NBA Hawks owner to sell team after revelations of racist emails from 2012

The Game Room
41

But, he did say that. He was frustrated that they are not realizing the revenue that they potential could be making and wanted to increase it. He believes the cause is that not enough white people are coming to the games, as they generally skew higher economically. He posits that they are not coming because they find the largely black audience intimidating.

The whole motivation of attracting white people was to make more money, not to denigrate black people. The only color that is a factor here is green.

42

I was only referring to the more than somewhat relevant layer…:smiley: .

43

So… you made up some stuff.

And if he had talked about ways to sell more season tickets without bringing race into it, we’d be having a different conversation. But he said very clearly that he wants to de-emphasize the blackness of the crowd because it scares off white people who could but season tickets and spend more money. The Hawks don’t have to play to this kind of prejudice, but he wanted them to do that.

44

Am I really the only one here seeing a cynical ploy by the Hawk’s owner to get himself a Ballmer bonus? :confused:

I might have said something intemperate when OJ was acquitted… who wants to buy my house for $2.5 million? :smiley:

45

Precisely my point!!

46

Welcome to Atlanta. I live down here (in Decatur, an “in town suburb”). Most of the attendees of sports come from the metro area. That is, basically, why the Atlanta Braves are moving out in the suburbs (which I’m not a fan of at all, but that’s the basic reason). This is a city where a ton of people don’t particularly care about hour long commutes, and there isn’t much of an upswell among suburbanites for mass transit to reduce it. They come down into the city for sports and while they may bitch about the traffic, they’ll still make the trip.

FWIW, I read the email and while some parts should not have been said, for the most part, I don’t think it was racist. Just IMO.

47

I didn’t call it racist. I said it’s reasonable that people would object to what he wrote. I avoided the word racist because people will go to bizarre lengths to find ways to excuse people who are accused of racism (if the accused and the excuser are white), and I was hoping to forestall that kind of tedious hijack. I disagree with your broader statement, though, because there’s more to racism than saying you hate black people. Donald Sterling didn’t say he hated black people either. He just didn’t want them around. Levenson doesn’t say he hates black people, but he wants to get more white subscribers and says they’re struggling to get them because the crowd is seen as too black - so he wants changes to their music, their cheerleaders, and their kiss cams.

Yes. Here’s how this actually became public.

It sounds like Ferry was given a scouting report (or something similar) that included some kind of racial comment about Luol Deng, who the Hawks were trying to sign at that time. As a result the team investigated and found Levenson’s email from 2012.

48

Tedious hijack?

The OP ends with "racists like that have no place in regular society and should be socially hunted down and exposed and harassed to the full extent of the law. Small applause for Levenson for doing the right thing. "

… that is quite a statement and is deserving of more reaction than just those that you’d like to restrict the thread to in order to make your points.

49

I don’t control what the OP said. I was discussing what I said and why I chose the words I chose. And yes, the type of tangents I described are extremely tedious.

50

Do you really think that this is the only email about increasing revenue at the arena that he has ever sent. Really? The reason this email stands out is because it is the one that has a racial component. It is that aspect that makes it noteworthy.

Let me correct that paraphrasing for you…

That is his goal. He only brings up the audience demographics as one possible reason for not achieving this goal.

51

No, he said he didn’t want them around his mistress!

Donald Sterling was, in the end, a pathetic old fart. The recordings that got him in so much trouble weren’t the angry ravings of a racist, they were the pathetic pleadings of an elderly Sugar Daddy whose girlfriend was embarrassing him in public.

Sterling gave V. Stiviano a house and a fancy car. She repaid him by fawning over much younger, much studlier and mostly black athletes in public. She was practically telling the world, “My rich boyfriend can’t possibly keep a young hottie like me satisfied, so I need to pursue other guys who can.”

Sterling was pleading with her, vainly, to stop humiliating him! He didn’t order her to stop seeing other men, or even to stop SLEEPING with them- he just begged her not to be seen with them in public.

SHE had all the power in that relationship. He was just a sad old man who had absolutely no control over his kept woman- and she knew it. She didn’t just bite the hand that fed her, she chewed it off!

52

No, it was plainly not his only email on the subject. But while discussing race and economics and its implications on season ticket sales, he did not say anything about trying to get their black fans to spend more, their commitment to that fanbase, or anything they could do to deal with the fact that in his mind, white Southerners don’t want to be around too many black people - business don’t have to echo their customers’ prejudices, you know; Levenson says he is disgusted by the potential racism here and he could’ve tried to address it and get a diverse crowd. Instead he says they need to downplay their black audience because white people don’t like it and he wants their money. How do you think black people who have been spending their money at Hawks games would feel about that?

Ugh. So many excuses. This is disgusting, astorian.

53

Hawks GM Danny Ferry on Luol Deng: “He’s a good guy overall. But he’s not perfect. He’s got some African in him. And I don’t say that in a bad way.” Deng, who is from South Sudan, is involved with numerous international charities and won the NBA’s sportsmanship award in 2007 and its citizenship award just this year. I look forward to the explanations of why this isn’t racist.

54

Well, a bit of an apology, I may have gone off the rails a bit when I made the topic. I reacted to the story before seeing the actual text of the email. After reading the email, I don’t think he’s nearly as bad as Sterling was and is not overtly a racist. However, he definitely has racist views that are deep-seated of people who was brought up in a racist environment and never unlearned how they were raised. I would bet that if someone were to ask him if he were racist, he’d say something along the lines of “I have many black friends”. He either doesn’t see or doesn’t recognize outright racist behaviors and due to that, he thinks he’s that his racism doesn’t exist. 2014 is a long way from the 1960’s and that kind of thing that happened back then doesn’t happen much anymore, but it doesn’t mean racism is gone. Much of it has become institutionalized and internalized, so much so that someone like Levenson may have real trouble spotting it if he’s not looking at it directly.

I heard a conservative radio talk show host call what Levenson wrote simply a case of stating what’s factual, and some of you in this topic have made the same claim, but there are a lot more in that email which is subjective and inferred than just a straight document of demographics. Breaking down the email:

He claims that demographically speaking, the Hawks are short on the primary demo for season tickets, which are 35-55 white males. I’m completely fine with this statement as its a non-biased reporting of facts. Even if he was mistaken and somehow the real demographics are 1-12 year old girls, it doesn’t change the fact that he reports this as he believes the truth to be. No problems with that whatsoever.

However, he starts to go into racist territory when he points out that the arena is:

– it’s 70 pct black
– the cheerleaders are black
– the music is hip hop
– at the bars it’s 90 pct black
– there are few fathers and sons at the games
– we are doing after game concerts to attract more fans and the concerts are either hip hop or gospel.

Unlike demographic information that he probably got from the NBA, this is strictly an eyeball’s view of the arena. I seriously doubt he was taking down information, aggregating customer demographics, and data mining information to get this. He takes a look at the arena and he just knows, he KNOWS that there are “few fathers and sons at the games”, and that somehow having black cheerleaders and hip hop music is going to affect the above-mentioned 35-55 white male demographic. He’s basically seeing himself as some arbiter of what whites and blacks like, with assumptions about their preferences all by a cursory glance at the arena audience. For those of you who think Levenson is not racist at all, what do you think he’s saying by pointing out there are few fathers and sons at the games?

He spends the next couple of paragraphs comparing the Hawks’ arena to DC, which he says has a comparably small (only 15%) black audience and bemoans the fact that the Hawks have given out tickets to primarily a black audience before making his points: blacks in Atlanta are too poor and southern whites don’t like being in the minority around poor blacks. So not only has he massively stereotyped the wealth, family, and tastes of blacks, he’s actually stereotyped whites too by calling them underhanded racists for not wanting to be around blacks. And its funny how he talks about how certain things said are code for racism, but he basically says “blacks are poor and their kids grow up without fathers and they like hip hop and black cheerleaders”

But even if you forgive all that and claim he’s simply reporting facts, the next paragraph highlights what he plans on doing to those beleaguered southern white racists. No, not tell them to try living in the 21st century or anything, but he wants to cater to them by having more white cheerleaders and music that 40 year old white guy is familiar with. “Hey racists, feeling uncomfortable? Come to Hawks games, we got stuff you like!” And a the same time, Levenson wants to make crowd shots have more white people in them and have the kiss cam be less black. If that’s not racist, then think about what he is doing to his admittedly majority 70% fan base: he wants to cater to their tastes less, he thinks they’re poor and less of them should come to the games, and he wants to pretend thousands of them don’t exist. All this so he can attract the racists who, though they are a disgusting remnant of America’s history and overt demonstrations of their power and influence are all but eliminated from acceptable public view, they have more money for our gift shop gewgaws so let’s get more of them in!

I stand by my original statement that its a good thing Levenson is leaving. I’m glad he’s doing it voluntarily and anyone who claims a 1st Amendment violation doesn’t know the law from a kick in the groin. His letter was filled with racism but some of them seems to be borne out of ignorance rather than malice. But he’s not as bad as I thought.

55

I am flummoxed as to what “He’s got some African in him” could even mean. Any ideas?

56

There are a few problems with this line of reasoning:

  1. He posits that race is the issue with almost no evidence that the reason Whites don’t come to his games in the number he has randomly decided is sufficient is because the crowd is too Black. He made racial assumptions based on his own biases, not something expressed to him by multiple people or by evidence. His own people shrugged their shoulders, they didn’t argue that he needed to get rid of the “overwhelming” number of Black fans. He personally decided it was that rather than having a mediocre team, poor public transportation options, inconvenient game times, etc. It was his preoccupation with race, not his White fans nor his management team. He didn’t even seem to have tried anything else to attract more fans.

  2. The methods he used to change the demographics didn’t increase attendance, so it’s clear the increase in White fans came at the expense of Black fans.

You say that as if that justification, even if true, makes it more or less racist. Can you imagine if the home builders Toll Brothers said they wouldn’t sell more than x% of their houses to Black people because high percentages of Black people are correlated with lower property values, meaning their house would be seen as a worse investment. Would you think that was okay just because they alleged concern was money?

Besides, caring about money to the exclusion of common sense and decency is wrong, and often unwise from a financial standpoint. Money isn’t apportioned along racial lines. Even if some groups have more or less on average, the way to attract richer people is not to work towards soft racial quotas, it’s to attract people willing to spend money. There are plenty of situations where poorer people actually spend more of their money on something than richer people do. Just because someone HAS more money doesn’t mean they re going to spend it on a given item or experience.

His desire to make money wasn’t a based on data, it was a crude and inexact racial discrimination. He didn’t quantify how much an average Black fan spends vs. a White fan. He didn’t investigate WHY these fans spent what they spent. It could have just been something as simple as some fans preferring to buy online, or to eat different types of food. To assume the crux of the problem is race, asserting that his White potential fans are racist, then catering to their supposed racism at the expense of Black fans is a pretty clear textbook case of racism.

Again, I don’t think it’s the WORST thing I have ever heard, but it is another example of how subtle institutional racism and biases affect minorities in so many ways. I swear no one would have believed a Black Hawks fan if he said the owner didn’t want too high a percentage of Black fans in the crowd, or too many Blacks on the kiss cam before this email came out. I suspect this guy grew up exposed racism and thinking it was fairly abhorrent without realizing the extent to which he was inculcated with those same values.

Please give a detailed cite on that? One that gives an shows where these fans live and how likely the are to come? I am not contending that sports fans don’t travel to games from the outside a city, but rather that holding the metro area demographics to be more representative of a potential crowd demographics isn’t based on evidence in this case.

Cite? Everything I read says it was a better tax-payer subsidized stadium, more parking, etc. I don’t see anyone arguing it’s to be closer to their fans.

There is a huge difference in tolerating an hour long commute to work for pay, and paying to accept it as a consequence of going to 41 basketball games. Besides your general point is true of almost every major city. DC traffic is routinely the worst in the nation. Yes, some fans in the outer VA suburbs will come to DC to see a Wiz game, but they are not nearly as likely as someone who lives in DC (or closer in). The demographics of Frederick don’t impact the Wizard’s financials much, and are not really relevant when talking about whether the crown is too ____.

How is it not racist to explicitly state you are taking steps to fewer of a certain group from coming to your business?

57

Here’s the thing- the target demographics are what the team says they are. It’s really an exercise in market segmentation- the team/Levinson clearly wants to capture a more affluent demographic of white people, and is concerned that the high proportion of black fans is hurting that.

There’s no actual bashing or anything negative in the emails- it’s just pointing out as they see things in the arena and proposing remedies to bring in the targeted demographic. Because the targeted demographic isn’t black, it’s apparently automatically racist by a lot of people’s lights. That’s not really fair- it’s assuming there’s something other than a profit motive at work, and I’m not at all convinced there is.

To use an example of something similar that didn’t get the “ZOMG! Racist!” treatment that was essentially the same thing, the FC Dallas soccer team used to play at the Cotton Bowl and had a very large and loyal Hispanic fan base, but that didn’t really buy a lot of tickets or merchandise.

So when they built their own stadium, did they put it in a Hispanic part of town? No, they built it in one of the whitest, most affluent suburb in the area- Frisco, which is some 30-35 miles from the Cotton Bowl, and nowhere near any major concentrations of Hispanics.

Presumably, they got a sweetheart deal from Frisco, but there was almost certainly an expectation that they’d attract the white soccer-kid crowd more than the relatively broke Hispanic crowd. Racist? Probably not, but it’s the same exact motive that Levinson is using to try and change the demographics at Hawks games. It’s also more or less the same motivation that the Cristal champagne people are doing when they try to distance themselves from rappers- they’re trying to engineer the target demographic, knowing that while rappers may buy a lot, they’ll sell more if they’re NOT known as Kanye or Diddy’s favorite champagne, because a lot of people will NOT buy it for that very reason.

58

It should be noted there that Ferry didn’t write those words. They came from a scouting report or research that he was given and did see ahead of time but “failed to redact,” as some story put it. So maybe he agrees with that assessment and maybe he doesn’t. I can imagine he said “I don’t say that in a bad way” because he realized he’d just quoted someone else saying something terrible. My first guess is that the writer is engaging in a little stereotyping of Africans as childish or savage. I don’t know - it means something bad, anyway, and it’s vague and confusing. Deng is by all accounts a great guy and the NBA has had several other African players who were also exemplary people - like Dikembe Mutombo and the late Manute Bol, for instance.

59

I agree. The issue is that your target is not your actual demographics, and there is no reason to think your target is reachable or preferably just because it’s your target.

But what substantive evidence is he basing that on? Do you honestly think White people were commenting on how few White people were on the kiss cam? While I think there are situations where some White people are demonstrably uncomfortable being in the minority, it doesn’t mean an alleged relative lack of White fans is caused by that.

Directly stating you want a smaller proportion of Black fans solely because they are Black and therefore make White people uncomfortable is not negative? It’s unfair to both Black and White fans.

It’s not assuming anything. He directly stated it. A profit motive has nothing to do with it.

Do you have some evidence they built the stadium there to avoid having too many Hispanic fans attend games? I don’t get why you keep equating not wanting group x with wanting more of group y, when the suggested means of getting more y is to get less of x.

Do you have ANY evidence that was a motivating factor?

It very well may be racist. First, there is a big difference between brand management and actively dissuading your customer base from attending your games because they are Black. Cristal presumably is avoiding to association with Kanye because he is polarizing rapper, not because he is Black.

60

If it’s defending Donakd Sterling to call him a pathetic old fart, so be it.

If you’re that easily disgusted, you should stay away from the SDMB. You’re far too sensitive.