Good morning all. I hope you had a good weekend. Well, race is the American story that keeps on giving. Over the weekend, we learned that an owner for the Atlanta Hawks basketball team was selling his ownership because he sent an email voicing concern that too many black fans are attending the basketball games (in a heavily black city) and that is why white people werent buying season tickets. Some have called it racist, some havent. But what I think is more telling is how racism doesnt have to be the driving force behind policies that can have a notable racial impact. What do I mean? Bruce Levenson never said he minded black fans or that they caused any problems, but he said that white potential customers did and so the team needed to take actions to correct that. His email was about financial concerns but you see how those financial concerns, resulting from racial prejudice on the part of others, could impact black people. One tool that is used is to raise ticket prices (a race neutral action that has a racially disparate effect) so that they are less affordable to black fans, which is how you get the much whiter fan demographics he cites for other NBA teams. The problem? Black residents in these often majority black cities are paying taxes to fund stadiums, ect., for owners who do not want them to come to games in large numbers. But more critically, is how decisions based on race (whether or not the intent is racist) can still be devastating. Look at the mortgage crisis. Banks preyed on black neighborhoods, not necessarily because they hated black homeowners and wanted to discriminate against them, but because decades of housing segregation made black ad Latino neighborhoods vulnerably to predatory lending and banks knew they could get away with shopping toxic loans in these communities because these communities had few banking options. Whether the banks intended to be racist or not is irrelevant - the damage is the same. Thoughts?
Posted on: Mon, 08 Sep 2014 14:44:44 +0000
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