Unlike any other sport, the NBA is now a league where “very rich 20-somethings running the league from the backs of limos,” are “colluding so that the best players gang up on the worst. To hell with the Denvers, the Clevelands, the Torontos. If you aren't a city with a direct flight to Paris, we're leaving. Go rot.”  In other words, this line of criticism have warned that “the inmates are running the asylum,” so much so that the league “is little more than a small cartel of powerful teams, driven by the insecurities and selfishness of the players who stack them.”  

While such rhetoric erases history (of trades – players of the golden generation have certainly demanded trades; the same can be said for other sports as well) and works from a faulty premise that parity is good for the economics of the NBA (the very different television monies for the NBA and NFL proves the faultiness of this logic), the idea that the league needs more parity remains a prominent justification for the NBA lockout.   “The owners believe that the league should be more competitive and that teams should have an opportunity to make a profit,” notes David Stern. Similarly, Adam Silver, deputy commissioner, argues, “Our view is that the current system is broken in that 30 teams are not in a position to compete for championships.” 

Such rhetoric and Stern’s ubiquitous statements about the NBA needing a dramatic restructuring builds upon argument that the NBA’s future is tied to its ability to thwart players like LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Deron Williams, and potentially Dwight Howard, Chris Paul, and others from taking their talents anywhere.  The cautionary rhetoric was evident in Jason Whitlock’s “NBA players are wrecking their league:”

This whole NBA scenario — from LeBron’s Decision to Melo’s Madness to Deron’s Escape — reminds me of the American housing bubble. . . .

For close to a decade, NBA players have walked the thin line between love and hate with their customers. The players crossed it when Ron Artest and several Indiana Pacers climbed into the stands to brawl with spectators. Commissioner David Stern instituted a string of new rules — dress code, tougher restrictions prohibiting fighting, 19-year-old age requirement for the draft — to push the players back on the other side of the line.

Those Band-Aid policies are starting to break. The players, many of whom have never grasped the need to understand and satisfy their customer base, are beginning to unwittingly push back.

Soaked in the arrogance of fame, wealth, immaturity and business ignorance, the players have dramatically reshaped the league with their free-agent and impending free-agent maneuvers.

In doing so — in destroying basketball in Cleveland, Utah and Denver — LeBron, Melo, Amar’e and Deron reinforced the perception among fans that teams don’t matter.

“As a player, you have to do what’s best for you,” Wade told reporters in reaction to the Carmelo trade to New York. “You can’t think about what someone’s going to feel or think on the outside. You have to do what’s best for you, and that’s what some players are doing. I’m happy for those players that felt that they wanted to be somewhere and they got their wish.”

That pretty much sums up the mentality of the modern-day American and modern-day pro athlete. Pleasing the individual takes precedence over everything else. It doesn’t matter that the collective strength of the NBA made Wade rich. Wade and other NBA players must be concerned only with themselves. That’s the American way.

He, like others, has called upon David Stern and the owners to protect the league, the game, and the players from the players themselves.  And that is what we are seeing with the NBA lockout.  Yes, it is about money – yes, it is about free-agency, the mid-level exception, hard versus soft caps, splits in revenue, and countless other issues but in the end this struggle is one that is about power and control.  It is a struggle to reverse if not end free agency, to guarantee profit and competitiveness (and lower salaries) through limiting player movement.  It is about reversing the victories  of past collective bargaining agreements and even Curt Flood.

It represents a struggle from the owners to make sure the future LeBron James’ doesn’t have the ability to take his talents to South Beach; it is a fight to make sure the next wave of stars doesn’t follow in the footsteps of Carmelo and Deron Williams who purportedly used the mere prospect of free agency to lead to force a trade.  It is a fight about restricting the power of the NBA’s 40 million dollar slaves from exercising what little power they possess.  

While the issues at work certainly relate to notions of parity, small market versus big market, and countless other issues, the scorn and rhetoric sounding the alarms plays upon fears resulted from the increased perceived power of black athletes.  The fears, the accusations, and the speculation as to the demise of the league, all which play on the purported selfishness, lack of intelligence, egos, and overall attitude of today’s (black) players builds upon longstanding stereotypes regarding black masculinity.  It is the living embodiment of the infamous words said between two cops regarding Malcolm X: “that’s too much power for one man to have.”  The NBA players, its primarily black players, have exhibited too much power, leading to widespread panics and condemnation; it has led to action in the form of the NBA lockout. 

We can understand the NBA lockout by looking at the work of Herman Gray, who argued that blackness exists as a “marker of internal threats to social stability, cultural morality, and economic prosperity.” It is similarity evident in the writings of Homi Bhabbi who persuasively described blackness in the white imagination as “both savage (cannibal) and yet the most obedient and signified of servants (the bearer of food); he is the embodiment of rampant sexuality and yet innocent as a child; he is mystical, primitive, simple-minded and yet the most worldly and accomplished liar, and manipulator of social forces.”   The NBA lockout is justified by the ideas that blackness is “simple-mindedness” that blackness is childishness, and that blackness is a space of manipulation, all of which threatens the long-term success and profitability of the NBA product.  The lockout is an effort to get that under control, to prevent anymore runaway slavesfrom putting themselves ahead of the plantation, I mean the game.   

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. 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). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.

Is the NBA Lockout About Race?

Is the NBA Lockout About Race?

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

I thought I would write a follow-up to my piece, “Bill Simmons and the Bell Curve: The ‘limited intellectual capital’ of the NBA’s Players” which has elicited a significant reaction.   It should be clear from the outset, I am not interested in conversations about individuals, intention, or motivation.  To paraphrase the always-brilliant Jay Smooth, the conversations should focus around what has been said, what has been done, and what all of this means in a larger context rather than the individual actors.  The discussion needs to be about how ideology, narrative, and frames operate within these larger discussions. 

One of the common responses to Bill Simmons’ commentary and more specifically the criticism directed at me for reflecting on the racial meaning in those comments has been that Simmons was talking about all NBA players, not just those who are black.  Given the racial demographics of the league and the racial signifiers associated with basketball, it is hard to accept the idea that “NBA player” isn’t a mere code for blackness.  In other words, blackness and basketball become inextricably connected within the dominant imagination, akin to Kathryn Russell-Brown’s idea of the criminal blackman.  Just as the “criminal Blackman” exists as contained identity within the dominant white imagination, the blackballer functions in similar ways. 

The process of both essentializing and bifurcating the black baller is evident in the very distinct ways that the white racial frame conceives of both white and black players, playing upon ideas of intelligence and athleticism.  Whereas the blackballer is imagined as athletic, naturally gifted, and physically superior, white basketball players are celebrated for their intelligence, work ethic, and team orientation.  In Am I Black Enough for You, Todd Boyd identifies a dialectical relationship between racialization and styles of play where whiteness represents a “textbook or formal” style basketball, which operates in opposition “street or vernacular” styles of hooping that are connected to blackness within the collective consciousness.   In both styles of play, notions of intelligence, mental toughness, and mental agility are centrally in play. 

A second and widely circulated denunciation against those critical voices has been our lack of fairness or the double standards of this portion of the discourse.  Whereas I honed in on Simmons’ comments, little has been made about those of Jason Whitlock (Bryant Gumbel has been the at the center of media commentary).  Lets be clear: the comments of Jason Whitlock, irrespective of intent, are worthy of criticism in that his recent commentary plays upon and reinforces dominant narratives and frames about race and blackness.  Looking at his comments, alongside with those of Simmons, further illustrates the ways in which ideologies are circulated, and how commentaries such of these cannot be understood outside of these larger contexts.

A belief in the superiority of white intelligence has been commonplace within American history.  This remains the case today.  In one earlier study (during 1990s; see here for another source) about the persistence of racial stereotypes, the author found the following:

More than half the survey respondents rated African Americans as less intelligent than whites. Fifty-seven percent of non-African Americans rated African Americans as less intelligent than whites and thirty percent of African Americans themselves rated African Americans as less intelligent than whites. Sixty-two percent of the entire sample rated African Americans as lazier than whites and more than three out of four survey respondents said that African Americans are more inclined than whites to prefer welfare over work.

In a 2010 study about race and politics, researchers at the University of Washington found that stereotypes about blacks as it relates to intelligence, work ethic, and trust-worthiness remain prominent. Another recent study about race, politics, and stereotypes found that while there has been slight progress in terms of the rejection of longstanding prejudices, they remain constant within the national discourse. 

These studies point to the power of the white racial frame and the persistence of racial realist arguments.  Tim Wise describes this line of thinking in the following way:

  

The primary arguments made by the so-called racial “realists” are as follows:

1.    Race is a scientifically valid category of human difference;

2.   Racial differences are not only real but meaningfully connected at the biological and/or genetic level with important human traits, most notably, intelligence;

3. Intelligence is measurable using standardized IQ batteries and other mechanisms;

4.   Blacks are generally less intelligent than whites and Asians, and this is due to biological and/or genetic differences between the races.

Flowing from these premises, the racial “realists” argue that social policy should take these “truths” into account. This means that we should cease all efforts to create greater social or economic equity between the races, since they are inherently unequal in their abilities. It also means that personal biases on the basis of these truths — even those that perpetuate deep racial inequities in the society — are not unfair or unjust but rational. It is rational, for instance, for employers to favor white job applicants for high-level jobs, since they are more likely to possess the talents necessary to do those jobs well. So, in this sense, discrimination should not be prohibited. It should be tolerated, and seen as a logical choice given the science of racial difference. And certainly we should not take racial disparities in income, wealth, occupational status, or educational outcomes to suggest the presence of racism; rather, these gaps merely reflect the persistent human inequalities that cluster along racial lines.

As I read the comments of Simmons, Whitlock and countless others, I am unable to disconnect my reading from this larger social, ideological, and political context.   The larger discourse exists inside the words, in the interpretations, in the meaning, in the reception, and in the larger ramifications.   It is within this larger context that I read Jason Whitlock’s “Players need to stick to their day jobs”

Referring to the “foolishness of basketball players” and players as “a group of spoiled, entitled, delusional kids who learned boardroom manners from watching episodes of “The Apprentice?,” Whitlock concludes that the players are out their league.   Arguing that the players are not victims of racism or David Stern’s “plantation mentality” (reference to Bryant Gumbel’s recent comments), he offers the following:

But these NBA players are not victims during this lockout. Not of David Stern.

They’re victims of their own immaturity, stupidity and delusion. They have the wherewithal and resources to stand toe to toe with commissioner Stern, but they are improperly using and undermining their power. Gumbel’s commentary on HBO’s "Real Sports" won’t help them realize and effectively utilize their power. It will assist the players in curling up in a fetal position and playing the victim.

That’s what we, African-Americans, do all too often in the aftermath of the civil-rights movement. We have no real understanding of the effort, courage and disciplined strategy Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and their supporters used to win the freedoms we now take for granted.

Here we see that Whitlock’s criticism of these “silly players,” “a bunch of kids with sycophant publicists and groupies,” who are acting “stupid” is rooted in criticism of African American youth.  By contextualizing the NBA lockout within a larger discourse of the hip-hop generation betraying the struggles, sacrifices, and the politics of respectability, Whitlock links this discussion to a wider discourse.  Playing upon hegemonic ideas regarding the American Dream, hard work, and disciplinarity, Whitlock’s comments also resonate with larger narratives about meritocracy and bootstraps ideology.  Writing about sports as a powerful institution for mythmaking about the American Dream, C. Richard King and Charles Springwood argue that:

The commonsense notions of the self-made man, and the American dream work against personal and collective engagement with the materiality of racial difference.  Individuals, effort, and ability to obscure the conditions and effects of racial hierarchy . . ..  These life histories map out opposite itineraries, success, superstardom, and the American Dream juxtaposed with failure, obscurity, and a societal nightmare.  They individual, they assert, makes his or her fortune based on his or her effort and ability.  The system is open, fostering upward mobility for individuals with talent, character, and DISCIPLINE (my emphasis) (2001, pp. 31-32, p. 34).

In other words, the riches, fame, and “the game” itself of the NBA are available to the players, even during this lockout.  What precludes the fulfillment of the American Dream is the “character” and lack of “discipline” of the players during the labor negotiations.  While blame can be spread around, in the end, it is the players’ fault.

Whitlock, unlike much of the media punditry, offers a level of honestly here, making clear that public discussions of NBA players or the NBA is indeed a public debate about blackness.

Another striking aspect of Whitlock’s column rests with his effort to invoke the metaphor of “the animal kingdom,” describing the NBA lockout as a battle between two distinct species.  He writes:

We ignore the laws of the jungle that we live in.

Racism, classism, sexism, power imbalances, etc. aren’t going away. They’ve been here since the beginning of time. They’re part of our flawed nature. No different from a lion’s nature to prey upon zebras, buffalos and wildebeest.

Have you ever seen zebras hold a news conference on “Animal Kingdom” demanding that lions quit attacking zebras? No. Zebras train their young in ways to avoid lions and other predators.

As such, the NBA players are conceived as Zebras who are subjected to the rules and laws of nature. 

Dictated by the laws of nature, David Stern (Whitlock ostensibly erases the owners from the discussion here), as the lion, will be the aggressor with the players.  Rather than “complain” and try to battle the lion (David Stern), the Zebras (the players) need to realize that they are incapable of defeating the more powerful, fierce, and fit King of the NBA jungle.  They must retreat and allow their lion to face-off with David Stern. 

The invoking of this rhetoric is striking in its imagination of the players and the commissioner as two distinct species with predetermined qualities, characteristics, and skills.  Zebras and lions don’t acquire their skills and place in the jungle hierarchy because of their own actions or training, but because of nature. 

It is difficult to ignore the large racial implications of Whitlock’s discussion of the “animal kingdom” given the ways in which biology and differences-grounded-in-nature have been central to racial discourse through history.    

In two recent episodes of Real Time with Bill Maher (one including Toure, who also discusses the matter), Bill Maher spoke about how the denial of racism has become the new form of racism.  The race denial card is the most powerful and widely circulated in the deck, evident by the fact that I as someone who merely tried to reflect on the racial meaning and implications was blamed for infusing, interjecting, and otherwise playing the “race card” (is denying race also playing the race card?)

“Racism” functioning as the denial of racism is nothing new (see Bonilla-Silva’s Racism without Racists) and so often works in conjunction with cultural racism.  According to Bonilla-Silva, “Cultural racism is a frame that relies on culturally-based arguments” (2003, p. 28).   According to Ben Carrington and Mary McDonald, “cultural racism posits that although different ethnic groups or ‘races’ may not exist in a hierarchical biological relationship, they are nevertheless culturally distinct, each group having their own incompatible lifestyles, customs and ways of seeing the world” (2001, p. 1).  Likewise Nancy Spencer describes cultural racism as being “predicated on an understanding of culture as a whole way,” which “has implications for racism in sport” (2004, p. 121).    While we can see both the “denial of racism” or the dismissal of the significance or race and cultural racism in its operation, we also see the powerful ways the biological notions of difference continues to operate within this context. 

The lockout illustrates the powerful ways that the black NBA player is conceptualized, imagined, and represented as a “‘bad boy Black athlete” (Collins 2005, p. 153), defined by being “overly physical, out of control, prone to violence, driven by instinct, and hypersexual”; the white racial frame ubiquitously imagines NBA black ballers as “unruly and disrespectful,” “inherently dangerous” and “in need of civilizing” (Ferber 2007, p. 20).  Whether focusing on “intelligence,” “levels of education,” “maturity” and “disciplinarity,” the NBA lockout discourse is a reminder of the powerful ways that the white “gaze” subjects blackness to “the prison of prior expectation” (Williams 1997, p. 74).

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. 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). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.

Bill Simmons and the Bell Curve: The “limited intellectual capital” of the NBA’s Players

Bill Simmons and the Bell Curve:

The “limited intellectual capital” of the NBA’s Players

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

Like many sports writers, Bill Simmons has used his columns this week to condemn NBA players, ostensibly blaming them for the cancellation of games.  On Friday, he offered the following that put the onus on the players:

Should someone who's earned over $300 million (including endorsements) and has deferred paychecks coming really be telling guys who have made 1/100th as much as him to fight the fight and stand strong and not care about getting paid? And what are Garnett's credentials, exactly? During one of the single biggest meetings (last week, on Tuesday), Hunter had Kobe Bryant, Paul Pierce and Garnett (combined years spent in college: three) negotiate directly with Stern in some sort of misguided "Look how resolved we are, you're not gonna intimidate us!" ploy that backfired so badly that one of their teams' owners was summoned into the meeting specifically to calm his player down and undo some of the damage. (I'll let you guess the player. It's not hard.) And this helped the situation … how? And we thought this was going to work … why?

Congratulations, players — you showed solidarity! You showed you wouldn't back down! You made things worse, and you wasted a day, but dammit, you didn't back down! Just make sure you tell that to every team employee who gets fired over these next few weeks, as well as to all the restaurant and bar owners near NBA are

Beyond trotting out the “angry black man” trope, which seems to be commonplace within the NBA punditry, and blaming the players for the forthcoming unemployment facing many employees within of the NBA, Simmons hinges his evidence about the incompetence of the players by citing the amount of formal college education of Piece, Bryant and Garnett.  In other words, people are losing jobs and fans are losing games because the NBA is at the mercy of its stupid/uneducated black players.  And, Simmons wasn’t done here, offering additional clarity about his comments in “Behind the Pipes: Into the Arms of the NHL.”  Explaining why he started going to hockey games, Simmons once again returns to the lockout or better said the player caused cancellation of games.  In this column (sandwiched in between his general arrogance, dismissive rhetoric, and overly simplistic analysis that presumes sports exists in his theoretical mind and not reality), he writes

Where's the big-picture leadership here? What's the right number of franchises? Where should those franchises play? What's worse, losing three franchises or losing an entire season of basketball? What's really important here? I don't trust the players' side to make the right choices, because they are saddled with limited intellectual capital. (Sorry, it's true.) The owners' side can't say the same; they should be ashamed. Same for the agents. And collectively, they should all be mortified that a 16-hour negotiating session, this late in the game, was cause for any celebration or optimism. In my mind, it was more of a cry for help.

Unusually Simmons offer some blame for the owners.  As the intelligence once, they have an obligation to fix the situation.  Although they have the intelligence they allow the players, who lack intelligence, to have input in the situation. To Simmons, this is the source of the NBA’s problem. 

The racial paternalism here is as striking as are his efforts to resuscitate the bell curve.  What we are left with is an argument that the NBA faces a lockout because those who possess the requisite intelligence, who posses the proper fitness, have failed to control their inferior players.    Michael Eric Dyson described such rhetoric as central to the history of American white supremacy: “Skepticism about black intelligence and suspicion about black humanity have gone hand in hand throughout the history of this country in feeding the perception that black people don't quite measure up.”  Writing about black male athletes and processes of representation, Ben Carrington invokes Frantz Fanon, who wrote about the incompatibility of blackness and intelligence within the white imagination.  Carrington notes Fanon’s exploration of the ways in which blackness was conceptualized and envisioned through white supremacy:

When Fanon gives his white patients a word association test, it is significant to note how often his respondents mention either sports, or prominent black athletes of the period. Fanon informs us that the word, 'Negro brought forth biology, penis, strong, athletic, potent, boxer, Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Senegalese troops, savage, animal, devil, sin’. For Fanon, the black male was the repository of white fears, fantasies and desires, and of all of these constructions, there was one figure above all others that held a central place within the colonial imaginary: ‘There is one expression that through time has become singularly eroticized: the black athlete’.

In reading Simmons, it is clear that the black athlete remains both eroticized and demonized, a repository for white fears, fantasies, and desires, as well as a rhetorical space to articulate white fantasies, desires, and ideas about whiteness.  It is no wonder that Simmons recycles the bell curve, explaining the lockout as simply a violation of nature or what happens when the intellectually inferior get to have input in a world where adults should make those important decisions.  

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. 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). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.

Not About a Salary, but a Racial Reality: The NBA Lockout in Technicolor

Not About a Salary, but a Racial Reality: The NBA Lockout in Technicolor

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

With the NBA lockout reaching a new low (or a return low) with David Stern’s announcement of the cancellation of the first two weeks, the class of pundits have taken to the airwaves to lament the developments, to asses blame, and offer suggestions of where to go from here.  Not surprisingly, much of the commentaries have blamed players for poor tactical decisions, for wasting any potential they may have had over the summer, and for otherwise being too passive.   Take Harvey Araton, from The New York Times, who while arguing that the players will need to take risks in order to secure leverage, speculates about a potential missed opportunity:

If it sounds unrealistic to suggest that the modern player might have considered striking first — or at least threatening one before last spring’s playoffs — that is only because the tactic has become virtually anathema, which is a mighty curious weapon for a union to concede.

While on the phone, Fleisher looked up the language in the expired collective bargaining agreement on Pages 264-265 that prohibited players from impeding N.B.A. operations. But supposing the players had gone ahead and walked out on the eve of the playoffs after they’d all been paid their regular-season hauls?

Fleisher guessed they would have opened themselves and their individual contracts up to a court action. Or maybe the owners — petrified at the thought of their profit season being flushed — might have agreed to a no-lockout pledge for the start of this season. Who knows? But sometimes risk begets reward.

While abstract at a certain level, the argument makes sense.  Had the players been more aggressive, had they taken steps earlier, had they capitalized on past leverage, the situation might be different.  Yet, we don’t live in an abstract world.  The realities on the ground precluded such steps (see here for my past discussion).  If the efforts to blame players, to demonize them as greedy, selfish, and out-of-touch during a LOCKOUT is any indication how the public might have reacted to a player strike, especially one starting at the playoffs, the strategy suggested here is pure silliness. 

Moreover, it fails to understand the ways in which race operates in the context of sports and within broader society.   The public outcry against LeBron James for exercising his rights of free agency, the condemnation of Deron Williams or Carmelo Anthony for deciding that they wanted to play elsewhere, and the overall vitriol directed at players illustrates both the impossibility of any player leverage and the ways in which race undermines any structural power the players may enjoy.  The owners possess the power of the racial narrative that both guides public opinion and fan reaction. 

We can make similar links to the larger history of African American labor struggles, where black workers have struggled to secure support from the public at large because of longstanding ideas of the lack of fitness/desirability of African Americans in the labor force.  In other words, fans, just as the public in past labor struggles, see the black body as inherently undeserving and thus any demands for fairness, equality, and justice are seen as lacking merit.  On all counts, the commentaries fail to see the ways and which blackness and anti-black racism constraints the tools available to the players.

Even those commentaries that ostensibly exonerate the players in highlighting David Stern’s strategy of throwing the players under the proverbial racial bus (his race card) with the hopes that the public will ultimately turn against the players (mostly there already) erases race from the discussion.   For example, in “Stern ducks, lets NBA players take hit,” Adrian Wojnarowski highlights the difficulty facing NBA players and how that reality guides the intransigent position from the firm of Stern and owners.  “So, there was the biggest star in the sport waddling onto the sidewalk on 63rd Street in Manhattan on Monday night without the kind of big-stage, big-event scene that the commissioner always loves for himself in the good times,” he writes. “He knows the drill now: Step out of the way, and let the angry mobs run past him and the owners. Let them chase his players down the street, around the corner and all the way to the lockout’s end and beyond.”  Similarly, Bud Shaw penned the following:

Blaming locked-out players in a work stoppage? Sounds like a plan, just one that defies logic.

A player strike didn't cause a partial cancellation of the schedule. Commissioner Bully made the call, doing the bidding of an ownership whose strategy is to watch players squirm when they start missing checks and wait for the inevitable wave of public resentment to crash down on their heads.

After David Stern's announcement, LeBron James tweeted an apology to fans for the lost games. Steve Nash aimed his regrets at those hurt most by the cancellation, saying "sorry to all the employees in and around NBA arenas losing work." The owners are betting you'll read over that and do what fans always do in these situations. Scoff and say, "Sorry? Sure they are. I'd play for a quarter of what those guys make

The reason Stern can step aside and “let them chase his players down the street” (he certainly uses language to convey a lynch mob mentality) are grounded in anti-black racism. 

Class matters and surely the current economic crisis matters, but when the strategy of ownership is to lock their workers out and when those workers offer a concession of at least 160 million (reduction of player’s take of the BRI from 57% to 53%), it is hard to argue that class disintentification drives fans and the public at large from players to owners.  Race and the power of a white racial frame that imprisons black male bodies to a narrative of criminality, danger, pathology and greed, that constructs blackness as undeserving, unintelligent, unprofessional, and not part of the mainstream, highlights the basis of this strategy.

The lockout isn’t simply about increased profits and changing the structure of the NBA so that the Cavs, Kings, and Bobcats have as much of a chance of winning an NBA championship as the Heat and the Lakers (this portion of the argument remains suspect to me since clearly a NBA finals between the Bobcats-Kings finals does little to improve revenues).  It as much about breaking the union, disciplining and managing the league’s black bodies in an effort to secure victory in the NBA’s assault on blackness.  It is both an effort to capitalize on anti-black racism through playing on fan/media contempt all while enhancing their profit margins (constrained by anti-black racism) and power to transform the criminalized black body into a more profitable entity.  

In 2006, Kobe Bryant had not yet returned to his prominence within the NBA.  In wake of accusations of sexual violence and his often-publicized feud with Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe remained a suspect superstar incapable of converting talents to profits for the league and its corporate sponsors. That year, he did secure his place in history when he scored 81 points in a January game.  Notwithstanding the historic nature of this performance, his dropping 81 on the Raptors led numerous commentators to question Kobe’s commitment to his team/the game, using the moment to lament his inability to become the next MJ.  On the web, in newspapers, on sports talk radio, and on the various television sports debate shows, fans and sport commentators debated whether scoring 81 points was indeed a great accomplishment or a sign of a character flaw in Bryant, and thus a sign of the precarious future for the NBA. 

Interestingly, similar conversations took place earlier in the season, when Bryant dropped 61 on the Dallas Mavericks in three quarters.  With his team up by 40, Bryant did not play the fourth quarter, prompting fans and sports reporters to deem Bryant as selfish for he did not return to the game in search of Wilt Chamberlin’s 100 points in a game record.  Greatness on the court was one thing, but his purported selfishness, his me-first attitude, and overall disrespect for his teammates, opponents, the fans, and the game itself, embodied the problems facing the NBA. 

Scoring 81 points served as a signifier for his place as both a dollar sign and a thug within the dominant white imagination; he was marketable, yet limited as a commodity because he was unable to transcend the meaning of blackness.  In this instance, he, like so many NBA ballers, functioned as the ultimate marker of the decay facing the NBA, functioning as both a source of celebration and a spectacle where the discursive logic and ideological rhetoric played out on, through and within his body.  In other words, Bryant’s greatness did not propel the league forward because his greatness fed anti-black stereotypes and narratives. 

The NBA’s strategy of marketing players over teams, of commodifying stars over rivalries proved ineffective because of the wider meaning conveyed by blackness within the white imagination.  The lockout represents a reversal of this strategy by both undermining the star power of the NBA’s elite players all while trying to create team parity.   Since the next Michael Jordan, as a post-racial fiction, appears no where in the NBA’s future, the league is set on restructuring itself to further conceal its blackness even while it plays upon anti-black sentiments to cultivate support for ITS cancellation of games.  It ain’t about their salary, it’s about the race of the NBA reality that guides the NBA lockout and its reception.

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. 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). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.