Ebru Today - Dr. David Leonard on "Linsanity" & NBA's Racial Landscape

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.

“Truth to Power:”? No Truth or Empowerment in Jason Whitlock’s Tweet

“Truth to Power:”? No Truth or Empowerment in Jason Whitlock’s Tweet

by the Collective | The Feminist Wire | NewBlackMan

We come together to express our collective disappointment over Jason Whitlock’s recent tweet about Jeremy Lin.  We hope that our voices, our analysis, and our anger demonstrates not only our opposition to this sort of rhetoric but the ideologies and stereotypes that provide a foundation for people like Whitlock to stand upon.  His tweet is a symptom of a larger problem and therefore warrants analysis and condemnation in an effort to transform the very culture that produces these sorts of comments each and every day.

***

Perhaps Jason Whitlock is suffering from (L)insanity. Or, perhaps on a much more politically incorrect level, Whitlock is on that bull.

His tweet wraps misogyny, stereotypical phallic fantasy, and race into one awkward 'joke' that provides enough side eye for years to come. Perhaps most disturbing is the crude attempt at humor with little to no purpose and situating it within politics of (ir) respectability. Further complicating (complementing?) the peculiarity of this tweet is the imposition of digital anonymity/privacy of Whitlock and his followers: because I'm behind a screen name (or lack thereof), is it cool to laugh and 'joke' about such sensitive and taboo topics? Is it respectable?

Does Whitlock have (social) responsibility? Damn right. Why wouldn't he? Because, in an offsetting way, Whitlock's crudeness is a representation of the public dismissal of race as a marker of American cultural discourse. And, simultaneously, how jacked it is – Regina Bradley

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Male professional sports, like the military, have long been valued for its ability to allow talent to flourish, in spite of the realities of race and ethnicity.  Professional sports are often viewed as the most natural of American meritocracies, though such opportunity, as it were, rarely extends beyond the field into the realms of management and ownership.  This is not to suggest that racism, sexism, and homophobia are non-existent in professional sports, but that impact is largely muted by performance.

One location where intolerance remains unfettered, is of course, within the arena of commentary where sports-talk radio and the comments sections of sports sites recall the kind of racist, sexist and homophobic rhetoric that many believed went underground generations ago.  Ironically such rhetoric has proved big-business for big Media, creating celebrity in hosts and sports journalists, whose bad behavior is celebrated as “realness” and who somehow think that thoughtful and reasoned analysis and commentary are towing some invisible line of political correctness. 

In this regard, Jason Whitlock is not alone—his now infamous idiotic, racist, sexist, homophobic and xenophobic rants are part of his brand, and it’s a brand that apparently serves him and his employer Fox Sports, very well.  Bless them.  And while I feel no real need to compare Whitlock’s recent comments about Jeremy Lin—as misogynistic as they were racists—to the ill-advised comments on twitter by journalist Roland Martin, I would at least expect that the same fervor in which GLAAD demanded that CNN punish Martin, and that many of Martin’s Black peers demanded that Martin be reinstated by his employer, would be deployed to protect a young Taiwanese-American basketball player, who is simply doing his job to the best of his ability within a meritocratic structure that we all claim to value – Mark Anthony Neal

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Appalled. I find myself rendered nearly speechless in the face of the harmful and repulsive comments of Jason Whitlock and many others with regards to Jeremy Lin. We, however, cannot remain silent about such racist and misogynistic comments. Relying upon deeply infuriating racial, sexual, and gender stereotypes to “celebrate” Lin illuminates not only the absurdity of a post-racial society or national, cultural imaginary, but makes apparent the most disgusting and deeply entrenched stereotypes that are foundational to social and cultural discourses on race in the United States. To merely disregard Whitlock’s or other comments about Lin that pivot around deeply problematic racial, gender, and sexual stereotypes as “jokes” or “harmless sports banter” minimizes the dehumanizing nature of such comments. In the same breath that we laud Lin, let us also collectively deplore the words of those who rely upon damaging stereotypes in their commentary - Treva Lindsey

***

There are so many levels on which Whitlock's (knee)jerk attempt at satire was sad and wrong; most of them have been covered by others, including the boorishness of greeting a player who's risen to the toughest of challenges by ceremonially unmanning him; the pathetic symbolism of a man whose race has historically suffered because of sexual mythology unleashing the tools of such distortion and degradation on a man of another race that has so suffered; the almost antique misogyny of Whitlock's phrasing and innuendo. So I'll focus on something I haven't seen raised: The enormity of Whitlock's imposition of the darkest stereotypes of the modern celebrity athlete on a young man who clearly is anything but. Lin is humble, hard-working, clean-cut almost to a fault -- and a deeply, deeply devout Christian who has spoken of joining the ministry after his playing days are over.

Forget the ridiculous anatomical slur: The suggestion that he might celebrate a victory he dedicated to God by having random sex with a "lucky lady" is almost certainly what would offend and horrify Lin more.

Now, given that his employers at Fox will likely lose little if any sleep over Whitlock's arrant racial offense, the question I ask is this: Will FSN -- whose sister networks carp endlessly about the war on faith -- punish Whitlock for demeaning Lin's deep, professed Christian beliefs?

If so, I'll take it - Jeff Yang

***

Jason Whitlock's tweet brings me back to a time in the early 70's when I was playing on a football team comprised of players from Harlem, the Upper West Side and an Italian Restaurant near Lincoln Center. The only way people could communicate was exchanging ethnic slurs and boasting about sexual conquests, a discourse that reduced me to total silence. It is sad to see how much that atmosphere, so deeply entrenched nearly 40 years ago, still dominates sports journalism and shapes the way men immersed in competitive sports construct their masculinity, irrespective of their racial or cultural background. Needless to say, that atmosphere creates a camaraderie rooted in fear and suspicion on the field. It also promotes violence off the field toward those who are targets, especially women, who are viewed as appropriate subjects of sexual aggression following sports victories, and inhibits real relationships based on candor and trust. In short, it is really bad, and really sad. I had hoped that younger people had moved beyond what I had grown up with, but apparently not. Predatory masculinity is alive and well and living in America –Mark Naison

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At what point will we resist re-assigning markers of difference that have worked to asphyxiate our identities as people of color for centuries? And, when will we realize that our deployment and projection of racial fantasies and stereotyping toward our selected “Others” not only destabilizes our ability to flourish as humans, but also are antithetical to our own personal and political interests? Further, on what occasion will black men and boys construct masculinities that are courageous enough to loosen the yoke of cultural (mis)re-presentations and broad enough to embrace the complex subjectivities of both self and others?

Jason Whitlock’s recent tweet regarding Jeremy Lin is obscene. And for those who want to dismiss it as normal sports talk, shame on you! Whitlock’s tweet is part and parcel of a larger, inter-textual grand narrative on classificatory violence, which aims to categorize things that feel out of place—in order to bring us back into a so-called normal state—or worse, get rid of the “problem” by thrusting it into the realm of “the spectacle.” Does this sound familiar? It should. Herein lies where identities, of both the signified and the signifier, get reinvented. However, in the present age of hyper-social-media, it is also where public discourse turns into a theater of fetishized display, where bodies serve as indisputable evidence for racial, sexual, ethnic, and gendered difference. This is where the signifier hopes to mark himself as “normal.” However, sadly for Whitlock, he too is part of the joke. He too is problematically fixated at a level of genitalia; no longer a black man, but a penis (pun intended) - Tamura A. Lomax

***

Jason Whitlock’s tweet fails not only the racism/sexism test but also the satire test. The racism is obvious--though it should be pointed out that the alternatively “positive” and “negative” stereotypes of Asians and Blacks (e.g. nerds v. athletes) have always been designed to complement each other and reinforce white supremacy. I might even be more offended by the pathetic attempt to be funny. It seems that any time someone breaks through a major public color barrier that America is required to go through an initial cycle of exorcising all of the most tired stereotypes before we can adjust to a whole new condition. So congratulations, Jason, you made the list alongside the birthers and Fuzzy Zoeller’s “fried chicken” (he forgot to add “pad thai”) comment about Tiger Woods – Scott Kurashige

***

Jason Whitlock might as well have pulled up the corners of his eyes and said, “ching, chong, ching, chong,” like the kids who used to taunt me on the playground as a kid. (And I'm not even Chinese; I'm Filipina).  In less than fifteen words, he managed to dredge up the most tired racial, gender, and sexual stereotypes associated with “oriental” people: the hypersexuality and ready availability of Asian women, and the effeminacy and queerness of Asian men. His comments play into the longstanding techniques of divide and conquer that have pit people of African and Asian descent against each other since colonial times. We have much more to gain in working together to combat white supremacy, not just in the United States, but also across the globe. Whitlock's comment does nothing to encourage the development of these types of solidarities – Theresa Runstedtler

***

U.S. racial discourses remain arrested in that primal scene of childhood violence: the schoolyard. For so many of us, the schoolyard “wisdoms” about which Jason Whitlock tweets are not just a bad memory but a daily reality. It is especially painful to hear such “wisdoms” repeated by a black man. Whitlock’s chauvinism denies Jeremy Lin’s body the capacity to represent the nation as well as more obviously the NBA and the high stakes capitalist world of sports celebrity. Bodies like Lin’s can never measure up. But in a sense neither can Whitlock’s. This was the terrible irony that left me feeling more saddened and broken than angry. Whitlock participates in the very logic that demeans his humanity. His comment suggests that he has embraced racist notions of black sexual prowess as the sorry (mis)measure of his own masculinity and self-worth—his fantasies about Lin’s body, inversely reciprocal, certainly speak to such unhappy investments – Hiram Perez

***

Jason Whitlock’s racially insensitive tweet about rising Asian-American NBA superstar Jeremy Lin betrays an investment in an impoverished Black masculinity narrative that pivots upon the erroneous and scientifically disproven idea that Black men have bigger penises than every other group. Whitlock’s need to re-establish Black masculine potency vis-à-vis narratives of athletic and sexual dominance suggests the presence of a threat. But why is the presence of an Asian American kid who can ball his ass off so threatening? Perhaps because Lin’s presence in the Black male dominated space of the NBA rightly demands we rethink our tired and dangerous investment in the myth of biological Black male athletic superiority. Coupled with the homophobic tweets of news commentator Roland Martin, it is clear that the logic of hypersexual Black masculinity is dangerous (e.g. lynching, myth of the Black male rapist, etc) not only to Black men but also to other subjugated masculine subjects, be they Asian men, gay men (Black and otherwise) and women, who become the targets of straight Black men’s misguided need to re-establish dominance – Brittney Cooper

***

What makes Whitlock’s tweet funny? First, of course, there is the nod to the social construction of Asian men as feminine and sexually passive, which then gets played out in our (oh so necessary) cultural discourse on the size of their penises. So that’s funny. Then, there is our collective racial imagination of basketball as a sport in which Black men demonstrate a certain aggressive kind of masculine performance. So the presence of a Chinese American in this sport demands that he be assessed for his ability to perform race consistent with our imaginations, both on the court and off. He impresses us with his on-court moves, but we are obsessed with whether an Asian male can compete with (naturally) virile Black ballers when it comes to really laying it down. So that’s funny, right? Oh, and of course, we all know women can’t help but fight over dick, especially the dick of a basketball player, which, as we’ve already concluded, is huge because it's black.

Unless…ha ha… it’s not. And what (all) women really want at the end of the night is to be “lucky” enough to score a big dick, so they can feel the “pain.” So Whitlock’s tweet is also about this woman lying there prostrate, sexually frustrated because Lin couldn’t deliver, which, of course, she should have known because he’s Asian. So once again, women are not only insatiable in bed, but are also naïve, particularly about sex. Which just confirms what we already know about women. And that is hilarious, no? – Michael J. Dumas

***

It makes me wonder about you, Mr. Whitlock, that you assume Jeremy Lin should celebrate his stellar performance on the court last night by inflicting “pain” on a woman. Is that how you celebrate your tweeting achievements? It is amazing that you could be so unaware of the irony of racially stereotyping Lin’s anatomy and linking it to sexual violence, given the ugly history in which “southern justice” has been justified again and again through fantasies of black men, their genitalia, and their supposed propensity to inflict sexual pain on women. But then again, given your “achievements” as a sportswriter in the past, your cluelessness is not all that surprising – Anoop Mirpuri

***

My response is flavored by spending the past few days immersed in a discussion of the liberation that is to be experienced with Post-Blackness. In the age of social media, I remain amazed by the lengths bullies, masquerading as “writers,” are willing to take to demonstrate their ability to use micro-aggressive means to exert their supremacy over others. As a Baby-Boomer, I’m left with questions. Is social media a mechanism used by the socially inept to exercise their “voice” that is impossible in a face-to-face environment? Does some social media exacerbate the breadth and depth of stupidity possessed by the owner? Does it foster stupidity; perpetuate it? I believe that all of the world via the blogosphere is a stage and juxtapose this medium against an old school warning that I received in the 1980s to avoid emulating a colleague who was a wild cannon in the work place because with that person it was always “what comes up, comes out.” But in those days, what you said was only heard by those within hearing distance. Should you think before you tweet? Jason Whitlock’s “performance” at perpetuating racial stereotypes is flawed on way too many levels to begin to articulate – Valerie L. Patterson

***

Jason Whitlock, who describes himself on his twitter page as “too honest” and someone who “speaks truth to power” once again showed the power in speaking hurtful untruths based on stereotypes, assumptions, and systemically produced biases.  Jason Whitlock has made an entire career in demonizing Others, disseminating the ideologies of white supremacy, and peddling sexism.  He once refereed to Serena Williams as an “unsightly layer of thick, muscled blubber, a byproduct of her unwillingness to commit to a training regimen and diet that would have her at the top of her game year-round.”  This is the same man, who has described “hip-hop culture” as “nothing more than prison culture,” and who once provided this assessment of black youth:

We have a problem in the black community, and it didn't make its debut at All-Star Weekend Vegas. What was impossible to ignore in Vegas was on display in Houston, Atlanta and previous All-Star locations. With the exception of Louis Farrakhan's 1995 Million Man March, it's been on display nearly every time we've gathered in large groups to socialize in the past 15 or so years. The Black Ku Klux Klan shows up in full force and does its best to ruin our good time. Instead of wearing white robes and white hoods, the new KKK has now taken to wearing white Ts and calling themselves gangsta rappers, gangbangers and posse members. Just like the White KKK of the 1940s and '50s, we fear them, keep our eyes lowered, shut our mouths and pray they don't bother us. Our fear makes them stronger. Our silence empowers them. Our lack of courage lets them define who we are. Our excuse-making for their behavior increases their influence and enables them to recruit more freely. We sing their racist songs, gleefully call ourselves the N-word, hype their celebrity and get upset when white people whisper concerns about our sanity. And whenever someone publicly states that the Black KKK is terrorizing black people, black neighborhoods, black social events and glorifying a negative, self-destructive lifestyle, we deny and blame the Man. I don't want to do it anymore.

The recent tweet about Jeremy Lin is a continuation of more of the same from Mr. Whitlock, leaving me to wonder if he would be better-suited writing stump speeches for the GOP or better yet keeping his “honesty” to himself – David J. Leonard

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Whitlock's tweet was a cheap shot of the basest proportions. He's an embarrassment to the writing establishment – Oliver Wang

Contributors

Regina Bradley is a Ph.D. candidate in English at Florida State University

Britney Cooper is a Ford Postdoctoral Fellow at Rutgers University

Michael J. Dumas is an assistant professor of Education at New York University

Scott Kurashige is the Director of Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies at University of Michigan

David J. Leonard is an associate professor of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies at Washington State University

Treva Lindsey is an assistant professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at University of Missouri

Tamura A. Lomax holds a Ph.D. in Religion from Vanderbilt University is co-founder of The Feminist Wire

Anoop Mirpuri is an assistant professor of English at Drew University

Mark Anthony Neal is professor of African and African American Studies at Duke University

Mark Naison is professor of African American Studies and History at Fordham University

Valerie L. Patterson is an assistant professor of Public Administration at Florida International University

Hiram Perez is an assistant professor of English at Vassar College

Theresa Runstedtler is an assistant professor of American Studies at SUNY Buffalo

Oliver Wang is an assistant professor of sociology at Cal State Long Beach

Jeff Yang is a columnist for the Wall Street Journal Online and can be heard regularly on WNYC 's “The Takeaway.”

Thabiti Lewis: Ballers of the New School [video]

from Projection HBW

Professor Thabiti Lewis came to the University of Kansas on October 24 and discussed his book Ballers of the New School. In his lecture he urged the audience to consider the role of race in the sweaty as well as the sweat-free zones of sport. He argues that American sport culture performs and propagates rituals, symbols and expressions of fear and difference that sustain racism and notions of racial supremacy. He explains the continuation of these symbols and notions blocks bridges to racial progress.

Video Design Credit: Brandon Hill--University Kansas Student of Film and Media Studies

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

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

by David J. Leonard | special to NewBlackMan

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

BUGGIN' OUT

Not only did you knock me down, you

stepped on my new white Air Jordans

that I just bought and that's all

you can say, "Excuse me?"

BUGGIN' OUT

I'll fuck you up quick two times.

Who told you to step on my sneakers?

Who told you to walk on my side of

the block? Who told you to be in

my neighborhood?

CLIFTON

I own a brownstone on this block.

BUGGIN' OUT

Who told you to buy a brownstone on

my block, in my neighborhood on my

side of the street?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Postscript

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

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. He is the author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop (SUNY Press).

Ebru TV's Footnote: Thabiti Lewis, Ballers of the New School

from Ebru TV

On this episode of Footnote, we discuss the book Ballers of the New School – Race and Sports in America. Author Dr. Thabiti Lewis uses American sports culture to challenge and explore notions of race in America.

Call of Duty? Kobe and Virtual Warfare

special to NewBlackMan

Call of Duty? Kobe and Virtual Warfare
by David Leonard

Kobe Bryant has done it again. He has supplanted LeBron James. Whereas James’ decision to “take his talents to South Beach,” ESPN’s “The Decision,” his appearance on Larry King, and his recent Nike advertisement have elicited widespread debate, discussion, and consternation, Kobe Bryant, despite winning his second straight title with the NBA has been out of the spotlight. Yet, his appearance in a commercial for Activision’s Call of Duty: Black Ops has not only surely allowed for the commercial to naturally appear on ESPN and during NBA games but also has resulted in ample discussion about the meaning and appropriateness of his appearance within the advertisement.

The commercial, like other games in the genre, imagines war as a space of play, as a space of excitement, as space of harmless fun, and one without consequence. It likewise imagines a warzone as a space of unity, where irrespective class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, politics, or celebrity, people can and need to come together to defeat a common enemy. Promoting the game with the tag line, “There’s a solider in all of us,” Kobe Bryant makes an appearance as to illustrate that war, and the game is a place where superstar basketball stars can play alongside of waiters, Jimmy Kimmel, and others.

Not surprisingly, his appearance in the commercial prompted ample chatter. Mark Medina, on The LA Times blog who noted that he didn’t find the commercial “enjoyable,” wrote “I think the commercial featuring a happy-go lucky vibe with ordinary citizens pretending to be in combat downplays the seriousness that real combat entails.” Similarly, Sam Machkovech commented on The Atlantic.com that the "troubling mélange of gun, grenade, and rocket combat acted out by blue-collar workers, children, and celebs like Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel" resulted in a “disappointing game-related ad" . . .that equips people with real guns and simulates real-life, no-CGI combat . . .. The only things missing are the dead bodies on the receiving ends of each bullet and blast.” Others took the debate, given Kobe Bryant’s celebrity, and cultural meaning in a different direction.

In his blog post “In the crosshairs,” Paul Jones links Bryant’s decision to his responsibility as a role model, one who shouldn’t be promoting violence: “Like it or not, Bryant is a role model. Maybe I'm old fashioned but anything that promotes or glorifies that kind of violence doesn't float my boat. I know it's just a video game but it's not my cup of tea.” Likewise, Tim Keown uses the commercial as a way to talk about gun violence in Berkeley, California, linking the deaths and murders of young (African American – the article doesn’t say but also the rhetoric, images, and narrative leads one to belief as such) boys to Kobe’s appearance in this commercial.

Writing through Todd Walker, a football coach and funeral home worker in Northern California, Keown focuses on the destruction facing Walker’s community and how the glorification of violence within this advertisement is part of the problem. He describes Walker’s reaction to the commercial in the following way:

He was already disgusted, but about halfway through the spot, Walker did a double take: Wait! Wasn't that Kobe Bryant? Seriously, is that really Kobe Bryant carrying an assault weapon with the word "MAMBA" on the barrel? Did Kobe Bryant, the highest-paid player in the NBA, take money not only to advertise a shooting game but actually shoot -- or simulate shooting -- an automatic weapon while doing it? None of his people, not his wife or his agent or someone in the NBA offices, advised him against this?

"I couldn't believe it was him," Walker says. "What's wrong with him?"

Walker gives funeral-home tours to every team he coaches. He tries to hammer home the reality of death by putting kids in cardboard cremation boxes. He shows them the tools he uses to drain bodily fluids and the chemicals he uses to prepare bodies. It probably wouldn't play in the suburbs, but Walker's trying to fight a culture that glamorizes death with tattoos, airbrushed T-shirts and roadside memorials. He's fighting a culture that has desensitized death to the point where fantasy has overtaken reality. In the process, the permanence of death -- "That person is gone," Walker tells the kids when he closes someone inside the box -- is often lost.

Beyond the scapegoating, and the ways in which the article rehashes culture of poverty arguments alongside those that blame violence on choice and decision-making amongst those victimized by state violence, Keown does little to distinguish between the types of violence being displayed within virtual warfare (as glorious; as justifiable) with those images and narratives that consistently use the violence associated with and attached to the ghettocentric imagination to rationalize, justify, and otherwise imprison black bodies. The efforts to link virtual warfare and urban violence through Kobe Bryant, one of the more recognizable black bodies, demonstrates how blackness is circulated as threat, danger, and object of derision. Others, however, used Bryant’s presence, and the NBA’s non-response as evidence for the acceptability of virtual warfare.

On the “Grumpy Sociologist” Dave Mayeda asks the following about the commercial: “Should society be glamorizing war to make money, and turning to celebrities to peddle these products?” He further argues that these games (and by extension their commercials that promote and encourage play in/of these games) naturalize a war culture, erasing the cost and consequence of war. This argument merely echoes longstanding questions about the significance of war games. “What I find really frightening is that in our playtime – in our leisure time, we’re engaging in fictional conflicts that are based on a terrorist threat and never asking questions,” notes Nina Huntemann. Richard King and myself argued similarly in “Wargames as a New Frontier Securing American Empire in Virtual Space” (from Joystick Soldiers: The Politics of Play in Military Video Games edited by Nina B. Huntemann and Matthew Thomas Payne):

“US efforts to establish neoliberal policies in Afghanistan, Iraq and throughout the globe, coupled with the overall movement to legitimize US global hegemony, have come through much ideological work from television and Hollywood, to news media and virtual reality. In fact, in a post 9/11 America, video games have become a crucial space of articulating American empire, providing a vehicle of interactive dissemination that allows for the transportation of citizen bodies from their homes onto battle fields, into political struggles, and into a global theater where US efforts to secure power is normalized and justified. We must therefore understand virtual warfare and the popularity of war games by developing a spatial understanding or a critical pedagogy that illustrates the connections, dialectics of warfare, and violence within virtual and real-time spaces.

Mayda’s and others discussion of the commercial as an entry point into the larger issue of the militarization of everyday life is important, especially as the defense of the commercial deployed the clichéd argument, “It is just game” and “a commercial.” Given the ways in which these games have proliferated over the last ten years, the ways in which militarization is evident in all forms of popular culture (and in toy stores), and how sports, from its language to its efforts to put military hardware on display during pregame festivities, and its ideological offerings, one has to wonder why a commercial featuring Kobe Bryant offers the only moment of intervention.

The specificity of race, Kobe, the NBA, and the commercial are evident as Mayeda goes on to argue, in response to the debate between Skip Bayless and Bomani Jones on ESPN’s First Take.

“Bomani Jones hits the nail on the head. With approximately 1 minute left in the video, Jones points out that if Bryant was re-enacting what's portrayed in the video game, Grand Theft Auto (e.g., murder, assaults, prostitution), he would be reprimanded by Commissioner Stern. However, because Bryant, Kimmel and the other actors are re-enacting war against each other, and presumably against American enemies in the game, the portrayed violence is at the very least permissible, and more likely glorified as a kind of American patriotism.

Jones, who uses the moment to talk about NBA "hypocrisy" given the league’s reticence notwithstanding David Stern’s propensity to control player image, arguing that had Kobe Bryant appeared in a commercial for Grand Theft Auto 57, it "would have [been] pulled [...] off the air” because the violence associated with war “doesn't scare people. Street violence scares the NBA's fanbase, or the ones that David Stern is trying to appease by stopping guys from arguing with refs."

In other words, Kobe, as a black NBA star, can exist inside the virtual theater of overseas warfare, but his presence in another context would elicit a far different reaction because his blackness, as signifier, as cultural symbol, and as cultural frame is inherently disruptive and problematic. In another context, his visible blackness would function as essentially disruptive, uncontrollable, as a source of “cultural degeneracy.” Blackness exists as “a problematic sign and ontological position” (Williams 1998, p. 140). The fact that Kobe appears in a war game ad and not a ghettocentric commercial says nothing about the relative acceptability or contempt for particular types of violence but rather where and how blackness can enter into the white imagination.

Having written extensively about video games, both international and domestic war games (Grand Theft Auto and other ghettocentric games exist in imagining domestic warfare), I am struck by Dave Mayeda’s analysis of the game and Bomani Jones’ analysis. Jones isn’t simply pointing to the acceptability of “ghettocentric violence,” that violence against a foreign other is more acceptable and permissible than games that imagine gang and inner city violence. Rather, both forms of violence, evidence in the popularity of games like Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, war films and those concerned with “Boyz” and “Menaces,” and the ubiquity of war and violence on the nightly news and in public discourse at large.

Violence, when directed at a foreign other, and when reifying dominant white racial framing about violent, dangerous youth of color, is quite permissible and acceptable within American media culture. Given the criticism directed at Bryant, Mayeda’s argument about “permissibility” leaves some pause. Kobe’s visibility within the commercial, his presence as a “role model,” as a black man enjoying warfare, and as a member of “Us” results in a commercial less permissible and thus more susceptible to critique. Moreover, Jones’ point doesn’t seem to be that displays of militaristic warfare are more acceptable than “ghetto violence.” Rather he is arguing that in the context of the NBA, given the constant fears about the blackness of the league, Bryant’s presence in a commercial reifying his blackness and the stereotypes associated with the white racial framing of hip-hop/urbanness, would prompt far greater outrage and likely intervention from the league office. In fact, the commercial with its emphasis on “shared nationalism,” and shared identity as “soldiers” within a larger war effort, irrespective of class, race, gender, celebrity, and physicality mirrors the efforts of the NBA to deemphasize the racial identities of its players, promoting a neoliberal, market-driven notion of identity.

Moreover, it is crucial to understand how fear plays out within the context of this commercial and how Bryant’s presence in a militarized zone doesn’t elicit the same sort of fears as his presence might in another context. Within war games, and in the commercial, there is an effort to emphasize the multiracialness of the nation as to imagine a national body coming together to battle, wage war, and otherwise destroy a foreign other. In other words, video games, whether set in the old West, the new Iraq, or the post-civil rights ghetto, offers a space to rehearse the central tenets of American imperialism, law and order, manifest destiny, and the benevolence of (white masculine) American Democracy.

Call of Duty: Black Ops, as evident by the commercial, replicates this mission. It assuages fear. However, Kobe’s hypothetical presence in Grand Theft Auto commercial would aggravate fear as a black body within a post-civil rights ghetto context. Beyond abstract connections and the links of fear, the surrounding discourse of reception -- the celebration of violence within war games (one manifesting through state powers) and demonization of violence when performed by state enemies (criminals and terrorists), Jones points to the ways in which symbolic (virtual) violence and these games in general distort, reify, and dehumanize, bodies of color in justification of state violence.

These games turn on dehumanizing racialized violence directed at bodies of color, pivot around a rhetoric of danger on insecure frontiers, and encourage a reworking of the contours of fear and victimization so that white consumers can occupy them. It isn’t that one violence is more permissible than the Other, it is that black bodies (evident by Kobe Bryant) can be visible as a cog within a larger state power but cannot exist inside a space where blackness is defined as a threat to domestic safety.

Moreover, the reaction demonstrates the limitations of redemption for bodies rendered as inherently suspect and dangerous. The fact that Skip Bayless offered the following illustrates the limited possibilities for redemptive black bodies: “He was smiling while holding an assault rifle in combat while we have troops overseas at this moment doing the same thing for real in combat.

It's completely out of bounds for Kobe Bryant, who I thought had completely rehabilitated his image after Eagle, Colo., but even the great Kobe Bryant is not that, so to speak, bulletproof.” The reaction to this commercial demonstrates that no matter how many successful years Kobe Bryant has on the court and no matter what he does off the court, he will always be viewed with skepticism and derision.

The media and commentary, discourse irrespective of the argument (condemnation/celebration of Bryant), focused much of discussion about the commercial on the NBA’s star and not the issue of virtual warfare. Just last year, I wrote about controversy surrounding a NIKE advertisement featuring Kobe Bryant with the tagline “Prepared for Combat” in Journal of Sport of Social Issues, amid the arrest and suspension of Gilbert Arenas:

The backlash and the legislating by the NBA, when read alongside those scholars who have argued that the structural and culture locality experienced by blacks renders them to be noncitizens in the national imagination, the encouraged and supported denial of their rights as citizens, whether in terms of guns, the right to earn a living straight out of high school, or the right of free speech/expression, fits their perpetual place outside the American citizenry. The centrality of black NBA ballers as dangerous criminals—abject noncitizens—is clear through the discursive logic: Criminals shouldn’t have access to guns. If Stern is discouraging players from carrying guns, it must because they are dangerous, irresponsible, pathological, criminal noncitizens.

This is made clear by this commercial and the various commentaries that Bryant’s presence as a “soldier” within a U.S. military context is acceptable because the location is one of control and disciplinarity, whereas blackness in other contexts continues to exist as Other, object, scapegoat, and abject noncitizen. It is all matter of what combat is being prepared for and who the imagined victim might be that determines whether or not violence, real or virtual, is acceptable.

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David J. Leonard is an associate professor in the Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University at Pullman. His next book (SUNY Press) is on the NBA after the November 2004 brawl during a Pacers-Pistons game at the The Palace of Auburn Hills He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums.

Did Albert Haynesworth Really Mean Slave?

Did Albert Haynesworth Really Mean Slave?
by Thabiti Lewis

Recently a media feeding frenzy ensued when Washington Redskins defensive tackle Albert Haynesworth uttered the statement, “Just because somebody pays you money don’t mean they’ll make you do whatever they want…I’m not for sale. Yeah, I signed the contract and got paid a lot of money [$21 million this year], but that don’t mean I’m for sale or a slave or whatever.”

Part of the shock, or better yet outrage, seemed to be focused on the very thought that a black man making so much money would compare playing in a defensive scheme he despises to the master-slave relationship at the heart of the American Black-white divide. According to Haynesworth his bone of contention was part of his contract negotiations with the Redskins.

Of course he is not the first contemporary athlete to utter the slave comparison. Former NBA great Larry Johnson once referred to some of his New York Knicks teammates as “rebel slaves” which generated similar outrage. William Rhoden’s wonderful book Forty Million Dollar Slaves takes on the historic plantation mentality of American sport culture and contemporary athletes. And my own book, Ballers of The New School, examines the mentality of contemporary post-civil rights, hip-hop generation athletes, bold enough to make such utterances.

To be fair to Haynesworth who is black, the history and legacy of the enslavement of African persons in the New World, and testifying against it or vestiges of it, will forever be part of the psyche of black Americans. Enslavement in America was harsh, bitter, and cruel as recounted in endless slave narratives. These narratives testified against captors and bore witness to the desire of every black person to be free. Haynesworth’s recent tirade or testimony (depending on your point of view) underscores the feelings that most contemporary athletes are either unwilling to or incapable of articulating.

While Haynesworth certainly does not endure the same type of cruel bondage, his rebellion is against those in power of a plantation or system (dominated primarily by white men) that controls black men—even if they pay them. It is a system capable of making them “do whatever they want” whenever they want. Haynesworth, like the slave narratives, which demonstrated the problematic value of plantation culture, is perhaps addressing the problematic white-black labor conditions in contemporary sports culture that is driven by a modicum of the past master-slave ideology.

Rhoden says in his book “sports might be a plantation of sorts.” Haynesworth seems to concur. And, no amount of money will hush black folk with knowledge of this legacy, because America’s foundation is buried in the fields of slave plantations.

Ironically, the foundation of contemporary high profile sports like football and basketball are the descendants of former slaves. Even the structure of contemporary sports teams traces the power dynamics of plantations. Nearly all the people who exercise power over players are white— the owners, head coaches, commissioners, etc.

The outrage directed at Haynesworth for making his “slave” comment confirms the unspoken notion that because he is Black, he is treated as a descendants of former slaves. Critics say Haynesworth should be grateful—more grateful than his white peers—for the money he makes.

But if Haynesworth is getting paid so much and the dynamics are so different, why make the comparison?

Haynesworth is bothered that despite his immense wealth he does not control the terms of his liberation—the problem slaves faced without the benefit of wealth. Further, in the contemporary sports world not only are white men (like his coach and team owner) in power, but they have defined the terms of the liberation for black men. Haynesworth’s analogy is perhaps his way of saying that while his services may be for sale, his pride and self-respect are not. Despite the money, prestige, and lifestyle, he is not blind to the master-slave power dynamic in contemporary sport culture.

What underscores the Haynesworth saga is how it compares to that of Minnesota Vikings’ Brett Favre who is white. Haynesworth dislikes the Redskins 3-4 defensive scheme, preferring to play tackle instead of nose guard. He also skipped the Redskins voluntary off-season conditioning program. The media maligned him for this, suggesting he was lazy. Brett Favre routinely skips training camp until the last two weeks of camp. He also chose to play for the Vikings because they use an offense he likes.

Yet, the media response to his antics is the antithesis of the response to Haynesworth. Haynesworth is called “ridiculous,” “an idiot” and worse for making his comments. Meanwhile Favre is worshipped for holding teams hostage (deciding if he will play or retire) each year until two weeks before the season begins. In fact, he was given a raise this season. (He now makes $16 million!)

Race is an undeniable variable in the different treatment of these men. The black one is told he should be grateful, shut up and do what he is told. The other is afforded the latitude to waffle about playing, and is offered a raise for doing so.

My point here is not that Haynesworth is literally a slave, but that because he’s Black he’s treated like one. Nor is it that whites are literally masters. The point is that Haynesworth seems to be aware the racial dynamics at play and rejects them. Our national understanding of race could make leaps and bounds, if the public considered these dynamics alongside Haynesworth words, “I’m not for sale or a slave or whatever.”

Originally Published by NewsOne.com

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Thabiti Lewis is the author of Ballers of the New School: Race and Sports in America (Third World Press, 2010). He teaches English and American Studies at Washington State University Vancouver.