September 8th: Not the Same Deal

If you’re looking for the good news in the wake of the Donald Sterling debacle, it may have come in something of a surprising form. Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson announced today that he would be selling the team because of a racist email he sent in 2012.

At the first moment, all basketball fans’ hearts should sink. I don’t think the NBA could handle another owner causing a team that kind of distraction again. Upon further inspection, though, something very different was happening here.

In the email in question, Levenson sent a communication to his General Manager, Danny Ferry, in which he seemed to be giving something of a “state of affairs” in many important areas of the team’s operations. He began with commending parts of his organization, as well as giving some thoughtful remarks about how to move forward with issues such as food vendors and season tickets. In my reading of the email, I started to like the guy from the beginning of the email.

It was in the fourth section that the issue came up. In it, Levenson diagnoses one of the issues he is facing that most drastically affects his team’s bottom line: season ticket holders. He makes the comment that, more than at most stadiums, the Hawks draw a uniquely African American dominated crowd. He cites “eyeball statistics,” numbers he attempted to guess at based on observation, mentioning 70% African Americans in the crowd, predominantly black cheerleaders, and an overwhelming amount of hip-hop music in the stadium. He then goes on to say that the feeling of overwhelming African American culture in the building may be leading to low numbers of season ticket holders because most season ticket holders are affluent, and there are fewer affluent African Americans in Atlanta than whites.

This is the email that Levenson self-reported as racist and the reason he has no business owning an NBA team. Really, though, business is the reason he is owning an NBA team, and all of his comments were observations in the name of smart business. Upon deep inspection of the email, there is nothing that should have driven Levenson to step away.

Now, that isn’t to say stereotyping and over-generalization isn’t a big issue. These can be incredibly detrimental when assessed in society. The thing is, though, that business and society are very different, and sometimes something that is wrong in society is imperative to running a financially responsible organization.

This case, more than most, needs to call into light the importance of intent. In the case of Sterling, he was a racist who meant to say that blacks were inferior. In the case of Levenson, he even goes so far as to call other antics “racist garbage,” almost feeling bad for making his observations. He was attempting to answer a business question with something that, for all intents and purposes, were ball-parked observations. If he had done a census of fans at his games, he could have made the exact same statements with facts (plus or minus a few digits), rather than slightly skewed information that could be claimed as “opinion”.

You may be wondering where the “good” from the Sterling situation comes into this one. The good is that this is evidence that the NBA learned something. This is evidence that no level of racism will be acceptable. This is evidence that a seemingly good man who made a mistake will own up to it and take responsibility for his actions.

I don’t believe Levenson needs to sell his team. I think he made business-minded statements to a man in his organization to help make more money. I think it is pretty great, though, that he is willing to step down (step down for some big bucks, that is) to state how important it is that we be thoughtful of the way we treat each other and think about racism.

I have two blogs: a sports blog and a “life” blog. The reason this is on the “life” blog rather than the sports one is that racism is an issue that transcends sports. It’s also important that, in a time when issues in sports will bring to the forefront important societal issues, that the public knows about the conversations going on in sports and, in this case, the great moves forward that are being made.

February 9th - America the Beautiful

American politics are screwed up, and they aren’t getting better. Republicans don’t want to talk to Democrats, and, frankly, Democrats aren’t that interested in talking to Republicans. The government can’t seem to agree on anything, and it doesn’t look like the American people are getting along any better than their politicians.

On the other side of the world, though, something big is happening. 230 men and women are going to compete in the Olympic Games. They are doing so not as individuals, but as representatives of the United States of America.

This year’s games, taking place in Sochi, Russia, carry with them a significance far beyond simply athletic prowess. The post-USSR Russian government is not in a good place, using the guise of democracy to overshadow an inherently corrupt system. This might have gone unnoticed, until some logistical pieces of the games started to fall apart. Running “water” came out looking more like iced tea than anything else, doors wouldn’t open, rooms weren’t well put together. Overall, the accommodations were a mess.

That would have been bad enough, but things didn’t get any better when some reporters started doing some digging on other Russian behaviors. Like, the notion of putting men in jail for being homosexual. All of a sudden, protests were going up, calling for all sorts of action, from sanctions to boycotts, all attempting to boldly protest the crimes that Russia has committed against its people.

This isn’t the first time the Olympics have served as a staging ground for the world’s conflicts. The 1936 games were held in Berlin, Germany, at a time when Germany was well on its way to starting the most atrocious act of hate in recent history. The 1980 Olympics held in Lake Placid, New York featured the bitter rivalry between the United States and USSR, culminating in the “Miracle on Ice” hockey championship. In both cases, political situations almost led to boycotts of the games, and in both cases the Americans competed. The result? An African American man winning a gold medal in Hitler’s home and an band of Americans showing the Russians that they’re dominance will be short-lived.

For the next two weeks, Americans will once again be on foreign soil, competing for medals and the rights to claim athletic superiority. There is, though, so much more at stake than awards and accolades. The United States is defending a way of living, a freedom, and an idea. We are defending the right to freedom, the right to be a light unto the nations.

Americans are not unified. We don’t agree on a great many things. We don’t agree on the way we should run our government, or the line between where my liberties end and the liberties of another begin. We can’t seem to agree on much of anything. With one major exception: we live in a country that allows us to fight for what we believe. Our rights are defended, and there is a civilized way of fighting for what we want.

There are 230 Americans in Sochi. I don’t know what they believe about homosexuality, healthcare, government spending, or guns (well, maybe with the exception of the biathlon competitors). I don’t really care. What they’re doing there, what they’re saying by being there, is that America, the country they represent, is alive and well, and we are ready to be a presence on the global stage.

There is a difference between being an American and the idea of America. America is something we all believe in. America is an idea. And we have to come together, most especially for the next few weeks, to support America as it represents us, each and every one of us, on the world’s stage.