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.

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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.

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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.

What’s in a Name? The ‘Plantation’ Metaphor and the NBA

What’s in a Name?   

The ‘Plantation’ Metaphor and the NBA

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

Several weeks back, at the conclusion of HBO’s Real Sports, Bryant Gumbel took David Stern to task for his arrogance, “ego-centric approach” and eagerness “to be viewed as some kind of modern plantation overseer, treating NBA men, as if they were his boys.”  Highlighting the power imbalances and the systematic effort to treat the greatest basketball players on earth as little more than “the help,” Gumbel invoked a historic frame to illustrate his argument.

If the NBA lockout is going to be resolved anytime soon, it seems likely to be done in spite of David Stern, not because of him. I say that because the NBA’s infamously ego-centric commissioner seems more hell-bent lately on demeaning the players than resolving his league’s labor impasse.

How else to explain Stern’s rants in recent days? To any and everyone who would listen, he has alternately knocked union leader Billy Hunter, said the players were getting inaccurate information, and started sounding Chicken Little claims about what games might be lost, if players didn’t soon see things his way.

Stern’s version of what’s been going on behind closed doors has of course been disputed. But his efforts were typical of a commissioner that has always seemed eager to be viewed as some kind of modern plantation overseer, treating NBA men, as if they were his boys.

It’s part of Stern’s M.O. Like his past self-serving edicts on dress code or the questioning of officials, his moves were intended to do little more than show how he’s the one keeping the hired hands in place. Some will of course cringe at that characterization, but Stern’s disdain for the players is as palpable and pathetic as his motives are transparent. Yes the NBA’s business model is broken. But to fix it, maybe the league’s commissioner should concern himself most with a solution, and stop being part of the problem.

Not surprisingly, his comments have evoked widespread criticism and scorn: see Example #1, Example #2, Example #3 and Example #4).  Even less surprising, commentators have chastised Gumbel for inserting race into the discussions, as if race isn’t central to the lockout, the media coverage, and fan reaction.  As evidence, the response to Gumbel, and the ubiquitous efforts to blame the lockout and the labor situation on the players through racialized language (see here for example– h/t @resisting_spec), illustrates the ways in which race and hegemonic ideas of blackness operates in this context. 

Also revealing has been the response to Jeffrey Kessler, a lawyer for the NBA players Association, who similarly described David Stern’s treatment of the players.  He told the Washington Post: “To present that in the context of 'take it or leave it,' in our view, that is not good faith. Instead of treating the players like partners, they're treating them like plantation workers.”  While his comment elicited some backlash along with an apology, the vitriol and the level of indignation didn’t match the reaction to Gumbel. 

Beyond the power of white privilege in this regard, what has been striking has been the references to history by the anti-Gumbel/Kessler crowd; much of the criticism at Gumbel and Kessler has focused on their historic amnesia.  That is, their comments, while being inaccurate, unfair, and infusing race into otherwise colorblind situation, are disrespectful towards the history of slavery in America.  References to slavery in this context betray the violent history of American slavery.  In “Occupy the NBA: A Plea from an Avid Basketball Fan” Timothy Jones takes Gumbel to task for the historic slight here:

I’m appalled that anyone would compare this situation to slavery. I have great respect for Bryant Gumbel, but his quotethat David Stern sees himself as a modern day plantation overseer is not only disrespectful to our ancestors, but it also did nothing to help this situation. Stern may not be handling this situation well, he may not have the best interest of the players in mind, he may be a mean person (I really have no clue), but I do know that brothers making millions of dollars are nothing like slaves on a plantation.

Charles Barkley agreed, referring to Gumbel’s comments as “stupid” and “disrespectful to black people who went through slavery. When (you're talking about) guys who make $5 million a year.”  Likewise, Scott Reid questioned the use of such an analogy given history: “The point is that too many people inappropriately use slavery and enslaved people to make points about things that are nowhere close to comparison. All of these casual slavery analogies do nothing but diminish one of the worst crimes against humanity in human history. Comparing enslaved Africans, or anyone else for that matter since slavery still exists for many enslaved people, is not only absurd, it is just plain disrespectful to the memory of the millions who perished under the worst kind of injustice.”

While seemingly representing a different set of politics, blogger David Friedman also noted the historic disrespect in Gumbel’s comments:

Bryant Gumbel's ludicrous, poorly thought-out (and anti-Semitic) rant against Stern: comparing Stern to a "plantation overseer" is offensive, a falsehood that simultaneously diminishes the true suffering of Black slaves in the American South while also slurring a Commissioner whose league has consistently been at the forefront in terms of hiring Black executives and coaches. Gumbel's attack against Stern comes straight out of the Louis Farrakhan playbook--portraying Jews as exploiters of Blacks--and Gumbel's consistent track record of expressing such bigoted attitudes would have terminated his career a long time ago if his chosen target were any group other than Jews (just imagine a White commentator speaking similarly about a Black person or anyone saying anything remotely derogatory regarding homosexuals).

At one level, I find such criticisms to be simplistic.  The references to slavery are not literal comparisons, but rhetorical devices that seek to emphasis power, race, and the control of black bodies within modern sporting context.  The rhetorical comparison/analogy isn’t simply about physical control but ideological and mental power differentials.  Moreover, in a society that routinely devalues, ignores, sanitizes, and erases the horrors of American slavery, I think the selective resistance by many raises questions.

Yet, questions and criticisms about a slavery analogy (and it is an analogy) are important because it demonstrates the power of language.  There is a danger in comparisons as differences or the specificity of history are erased, flattened, and otherwise stripped because of the varied realities at work. 

Yet, the critics of the “40-million dollar slave metaphor” are often as guilty as those deploying (myself included) these analogies through their frame of history.  In other words, in imagining slavery as a historic institution, as something exclusively in the past, these critics perpetuate the false understanding of slavery in our contemporary moment.  The danger and difficulty of this rhetorical comparison is not simply about betraying or disrespecting history (how can two so different experiences be described through the same word/historic frames), but in perpetuating the idea that slavery exists ONLY in the past.  These critics lament Gumbel, Rhoden, and others by arguing that the NBA, in the contemporary, has nothing to do with slavery, which exists in the past. 

Slavery exists in our present and in our presence.  From Brazil to Ivory Coast, from India to Nepal, from Florida to North Carolina, slavery exists in our contemporary world.  It remains a violent scourge on our society. Understanding both history and the contemporary manifestations of slavery must inform rather than obscure, complicate rather than simplify, and provide depth rather than flatten the rhetorical usage of slavery metaphors, whether it be with the NBA, sports, or otherwise. Phillip Lamar Cunningham, in “Toward An Appropriate Analogy,” illustrates the complexity here, reflecting on a shared and divergent history, one that points to the dialects of race, power, body, control and economic profits:

That said, today’s NBA player’s situation is not wholly unlike that of the post-Civil War freedman. Free of literal shackles, the former slave is free to fend for himself now that he is no longer bound to the plantation. While he was free to go anywhere he chose, he faced the choice of living in a volatile South or a disdainful North that merited him no semblance of equality. Some fled North and carved something out of nothing; many stayed behind as sharecroppers.

To drive the analogy further, one must also consider the position in which league owners find themselves, which is not unlike that of the former slaveowner. With his hold on the slave relinquished, the slaveowner still held the same need for labor. With his primary source of labor now having a semblance of independence, the plantation owner had to negotiate labor costs. Theoretically, he could look elsewhere for labor, but of course the former slave was best suited for the work. This is not unlike today’s NBA, a league in which its primarily black talent is best suited for the job and without whom it is likely to fail or at least face a great deal of hardship in returning to prominence (as did the National Hockey League after its 2004 lockout).

Consider the following quote regarding sharecropping from Alan Conway’s controversial The Reconstruction of Georgia (1966): “[S]harecropping was to a degree the least of all evils, a yoke of compromise which chafed both parties but strangled neither. The owner was able to retain a fair amount of supervision of his land and the Negro cropper took his half loaf of independence as better than none at all” (116). Sadly, the same easily could be paraphrased and applied to today’s NBA lockout.

While NBA players are neither slaves on 19^thcentury cotton fields nor those who pick tomatoes, harvest cocoa in the Ivory Coast, or work in the sex, soy and soccer ball industries, the “40 million dollar slave” is part of that history.   

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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.