Good Piece If the Clippers Win the NBA Championship Does Racism Win as Well? CLICK LINK PRESS LIKE huffingtonpost/antonio-moore/clippers-donald-sterling-nba-championship_b_5285239.html?utm_hp_ref=sports&ir=Sports START DIALOUGE Looking at the broader picture, for the last 30 years the NBA as a whole has served as a decadent veil covering an African-American male existence that has decayed from social denial. Sports leagues with their rags-to-riches stories, became window dressing for a national economic forecast for African Americans that has bare cupboards. A culpable deniability grew alongside the NBAs expansion into our cultural psyche about how a few hundred newly minted black male millionaires made it easy for a nation to justify lack of real discussion on endemic social issues facing millions that look like them. Yet, their experience with blackness is not a solution for a mass group, rather an escape route for the few. Just as Charles Barkley stated on TNT, Myself, Shaq and Kenny, were black, but were not really black. Were all successful and really, really wealthy... essentially pointing to how the fame, and wealth allows them to escape the trap that black maleness creates in our new America. The broadcasting of wealthy black twenty-something-year-old millionaires allowed America to hide from how history and present realities point to an abysmal set of prospects for young black men as a whole. Black athletes shown on TV screens, and smartphone apps to the point of nausea allowed for American culture to normalize them, and undervalue the struggle of a generation. The ability to point to singular successes allowed the nation to escape judgment, and shift failure to each black man not jumping high enough, running fast enough or growing tall enough. As such, if the Clippers win despite scandal, yes this archetype is reinforced, and wins as well. For the NBA to now try to separate the Sterlings and their team is like cutting out a trees roots. The league is acting like it cares about racism, rather than the effects this racial scandal can have on its all-American bottom line. The slight of hand is to make this entire issue about Sterlings words on a tape, rather than his actions in a city for the last 30 years. If the Clippers win the championship, it is more than racism winning. If the Clippers win the championship, as the franchise is handed the Larry OBrien trophy, it signifies that consumerism has triumphed over morality. It makes it clear that we all just want to celebrate, even if the host we are celebrating with despises us. So if the Clippers win the championship, yes Donald Sterling wins as well.
Posted on: Tue, 13 May 2014 04:49:05 +0000
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