Discussion for article #227353
Bet he got more than 30 pieces of silverā¦
the teamās cheerleaders are black and hip-hop music was played.
Oh fuck! HIP-HOP MUSIC?
What is a white southerner to do?!?
āMy 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,ā Levenson said in the email released Sunday by the Hawks.
Dear racist fucks,
Unless black crowds are brandishing weapons or shouting epithets at the white crowds, they are not āscaring awayā whites, but rather, the racist white people are avoiding blacks. It is not the agency of the blacks that is doing the harm, it is that of the whites.
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I donāt think heās advocating these views; heās identifying them and, from the way i read it, criticizing them. Iām surprised he saw fit to sell and that TPM called it an offensive email. Perhaps Iāve missed something but talking racist attitudes doesnāt make you a racist.
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Sounds like he was well-intentioned. The people he was really criticizing were Southern whites, and as a Georgia native and Atlanta resident, Iām confident that heās at least in part right: Atlantaās suburban white sports fans are perfectly fine so long as African-Americans are in the minority, but many, many of them arenāt ācomfortableā in social environment thatās either dominated by blacks or by a blend of cultures.
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Is this a sales ploy? After seeing what the Clippers went for, maybe he figures this is a good time to cash out ā before the REALLY bad emails come out.
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Looks like he received word that he had to sell and is trying to make himself look good. Smart man. Still a racist tho.
Unfortuantely his comments about people being uncomfortable when theyāre around diversity are not far from the truth and it isnāt just southern whites. Iāve been warned about āunsafeā areas many times and couldnāt figure out what the speaker was referncing until I realized they saw a black face in the area once.
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ā¦
I have told them I want some white cheerleaders and while i donāt care what the color of the artist is, i want the music to be music familiar to a 40 year old white guy
That doesnāt sound like heās challenging the ideas, but rather heās giving in to what he perceives the racist view is by being racist himself.
Then there is this:
i have also balked when every fan picked out of crowd to shoot shots in some time out contest is black.
I think the full email should be read, TPM seems to have glossed over certain parts. Good that he is getting out, though I suspect there are a lot more owners just like Sterling (i.e. Mark Cuban) but are more careful with their comments
I read the full email. Just donāt see the blatant racism here that requires him to resign. His statements were nowhere near Sterlingās statements. Sterling was full of hate.
This guy is describing why he thinks the black and white dynamics are impacting ticket sales. He wants more money, not giving a crap about the people showing up already. Greedy, but racist?
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Unless thereās more to this than meets the eye, I donāt think this is a case of racism. Itās a case of an owner recognizing the difficulties of attracting an integrated audience in the Deep South.
Let me stipulate that thereās a huge amount of racism in the U.S., and the Ferguson and Trayvon Martin injustices and the others that make the news are just the surface of it. But in this case I think the NBA, which is in a very difficult position, must have put pressure on the guy already to get out.
Being a Celtic fan, I know without a doubt that Larry Bird was fundamental to the Celtics draw in Boston not just because he was great, but because he was white. This is a country where a whole lot of people needed the Beach Boys to play Chuck Berryās music before they could be really comfortable with it.
Even that need is not totally āracistā per se. To a large degree, itās the desire to identify with someone. Young people, for example, do not often get a big thrill out of seeing a bunch of old guys playing rockānāroll ā and sometimes the reverse is also true.
I saw the T.A.M.I show in 1965 in a black theater in San Francisco and the black kids sat silently while the Rolling Stones played, but they cheered and screamed when James Brown was on stage. Is that racism or identification?
This is not at all to say that the southerners who feel uncomfortable around blacks are not racist. I just donāt think this guy deserves to be called a racist for this particular email. He said something unpolitic for an NBA owner to say.
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Mr. Levenson. Mr. OāReilly. Your table at Sylviaās is ready.
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This is a strange story. Thereās no racism in the email that I can detect, just attempts to target a wealthy demographic by focusing on it. I can only guess that he wanted to sell his share of ownership ā why he thinks blaming it on the email will help is a mystery.
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Where is the Ghost of Eustace Tilley? Surely he would see this as a liberal plot against white men.
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By dismissing his own email, he dismisses its concerns about the growth potential of the club; something a prospective buyer of his shares may use to justify offering a lower price.
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Mark Cuban? Really? Any evidence of this?
I believe this is a ruse. Heās tried, and failed, to unload the team before. Who really believes he outed himself in good conscience and not for ulterior motives?
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Yes, Mark Cuban. Really. The guy who said heād cross the street if he saw a black guy with a hoodie.
I guess because Black men with hoodies are so scary.
And yeah, people tried to rationalize what he said because he also claimed heād do so if heās scared of White guy with tattoos - but I think he threw that in to deflect from his comment. He even tried to walk it back after someone called his attention to Trayvon Martin.
I donāt get it. What he said is almost certainly trueāwhite southerners will not spend their money at a venue that is perceived as welcoming to black people. It is ugly, it is unfortunate, but it is true. And the revenue required to run an NFL franchise probably needs more money from white people than the Falcons were getting, even with a successful team. Why arenāt we allowed to speak honestly about race in this country?