Interesting article on the McDonald’s thing.
Yeah, it’s definitely a logic you don’t want to push too far. And I, too, am generally really skeptical the whole “What?! That’s Not Racist!” brigade that always pops up when a white guy says or does something awful. We may just be drawing the line in slightly different places in this instance.
It’s irrelevant to whether Levenson’s actions were legally or ethically defensible. It’s highly relevant to the question of whether Levenson is personally racist and/or whether the sentiments he expressed in that letter were racist.
They also have a lot of white fans. The issue the e-mail raises with these things is not that there are too many blacks shown. It’s that all participants are black. Your phrasing is “whitening up their image”, but the better term is more akin to “accurately reflect the demographics of our fan base”. This is something that virtually every corporation, university, and government entity wants to do. The only difference in this case is that the targeted demographic is white and Levenson spoke in explicitly racial terms instead of coded phrases.
There’s an interesting little bit of history here. The Hawks came to Atlanta in 1968 from St. Louis.
The “official” reason was because the St. Louis ownership couldn’t get the city to build a new basketball arena, or even substantially renovate the 30-year old auditorium where the Hawks played.
The “unofficial” reason was that the local fans and business interests had jumped from the Hawks in favor of the hockey Blues, which had started up in 1966 and was the hot fad in town.
But the “whispered” reason was that the Hawks and their fans were too black, causing the white fans and power structure to desert the team.
By the way, the interesting thing about this thread is that a bunch of people are calling the e-mail racists and taking offense. But no one is taking offense for the people who were actually insulted. Levenson essentially calls his white fan base a bunch of southern racists too scared of blacks to go to a basketball game.
You know what? Being thought of as being racist is not worse or more of a “real” insult than people wanting to avoid you or exclude you because of your race. The latter is racism. The former isn’t.
And there’s no evidence Levenson wants to exclude or avoid black people. He didn’t say fire all the black cheerleaders and hire white ones. He said hire at least one white cheer leader. He didn’t say stop showing black people on the kiss kam. He said show at least some white people. He didn’t say stop picking black people to participate in on court activities. He said pick some white ones as well.
If some hockey team owner said “Hey, we’re not filling up seats. Maybe we should try to appeal to Black and Hispanic communities. Let’s play some music popular in those communities, feature more non-white couples on the kiss-cam, and hire some black and Hispanic cheerleaders so we can increase our audience,” would that also be bad?
(I know hockey doesn’t have cheerleaders. Pretend it does.)
Honestly I’m not seeing a lot of racism here. It just looks like a guy trying to sell more tickets. He specifically says he doesn’t have a problem with Blacks in the audience, he just wants to sell tickets to whites as well.
It depends. Does he also say that they can’t get black and Hispanic fans because they have too many white fans, and does he think white fans are undesirable because they don’t spend enough money?
No because that isn’t reality.
Whites have more disposable income. This is attractive to business men.
Whites aren’t used to being the minority. This sometimes makes them feel uncomfortable. So some white folks will avoid situations where they know they’ll be the minority.
You’re fighting the hypothetical here.
Levenson noted this, and used the correct term for it.
That is weird, but only because that’s the smoking gun that proves the racism. The entire motivation behind everything he proposed is to appeal to these southern racists. The actions all stem from wanting to support the racism of these people. He’s engaging in racism by proxy.
Yes, his goals are to make more money. But he proposes to do so by enacting policies that he believes would appeal to racists and their racism. That makes them racist policies, even if he himself isn’t racist.
But I’m not so sure about that, either. Sure, he goes out of his way to say that he doesn’t feel uncomfortable around black people . Yet he thinks all other white people are racists. Who do that the most often? Racists. It’s the logic behind “Anti-racist is Anti-white.”
I think it’s very likely he’s projecting his own racist views onto others in this. So, rather than being racism by proxy, it’s just plain racism. The only reason he can think of that he isn’t making enough money is that those scary black people are making all the rich white people uncomfortable. He blames the racism on others, but it’s really his own.
(Yes, in this post, I’m using “___ by proxy” construction to mean that he is the proxy, unlike the more usual use of the term. I like the term, and couldn’t think of anything better.)
Compare this to the actual email, which says something different.
Not “there are no white people.” “It’s too black.”
He didn’t say they never pick black fans. He says he “balks” when they don’t pick white fans for any individual contest.
Right. And for the record, yes, Levenson is stereotyping white Southerners. I am also surprised there has been so little commentary about that because it’s normally a recipe for easy outrage.
Not getting into the content of the letter but addressing the issue of whether music changes can impact the racial makeup of crowds the answer is absolutely yes.
Several bar-restaurants in my little burg on the eastern shore of Maryland had experimented with more urban flavored music to increase black crowds. It worked spectacularly and they paid top dollar for drinks, but in many cases there was invariably a local gangster and wanna-be gangster element that came along with that crowd and instigated numerous fights, sometimes on premises, but most often just off premises in the street or in the parking lots. The police descended, the liquor board gave warnings, and the whites (and a number of blacks) fled.
The restaurants started (deliberately) playing country music. This drove most of the black patrons (and some whites, mostly college kids) away. When they were satisfied they were no longer popular with the black crowd they went back to more of an eclectic mix of music including some hip hop.
Music will absolutely move crowd demographics, and it will do so quickly and without having to be accused of overt racism.
I guess he was calling him shifty and dishonest? The full quote was “He has a little African in him, not in a bad way, but he’s a guy who would have a nice store out front, but sell you counterfeit stuff out of the back.” One of the teams’ minority owners was outraged, and so was the CEO. That co-owner wanted Ferry fired. The end result is Levenson getting out. So here’s a fun question: does anyone see a possible link between a team owner who is iffy on black fans and a scouting report that says weird, prejudiced crap about a black player? I’m tempted to emphasize again that Deng appears to be an outstanding person, but that’s not even the point- even if he were kind of a shady character, the fact that he’s African doesn’t have shit to do with it.
While the Levenson letter is offensive in some respects it’s not quite the “set yourself on fire then fall on your sword offensive” that some would make it out to be. He probably could have ridden this out with a sincere sounding mea culpa and promises to be more sensitive in the future. I think the people seeing this as a strategic ploy to dump an underperforming asset for maximum dollars are correct. Ballmer’s payment for the Clippers was astounding.
Wait, if this was about wanting to dump his ownership stake in the team, why would he need a strategic ploy? Just announce that the team is for sale. It seems like you’re likely to get a better deal if you haven’t already announced that you have to sell.
A lot of people, especially white, middle class people, believe that racism consists primarily of overt bigotry and ignore the larger institutional racism that has a far larger direct effect on minorities.
A lot of homeowners in the 50’s & 60’s genuinely did not have any personal bias against black people but, quite rationally feared that their property value would go down if blacks moved into the neighbourhood. They feared this because the person who they sold the house to, while potentially also not biased would also have the same fear.
This rational fear lead to redlining, the creation of HOAs and the systematic disenfranchisement of an entire generation of black people from owning desirable property and an economic legacy that continues onto the present.
We now have no problems labelling those actions as both deplorable and racist, irrespective of the personal beliefs of the actors because we recognized that the enabling of the bigotry of others also constitutes a sin.
The reasoning behind Levenson’s moves are in the same vein as redlining or separating lunch counters and they make a good deal of sense. And it’s because they make sense that they’re such a dangerous belief and why I have no problems labelling them as clear cut racism.
Ooooohhhhhh… so if V. Stiviano had been seen canoodling in public with younger, more virile WHITE athletes (say, Andrew Luck instead of Matt Kemp), Donald would have been just FINE with that.
Sure.
Resign immediately as a moderator.
Now. You cannot command respect from anyone. You’re a potty mouthed moron, and have proven you have no business policing anyone else’s language or behavior.
If you want to use your immense “power” to kick me off these boards, go ahead.