Tim Hardaway, homophobia, & race

Editor's Note : Tim Hardaway, homophobia, & race : aka : Why white is right.

Maybe it's me, but...

It's one thing to offer a thoughtful, weighty discussion of what Tim Hardaway's blackness has to do with his comments about gay men. It's useful, in fact, to point out how homophobia limits the agenda & activism of any organization. (In the above case, the blogger is writing on the N.A.A.C.P.)

It's another thing to bring it up flippantly, in passing, & with no substantive context...to accomplish what? Hell if I know.

One blogger writes,

... the African American community, including the churches, have not been exactly helpful to the gay community over the years. Religious beliefs play a big part in it.

Or, as one blogger points out, there's FoxNews (gulp!)

Hardaway's bigotry, while hardly unique, is particularly sad given that he played college ball at the University of Texas-El Paso, which made history in 1966 as Texas Western by defeating Kentucky in the NCAA final with an all-black starting five. When the Miners beat Kentucky, which was coached by the retrograde Adolph Rupp who refused to recruit black players, it was a landmark on the "glory road" to racial equality in college athletics. Presumably, Hardaway, an African-American, would reject Rupp's racism as immoral. But apparently he would have no problem with discrimination against gays.

Briefly, some thoughts on this :

• When a white person says something homophobic, we should relentlessly bring up white people's legacy of dominance over others as proof that white people just don't get it. That might make some sense.
• Is it surprising that religion might be involved in the production of homophobia amongst black people? Did we expect that all religious black people would be less homophobic than some religious white people?
  
• To suggest that a person who faces one form of discrimination should develop some radical ethos of equality is a bit daffy; in a way, it suggests that white racism might actually benefit black people. It'll help them get enlightened, or something like that.
  
• Sometimes, one's own experience of discrimination generates solidarity with others facing different forms of discrimination. Often, it doesn't. Which is why scholarship on African-American feminism or uneasy amalgamations of Marxism & feminism exists.
• Sometimes, the white gay & lesbian community have not exactly been helpful to the black gay & lesbian community. Again, there's no such thing as automatic & easy solidarity.
  
• Anyone else have thoughts on this? I'm just a little stumped & perplexed, though not surprised.
  

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

Free Tim Hardaway(?)

Editor's Note : Free Tim Hardaway? What?

If there is such a thing as a definitive take on Tim Hardaway's homophobia | p.r. gaffe : (depending on how you look at it) : it might just be Sports on My Mind's
Tim Hardaway and the Language of Hate; Chris Broussard is LZ’s Good Buddy (as long as LZ Doesn’t Check out his Johnson in the Shower, That Is). (God I love that title.)

Sports on My Mind offers a good summation of Hardaway's comments & apology, & ties it to ESPN's Chris Broussard's equally asinine, yet less publicized, message of born-again, Christian love.

Apparently, SoMM notes, the N.B.A. removed Hardaway from all league-related appearances. To be brief : I'm fine with that. Hardaway has a right to believe what he wants & speak what he wants, but he, of course, has no inherent right to a league position, nor access to the public airwaves that disseminate his hatred & paranoia.

The thing is, I don't think that this (legitimate-form-of-)censoring Hardaway is an adequate response. It seems to me that the solution de jour of an ambiguous mixture of media mouths & the masses for the expression of hate, stereotype, racist, or offensive discourse is ... simply ... fire him/her. See: Michael Irvin, see: John Edwards' bloggers. (Neither Irvin nor the bloggers was fired, though those bloggers may as well have been. Looks to me like they took one for the team.)

I do not condone Hardaway's beliefs, nor do I think that he is a victim of some panoptic, prohibitory p.c. police force. But, by calling for the banishment or actually banishing a single voice, I speculate that the following occurs :

• We mistake the production of silence with the production of an "aware," "tolerant," or, even "gay friendly" league. Of course, a locker room filled with hate speech can't contribute to any of those things. But will a locker room of stifled hatred either? (Perhaps Broussard is over-estimating who's "with him," but he seems to think that most players feel like he does about gay people.) In other words, the homophobia doesn't go away; the environment might simply be hateful-1.
• Confronting homophobia isn't only a p.r. move. Hardaway showed his hand, apologizing for saying that he hates gay people, not for hating them.

  Yes, I regret it. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said I hate gay people or anything like that,” he said. “That was my mistake.”

  It's not at all disingenuous; he's apologizing for exactly what got him in trouble in the first place. &, I think, by engaging in this cycle of speak-(apologize)-&-fire, we tend to diminish non-speech related contributors to homophobia.
  
• This narrative, now common : speaker says something asinine, public & other media mouths call for firing, speaker is fired or resigns : is particularly easy to understand & easy to broadcast. ESPN can run the whole story through its nauseatingly repetitious Sportscenter machine thanks, especially, to the fact that we get a neat ending. There's no wider discussion; the words Hardaway spoke are his problem, we disavow them, & he's been taken care of, in one way or another. I know the job of ESPN isn't that of sociology, nor is it David Stern's work to conjure the ghost of C. Wright Mills, but let's dig a little deeper. For example, let's wonder what Hardaway's remarks have to do with Broussard's & what do both of them have to do with Tony Dungy's public support of an anti-gay organization? The N.B.A. Commish has some remarks credited to him about when the league's "inquiry" about its players end: right about when the players put the ball on the floor (so long as you have played one year in college, & abide by the dress code, & stay away from the clubs). But let's not buy what Stern is selling without investigating the evidence. For example, dig around, ESPN, to find out whether the NBA & its union provide the same benefits to a married, homosexual couple as it does a married, heterosexual couple. (It hasn't happened yet, so I'm talking about a theoretical couple ... & the league's complicity with heterosexism.) But, more importantly, let's strive to generate a real conversation : not only Amaechi's powerful biography & critiques narrating us through other player's soundbites.
  

I hate what Tim Hardaway said. But that's not the end of this story...

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

Nope.

See last post.

Gosh, I feel bad for this team. They can't buy a thrill.

Boston wins?

This is a premature post. With just under 3:00 left in their game, the Boston Celtics are leading the Minnesota Timberwolves. If Boston hangs on & wins - a huge IF since this team can't seem to succesfully draw up & run a play in the final minute of a game - then the T'Wolves will have done the impossible : ruined a 17 game winning streak (the Suns', on Jan 29th) & a 17 game losing streak (the Celts').

Here's hoping.

David Stern's airball

Sports Media Review has a few days worth of discussion on John Amaechi's revelation that he is a retired NBA player and a gay man.

Meanwhile, Sports on My Mind offers a review of player, coach, & Commish reaction to the news on Amaechi.

Specifically, Commissioner Stern has this to say.

“We have a very diverse league. The question at the N.B.A. is always, ‘Have you got game?’ That’s it, end of inquiry.”

It's goofy how disingenuous this statement is. Stern has presided over some recent rule changes that are decidedly not about the question "Have you got game?" In fact, the implementation of an age-limit runs counter to Stern's logic. Prep-to-pro ballers frequently have game; some of them - LeBron, Amare, Dwight, (Durant?) - have game-in-excess. But, at least in this case, that wasn't the end of the inquiry.

Briefly, two additional critiques of Stern's public statement.

• As proof that "Have you got game?" is not the end of the N.B.A.'s inquiry, I point you to one reality of the N.B.A. - its dance teams - that is (again) decidedly not about the question "Have you got game?" and is (obviously) about other, more messy questions, such as gender in sports, (hetero)sexuality in sports, etc.
  
• While it is important that all players, regardless of race, class, religion, sexuality, get a fair shake in the league, this is only part of the discussion. The excerpts of Amaechi's book indicate that he had a mixed experience in the league. Certain players - namely Greg Ostertag and AK47 made Amaechi's time in the league bearable, others (Amaechi names coach Jerry Sloan as one of those others) did not. The conversations journalists, players, and bloggers are having about Amaechi are generally not about whether gay men should be allowed to play in the league, which, if that was our question, Stern's statement would be an adequate response. Rather, people are wondering about the personal, psychological, & social costs of being gay in the N.B.A., as well as the possible hostilities and acts of generosity that a publicly gay N.B.A. player might experience.
  

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett

I eat Snickers every chance I get.

Editor's Note : A few weeks ago, Sports Media Review insinuated that the reason this blog develops so slowly is because Johnny Hatchett has a life. This is not true.

Yes, this blog develops slowly. I can't seem to keep pace with the mighty, mighty blogosphere. Also, I'm attempting to blog as part of my coursework; the project that I've begun to that end is housed at emptypanopticon.org. It's supposed to be a blog informed by sociological research on technology, surveillance, & social control. But I finds ways to sneak in some sports anyway.

That said, I do hope to (intermittently) keep up with this blog. Maybe I'll be a day or two late on every issue that I write on, but so it goes. Not every thought needs an instant voice, right?

So : with that said :

There are a few ingredients that will keep me away from a product. Right now, I eat vegetarian meals, so any kind of meat is one of those ingredients. The other two are high fructose corn syrup & partially hydrogenated oil. I'm not sure why I avoid those : have little in the way of science to prop my decision : but I generally do.

Why am I exposing my nutritional superstitions? Well, because Snickers® Brand products have one of those two ingredients - the partially hydrogenated (soybean) oil. (To my astonishment, some of the Snickers® Brand products, including the traditional candy bar, do not use that high fructose gunk. Good for them.)

What this means is that I wouldn't likely be eating Snickers® Brand products before their Super Bowl debacle.

But, apparently, Snickers® Brand products are more than gooey amalgamations of caramel, peanut, nougat, etc. They're either a delicious prop in a really funny advertisement or, as super-blogger Americablog.com tells us, they're a nefarious prop in a homophobic advertisement. (Americablog.com tells you just about everything that you could ever possibly need to know about this advertisement, the marketing campaign built around it, the N.F.L.'s explicit support of it, etc.)

Personally, I agree with Americablog.com. The advertisement wreaks of homophobia, not because it incites Snickers® Brand consumers to hate people who are gay, but because it contributes to the enforcement of a social taboo against (certain forms) of homosexual desire & intimacy. If the advertisement is "about" anything, it's as much "about" what I (as a male viewer) should feel about my own desires & intimacy as it is about what I should do about other male viewers' desires & intimacies.

But isn't the advertisement hi-bloody-larious?

Well, as Mars, Inc. acknowledged, humor is subjective. What that acknowledgement ignores is that humor & homophobia (or any form of hate &/or inequality) are not mutually exclusive. This logic seems to imply that good, effective humor excuses - or even decreases - the significance of the stereotype the humor depicts.

Yes, the ways that humor undermines or exploits stereotypes & inequalities is complex. Spike Lee speaks to this in Bamboozled, closing the movie with a montage of the ways that whites used/continue to use humor to reinforce racist beliefs. (Or was that montage in The Confederate States of America?) More recently, we've struggled with this when watching Chappelle's Show. Or Borat.

&, anyway, even if we could forget about homophobia & heterosexism for a minute, what's so funny about a visual punchline that everyone in the room knew was coming?

peace love gap,
Johnny Hatchett

PS : Let's talk a little more about the straight men who were disgusted, not by the homophobia, but by the kiss. Let's talk a little more about what I think was the sensuousness : the close up : : the open mouths : hungry lips : the closed eyes : of the approach : even if a joke & accidental, even if around a goddamn Snickers® Brand candy bar. That sensuousness made a lot of people uncomfortable... & gosh, imagine if the commercial had ended here : with "I think we just accidentally kissed" returned by a look of acknowledgment from the long-haired mechanic. This country would buzz, would still be buzzing.

"No more water, the fire next time!"

Sports Media Review's latest blog entry is a searing critique of comments ESPN's Mike & Mike made about New York Knick Stephon Marbury. (This is the NBA point guard who you might know better by his two nicknames "Starbury" and "Bad Teammate.")

Essentially, Marbury responded to an inquiry made by NY Times journalist Harvey Araton by responding, matter-of-factly, that “I don’t answer to nobody." Needless to say, the Mike & Mike boys got a bit daffy about this comment.

Amongst other things, "Greeny" offered that, "These guys have been stars on some level from the time they were little kids. They’ve been told, you can do whatever you want, and there will be no consequences." This, apparently, explains why Marbury responded to the NY Times journalist as he did.

Sports Media Review's sane take on this lunatic statement

Then there's the notion, expressed most forcefully by Greenie, that this generation of athletes has been spoiled and pampered from an early age, which leads in a straight line to their catastrophic refusal to explain themselves to reporters. Is Greenie suggesting, therefore, that he wishes he could have had Stephon Marbury's childhood? A child hood in which Marbury was one of seven kids growing up in an urban hell, as depicted in Darcy Frey's The Last Shot? Greenie himself grew up in New York City, the son of a lawyer. Did he really not hear himself suggest this morning that Stephon Marbury had had everything handed to him since he was eleven years old by contrast with, we are to assume, guys like Greenie, who had to scratch and claw his way through a brutal middle class child hood.

(SMR's also discusses the crazy tendency of (generally coddled) sports reporters to idealize the spoiled youth of "problem" athletes in his take on Bobby Knight's motivational techniques.)

I want to add to SMR's critique (which I whole-heartedly endorse.)

I'm going to begin with an assumption. (Yes, as a student of sociology I know I shouldn't make assumptions, but I'll begin with one anyway.) The assumption is simple & this : growing up, many children are told & come to believe that they can achieve whatever they want - if they develop their talents & work hard, America will take care of the rest.

Now, Greeny isn't complaining that Starbury was taught this. What he is complaining about is that the point guard was taught a derivative of this : Marbury, given his talents, deserves the money and fame that he received (& receives) & has a right to demand to be allowed to do whatever he wants with it & there will be no consequences. In this case, what Marbury wants is to start a talk show, which other, more prominant athletes & coaches on superior teams already have. Apparently, such an act ought to have considerable consequences, at least for Marbury.

(Speaking of no consequences : the sports mediamouths are judge & jury for athletes. Who, besides a few critical bloggers, is judge & jury for the mediamouths? Mike & Mike get away with making all sorts of unsubstantiated remarks & they're always back on the radio / tv the next day.)

The reason I'm writing is this : I can't speak for Mike Greenberg, nor for Stephon Marbury. I have no clue how intensely each was socialized into the "American dream." I don't know if Greenberg's father, mother, teacher, etc., ever actually told him that he could accomplish anything he wanted. I don't know if anyone ever told him what his white skin did for him. I don't know if Marbury was ever told similar things, or if he ever sensed that there was some role the color of his skin played in what people thought he could achieve.

Speaking as a person with white skin, I was ignorant of any link between that color, my ability to achieve, & social expectations of my achievement.

Contrast that with the devastating look that James Baldwin's father showed him :

"The fear that I heard in my father's voice, for example, when he realized I believed I could do anything a white boy could do, and had every intention of proving it, was not at all like the fear I heard when once of us was ill..." (The Fire Next Time)

Greeny might not intend for his comments to say this, but a message they speak, in addition to what SMR pointed out, is this : "you, Stephon Marbury, don't deserve what you have / (you never did). In fact, you should never have been taught to expect what you've got / (it shouldn't have come to you in the first place). " Those comments, in a way, sound a bit like Baldwin's father's voice, just in reserve...

Maybe I'm going too far. If I am, maybe I'm just a little disturbed. If I'm not, I'm very disturbed.

peace love gap
Johnny Hatchett