It’s your argument. You tell me why his changes will drive away black fans.
You’re wrong about the demographics of Atlanta. Like I said before, the metro area is 55% white, 35% black, and a mix for the last 10%. So if the arena is indeed 70%, blacks are over represented by a factor of 2.
It’s highly objectionable. It’s arguably grounds for him to lose the team.
I don’t think it’s racist, and I think calling it racist cheapens the word.
And, as I noted, he would be just as happy if the people filling those seats were black. He does not want to fill the arena with white people, he wants to fill it with people who buy tickets on a regular basis, particularly premium ones.
Because he is changing many of the things they presumably like. Yes, it doesn’t HAVE to be an either/or proposition, but when you actively suggest changing things Black people probably like in order to cater to White bigots, driving away Blacks is a highly likely outcome even if it’s just to avoid being around racist White people.
Actually, you are wrong. You have it pretty much backwards. See here, here, and here. Blacks by all accounts are 50%+ of the Atlanta population.
This was the exact argument used by many owners of segregated lunch counters that, while they were not personally racist, their customers were racist and they were simply catering to them. It didn’t fly back then and it shouldn’t fly now.
What? Are they going to stop coming if the Hawks get a white cheerleader or play some country music?
That’s just counting the actual city of Atlanta. The demographics of the metro area are what I listed. See here for one cite:
You’re both right. City of Atlanta (450k people) follow Brickbacon’s stats. Metropolitan Atlanta (5.5 million people) follow treis’s stats.
ETA: Simulpost with Treis…
Good lord! Not racist.
By that logic: If media companies charge more to advertise to the 18-49 demographic, does that make them bigots against children and old people? :dubious:
Most of them were lying. Do you think Levenson was lying?
I don’t know. Why would White people start coming for those reasons? You can’t simultaneous argue that more of things White people generally like doesn’t means less of things Black people generally like if it’s fairly zero sum, and the explicit goal is to make the crowd less Black.
Which, of course, is not what you said. It also doesn’t justify your comment that Blacks were over-represented unless you think the Hawks, who play in Atlanta proper, should for some reason draw disproportionately from the outer metro area.
Actually, in the passage you quoted Brickbacon, treis specifically mentioned the Metro Atlanta area.
And the argument that a team should only concern themselves with the 450k market within the city limits while dismissing the 5 million people surrounding the city limits is… odd.
The explicit goal is to grow the size of the crowd by targeting an underrepresented demographic. There’s no reason to think the owner wants fewer black people to come. He wants white people to come in addition to the black ones that already do.
You just don’t know what you’re talking about here. The city of Atlanta has less than 10% of the population of the metro area. The boundary is practically meaningless.
The Wizards also face the same issues… 650k inside the DC city limits, 5.2 million outside. Why limit your marketing efforts to the 650k?
The Hawks always have the option of moving to Cobb County, like the Braves are doing. 
You are right. My apologies treis.
That’s not what I said at all. My point, which still stands is that the “metro area” in most places is not going to be equally drawn from in a sport like basketball where you have 41 home games. If you think it’s reasonable to assume someone who lives in Atlanta is just as likely to go to a game as someone in the Brookhaven, please explain why? The same thing applies to DC. Why would I expect someone in Manassas to be just as likely to attend a Wizards games as someone in Georgetown or Chinatown? Maybe that is the case, but you can’t just point at a number as say X group is under-represented.
Except that is not a complete or reasonable parsing of what he said and clearly implied.
And yet, he said:
[QUOTE=Levenson]
I have been open with our executive team about these concerns. I have told them I want some white cheerleaders and while i don’t care what the color of the artist is, i want the music to be music familiar to a 40 year old white guy if that’s our season tixs demo. i have also balked when every fan picked out of
crowd to shoot shots in some time out contest is black. I have even bitched that the kiss cam is too black.
Gradually things have changed. My unscientific guess is that our crowd is 40 pct black now, still four to five times all other teams. And my further guess is that 40 pct still feels like 70 pet to some whites at our games. Our bars are still overwhelmingly black. This is obviously a sensitive topic, but sadly i think it is far and way the number one reason our season ticket base is so low.
[/QUOTE]
Now let’s look at what these changes supposedly did. Here is the average attendance from 2006-2013 (email was written in 2012).
2006: 15,071
2007: 15,594
2008: 16,280
2009: 16,748
2010: 16,545
2011: 15,648
2012: 15,199
2013: 15,125
His efforts don’t seem to have growth the pie any, so this idea that he was only wanting to attract Whites, but not at the expense of Black fans doesn’t seem to have been effective. From the time he says they began looking at the issue (presumably when the crowd was 70% Black) to when he wrote the email (when it was 40% Black), the average attendance increased by 124 people. That’s less than a 1% increase, which clearly means the loss of Black people coincided with the gain in Whites.
More importantly, if his goal was as innocuous as you suggest, why did he say:
[QUOTE=Levenson]
“If you’re angry about what I wrote, you should be,” he said. “I’m angry at myself, too. It was inflammatory nonsense. We all may have subtle biases and preconceptions when it comes to race, but my role as a leader is to challenge them, not to validate or accommodate those who might hold them.”
[/QUOTE]
Now I don’t think his biases make him particularly abhorrent or even that unusual, but it is clearly racist and he even admitted as much.
Yes, and please explain why a team should draw equally from the “metro” area, which is also a meaningless boundary.
I am not suggesting limiting marketing, but rather not assuming your marketing is equally compelling to people who live 30 miles from the stadium as those who live next door. The DC Metro area supposedly includes places in Loudoun and Frederick counties. Using those numbers to imply a given group is under or over represented is foolish. Do you realize how long it takes to get from Ashburn to Chinatown DC on a weeknight? If you want to use a mileage radius around the stadium, or a travel time standard, then the demographics might be more compelling, but just deciding the “metro” area is relevant without evidence is not compelling.
It’s Levenson’s argument. Take it up with him.
Your argument would be stronger if he had actually said this, but he didn’t. He did say he wants white people because they have more money and spend more. And he said they aren’t coming because there are too many black people. If he had couched this argument purely in economic terms you might have a case. He did not.
It’s irrelevant. One of the big wins of the civil rights era was the decision that even if the sentiment were genuine, it’s still not a legitimate excuse to practice racial discrimination.
On what grounds then? The appearance of racism?
The black fans who go to basketball games as opposed to hockey games. The ones who prefer the “blackness” of the former over the “whiteness” of the latter.
Oh, so you are adding a wholly new, and somewhat irrelevant layer of racism to the matter.