Elijah Harden
Allison Curseen
English 2150
18 May 2015
In the article “Race in the Present Day: NBA Employees Sound Off on Race and Racism” Kwame Agyemang and John Singer argue that despite the prominent visibility of African Americans in certain parts of society (particularly football and basketball) America is not a post-racial society. Agyemang and Singer primarily use the personal accounts of five employees from an unnamed NBA franchise in order to establish that there are problems which African Americans incur because of race both in the NBA and society at large. The employees develop three primary accounts. The first is, there are suspicions that there is a wealthy white conglomerate that controls the fate of the country. Second, racial progress has been made but racism still persists. And lastly, whites see African Americans as inferior. The solutions offered for these problems are black ownership within the league and unity among African American athletes as a means to reduce racism. While African Americans may experience discrimination as a result of their race, the underlying issues brought about by capitalism are left unaddressed. These issues with capitalism allow those with money to become more prominent at the cost of another person. It may be true racism would not exist (at least in its current capacity) if there was black ownership. However because of the deficiencies capitalism creates, it would be replaced by another system of discrimination which is the true issue that is trying to be solved.
Agyemang and Singer attempt to identify racism experienced by particularly male African American NBA players, staff, and in society in general. To make their argument Agyemang and Singer complement the accounts of the NBA staff with brief anecdotes of unequal treatment experienced by both athletes and individuals living a pedestrian life, when it comes to suspensions, and interactions within the media. The narratives presented by the NBA employees are used to give credibility to the idea that 1) racism still exists and is being experienced 2) no person is able to escape racism and 3) black empowerment will go a long way in reducing racism.
The desire of the participants and conductors of the case studies is ultimately to live in a peaceful society. A society in which everyone is treated equally and not judged based on arbitrary parameters of desirability like race, gender, and cultural background. The article is valuable for being one of the first studies of racism in the NBA through testimony from its employees (previously accounts only collected from male collegiate athletes). It is also valuable for pointing out clear patterns of institutional racism. However, the article stops short at identifying the real problem and its source. The problem at hand is discrimination that is enabled by capitalism. This becomes apparent when looking at the solutions offered to combat racism.
The solutions offered to combat racism often replace white leaders with black ones. This would likely reduce racism (toward African Americans) but discrimination would still manifest itself in a different form. In this new scenario however, it would occur with black people in leadership positions and toward a different group. When an individual in the study was asked to expand his thoughts regarding black ownership he offered it would be difficult to achieve but the goal is still something desirable to be achieved.
But still, we have to have sponsorships and money coming in from the business
sector and a lot of that money has to come from white people, I’m sure. But still,
I think it would help if we pulled our resources together a little bit more, or a lot
more, and try to do more for each other as far as coming up with our own
league. We have everything else as far as NAACP, you know, BETAwards, you
know, that kind of thing. So why not have our own league? (Agyemang and Singer 23)
In this quote the participant offers a solution to racism which is legitimate ownership from black people in places of influence. In order to achieve this he admits it would be necessary to have corporate sponsors backing the league they intend to create. The sponsors are (presumably) not racist, but they still would have interests that need to be reflected within the game. The objective of any business is to maximize the bottom line (income after taxes) and the new owners would still have to respond to their audience. As a result of the nature of business, interests of the owners, sponsors, and audience have to be reflected in the product that is presented on the playing field. The outcome does not have to be one where the final product is racist. But, it would still result in discrimination against individuals who participate in non-normative activities that may be looked at as unfavorable, to protect the bottom line. Well-to-do people (black or otherwise) do not want to create a product that will not be popular or one that will ultimately fail. They will have to respond to certain pressures to protect their interest (having a relevant and profitable product). In the same vain, just the unification of wealthy African Americans does not prevent discrimination from ever happening again to members within the community.
The solution of black unity as a means to stop racism is given by the article. The call for well-to-do athletes to represent the interests of everyone is problematic because it presupposes they are benevolent and their benevolence will trickle down to everyone else. It should be noted here explicitly that the participant’s plans for the NBA represents society at large. There are correlations between the functions of the African American athletes, owners, and employees, involved in other institutions within society. That is to say that the ideas presented by the participants of the survey about how to make the NBA more egalitarian, is meant to act as a blueprint of what could be imposed within society in general. For example, black ownership of NBA teams would be black ownership of Fortune 500 companies.
The unity among prominent African-American male athletes in the NBA was also exemplified throughout the lockout period as the likes of Chris Paul and others opted to have summer league games on Historically Black College & University (HBCU) campuses. The significance in this is that these players are not just going back to their alma maters, which are often times predominantly white institutions of higher education (PWIHE) but, instead, are connecting with the larger African-American community at HBCU schools that they never attended. (Agyemang and Singer 26)
Agyemang and Singer attempt to demonstrate that when African American athletes unify it only results in positive things happening for other African American people. Chris Paul and others instead of choosing to play at the institutions where they went to school which are predominantly white chose to play for predominantly black audiences. Agyemang and Singer mean to use this as a model that would work consistently on a larger scale. Black athletes and owners putting out a successful product that caters to black people. (Perhaps on a larger scale it would be non-racist athletes, and non-racist owners putting on a show for a non-racist audience) What is lost, or at least not properly communicated is the athletes who put on the exhibition stood to gain (not to say they cannot profit image wise or financially from their work), and the gains that they make do not necessarily transfer to less well-off individuals. The point here is even though wealthy African Americans may become more financially well-off and even more accepted by society in general, it does not prevent discrimination against poor people from occurring.
Agyemang and Singer point to David Stern (former commissioner of the NBA) changing the landscape of the NBA in order to profit. “Stern inherited a quandary, which he felt he was the perfect person to ameliorate. Much to the liking of his majority white consumers, he ‘marketed and managed [the NBA] with a specific, if often tacit, goal of making African-American men safe for (white) consumers in the interest of profit.’” (Agyemang and Singer 13) David Stern was concerned chiefly with the image of the league in response to the sponsors. If the sponsors were indifferent to the image of the basketball player, there would have been no adjustments made to player conduct. The fiscal concerns cause the league to operate as it does, protecting the bottom line at all cost. As long as people continue to act in the interest of profit the marginalization of individuals will continue irrespective to the race perpetrating the action.
The consolidation of power and resources amongst the wealthy does not preclude discrimination from happening it simply empowers a group, still at the cost of another. Capitalism is a zero sum operation that is to say, as one person gains another person must lose. Agyemang and Singer never solve the issue of capitalism which is people don’t end up with the same amount of resources. The inequality present from the unequal distribution of wealth enables those with resources to arbitrarily dictate norms of society and it allows them to take punitive action against those that violate those norms (see NBA dress code policy). As long as people with more resources (wealth) are in position to dictate what lifestyles people should pursue discrimination is still going to exist. It also means individuals with more resources (wealth) will try to control what are acceptable cultural practices and goals for people to have, in the interest of protecting their profit. In sum, what individuals should desire to be (the ways in which they conduct themselves in the public i.e.” expression”) and what individuals should want to do with their lives (make money, have kids, a house, etc.) will still be controlled by a wealthy elite. As well to do African American athletes become more accepted by society, poor African Americans will still have no such status, and it could even mean wealthy African Americans will discriminate against poor African Americans.
To reflect, the article “Race in the Present Day: NBA Employees Sound Off on Race and Racism” presents the fact African Americans still face racism though America is at times considered post-racial. Kwame Agyemang and John Singer utilize the testimony of five employees of an unnamed NBA franchise to establish personal connections to racism and to begin to formulate the solution to racism. The solutions offered do combat racism but present different problems at the real issue that the participants and researchers intend to solve. This problem is the discrimination that occurs because of failures of capitalism to distribute resources equally. Black empowerment through ownership would reduce racism but does not address the true goal of the individuals who participated in the research which is ending discrimination of all variety.
Agyemang, Kwame and John Singer. “Race in the Present Day: NBA Employees Sound Off on Race and Racism.” Journal of African American Studies 18.1 (Mar 2014): 11 – 32. EBSCOhost. Web. 28 Mar. 2015.
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