The Elbow Heard Around the Nation: The NBA and the End of ‘Peace’

The Elbow Heard Around the Nation: The NBA and the End of ‘Peace’

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

When Ron Artest announced his intent to change his name to Metta World Peace, I had discussions with several people about potentially changing the name of my book, After Artest (May 2012, SUNY Press) to reflect his metamorphosis. Examining how the Palace Brawl forever changed the NBA, while also highlighting the larger scripts of race and criminalization, After Artestreflects on the processes of demonization and criminalization directed at Artest and his black baller brethren in the aftermath of the 2004 fight between the Pacers-Pistons-Piston fans.  While deciding against changing the book’s title for a myriad of reasons, one principle issue for me in pushing back against a title like “Peace after the Palace” was that in spite of efforts from the NBA, its fans, and the media establishment to police, punish, and control blackness in their efforts to secure peace, neither condemnations and suspensions, dress codes or age restrictions, would bring about peace for the league because of the ways that race and racial narratives operate within the American cultural landscape.  The efforts to recreate the illusion of a racially-colorblind Jordan-esque landscape were futile given persistent anti-black racism and governing stereotypes.  Peace after the palace was not possible because of the ways that blackness and anti-black racism overdetermined its meaning within the national landscape.  Artest and what he embodied in the national imagination guided and served as a lens as the NBA sought to deracialize itself within the national imagination.  This is why I start After Artest as follows:

“The real question, how does it feel to be a problem” – W.E.B. DuBois, 1903 (Quoted in Jackson 2006, p. 9)

Ron Artest more than likely will be suspended, but so should Kobe” (Resnick 2009)

“Kobe vs. Artest: Proof Artest Will Kill Your Team” (2009)

“NBA Bad Boy Ron Artest of L.A. Lakers Admits He Had A Problem: Drinking During Games! ” (Douglas 2009)

“Trevor Ariza loses shoe, Ron Artest tosses it into the stands” (2009).

Artest, who's trying to put his bad-boy image behind him, said he could simply display his ring in his living room or he could wear it.' But I think it'll be more important to give back to something I believe in, which is providing kids with someone to talk to because it's so expensive. I pay for parenting counseling, marriage counseling and anger management, and it's very expensive. This will be for children of all demographics, rich or poor — preferably the rich can pay for their own psychologists — but it'll be a great way to help kids who don't know where they're going in their life at this point' ("Ron Artest Plans" 2010)

*** 

Artest, who's trying to put his bad-boy image behind him, said he could simply display his ring in his living room or he could wear it.' But I think it'll be more important to give back to something I believe in, which is providing kids with someone to talk to because it's so expensive. I pay for parenting counseling, marriage counseling and anger management, and it's very expensive. This will be for children of all demographics, rich or poor — preferably the rich can pay for their own psychologists — but it'll be a great way to help kids who don't know where they're going in their life at this point' ("Ron Artest Plans" 2010)

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At first glance, the above headlines point to the fact that Ron Artest’s personal history, and especially his association with the Palace Brawl, continues to determine the public narrative assigned to him by the dominant media and broader public discourse. Even those instances of praise and celebratory redemption does so in relationship to his past indiscretions. Despite the banality of his exchange with Kobe and his tossing of another player’s shoe off the court (his sportsmanship was questioned by an announcer), and notwithstanding his efforts to admit to a past drinking problem1 or shed light on the issue of mental health, each in varying degrees have been the read through the lens of the Palace Brawl.

In 2009, Ron Artest admitted to drinking alcohol at halftime while he was a member of the Chicago Bulls. Hoping to teach kids by sharing his past mistakes, Artest’s admission, not surprisingly, prompted much media and public debate. Although some people questioned the truthfulness of his admission, others used this moment as an opportunity to speculate about whether Artest was indeed drunk when he entered the stands in 2004. Likewise, his tossing of Trevor Ariza’s shoe into the stands, along with his physical and verbal altercations with Kobe Bryant, were given amplified meaning and importance considering his role. In all four instances, Artest’s past and his character are used as points of reference.

Often invoking his involvement in the 2004 Palace Brawl, the dominant frame that facilitates his representations is not only constrained by Artest’s personal and professional histories, but by the prism of race and blackness. He is consistently imagined as a problem. The nature of these representations point to the ways in which blackness overdetermines not only the meaning of Artest, but of all black NBA players in a post-Brawl context. Post-Artest, blackness is the hegemonic point of reference for both the commentaries and the policy shifts within the NBA, demonstrating that the Palace Brawl changed the racial meaning of the NBA and thus changed the regulatory practices governing the league. . . . .

The Palace Brawl was the culmination of the recoloring of the NBA. It represented a moment when the blackness of the league was irrefutable and thus needed to be managed, controlled, and, if necessary, destroyed. After Artest argues that the Palace Brawl served as that “aha moment” in which blackness displaced the racially transcendent signifier of Michael Jordan. This blackness, and its representative threat, were undeniable and, as such, necessitated intervention, termed as an assault within this book’s title. Not surprisingly, anti-black racist/white racial frames have anchored the debates and policies that have followed Artest; frames based on racial transcendence or colorblindness remain in the background. In this sense, Artest mandated a reversal wherein race/blackness had to be noticed (and controlled/destroyed), leading to public articulations of the white racial frame instead of denials of racial significance.

With this in mind, it is not surprising that the sports media establishment, and the social media world is all abuzz following a Metta World Peace foul on James Harden on Sunday in a nationally televised game.  A hard foul that was reckless and dangerous; one that warranted an injection (unlike others I have no idea his “intent”) and a suspension; and one that was disappointing to say the least and not worry of defense. I am not here to defend the foul or explain, although those who use the foul as a referendum on Metta, the NBA, or blackness need to check themselves. 

It was unfortunate; yet equally unfortunate and more destructive have been the response.   Hayden Kim, on The Bleacher Report, referenced Metta’s “unstable mental stable” and an inability to maintain control; worse yet, he described his outburst in the following way:  “As he pounded his chest, acting like a gorilla during mating season, he caught James Harden with an ill-advised elbow that could have caused an earthquake” (the original piece no longer has this language but can still be found here and here).  The hyperbole notwithstanding, the descriptor of Metta as a “gorilla” given its historic meaning is disturbing to say the least – disgraceful, in fact. 

Ken Berger focused more on the typical hyperbole and ‘what ifs” with his discussion of the elbow heard around the world.  “Metta World Peace's vicious, dangerous elbow to the head of James Harden Sunday was no garden variety NBA elbow, and it probably will result in longer than your typical elbowing suspension,” writes Berger. “It should, anyway. This was about as cheap as a cheap shot gets. It'll have nothing to do with the fact that Metta World Peace is really Ron Artest, he of Malice at the Palace fame. World Peace, after all, has come a long way since his 73-game suspension for going into the stands in Auburn Hills, Mich., in 2004, and even won the NBA's citizenship award last season (when his name was still Ron Artest).”  Berger, unlike so many others notes his recent citizenship award, falls into the trap that he cautions against: reading the incident through the Palace Brawl. 

This incident, and the entire NBA are always read through the Palace Brawl and the meaning of blackness.  How else can we explain the reactions, the twitter trends, the web comments, and the statements from the likes of Mike Breen (who called it “disgraceful”), whose initial commentary added fuel to the fire? I don’t think this was first elbow (or even elbow that connected) or flagrant foul in the NBA?  Clearly there is something more at work!  How else can we explain Magic Johnson’s rush to judgment, “It was intentional — and a cheap shot”?    While clearly able to enter Metta’s head (a common place), Johnson gives World Peace zero benefit of the doubt.  Metta’s body, the meaning of blackness, and the signifiers of NBA ballers precludes reading it as just a foul or a bad foul, but instead a commentary on Metta, on the NBA, on blackness.  How else can we explain Jon Barry continually referencing Ron Artest’s reputation at the same time that he calls him “metta weird peace?”  How else can we explain Jason Whitlock who tweeted, “Ron Artest is too unstable to play in the league.  I'd consider a lifetime ban. Seriously. Next guy he hurts should sue the league.”  The reaction isn’t to the foul but to the person and the body who committed the foul.  The endless tweets are telling:

Ron Artest changing his name to Metta World Peace is like Joseph #Kony changing his to Childrens Rights Activist

ICYMI: Here's the clip of Metta World Peace nearly decapitating James Harden

Lynch metta world peace

Enough of this guy. Kick him out of the league. His act is tired> Metta World Peace FLAGRANT FOUL on James Harden!:

Metta World Peace #WTF Dude.....You're now banned from watching Jon Bones Jones on anymore UFC Telecast! U R in the NBA not the UFC #SMH

Metta World War Peace just broke out at Staples Center! Ron Ron is officially IN the building.

Metta World Peace is the dirtiest player in the NBA #disgraceful

The continued references to his mental state; the constant links to the Palace Brawl, the efforts to overstate and dramatize the elbow, and the efforts to pathologize and demonize Metta as person as opposed to the foul are telling.  It was yet another “aha” moment, where the NBA’s efforts to quell fan anxieties about black bodies has been put to the test.  Artest plus elbow to head causes anxiety and anger, which in part is wrapped in the racial scripts of black masculinity.  Kevin Love’s “stomp” or Jason Smith’s decking of Blake Griffin certainly did not evoke panics and calls for lifetime bans, lynchings, or incarceration.  The sight of Love stepping on his opponent’s face or Jason Smith leveling Griffin didn’t elicit panics because their actions and bodies don’t stroke the fear, panics, and stereotype.  This isn’t a justification of the flagrant foul or a call for Metta to get a pass, but rather an effort to help explain the panics and national outrage that extends beyond the basketball court.  It was yet another moment where the NBA’s (and Metta’s) image, the meaning of blackness within the national imagination.  No apology, no explanation, and no amount of contrition will allow for forgiveness in the short term (only punishment serves that capacity) or in the long term, where from this point Metta will known be known for the Palace and Elbow, both overdetermined by narratives and scripts that predominant the cultural landscape.  

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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 NewBlackManand blogs @ No Tsuris.

‘No [Hoodies] Allowed’: The NBA’s Dress Code & the Politics of New Racism —Excerpt from After Artest: The NBA & the Assault on Blackness

‘No [Hoodies] Allowed’: The NBA’s Dress Code & the Politics of New Racism

—Excerpt from After Artest: The NBA & the Assault on Blackness

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

The murder of Trayvon Martin has prompted widespread discussions about race in America, persistent inequalities within the criminal justice system, differential values afforded to different bodies, and the real-life consequences of racial stereotypes.  Amid many of the discussions, media reports, and the protests have been questions about the racial signifier of the hoodie.  From the million hoodie march to the backlash directed at Geraldo Rivera, who named the hoodie as a co-conspirator along with George Zimmerman, the discourse has reflected on the racial signifiers embedded in the hoodie.  In other words, how is a black body, inherently criminal and suspect when read within a hoodie; what are the dialects between the hoodie and the black body within these processes of criminalization?  These types of questions have been asked and represented in a spectrum of spaces, highlighting the ways the black bodies are imagined as threatening within the dominant white imagination.  Pushing the conversation beyond individual prejudice and “what was in George’s heart,” such counternarratives have reflected on how media narratives, popular culture, and a culture that criminalizes black bodies produces a Trayvon Martin, whose mere presence is seen as a threat, all while producing a George Zimmerman. 

As a scholar of race and sport, these questions have long guided my work: how do the representations of black athletes, particularly those in the NBA, buttress larger ideological, political, and criminalizing processes?  How does the ubiquitous references to NBA players as “thugs” and “gangstas” as “criminals” and “punks” normalize blackness as questionable, undesirable, and inherently suspect?   The murder of Trayvon, the prison industrial complex, the racial segregation in school discipline, and the levels of state violence are a product of these cultural projects.  According to a report from the Opportunity Agenda, “distorted media representations can be expected to create attitudinal effects ranging from general antagonism toward black men and boys, to higher tolerance for race-based socio-economic disparities, reduced attention to structural and other big-picture factors, and public support for punitive approaches to problems.”

In my recently release book – After Artest: The NBA and the Assault on Blackness (SUNY 2012), I explore the broader criminalization of blackness inside and outside of the NBA’s arenas, that among things has focused on the attitudes, demeanor, and clothing of NBA ballers.  I, thus, present to you a short excerpt from the book, one that explores the racialization and criminalization that is evident in the NBA’s dress code as a way to expand our conversation about the murder of Trayvon Martin to reflect on how popular culture, media discourses, and the language of everyday racism both normalizes the criminalization of blackness and points to the importance of intervention in this regard.

After Artest

Not only unsuccessful on the court, the 2004 Olympic basketball team caused a significant amount of embarrassment for the NBA in the wake of its efforts to conceal blackness from the league.  Once a source of national pride, given the longstanding dominance of American basketball over the world, the 2004 installment was more of a nightmare than a dream team.  In anticipation of the Olympics, members of the basketball team attended a dinner in their honor at a fancy Belgrade restaurant.  While other guests, including members of the Serbian National Team, wore matching sport coats and dressed “appropriately,” Allen Iverson, Carmelo Anthony, LeBron James and other members of the American team showed up in sweat suits, oversized jeans and shirts, large platinum chains, and, of course, diamond earrings.  Larry Brown, the team’s coach and the often celebrated benevolent white father figure of the NBA, was appalled, coming close to sending several players back to the hotel.  Mike Wise, in The Washington Post, described the incident as transformative for the NBA’s league officials. 

Word of the fashion faux pas eventually made its way to the office of NBA Commissioner David Stern in New York, where concern was already on the rise about how some players were dressing and, more broadly, how the game's appeal was slipping. The NBA had tried mightily to fuse its product with hip-hop culture, viewing its young players and their street fashion sense as a way to connect with a new generation of fans in the post-Michael Jordan era. But that wasn't happening. Indeed, Stern and some of his closest advisers concluded, they might be driving fans away from the sport (2005).

Shortly after the debacle in Athens, and less than two months after the Brawl at Auburn Hills, the NBA sent a clear message about the future of hip-hop and those bodies who embraced/reflected/ signified this “ghettocentric imagination” (Watkins 1998).  Shortly after he was traded to the Sacramento Kings, the NBA formally admonished Cutino Mobely for conducting interviews wearing a skullcap.  Despite the fact that he donned headgear baring the insignia of the NBA, and that he was considered “a good guy,” Mobely’s fashion choice impelled league officials to remind its players about professionalism and the league’s new unofficial policy concerning hip-hop. In this instance, with the NBA’s simultaneous commodification and demonization of hip-hop and its black male signifiers now visible, the efforts to police the league’s new black aesthetic illustrated the complex and contradictory roles played by aesthetics, cultural values, and bodies that are constructed as both fashionable (desirable and cool) and suspect (dangerous). 

In the aftermath of the Palace Brawl, the failures of the 2004 Olympic basketball squad, the sexual assault allegations against Kobe Bryant, the arrest of Allen Iverson, and the overall perception that the NBA was being overrun by “criminals,” gangstas, and those otherwise prone to “bad behavior” (Philips 2005), David Stern announced plans for a league-wide dress code in October 2005.  Concluding that ad hoc policies and team-directed rules² were incompatible with their efforts to “rehabilitate the image of a sport beset with bad behavior,” the league instituted a dress code policy that governed players all while sending a message to fans and corporate partners. While denying that the dress code was part of the NBA’s master plan to appease white corporate interests and those of Red State, Middle America – or even that it was directed toward the NBA’s black, hip-hop baller – Stern repeatedly acknowledged the connection between the dress code and the Palace Brawl.  “It was a low point in the perception of our league . . . .  Our players are really good guys who deserve more respect than that” (“Code Makes Debut to Mixed Reactions Across League”).  In other words, the dress code represented an effort to counteract the negative publicity that had plagued the NBA during recent years by restricting assumed signifiers of blackness. 

The 2003-2005 seasons were a “low point” for the NBA in a number of ways.  The NBA experienced a sharp decline in fan support.  Television ratings for the 2005 finals that pitted the Detroit Pistons against the San Antonio Spurs were down 30% from the previous year; its ratings for that year were last amongst the big three American sports (baseball and football).  During this time, the NBA office and its teams saw an increased number of complaints from corporate (Lorenz and Murray 2005).  Public opinion polls ranked basketball players as the least liked professional athletes among all the major Americans sports leagues.  In response to falling ratings, dissipating corporate support, a deluge of publication relation’s nightmares, and unrelenting criticism from much of the media, 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).  As a result, the league office directed players to be more accessible to fans in terms of signing autographs, while also participating in “season-ticket holder events.”  It also initiated the NBA Cares project, a global public service outreach initiative, which was intended to facilitate the donation of $100 million dollars to charity, provide one million hours of community service donated by the players themselves, and build 100 youth centers by 2010.  Both these initiatives represented the NBA’s effort “to look a little less gangsta and more genteel” (Eligon 2005). It was part of a public relations strategy that emphasized the quality and good nature of NBA players.  

Yet, the dress code would come to embody the NBA’s most systematic effort to alter its image in order to bring back its red state fans and corporate sponsors.  According to an NBA official, the dress code was designed to appease corporate anxieties about the league’s hip-hop image and protect the NBA’s economic (television contracts) future.  “If you speak to 100 people on the street and most of them think our players are the worst of the lot in pro sports, there’s a problem” (Quoted in Wise 2005).  Notwithstanding these anonymous explanations, or the media’s praise for the proposed dress code as a necessary challenge to the hip-hop/gangsta invasion of the NBA, David Stern and others consistently downplayed these motivations, instead focusing on the dress code as a means for combating the unfair demonization of its players.  It was the NBA’s attempt to help its (black) players be seen in a proper light.  In a letter outlining the dress code, which was sent to players, coaches, and owners,³ the NBA provided the following rationale for the policy:

We know that you share our desire that NBA players be appreciated not only for their extraordinary talent and hard work, but also for their accessibility to fans, their community service, and their professionalism – both on and off the court. To that end, we will be instituting, effective with the start of the regular season, a league-wide “minimum” dress code. Many teams have previously issued their own dress codes, designed to demonstrate the seriousness with which their players take the representation of their teams, their cities, and our league; our new dress code is not intended to affect any of those that are more formal than what is set forth below in the new NBA dress code (“NBA Dress Code: Dress Code Policy” 2005).

The policy required that players “wear business casual attire” whenever participating in league events or team functions, or when conducting “team or league business,” defined as any “activity conducted on behalf of the team or the league during which the player is seen by or interacts with fans, business partners, members of the public, the media, or other third parties.”  The policy restricted the clothing choices of players engaged in a number of tasks: participating in league events, promotional appearances, or media interviews; sitting on the bench when not in uniform; leaving or arriving at the stadium, and, potentially, riding on team buses or planes.  In addition to regulating dress in particular (public and private) spaces, the policy also stipulated what constituted “business attire,” noting that to be in compliance players must wear dress-shirts and/or sweaters, dress slacks, dress jeans or khakis, socks, and either dress shoes “or presentable shoes.” Beyond the above description of business attire, it required that those players sitting on the bench out of uniform wear jackets along with the other mandated clothing options.⁴  It additionally offered a series of prohibitions, thereby clarifying its intent, against the following: sleeveless shirts, shorts, jerseys, t-shirts, sports apparel (unless event appropriate), chains, pendants, medallions, sunglasses (indoors), and headphones (unless on team plane, bus or in the locker room).  The breadth and specificity of the regulation is clear: “Headgear of any kind while sitting on the bench or in the stands at a game, during media interviews, or during a team or league event or appearance (unless appropriate for the event or appearance, team-identified, and approved by the team) is to be excluded” (“NBA Dress Code: Dress Code Policy” 2005).   

Although Stern and others inside the NBA spoke of the policy in universal terms, as an effort to highlight the professionalism and “goodness” of all its players, numerous players saw the policy as something else: a racist assault on hip-hop and yet another instance of the NBA attacking its young black male stars.  Blackness exists as “a problematic sign and ontological position” (Williams 1998, p. 140).  Given that the NBA does not want to rid itself of its black players, the dress code seeks to lighten, if not whiten, these players in the national (white) imagination. It sought to recreate the illusion of racial transcendence amongst its African Americans players. It works to sever the ties between LeBron, Dwyane, and Kobe and hip-hop, blackness and the criminalized black body, at least within the white imagination.  Jason Richardson again makes this clear:  “They want to sway away from the hip-hop generation. You think of hip-hop right now and think of things that happen like gangs having shootouts in front of radio stations” (“Pacers' Jackson: dress code is ‘racist’”).

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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.

Brandon Marshall and the Challenge to Mental Health Treatment Inequality

Vulnerable: 

Brandon Marshall and the Challenge to Mental Health Treatment Inequality

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

On Sunday, amid all the hoopla about the start of NFL training camp, player movement, and the start of the NFL season, Brandon Marshall quietly told the world a secret, announcing that he was living with a Borderline Personality Disorder. 

Right now today, I am vulnerable, I making myself vulnerable, and I want it to be clear that this is the opposite of damage control. The only reason I am standing here today is to use my story to help others who may suffer from what I suffer from, from what I had to deal with. I can't explain to you and paint a vivid enough picture for you guys where I been in my life, probably since the end of my rookie year.

Noting that neither the cars nor the fame, neither the success on the field nor the joys experienced off the field resulted in happiness, Marshall highlighted the despair that he has experienced during his life:

I haven't enjoyed not one part of it and it's hard for me to understand why . . . . One of the things I added to my prayer was for God to show me my purpose here. When I got out of the hospital, I called my videographer and I said, Rob, grab your camera and just come to my house and just start shooting. I said I'm very depressed right now, I probably won't talk, I probably won't even leave my theater room, but you just shoot and don't stop shooting. I said, I don't know where we're going with this, I don't know what's going to come out of this, but something good is going to happen.

Marshall is not the first high-profile African American athlete to publicly document the struggles with mental illness. Several years ago, Ricky Williams spoke about his illness (Social Anxiety Disorder) “to up the awareness and erase the stigma." Likewise, Ron Artest, who has publicly acknowledged his own disease, has gone beyond chronicling his own story, testifying before congress while raising money (through auctioning off his championship ring) for mental health awareness among youth. 

The reaction to Marshall’s revelation, like that of Ron Artest and Ricky Williams, illustrates the ways in that definitions of black manhood curtail public discourse and treatment of black mental illness.  Responding to Ron Artest courageous announcement about his own mental health struggles, Mychal Denzel Smith offered an important context:

Black men don't go to therapy, they go to the barbershop." I can't count the number of times I've heard this throughout my life, nor relate how embarrassed I am to have actually believed this at one point. The resistance black men exhibit toward mental health awareness is astounding. The belief, in my estimation, is that admitting to and/or seeking help for a mental illness makes one less of a man. We have come to define masculinity/manhood as "strong," meaning silent, emotionless, stoic and uncaring. To our detriment, black men have accepted, embraced, and perpetuated this idea and left a community of emotionally stunted black men so repressed that the mere mention of a psychiatrist is met with a chorus of hearty laughter. It doesn't prevent us from suffering at the hands of mental illness, it's just that black men prefer to self-medicate with marijuana and Jesus (not necessarily concurrently). 



Marc Lamont Hill also focuses on context, providing an important historic reminder as to why African Americans (beyond culture, machismo, or cultural practices) often resist and otherwise dismiss mental health challenges:

Since slavery, the American scientific establishment has functioned as an ideological apparatus of White supremacy by advancing and normalizing claims of Black moral, physical, and intellectual inferiority. As a result, the last four centuries have witnessed the production of deeply racist beliefs and practices that justify the abuse, exploitation, and institutionalization of “flawed” and “diseased” Black bodies. . . . By using mental illness to justify the denial of full humanity, freedom, and citizenship to Blacks, as well as ascribe mental pathology to those who operate against the interests of the White supremacist capitalist State, the American medical establishment has engendered a healthy and persistent distrust among Black communities.

The absence of treatment, thus, contributes to criminalization; yet, criminalization, leads to a lack of attention to mental health issues.  Marshall, who has had his share of off-the-field troubles, has been vilified by the media and the public at large, demonstrating how stereotypes and white racial frames imagined him (and other African American fighting mental illness) not as someone who was sick but as a sick individual.   His experiences reflect a systemic failure to address mental health within the African American community; it reflects the power of white racial framing and the tendency to criminalize and pathologize rather than treat the symptoms of mental illness.  While reflecting the ways in which mental illness poses a threat to hegemonic definitions of manhood, the failure to sufficiently address mental health issues within the African American community illustrates the ways in which criminalization of the black body reconstitutes treatable symptoms as justification for incarceration. To understand criminalization is to understand the failure to treatment mental illness within the African American community

Here are some facts to consider

African Americans constitute over 25 percent of those in need of mental health care

Since 1980, suicide rates among African Americans has increased 200 percent

Rates of depression among black women are 50 percent higher than those of white women

25% of African Americans live without health insurance

35% male prisoners have Borderline Personality Disorder

25% of incarcerated women have been diagnosed with BPD

10% of people who suffer from BPD commit suicide

Blacks are more likely to be diagnosed with schizophrenia than with other mood disorders, even when the symptoms point to a mood disorder (whites more likely to be diagnosed with mood disorder when symptoms mirror schizophrenia)

Blacks are less likely to be given anti-depressant medications

Blacks are least likely group to receive therapy

Only 1:3 African Americans who need mental health treatment or care receive it

African Americans constitute only 2 percent of the nation’s psychologists and psychiatrists

According Dr. Regina Benjamin, mental illness continues to plague the African American community in disproportionate rates: “Mental health problems are particularly widespread in the African-American community,” noted the U.S. Surgeon General.  “In 2004, nearly 12 percent of African Americans ages 18-25 reported serious psychological distress in the past year. Overall, only one-third of Americans with a mental illness or a mental health problem receive care and the percentage of African Americans receiving services (nearly 7 percent) is half that of non-Hispanic whites.”   

Recognizing this problem and the many issues at work, it is important to highlight the courageous activism undertaken by Marshall, Williams, and Artest, all of whom have not only pushed back against the stigmas and fears associated with mental illness, especially as it relates to manhood, but whose public pronouncements have challenged hegemonic stereotypes and narratives that tend to criminalize the black body.  Their resistance elucidates the consequences of American racism in contributing to mental health problems all while contributing to a systematic erasure of these problems from public discourse and policy.  Marshall, like Williams and Artest, made clear that he is neither a criminal nor a bad person (a common narrative from the press and fans) but someone who is sick, someone who has gotten treatment, and someone who has long needed support rather than demonization.  He, like so many African Americans erased from public consciousness, just needed help.  Racism so often prevents this from happening. So next some media pundit denounces today’s (black) athletes for reticence and political cowardice, remember Marshall, Williams and Artest, all of whom took a stand against inequality in the treatment of mental health problems.

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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.

'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.

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>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.

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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.