A little over two years ago, Bruce Levenson, owner of the NBA Atlanta Hawks, was musing about his difficulties in building a substantial fan base, selling season tickets and attracting corporate sponsors. Unfortunately for Mr. Levenson, he chose to put his observations in the form of an e-mail, which he has now been forced to repudiate.
Such is the pressure of "public opinion", as shaped by the lamestream media. It's one thing to say the unsayable, but woe betide you if you put in writing the notion that there is any difference of culture, behaviour and so on between white folks and black folks.
What Mr. Levenson wrote, in August 2012, was that he had concluded that "southern whites" were uncomfortable at Hawks games. "My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a significant season ticket base.
Mr. Levenson said he often heard fans say the area around Philips Arena in downtown Atlanta is dangerous. "When I hear some people saying the arena is in the wrong place," he wrote, "I think it is code for there are too many blacks at the games."
Hawks crowds are 70% black, said the team's owner. The team's cheerleaders are black and hip-hop music was played at games. But, he said, "There was nothing threatening going on in the arena back then. I never felt uncomfortable, but I think southern whites simply were not comfortable being in an arena or at a bar where they were in the minority.... Then I start looking around at other arenas. It is completely different."
Though he said he disagreed with the conclusion, he said he told team executives to add white cheerleaders and music "familiar to a 40-year-old white guy."
What Mr. Levenson said two years ago, as Walt reads it, is that basketball is a black game played by black men for black fans. No kidding! But now, for the sin of making this "racist" observation public, he feels compelled to sell his controlling interest in the team, and will be doing so on Saturday. Here's part of his grovelling mea culpa.
"I wrote an e-mail two years ago that was inappropriate and offensive. I trivialized our fans by making clichéd assumptions about their interests (i.e. hip hop vs. country, white vs. black cheerleaders, etc.) and by stereotyping their perceptions of one another (i.e. that white fans might be afraid of our black fans). By focusing on race, I also sent the unintentional and hurtful message that our white fans are more valuable than our black fans.
"If you're angry about what I wrote, you should be. I'm angry at myself, too. It was inflammatory nonsense. We all may have subtle biases and preconceptions when it comes to race, but my role as a leader is to challenge them, not to validate or accommodate those who might hold them."
Any suggestion that Mr. Levenson's eating of this heaping platter of crow [No racist remarks, please! Ed.] is in any way connected to the financial difficulties of the franchise is, of course, completely unwarranted.
Comment from Poor Len Canayen: I don't think it's a race thing. Atlanta sports fan like football and baseball and that's all. Look at the fortunes of hockey in Atlanta, where not one but two NHL franchises -- the Flames and the Thrashers -- both failed to draw flies. And hockey is a white man's game!
VIDEO UPDATE: If you can't understand why white people would be nervous being surrounded by a mob of blacks, check out this video of what happened on Sept. 6th at a Kroger store in Memphis TN. According to witnesses, a mob of teens attacked store employees at the front entrance to the store, then an elderly customer in the parking lot. [If the video won't load, you'll find a link below. Ed.]
Speaking of being afraid to tell the truth, this video was posted to Facebook by "a witness", but has since been taken down. And now, for some reason, Ed. isn't seeing it here, even though it seems to be there when we preview the page in Blogger. If it's not working for you either, you can see it here on LiveLeak.
You may be interested, too, in the report on WMC-TV, detailing the official response from the police and other community leaders, who managed to avoid mentioning, even once, that the perps were black yoofs!
If you find any of this hard to understand, check out the video in yesterday's post "Racial violence in the USA: the real story".
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