By Arturo R. García

Basketball fans are well-acquainted with stories about a local star who never got to show their skills outside the neighborhood courts.

And make no mistake, Tayshana Murphy was on her way to bigger things. As Grantland’s Jonathan Abrams wrote:

Mention a court in New York City — West 4th, Rucker, Orchard Beach — they don’t just know of Tayshana “Chicken” Murphy. They know her. She possessed that killer crossover and played “man strong,” as Taylonn, her father, likes to say. Tayshana loved contact. “Babies,” she called the girls who helplessly bounced off of her when she drove to the rim. She played taller than her 5-foot-7 and with a fierceness that contrasted against her gentle, hazel eyes.

Those eyes sized up Shannon Bobbitt of the WNBA’s Indiana Fever this summer.

Bobbitt conducts a clinic every year outside the Harlem projects where she grew up. The clinic is a way for children to see the footsteps she laid for them to follow. Bobbitt had heard of Tayshana and that she could ball. She probably had no idea that the high schooler was itching to test her skills against the professional.

“She’s fast as hell, Pops,” Tayshana told her father of Bobbitt. “But she’s so little. She can’t handle me. I’m too big for her.”

Murphy’s story came to a premature and violent end on Sept. 11, when she was shot and killed in the Grant Houses project where she lived. Initial reports said the shooting was a case of mistaken identity stemming from a feud between residents of the Grant Houses and the nearby Manhattanville Houses – a story her family refuted.

Three men have been arrested and charged in connection with Murphy’s murder: Tyshawn Brockington and Robert Cartagena, who allegedly shot her, and Terique Collins, accused of delivering the murder weapon. But since her death, details have emerged adding more layers to the tragedy.

Less than a month after Murphy was killed, WABC-TV reported that homophobic graphitti had been written and drawn on the wall near the stairwell where it happened. Yet, as Mecca Jamilah Sullivan observed in The Feminist Wire, Murphy’s sexuality and how that may have factored into her death was not being talked about:

The D.A.’s indictment press release doesn’t mention the homophobic comments or the possibility that anti-gay hate played a role in the crime. Even the New York Times article on the Grant-Manhattanville feud, which quotes another 18-year-old woman as Murphy’s “girlfriend” leaves the issue of homophobic hate silent, focusing instead on Murphy’s foreshortened basketball career. One exuberantly homophobic blog even goes so far as to say that the love of basketball turned Murphy gay. The message of all these sources is clear: Murphy wasn’t really a black lesbian; she was an athlete. And her loss should be mourned accordingly.

According to Bridgette P. LaVictoire at LezGetIt, the hate speech on the wall opens up another possibility.

“Even if Tayshana was not lesbian,” LaVictoire wrote after the graphitti was found, “there is always the possibility that she was murdered for just appearing to be lesbian, and because of a view of women that puts such an athletic woman into danger because of a patriarchal view that women should be far more submissive an far less athletic.”

It’s important to note that Murphy’s family hasn’t commented on her sexuality. But Sullivan’s point stands: coverage of the case has not mentioned whether authorities intend to prosecute her murder as a hate crime. (All three defendants have pled not guilty.) And stories reflecting on her life, whether at her wake or at an event named after her, have kept the focus primarily on the court.

Though the family’s right to privacy is unimpeachable, it may have opened the door for another, more problematic narrative to emerge: the New York Post reported this week that Murphy was part of a female gang, pointing to it as an example of “good girls recruited by neighborhood gangs into lives of violence, where carrying weapons and committing crimes is as commonplace as shooting a free throw.” There’s no source mentioned other than some mysterious “cops,” and the bulk of the article focuses on a whole other case.

But the story is already getting posted verbatim on other sites.  If it gets enough momentum, it’s not hard to imagine that in a trial it could be used as a way to paint Murphy as an Angry Lesbian Gangbanger – to define her life by hate, and put her sexuality, however she defined it, on trial as much as the men accused of killing her.

Pacquiao makes boxing lovable by being lovable: He overcame immense poverty to become an international phenomenon worth millions. He is monstrously fast in the ring. He named his newborn Queen Elizabeth just because he likes Queen Elizabeth. He is humble and sweet-faced and appears amazed by his own success.

But dig deeper and you see something else about Pacquiao that is an unexpected gift. For Asians and Filipinos who were born and live in the West, Pacquiao offers a space where a diasporic people can feel closer to somewhere hardly ever seen. For a few hours they are united with all the other Asians in the world hunkered down in Pacquiao caps, socks and hoodies, trying not to gnaw off the rim of their beer glasses. Pacquiao closes a distance of thousands of miles so that they are at home.

…

For Asian fans, there is something exceptionally thrilling about Pacquiao: the joy of seeing ourselves whenever he is on TV. During an interview on “The Jimmy Kimmel Show” in 2010, Pacquiao sang “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You,” for no reason really, other than that he wanted to. I was transfixed by his warbling; he employed the exact same karaoke style as my Singaporean uncles. I had never seen such a comforting, familiar and unabashed presentation of Asianness on American TV.

…

It is Colin’s happiness at seeing a bona fide, nonfictional Asian hero for his friends that draws him to Manny. When I ask the group if they think it’s OK to experience enjoyment at the sight of an Asian man beating a white man, Aruna, Christian and Anthony search for a tactful response. But Colin says, “Doesn’t it sort of feel gratifying though? I’m just thinking of all the times we’ve seen Asian men emasculated, and I just think Pacquiao can be symbolic of Asian pride. It’s kind of cool and satisfying to see one of us — ” Colin stops to correct himself here, pointing out that he can’t say “us” because he’s not Asian. But it’s clear that Pacquiao means something to him directly, not just via his friends. He continues, “For me, when Obama won the presidency, it was one of the greatest moments of my life: to see a black guy, a biracial guy reach the highest levels. You can dispute Obama’s policies or whatever, but seeing that win, I cherish that. I don’t think it’s wrong to necessarily feel a little pride, a little racial pride maybe, in seeing Pacquiao knock out a white guy out.” He pauses dramatically. “He put that guy to sleep.” Everyone laughs.

…

Despite the fact that Asians are an enormous community, the perception that they are soft-spoken and submissive, and therefore a “model minority” preferred by the white ruling classes, can create rifts among communities of color. It is ridiculous to state that over 2 billion people share a deferential nature; yet in the case of Manny, the irony is that the description fits. All the Pacquiao fans at my disposal describe him as incorrigibly gentle. Ryan says, “He is a tough guy within the ring, and that confronts stereotypes about Asians, but outside of that he seems sort of nonthreatening, and maybe that fulfills a stereotype. But that’s because he just does him.” Yet contrast this with the way African Americans are stereotyped and how Mayweather appears — loud, arrogant, violent — and when two boxers who both match a racial bill come up against each other, it’s war. In an echo of the Jack Johnson treatment, perhaps Pacquiao is forgivably Asian. But neither being forgiven nor unforgiven for your ethnicity seems so hot.

By Arturo R. García

TRIGGER ALERT for subject matter relating to rape

For the sake of their safety, we don’t know the race, or any other identifying detail, of any of Jerry Sandusky’s alleged victims. But the tweet above is still right: what happened at Penn State University Wednesday night was about privilege. And it’s time sports fans started owning up to that.

On Wednesday, the university fired beloved football coach Joe Paterno and President Graham Spanier, in the wake of not only 40 counts of alleged felony sex abuse against Sandusky, a former assistant of Paterno’s, but grand-jury testimony revealing that Paterno, Spanier and other coaches and administrators were seemingly more concerned with protecting their own asses than the well-being of the children Sandusky allegedly terrorized.

What followed was maybe the single biggest display of stupidity undertaken by members of a college population: they rioted in the streets supporting a man who continue to employ a possible sex offender, even after being informed of “something inappropriate” happening in his team’s very facilities. And like schoolyard bullies, some had the nerve to portray themselves as victims:

“I think the point people are trying to make is the media is responsible for Joe Pa going down,” said freshman Mike Clark, 18, adding that he believed Mr. Paterno met both his legal and moral responsibility by telling university authorities about Mr. Sandusky’s alleged 2002 assault on a boy in a school shower.

Demonstrators tore down two lampposts, one falling into a crowd of students. They also threw rocks and fireworks at police, who responded with pepper spray. The crowd undulated like an accordion, with the students crowding the police and the officers pushing them back.

“We got rowdy and we got maced,” Jeff Heim, 19, said rubbing his red, teary eyes. “But make no mistake, the board started this riot by firing our coach. They tarnished a legend.”

The platitudes are as commonplace among sports fans as they are nauseating: The media is responsible. Our coach. The Us vs. Them mentality that has bred a million Jocks Vs. Nerds cliches, fueled endless hours of talk radio trash-talk – and let’s not forget, made billions of dollars for both Penn State and kindly ol’ “JoePa.” He was bigger than the institution, people said; he was an institution. After decades of exemplifying the most gratifying of sports homilies, his coaching career ends proving another truism: Power Corrupts.

Improbably, Paterno is the second “icon” to sully his own legacy within the past few years. His downfall was preceded by that of former womens’ basketball coach Rene Portland, revealed to be a raging homophobe during her 30-year tenure, as chronicled in the documentary Training Rules:

As Outsports’ Cyd Zeigler Jr. wrote in 2009:

The point of the film isn’t to simply tell the story of Rene Portland’s homophobic reign of terror and the young women she tossed into the gutter: It’s meant to make you feel it. When former player Lisa Faloon says, “Rene explained to all of us that we weren’t to talk to a lesbian, and if we were a lesbian, she specifically said, I will take your scholarship away and you will never play basketball again,” it lays the foundation for a series of stories of heartache from women who didn’t have the strength to stand up to Portland and the juggernaut of Penn State athletics. The film focuses on a half dozen other women, straight and gay, who were victims of Portland’s intolerance. Hearing women who played for Portland from 1980 to the late 1990s talk about how Portland undermined their self-confidence, attacked them, and shattered their lifelong dreams is heart-wrenching.

Portland’s transgressions were more direct, to be sure, and it’s good to report that she was also removed from her position – for me, particularly, because I met her after PSU played my alma mater years ago and it makes my skin crawl to think I was that close to well-hidden prejudice – but it operated from a similar place as Sandusky’s transgressions: I have the control and you do not.

This is far beyond the “lack of institutional control” cited by the NCAA when it comes to penalizing athletic programs. Penn State has tacitly engaged in institutional abuse of women and children who came to it because they felt they’d be safe there. If Southern Methodist can lose its’ football program for paying players under the table, then how can Penn State’s possibly be allowed to continue?

Some have argued that the idiots caught on camera Wednesday night will come to regret their actions, once they have kids of their own. I sincerely doubt that. It’s just as likely that they will become the sort of people who engage in ever-escalating acts of vandalism to prove their “loyalty.” The kind who will blame “the media” and the victims for daring to speak up. They will become the bullies who teach their own kids to “man up” and Listen to Coach. They will become the people who harass women online. They will become precisely the kinds of people who create the Rene Portlands and (allegedly) the Jerry Sanduskys of the world.

By Arturo R. García

Joe Frazier was mourned Monday night, following his death at age 67. And I can’t help but feel that, this time a little more than many, there was the sense that it came too late. Because at any other time, the story of “Smokin’ Joe” – the world heavyweight boxing champion in a time when being so still marked one as The Baddest Man On The Planet – could have marked him as a hero in a decade that sorely needed them. Instead, his defining moments in the era saw him cast as the villain, a role he would sometimes embrace all too well in later years.

For it was Frazier’s luck to run into Muhammad Ali at the height of Ali’s oratory powers. Suddenly Frazier’s American Dream was painted as a staid product of the Establishment, and no one in sports made a career out of defying that like Ali, and the three fights between them, for better and worse, followed Frazier for the rest of his life.

Mr. Frazier’s signature weapon was a destructive left hook, which he used to win his first title in 1968 and floor Ali in their first meeting in 1971. He developed his powerful left as a young child, growing up without electricity or plumbing in rural Beaufort, S.C. His father had lost his left arm in a shooting over a mistress, and young Joe became his father’s left arm.

“When I was a boy, I used to pull a big cross saw with my dad. He’d use his right hand, so I’d have to use my left,” Mr. Frazier once said. After watching boxing on TV with his father, he filled a burlap sack with a brick, rags, corncobs, and moss, then hung it from a tree.

“For the next six, seven years damn near every day I’d hit that heavy bag for an hour at a time,” he wrote in his 1996 autobiography.

At age 15, Mr. Frazier moved north to New York and then Philadelphia, where he found work at Cross Bros. Meat Packing Co. in Kensington. He began training in a Police Athletic League gym, won three national Golden Gloves titles, and then a gold medal at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo.
- Don Steinberg, Philadelphia Inquirer

Their first bout, on March 8, 1971, at New York’s Madison Square Garden, was one of the most significant fights in boxing history and one of the most famous sporting events of the 20th century. They were undefeated champions when they met in what was simply called “The Fight.” Frazier had won a tournament to claim the title that had been stripped from Ali when the latter refused induction into the military during the Vietnam War and was banished from boxing for 3½ years. Because he hadn’t lost his title in the ring, Ali was still considered by many to be the legitimate champion.

And even though Ali would get the better of Frazier in their storied rivalry, it was Frazier who won the first fight — the biggest of them
all — dropping Ali with his trademark left hook in the 15th and final round and winning a unanimous decision to claim the undisputed championship.

The victory marked the height of Frazier’s career, which he concluded with a record of 32-4-1 with 27 knockouts.

“If Joe Frazier would have fought King Kong, he would have knocked him out that night,” Gene Kilroy, a friend of both fighters who later managed Ali’s business affairs, told The Associated Press. “Nothing was going to stop Joe Frazier.”
- Dan Rafael, ESPN

Right up until the bell rang for Round One, Ali was dead certain that Frazier was through, was convinced that he was no more than a shell, that too many punches to the head had left Frazier only one more solid shot removed from a tin cup and some pencils. “What kind of man can take all those punches to the head?” he asked himself over and over. He could never come up with an answer. Eventually, he dismissed Frazier as the embodiment of animal stupidity. Before the bell Ali was subdued in his corner, often looking down to his manager, Herbert Muhammad, and conversing aimlessly. Once, seeing a bottle of mineral water in front of Herbert, he said, “Watcha got there, Herbert? Gin! You don’t need any of that. Just another day’s work. I’m gonna put a whuppin’ on this nigger’s head.”

Across the ring Joe Frazier was wearing trunks that seemed to have been cut from a farmer’s overalls. He was darkly tense, bobbing up and down as if trying to start a cold motor inside himself. Hatred had never been a part of him, but words like “gorilla,” “ugly,” “ignorant” — all the cruelty of Ali’s endless vilifications — had finally bitten deeply into his soul. He was there not seeking victory alone; he wanted to take Ali’s heart out and then crush it slowly in his hands. One thought of the moment days before, when Ali and Frazier with their handlers between them were walking out of the Malacaûang Palace, and Frazier said to Ali, leaning over and measuring each word, “I’m gonna whup your half-breed ass.”
- Mark Kram, Sports Illustrated

Frazier retired after his next fight — when he was knocked out by [George] Foreman in the fifth round in 1976. He came out of retirement five years later for one fight, a draw with a former convict, Floyd “Jumbo” Cummings, and finished his career with a 32-4-1 record and 27 knockouts.

Frazier lives in Philadelphia, owns and runs a gym there. His health is not the best as he has diabetes and high blood pressure. He and his nemesis have alternated between public apologies and public insults.

One exchange came in 2001 after Ali told The New York Times he was sorry for what he said about Frazier before their first fight. At first, Frazier accepted the apology, but then …

“He didn’t apologize to me — he apologized to the paper,” Frazier said in a June issue of TV Guide. “I’m still waiting [for him] to say it to me.”

Ali’s response: “If you see Frazier, you tell him he’s still a gorilla.”

- Mike Sielski, ESPN Classic

“Frazier beat Ali in the greatest of their fights, but Ali transcended boxing more than any other fighter,” said John DiSanto, who has created a home for Philadelphia’s rich pugilistic history at PhillyBoxingHistory.com. “It doesn’t take anything away from Frazier, but Ali is a different type of a figure. He resonated with people all over the world.”

Men mellow with age, but bridges were burned, and Ali’s overriding fame always seemd to eat at Smokin’ Joe. Until recently, it seems.

“Nobody has anything but good things to say about Muhammad now,” Frazier said. “I’d do anything he needed for me to help.

“I can’t fight the whole world or the whole city by myself.”

- Christopher Wink, Sports Illustrated

By Arturo R. García

Labor Day weekend brought with it the opening strains of the college football season, and according to Deadspin, Fox Sports wasted no time in going to the bottom of the “coverage” barrel.

In a segment at which only Alexandra Wallace could’ve LOL’ed, “investigative reporter” Bob Oschack set out to give the Universities of Colorado and Utah “an All-American welcome” to the Pac-12 Conference by going to the University of Southern California. The twist being, he only talked to non-white students.

More specifically, Oschack – a comedy writer by trade, if you’re generous enough to call Mind of Mencia “comedy” – focused his mock-report on what appeared to be international students who weren’t football fans. I say “appeared to be” because the students are given a textbook Othering: they’re never identified, nor are their studies mentioned. But that’s not what Oschack is going for here, of course. As Deadspin’s Emma Carmichael put it, “in the world of misguided network television humor, foreign accents and unfamiliarity with good old-fashioned football is funny.”

As Media Matters reported, Asian students made up just over 20 percent of the USC undergraduate student body as of Fall 2010, with international students making up 11.2 percent. About the only thing Oschack got “right” was the fact that USC’s enrollment is more diverse than Utah’s (75 percent white enrollment, according to a “Fast Facts” PDF) and Colorado’s (77 percent white, per CollegeProwler).

Fox quickly pulled the video from its site (although you can still watch Oschack’s compelling – and by “compelling” I mean “creepy wanna-be Daily Show” – report on why Oregon’s cheerleaders are “so f-cking hot”) and issued an apology promising to “review the editorial process” and the usual boilerplate expressions of contrition. No response from Oschack himself, but I’m betting he won’t get the chance to deliver it on any Fox Sports shows anytime soon.

UPDATE 9/7/11: The Associated Press is reporting that Fox Sports has cancelled The College Experiment, the program that aired Oschack’s segment, “effective immediately.”

ESPN has certainly hitched its’ promotional wagon to Michael Vick, but first things first: don’t blame Touré for the question, “What If Michael Vick Were White?” – or for that pic above of said hypothetical “White” Vick.

“I had no knowledge of or say in the title of the story and the horrific, misguided picture of Vick in whiteface, which dismayed and disgusted me when I saw it,” he explained in a column for CNN. “I think careful readers will note that the story and the image don’t really interact. They’re like two people who kinda know about each other but don’t really know each other. But this has happened to me before.”

He made a similar disclaimer on Twitter, according to Colorlines:

My essay on Vick is nowhere near as inflammatory as the pic of him in whiteface which contradicts me saying you can’t imagine him as white.

I wrote an essay about Vick & race. ESPN the mag titled it & added art without me (normal procedure). Judge me on the story not the art.

In his CNN piece, Touré also mentioned that he wanted to talk about football more in his Vick column, but that ESPN “was less interested in that.” Reading his essay on the Philadelphia Eagles quarterback again, I think his editors let him down in the process.

Touré’s column starts by describing the “deeply African-American approach” of Vick’s game:

Vick’s style reminds me of Allen Iverson — the speed, the court sense, the sharp cuts, the dekes, the swag. In those breathtaking moments when the Eagles QB abandons the pocket and takes off, it feels as if he’s thumbing his nose at the whole regimented, militaristic ethos of the game.

Denied the chance to place Vick’s game into a historical context, this graf makes Vick seem like the NFL’s answer to Julius Erving, when really he’s not even the first mobile black quarterback on his own team. Surely Touré didn’t forget about Donovan McNabb or Randall Cunningham?

Instead, it’s David Fleming who gets to make that connection in an otherwise hagiographic profile of Vick’s comeback, mentioning that he has become “the next link in a quarterback chain that runs from Fran Tarkenton to John Elway to Steve Young to Randall Cunningham.”

Crucially, three of the four quarterbacks in that chain are white. And all but Cunningham are in the NFL Hall of Fame. What would probably be different, if Vick were white, would be that the gaggle of football pundits ESPN employs to opine on the National Football League – always referred to by its’ first, middle and last name, like it was an unruly child or a serial killer – would frame his exploits differently: instead of showing “preternatural poise,” as Fleming puts it, White Vick’s mobility would show “how hard he works in the off-season;” his on-field celebrations would show us he’s “just having fun out there.” And so on.

So what Vick is doing on the field isn’t new; he’s just doing it at a higher level than anybody else right now – in large part because he’s a team that encourages him to do so, a fact Vick himself acknowledges (even if, as he told GQ, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell nudged him in Philadelphia’s direction.) So it’s unfortunate that Touré didn’t get the chance to discuss Vick’s professional good fortune in his column.

It’s also unfortunate his editors stuck that column with not only the re-colorized Vick pic, but a headline asking a question Touré himself shoots down:

This question makes me cringe. It is so facile, naive, shortsighted and flawed that it is meaningless. Whiteness comes with great advantages, but it’s not a get-out-of-every-crime-free card. Killing dogs is a heinous crime that disgusts and frightens many Americans. I’m certain white privilege would not be enough to rescue a white NFL star caught killing dogs.

The problem with the “switch the subject’s race to determine if it’s racism” test runs much deeper than that. It fails to take into account that switching someone’s race changes his entire existence. In making Vick white, you have him born to different parents. That alone sets his life trajectory in an entirely different direction.

But would it, really? I’m not so sure, and neither is Caperton at Feministe:

Switching someone’s race does not change his “entire existence” – it changes his race. And that’s not for nothing. Take a guy in Michael Vick’s childhood neighborhood and turn him white, and he’s going to have different experiences than his black neighbors. Pick any white kid at an almost entirely white high school and turn him black, and his experiences will be different from those of his classmates and of kids at majority-black schools. But that’s not everything. It’s not the entirety of existence. Flipping a man’s race switch from black to white doesn’t also put him in a four-bedroom home in Peoria with a CPA for a father, a librarian for a mother, a brother, a sister, and a pomapoo, and it doesn’t stop an indescribably busted person from torturing dogs in his swimming pool for fun and profit.

Touré claims to have speculated, “What if Michael Vick were white?” He really speculated, “What if Michael Vick grew up in a two-parent home in a better neighborhood with better friends and no dogfighters around?” and then assigned that as his working definition of “white.” In his mind, White Michael Vick never would have had a dogfighting ring in the first place, because in his whiteness he would have grown up free of the poverty, negligence, and violence that defines Being Black.

Touré, in fact, asks a question similar to Caperton’s later in his ESPN piece: “If Vick grew up with the paternal support that white kids are more likely to have (72 percent of black children are born to unwed mothers compared with 29 percent of white children), would he have been involved in dogfighting?”

Though that “72 percent born to unwed mothers” stat is questionable, as Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote two years ago, it’s not guaranteed that a two-parent household would have dissuaded White Vick from doing something criminally wrong away from the field, as Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger has (allegedly) shown us. If Vick’s dog-fighting operation had been located in the right county, he might have run into an (allegedly) more-forgiving police force. But how much of that is race and how much of that is geography?

In the end of his ESPN column, Touré asks us to look at Vick as “someone in the third act of the epic movie that is his life,” calling his return “heroic.” Personally, I can’t go that far – not just because of what he’s done, but because of moments like this one, captured by GQ’s Will Leitch, who talked to Vick after the quarterback is asked at a speaking engagement, “Are you mad about what happened to you?”:

I ask him if he buys this argument, if he believes he was treated unfairly. Most people convicted of dogfighting don’t spend a year and a half in prison. They aren’t forced to declare bankruptcy. I ask him if he was sent to prison for too long.

“One day in prison is too long,” he says.

Yes, but I mean for this particular crime.

He sighs. I’m not the first person who’s tried to lead him down this road. “For a while, it was all ‘Scold Mike Vick, scold Mike Vick, just talk bad about him, like he’s not a person,’ ” he says. “It’s almost as if everyone wanted to hate me. But what have I done to anybody? It was something that happened, and it was people trying to make some money.”

See, no matter what ESPN wants to tell us, there is a middle ground when it comes to Vick. Nobody can deny his ability, his intelligence, or his dedication to getting his career and his life back. But white, brown or black, remorse is remorse. And not even a Super Bowl trophy can make its’ apparent absence in that explanation any shinier.

By the time, I saw it, the offending messages of “Japs” and “Pearl Harbor” had been replaced by “Congrats Japan” – but searches for the terms Jay circled bring up angry and frustrated Twitter users responding to the initial tweets.

Readers, did you notice any game related racism, either on or offline?

By Arturo R. García

Like many college basketball players, Emily Tay’s quest to keep her career going led her to Europe. But her journey on the court is just a part of her story, and No Look Pass, which premiered this past weekend at Outfest in Los Angeles, captures the remarkable pressures Tay faces in her life, and not just as a basketball player.

The film chronicles Tay’s transition from starring at Harvard, where she was named the Ivy League’s Player of the Week three times as a senior and singed rival Yale with 34 points in her final game, to starting her professional career in Germany, a decision which puts her at odds with her parents, who expect Emily to enter an arranged marriage. What her parents don’t know, though, is that Emily is gay. Her romantic life faces another challenge in Germany, where she begins a relationship with a U.S. servicewoman.

Because the film’s July 9 premiere sold out, a second showing has been added:

When: July 17
Where: Directors Guild of America
7920 Sunset Blvd, West Hollywood
Tickets available here

By Guest Contributor Kristen Wright

On June 15, the Boston Bruins defeated the Vancouver Canucks 4-0 in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals. And on the previous Sunday, June 12, the Dallas Mavericks beat the Miami Heat 105-95 in Game 6 of the NBA Finals to secure the franchise’s first championship. The media has celebrated both victories as a triumph of grit and hard work over finesse and pure talent.

The streets of Vancouver may have erupted after the Canucks’ loss, but the team’s most potent offensive weapons – twin brothers Daniel and Henrik Sedin – were relatively silent throughout the Finals. The twins combined for two goals, three assists, and a minus- 4 rating during the Finals, but multiple writers came to their defense when commentator Mike Milbury referred to them as ‘Thelma and Louise’ (an inaccurate and offensive reference to their poor play) during a broadcast. Miami Heat superstar LeBron James has his defenders, but much more ink has been spilled over his shortcomings. While Dallas role players like JJ Barea and DeShawn Stevenson played over their heads, LeBron failed to live up to his hype.

Drafted 1st overall by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2003 NBA Draft, James was supposed to be the savior of a struggling franchise. He initially appeared to deliver on this promise, leading the Cavaliers to the playoffs every season between 2006 and 2010. The Cavs even made the 2007 NBA Finals, where they were swept by the San Antonio Spurs.

Last summer, LeBron became a free agent. After being courted by numerous NBA organizations, he announced his decision to join the Miami Heat during an hour-long special entitled The Decision. The program was widely ridiculed as a lengthy and unnecessary spectacle, and basketball greats like Michael Jordan argued that it was inappropriate for LeBron to join a team of rivals in an attempt to chase a championship.

But other criticism of James has come from the hockey world. Sam Fels, a Chicago Blackhawks blogger, wrote a piece on his blog Second City Hockey entitled “Viewing LeBron” (on NBC Chicago later cross-posted the piece under the title “What Hockey Fans Think of LeBron”). In his piece, Fels argued that hockey fans are turned off by the “bombast” of LeBron’s free agency and of the basketball culture in general.

Fels’ argument is not completely without merit. Many people believed that LeBron should have committed to Cleveland for a few more years. And if the team still did not appear to be championship material by the end of this period, he could have left with a clear conscience. I believe that if he was set upon leaving the Cavaliers organization, he could have informed them earlier (instead of minutes before the ESPN special aired), and avoided the televised special entirely.

It is important to emphasize that LeBron’s mishandling of his free agency was a personal mistake. Yet, Fels believes that the “bombast” of LeBron’s free agency is endemic to the culture of the NBA. The scandal surrounding LeBron’s free agency could be compared to the fracas surrounding Wayne Gretzky’s 1988 trade from the Edmonton Oilers to the Los Angeles Kings, or Bruins legend Ray Bourque’s 2000 trade to the Colorado Avalanche. Yet, the reputations of Gretzky and Bourque have remained intact. This is partly because the trades of Gretzky and Bourque were engineered by third parties. Gretzky had no idea that he was about to be traded, and during his tearful press conference, he was clearly reluctant to leave the Oilers. Bourque had expressed a desire to win a Cup before he retired, but Boston’s GM set up the trade with the Avs without consulting his star player. And in his piece, Fels argues that there is nothing wrong with leaving a cherished team to pursue a championship; LeBron and his fellow NBA players just lack tact.

Fels argues that some hockey fans’ disdain for the “bombast” of basketball comes with an “undercurrent of racism,” but for most fans, it is the ‘me first’ ethos of the NBA – its emphasis on becoming ‘The Man’ – and not its black players, that is a turnoff. Hockey is a team sport, not a sport that is intertwined with hip-hop culture and the “glorification of oneself.”

I believe that the NBA sells the game by marketing its stars, but any team sport requires contributions on all levels. Dirk Nowitzki may be the star of the Dallas Mavericks, but when he struggled to hit a 3 during the first half of Game 6, Jason Terry’s scoring touch bailed the team out. Jason Kidd is not a flashy player, but he is one of the NBA’s finest point guards. And Brian Cardinal, a career role player, used his body to foul Heat players at crucial moments.

And despite his self-expressed appreciation for ‘hip-hop culture,’ Fels’ analysis of basketball culture is limited. The “bombast” that he identifies in basketball players is often a form of self-expression. For young, disenfranchised black men (and women), the basketball court (or blacktop/parking lot) is a place to come alive, a place to vent frustration, and a place to learn about life. For many of these young people, the court is a place where they can be irreverent, and where they can show flash and swagger without fear of censorship. The black socks, bald heads, baggy shorts, and courtside celebrations of the University of Michigan’s ‘Fab Five’ (Chris Webber, Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson, Jalen Rose, and Jimmy King) were eviscerated in angry, racist letters by ignorant alumni (go to the 3-minute mark of the linked video). What these alumni failed to realize was that these young black men were injecting a new freshness into an old game.

Ice Cube reflected upon the cultural impact of the Fab Five in the titular ESPN documentary, arguing that “in the cultural sense, the [Fab Five] represented the homeboys and the homegirls.” Their undiluted boldness was appropriate for an era characterized by the Watts riot, the Rodney King beating, the twilight of crack epidemic, and, of course, NWA. And at the time, the Fab Five harbored a special disdain for Duke and its star forward, Grant Hill. Jalen Rose generated a huge amount of controversy when he called Hill an “Uncle Tom” in the documentary. Hill was also a young black man, but he was the product of a wealthy, two-parent home, and attended an elite, private university with a reputation for recruiting clean-cut players. The tension between Rose and Hill ignited a conversation about class dynamics within the black community, but it also showed that there are multiple ways to be a black basketball player, and that generalizations and stereotypes are fruitless.

There are many criticisms that could be leveled at the NBA, but Fels’ essay does not make those criticisms. He uses evasive language to express his discontent with the NBA, but the disdain that he feels for NBA players is the same disdain that the Michigan alumni felt for the Fab Five. The sentiments expressed in Fels’ essay are culturally racist; that is, they operate under the assumption that black NBA culture is fundamentally flawed, and inferior to the predominately white NHL culture.

The cultural landscape surrounding hockey is very different. NHL fans celebrate the grittiness of their athletes. Hockey players are expected to play through severe pain, and in the playoffs, injuries are not disclosed until the end of a series. NHLers are supposed to be polite to reporters and fans, and controversy is avoided at all costs. There aren’t supposed to be any characters in the National Hockey League (i.e., Ron Artest). The reality doesn’t always fit the image, but regardless, it is embraced wholeheartedly.

On average, hockey fans are wealthier than NBA, MLB, or NFL fans (with an average yearly income of $104,000), are more educated than fans of other sports (68% of hockey fans have attended college), and are more likely to be fully employed than other fans (64% hold full-time jobs). 2010 data from SportsBusiness Journal Daily shows than NHL fans are more likely to be male (63.6%) and white (86%) than MLB, NBA, NFL, MLS, or NASCAR fans. And these fans gravitate towards athletes that display the white, male upper-middle class propriety that they probably attempt to replicate in their own lives.

It is worth noting that there are prominent blacks in the NHL. Biracial Canadian Jarome Iginla is the captain of the Calgary Flames, and has won every major hockey award except the Stanley Cup. Iggy, as he is called, is beloved for his on-ice grittiness and off-ice generosity. Canadians PK Subban and Evander Kane are promising young talents. All three men are well-respected, though Subban has received heavy criticism for being “a pest” on the ice (many have also wondered if the controversy surrounding Subban is racially motivated).

When I connected hockey fans’ dislike of basketball to racism in the comments section of Fels’ piece, I was met with immediate backlash. Some commenters did acknowledge that hockey fans’ animosity towards basketball could be connected to racism, but they expressed similar disdain for NASCAR and white ‘Southern culture’ (which varies from state to state), or expressed frustration with what they perceived as poor NBA officiating.

Another commenter believed injecting race into the conversation was “insulting,” and he was rewarded for calling me out by another individual who believed that people are afraid of sticking up for their “actual thoughts because they are afraid of being called racist.”

Others argued that hockey players are more respected by their communities than NBA players, and that players would “knock [each other] down a peg” if they displayed the selfishness of NBA players. The same man said that one could “call him racist, envious, or whatever,” but that he “could not get behind the theatrics of the NBA and its players.”

Similarly, another commenter said that NBA culture does transfer “the worst traits of American society like no other sport does.” The Vancouver riots – both the 1994 and 2011 editions – incurred over a million Canadian dollars in property damage, and showed us that people of all races can embody the ‘worst traits of American society.’ But the discourse surrounding the riots has focused on the cleanup efforts. There have been no sweeping calls to change hockey culture, and no one would suggest that the population of Vancouver is fundamentally depraved. Some rioters have been demonized on social media sites – incriminating Facebook statuses have been reposted and ridiculed on Tumblr – but public disdain has focused on the rioters’ deeds and not their racial identities.

The racially-charged comments about Fels’ piece continued. One commenter argued that he couldn’t be racist because some of his favorite Chicago athletes were black. And my favorite quote expressed frustration with NBA players who were “ensconced in their own bubbles of luxurious isolation, replete with a retinue of hangers-on and mooches from their younger days.” This particular commenter said that NBA players were incapable of showing generosity like Washington Capitals forward Brooks Laich, who stopped to change a woman’s tire after being eliminated from the playoffs last year. (Laich is also a prized UFA, and the embodiment of the NHL aesthetic).

I don’t know of any NBA players who have pulled over to change a fan’s flat tire, but retired Alonzo Mourning’s foundation, AM Charities, is one of the best-run NBA player organizations. Under the auspices of AM Charities, Mourning has raised funds to build the Overtown Youth Center in Miami and sponsors the Honey Shine mentoring program for girls. AM Charities’ flagship event is “Zo’s Summer Groove,” a five-day event – in its 15th year – that has raised over 7 million dollars for youth programs in South Florida. Many current and former NBA stars, including Mourning’s former Heat teammates Dwyane Wade and Gary Payton, have participated in the event. And Mourning’s work has also inspired younger NBA players like LeBron James and Chris Paul to do charity work.

However, none of the Second City Hockey commenters mentioned NBA players’ charity work during their critiques of the league. They continued to insist that hockey fans are not racist, and argued that any discussion of race and sports was only meant to “ratchet up angst” by people who did not have a strong argument to make. Yet, their comments tell another story. There is nothing wrong with disliking basketball, but the commenters used code words (and sometimes didn’t use them) to mask contempt for black NBA players. If Sam Fels and the SCH commenters can express admiration for the gritty, ‘team-oriented’ ball of the Dallas Mavericks, they can surely acknowledge the positive actions of other black basketball players. And maybe, they’ll see that LeBron isn’t such a bad guy.

Top image courtesy of Barstool Sports

By Guest Contributor Gabriel Canada

The Indianapolis 500 is the largest single day sporting event in the world, held in a venue – the Indianapolis Motor Speedway – large enough to fit the Vatican and Churchill Downs at the same time. This unique facility is even more remarkable considering it was built in 1909 in an era before the World Cup or Super Bowl.

But though it can seat more than 400,000 people, the only diversity on the famed Speedway track was in the countries represented in the field. It would not be until 1991 that a black driver, Willy T. Ribbs, qualified for the world’s signature racing event.

For Ribbs, there was never any doubt that Indy is where he wanted to be. The fact that there had been no black driver to previously run in the race was never a factor for him.

“The historical side of my competing in the Indianapolis 500 had no relevance to me at the time,” Ribbs said. “My whole purpose in being in the Indianapolis 500 was, this is the greatest race in the world and that is where you want to be. As a young kid playing football you want to be in the Super Bowl as a young kid playing baseball its the world series and for a young kid growing up in racing I wanted to be in the Indianapolis 500. Its the greatest race in the world. That’s all that mattered to me.”

It’s important to point out that Ribbs was not racing’s first black star. That would be Charlie Wiggins, an accomplished driver in his own right, but made his name as the chief mechanic behind Wild Bill Cummings’ 1934 win at Indianapolis. Wiggins had been denied the option of competing in the race as a driver because of strict racial employment restrictions. Instead, he swept floors during the day and worked solely at night to convince officials his role at the track was that of the team janitor. He did so at considerable risk to himself. While working in a similar position at a race in Louisville spectators jumped into the pits in an attempt to lynch him.

While Ribbs didn’t face that level of threat in attempting to qualify, he was still, quite literally, risking his life: he spent the better part of a month in Indianapolis dealing with mechanical failures.

“We weren’t getting much track time,” Ribbs recalls. “Once we got a good engine in there and we got onto the Speedway to qualify for the final day. It was one of those moments when you look inside yourself and you’re going to see who you are now. When I drove out of that pit lane onto turn one to qualify I told myself it doesn’t matter now. Your life means nothing now. If your not in this race you’re going to want to die. This is your life now. The whole idea was to put everything on the line to get into this race.”

There was no pause for relief just a disconnect from reality when he finally made it into the starting line for the 500. Times taken during the process don’t reflect a driver’s fastest lap, so Ribbs had to go as fast as possible for four laps. He described the process as entering another world: “It’s like you’re traveling through a tunnel.”

The journey through that tunnel started at an early age for Ribbs. His father, he says, raced cars as a hobby. But by the time he was nine years old, young Willy was ready to make it a career, and his parents, he says, supported his dream.

“I had role models like Jim Clark, Mario Andretti, Dan Gurney, Bobby Unser,” he says. “I had drivers like that I focused on. Like any young kid I had those lights out there. It was my parents that got me racing. Sending me off to race in Europe and now I’m here.”

While every driver learns to work with sponsors during their career, Ribbs forged a unique relationship with someone not commonly associated with the racing world: comedian Bill Cosby, who is named on Ribbs’ website as “The Big Man.” Ribbs said the two first connected in the late 1980s.

“He knew who I was,” Ribbs says. “I had won a few races had success in a few series at this point when he called me up he said I don’t like racing but I like what your doing tell me which way we need to go. I told him I want to race at Indy and in the Indy Car Championship. He said meet me in two days in Vegas and teach me what we need to do. It was really that simple.”

Their arrangement was simple and precise: Ribbs dealt with Cosby directly, bypassing the usual lawyers or managers connected to one of the world’s best-known celebrities. For his part, Ribbs only had to a) tell Cosby how much sponsorship money he needed and b) use that sum wisely.

With two top 10 finishes his rookie year, on top of his historic arrival and Top 20 finish at Indy, Cosby’s money had been invested wisely. But, Ribbs says, he still faced an uphill battle: teams like Penske, Ganassi or Newman Haas, he says, had two-thirds more of a budget than his own. This disparity is at the heart of Ribbs’ only regret from his Indy Car years.

When asked where that reticence came from, despite his successes and history-making appearance, Ribbs is at a loss: “I have no answer for that,” he says. “Its something they would have to answer.”

Twenty years after that first tense qualifying run, and a second Indy appearance in 1993, Ribbs returned to the Speedway, but this time he’s in another role: as a team owner in the Indy Lights Series circuit, Ribbs is helping a new generation of drivers prepare to go through that same tunnel. He says that coming back to Indy as an owner was something he was thinking of the first time he made it to Indy.

“Once you retire from the sport a lot of drivers head out to pasture,” Ribbs says. “Well I wasn’t ready to start grazing yet. The new goal is to go to Indy. To be in the Indy Championship Series.”

Ribbs’ driver, Chase Austin, is making history in his own right: he was both the first biracial driver to make his start on a NASCAR Bush series race, and the first in the Indy Lights Series’ short history.

Ribbs has known Austin, a 21-year-old Kansas native, for the past five years, when Austin’s family approached the veteran for advice on their son’s driving career. Ribbs says the goal, at this point, is to lead Austin along “his first rodeo,” but not to pressure him – especially on this kind of track.

“Indy is difficult no matter what,” Ribbs says. “You could run a golf cart around here and it would still be difficult. It is the toughest racetrack in the world. There isn’t even a close or distant second. The fact of the matter is its very dangerous and this place has killed more race drivers than anywhere else on the planet. But the prestige is worth it. The event speaks for itself.”

By Arturo R. García

Shaquille O’Neal announced his retirement from professional basketball Wednesday in the video posted above, telling his fans, “We did it. Nineteen years, baby. Thank you very much. That’s why I’m telling you first: I’m about to retire. Love you. Talk to you soon.”

O’Neal leaves the NBA with four world championships under his belt, capping a resume that includes 28,596 points scored – good for fifth place on the all-time scoring list – along with 14 All-NBA Team selections, 15 All-Star Game selections, an Olympic gold medal and 13,099 rebounds. But – and this is a guess – it’s perhaps more satisfying for O’Neal that he was able to one-up his idol, Wilt Chamberlain: not only did he win, not only did he command attention, but he got people to “root for Goliath,” defying Chamberlain’s famous lament.

Shaq made himself less intimidating by cultivating a persona that was, at the time he rose up the professional ranks, unique in the NBA: a funny, yet competent, giant. Not that O’Neal didn’t make his share of mistakes: not just his foul-mouthed rhymes directed at then-L.A. Lakers teammate Kobe Bryant, and their accompanying feud, but his racist taunt against Yao Ming in 2002; and [insert your own Kazaam joke here.]

But compared to other players of his era, O’Neal’s schtick was a breath of fresh air. Michael Jordan grabbed more titles and was in more commercials, but while MJ put on a good smile for the camera, everybody knew he was really happiest crushing somebody’s will. And neither Wilt nor an older Jordan would have been able to put on a display like this near the end of their runs:

Nor would either of them have allowed the public to see them sharing this kind of levity – particularly with players who had by that time passed them by on the superstar totem pole:

In a funny way, that second clip might highlight a more underrated aspect of Shaq’s legacy: with his forays from sport into music, film, law enforcement, social media – he posted his video announcement on Twitter, naturally – and, near the end, reality television, O’Neal set the tone for the next wave of jocks like LeBron James and Dwight Howard who define themselves as their own brands on top of their team affiliations. O’Neal created a cult of personality that didn’t depend on titles. Sure, three-peating with the Lakers and winning another championship with Dwyane Wade in Miami helped, but it’s his personality and his unique combination of size, coordination and comic timing that will resonate with casual fans the most. He might not be the best ever to play the game, but at his best, O’Neal seemed to be having the most fun with it. There’s worse ways to be remembered.

By Arturo R. García

Before it even took place, the irony of the Atlanta Braves hosting a civil rights celebration Sunday had been pointed out, not just because of the team’s name, but because of Georgia’s recent enactment of House Bill 87.

The bill, modeled after Arizona’s Senate Bill 1070, targets undocumented immigrants and their employers, and had set off a controversy even before Carlos Santana, being honored by Major League Baseball at the game, took the opportunity to speak out against both laws. But as it turns out, the Mexican-born singer wasn’t the first pop-culture figure to do so.

Santana’s declaration that Arizona, Georgia and the people of Atlanta “should be ashamed of [themselves]” was met with boos, according to The Nation’s Dave Zirin, who also reported that MLB Commissioner Bud Selig left the game in the fifth inning without comment.

“If Selig really gave a damn about Civil Rights, he would heed the words of Carlos Santana,” Zirin wrote. “He would move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona. He would recognize that the sport of Jackie Robinson, Roberto Clemente and Curt Flood has an obligation to stand for something more than just using their memory to cover up the injustices of the present.”

Santana didn’t back down from his commentary after the ceremony, either, as he was quoted by various outlets as saying:

“This law is not correct. It’s a cruel law, actually. This is about fear. Stop shucking and jiving. People are afraid we’re going to steal your job. No, we aren’t. You’re not going to change sheets and clean toilets. …This is the United States. This is the land of the free. If people want the immigration laws to keep passing, then everybody should get out and leave the American Indians here. This is about civil rights.”

Like SB 1070 – currently being examined in the courts – Georgia’s new law empowers law-enforcement officials to arrest anyone if they fail to produce proof of citizenship upon request. But days before Santana embarrassed MLB by living up to his award, someone a bit closer to the action spoke up against the new law: Atlanta Hawks forward Etan Thomas, who told Zirin:

I can’t believe that anyone would be in favor of racial profiling. This bill is very similar to the Arizona bill and authorizes law enforcement officers to verify the immigration status of “certain criminal suspects.” So this means they can pull anyone over at anytime and their only crime could be minding their business. That goes against everything this country should stand for.

Thomas is no stranger to public discourse: he’s written columns for The Huffington Post and CNN, and released a poetry collection six years ago. He’s also, as of Wednesday morning, the only pro basketball player to speak up against the new law.

The league has courted the Spanish-speaking market – and make no mistake, Spanish-speakers are always in the crosshairs of laws like HB 87 – in recent years, most visibly by its’ “Noches Latinas” games, where selected teams wear special jerseys. One longshot possibility, if HB 87 ends up staying on the books, is that Thomas’ Hawks would get the opportunity to protest the law much like the Phoenix Suns did after Arizona’s law was signed. It’s a longshot, though, because the team’s owners are reportedly trying to sell the team.

Carlos Santana photo courtesy of The Associated Press
Etan Thomas photo courtesy of Getty Images

Race, gender and class aside, it is important to note several Duke students sincerely felt this particular team had it coming — a viewpoint based largely on their antics. Like the lawless monolith that was Goliath, they witnessed the lacrosse team carry on unruly and unchecked, a male alumnus describing them as a “rowdy, rambunctious and privileged” group gripped by an elitist attitude whose Friday-night frolics would be felonious if were committed by Duke’s predominantly black football team. Worst, he felt their supporters purported their innocence by virtue of this very privileged identity, as if “there’s no way that these rich guys who grew up in upper middle-class New England could possibly do something like this.” 

He also found fault with the issue of race superseding gender in several of the discussions that ensued in the aftermath. “The main issue should have been sexual assault and gender equality, but [people] can’t look at it without the racial lens. And then, there’s no way to even try to defend either side without it being, ‘Oh you’re just saying they didn’t do it because they’re white,’ or ‘You’re just saying that they did do it because she’s black,’ and I thought that just crowded the whole situation.”

Even as the evidence for legal wrong-doing became scarce and their innocence increasingly apparent, some students, particularly the racial minority and the low-income, still could not embrace the team as wholeheartedly as others. Yes, the legal case was spearheaded by an overzealous district attorney hellbent on seeing the players rot in prison, but when one couples the racial insults that surfaced from that night with African-Americans’ 400-year rendezvous with an unjust criminal system that at several points in time seemed to intrinsically function to disenfranchise them, black folk just weren’t that sympathetic.

I even recall several students thinking it was an opportune moment for influential (read: white) people to be subjected to the biases and corruptions that can rear its head in the judiciary system whenever race and class are influential factors. Don’t cry for them, Argentina. This was a common sentiment amongst several student groups.

- From “Duke Lacrosse Rape Case Still Hits a Nerve 5 Years Later”

Ever hear the theory that life depends on a few breaks here and there? In Wally Yonamine’s case, this is literally true. As in, physiologically so.

It’s not hard to imagine that Yonamine was at a personal crossroads around 1948. Yonamine, coming off his rookie season with the San Francisco 49ers, injured his wrist, to the point that it forced him out of the game.  This in itself threatened to be a tragic loss: Yonamine was not only a prodigy, drafted out of high school by the Niners, he was the first Japanese-American to play in the National Football League.

So what’s a guy to do after his history-making accomplishments are cut short? Why, do it another way, of course. Yonamine, who became a pioneer in a way perhaps no one could have imagined, passed away this week at the age of his 85.

Within three years after the wrist injury, Yonamine had transitioned to playing baseball, completing a season apiece with minor league teams in Salt Lake City and his native Hawaii, when Lefty O’Doul, manager of the San Francisco Seals (his SLC team’s parent club), made a fateful suggestion.

“O’Doul told me to play my style,” Yonamine once said. “He told me ‘ you’re going to change Japanese baseball because of your aggressiveness. The Japanese will love the way you play’”

And so Yonamine set out on a journey that was the mirror-image of the one he started with the Niners: instead of being the first Japanese-American NFL star, he became the first American to play professional baseball in Japan.

By the time Yonamine signed with the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants, he was used to fighting expectations and prejudices, as the Honolulu Star-Advertiser noted in its’ obituary for him, when he and his family moved from Maui to Kalihi, Yonamine’s classmates at Farrington High School derided him as a “hick” until his football prowess shut them up. Moreover, his family was eyed warily in their hometown of Olowalu, and not just because his parents – Matsusai, a native Okinawan, and Kikue, the eldest daughter of a family from Hiroshima – eloped in 1920. As Robert K. Fitts explained in his book Wally Yonamine: The Man Who Changed Japanese Baseball,

The elopement was shocking, but at that time any marriage between an Okinawan and a mainland Japanese was unusual. Even though white Hawaiians rarely distinguished between Okinawans and Japanese, the two groups viewed themselves as markedly different. Mainland Japanese, calling themselves naichijin (people of Japan homeland), considered Okinawans backward and true Japanese, as many Okinawans did not speak the standard language. Likewise, Okinawans often considered the naichijin to be stuck up. Although thrown together by plantation managers, the two ethnic groups rarely socialized before World War II.

Magnified by the war, Yonamine’s arrival in Japan was greeted by passionate anti-American sentiment. It didn’t help that he was a U.S. Army veteran who spoke no Japanese, and his aggressive American style of play, contrary to O’Doul’s suggestion, won him little support early on, as recounted in a profile on him by The Daily Angle:

He made diving catches in the outfield and was considered a hot dog. He received the same kind of catcalls and letters that Jackie Robinson faced in integrating the U.S. majors. In the face of all this hostility, he hit .354 his rookie season. Gradually, he won over some fans and teammates. But whereas Jackie was eventually accepted by his teammates, Yonamine’s success further fueled the hatred of his ultra-nationalist teammate, Tetsuharu Kawakami, the 1951 MVP. Here was a young American upstart with his disrespectful ways and his badge of what Kawakami considered dishonor–his parents had turned their back on the fatherland. Kawakami did everything he could to make life hard on the burgeoning young star, causing Wally to play even harder. The rivalry lasted, deep and intense, for the decade Yonamine played in Japan.

Over the course of 12 years with the Giants and the Chunichi Dragons, Yonamine earned his respect due and more, to the tune of a Japanese Hall of Fame career that boasted 1,337 hits, including a batting average of .300 or better in his first seven seasons – good enough for three batting titles – as well as seven All-Star selections and the 1957 Most Valuable Player award for the Central League. He then became the first American to manage in the Japanese circuit, passing along the fundamentals he learned from O’Doul to his own players. As a manager, Yonamine got his most memorable win in 1974, when his Dragons squad stopped a Giants juggernaut that had captured the Central League pennant for nine straight years.

The raucous scene after the victory was captured in the photo above, and recounted by Fitts:

… The mob grabbed him, held the skipper prostate above their heads and tossed him up and down across a sea of fans, players and reporters. Despite the rough treatment and the realization that crazed strangers, rather than his players, were tossing him, Wally’s face bore a huge grin of pure joy.

It took Wally nearly a half hour to push his way back to the clubhouse as excited fans, desperate to congratulate him, thwarted his progress. The celebration continued inside as the players, howling with delight, began shaking up beer bottles and letting the foam explode into the air.

After his career wound down, Yonamine continued to live in Japan, where his family founded the pearl company that bears his name, which operates to this day in both Tokyo and Redondo Beach, California. But he never stopped traveling to Hawaii, and during the 1990s he used his celebrity to attract Japanese tourists to the islands, and his family began donating $10,000 a year to fund the state high school baseball tournament, which was subsequently renamed in his honor. He also became a “special advisor for sports promotion” for the state, drawing a $1 salary per year.

“Hawaii, Japan and baseball have been so good to me,” he said after accepting the position. “I’m happy to be able to give something back.”

By Arturo R. García

If you’ve ever wished black history could be celebrated every month, the L.A. Clippers are feeling you – sorta.

No, that picture (via Ball Don’t Lie) is not a fake. It’s a real advert the Clips paid for and ran in the Los Angeles Times this past Sunday, promoting their Black History Month “celebration” … on March 2.

It’s tough to say what’s worse: that the Times would run this ad, or the fact that the typo isn’t even the worst thing about it.

Let’s start with the picture. Putting Blake Griffin in the ad? Okay, that’s a good call. If you’re not following basketball, the video below should explain why.

From there, things start getting problematic. It’d be interesting to know how the team plans to screen the 1,000 “underprivileged children” who will get into the game for free, because Clippers fans are a disenfranchised population all their own. But the “two tickets per ad/two ads per family” clause hints at the worst instincts of the team’s owner, Donald Sterling.

Including Sterling’s grinning mug in the ad crosses the line from incompetence to downright ignorance, if not arrogance. Sterling isn’t just widely known as the worst owner in the NBA, but he was sued by the U.S. Department of Justice not even five years ago for discriminatory housing practices, in violation of the Fair Housing Act. And, as ESPN’s Bomani Jones noted at the time, this wasn’t even Sterling’s first offense:

Sterling was sued for housing discrimination by 19 plaintiffs in 2003, according to The Associated Press. In this case, Sterling was accused of trying to drive blacks and Latinos out of buildings he owned in Koreatown. In November, Sterling was ordered to pay a massive settlement in that case. Terms were not disclosed, but the presiding judge said this was “one of the largest” settlements ever in this sort of matter. The tip of the iceberg: Sterling had to play $5 million just for the plaintiffs’ attorney fees.

Sterling’s insidious practices and prejudices were spelled out more clearly by ESPN The Magazine’s Peter Keating in 2009, as he wrote about a conversation between Sterling and Sumner Davenport, one of his property supervisors, after Sterling had acquired the Aardmore Apartments in Koreatown:

When Sterling first bought the Ardmore, he remarked on its odor to Davenport. “That’s because of all the blacks in this building, they smell, they’re not clean,” he said, according to Davenport’s testimony. “And it’s because of all of the Mexicans that just sit around and smoke and drink all day.” He added: “So we have to get them out of here.” Shortly after, construction work caused a serious leak at the complex. When Davenport surveyed the damage, she found an elderly woman, Kandynce Jones, wading through several inches of water in Apartment 121. Jones was paralyzed on the right side and legally blind. She took medication for high blood pressure and to thin a clot in her leg. Still, she was remarkably cheerful, showing Davenport pictures of her children, even as some of her belongings floated around her.

Jones had repeatedly walked to the apartment manager’s office to plead for assistance, according to sworn testimony given by her daughter Ebony Jones in the Housing Rights Center case. Kandynce Jones’ refrigerator dripped, her dishwasher was broken, and her apartment was always cold. Now it had flooded. Davenport reported what she saw to Sterling, and according to her testimony, he asked: “Is she one of those black people that stink?” When Davenport told Sterling that Jones wanted to be reimbursed for the water damage and compensated for her ruined property, he replied: “I am not going to do that. Just evict the bitch.”

Repairs never came. The shower stopped working, and the toilet wouldn’t flush; Jones needed to use a plunger and disposed of waste tissue in bags.

Kandynce Jones departed the home she loved but that caused her so much grief when she passed away, on July 21, 2003, at age 67.

Ultimately, Sterling paid the DOJ 2.725 million to settle the case against him. But if you thought Sterling kept his idiocy off the court, you’d be mistaken. A wrongful termination suit brought against him by his former longtime general manager, Elgin Baylor, is still pending. In court documents cited by the Times, Baylor accuses Sterling of maintaining a “plantation mentality”:

In court papers, Baylor said that Jim Brewer, then an assistant with the Clippers, wanted the chance to interview for the head coaching job after Bill Fitch was dismissed following the 1997-98 season.

“I believe he [Sterling] was a little reluctant at first but I said, ‘We owe him that courtesy.’ So we go there and we sit down and Brewer starts talking about his qualifications, that he believed he could do the job of being the head coach,” Baylor said in court papers.

“And when he finished, Donald said something that was very shocking to me. He said, ‘Personally, I would like to have a white Southern coach coaching poor black players. And I was shocked. And he looked at me and said, ‘Do you think that’s a racist statement?’ I said, ‘Absolutely. That’s plantation mentality.”

Baylor’s suit alleges that Sterling’s refusal to pay market value, on top of his attitudes, has cost the team numerous top-level black players over the years. But it didn’t stop him from objectifying them. As J.A. Adende reported on TrueHoop, court documents revealed several more disturbing stories of Sterling’s behavior, including this one:

“While ignoring my suggestions and isolating me from decisions customarily reserved for general managers, the Clippers attempted to place the blame for the team’s failures on me,” Baylor said in the declaration. “During this same period, players Sam Cassell, Elton Brand and Corey Maggette complained to me that DONALD STERLING would bring women into the locker room after games, while the players were showering, and make comments such as, ‘Look at those beautiful black bodies.’ I brought this to Sterling’s attention, but he continued to bring women into the locker room.”

And this team once thought it had a shot at signing Kobe Bryant? Does anybody think Blake Griffin is going to be happy being Sterling’s show pony?

But the oddest part of this story is the silence from on high. In a league where there’s a strict dress code; where criticizing referees gets you harsh words from league commissioner David Stern; and where there’s a continued insistence that said referees aren’t informed by their own prejudices, even if they might not lead to incidents as egregious as Sterling’s, the league and Stern have said absolutely schtum on the matter of Sterling. Not even after Sterling reportedly told Stern, “I would fire you.”

It’s not like there’s a lack of precedent for leagues stepping in to clean an owner’s mess: Major League Baseball famously stepped in and forced Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schott out of the game. And the NBA’s rule forbidding teams from trading away their first-round picks in consecutive years was instituted to protect them against meddling executives. Will Sterling’s latest faux pas finally force the league’s hand?

Thanks to Kevin for the tip!

Dear Mr. Groban:

Congratulations on being picked to sing the U.S. national anthem at next Sunday’s NBA All-Star Game.

No, really.

Just remember, though, that you’ve got your work cut out for you. You’ll have competition both on the court, and from the echoes of history.

First, as you know, you won’t be the only singer doing something nationalisticpatriotic that day: a fella named Aion Clarke will be singing the Canadian national anthem. You’ve got a slight advantage here, since the name might not ring a bell with most of your potential viewership this Sunday. But, based off of this track, the guy doesn’t sound bad.

Unfortunately for you, though, by accepting your assignment, you have all but assuredly chosen to step into the shadow of the man who managed to make “The Star Spangled Banner” … seductive. In Los Angeles, no less. Whatever longtime fans are watching, either at the Staples Center or at home, will no doubt compare you – for better or worse – to Marvin Gaye. Here’s why:

So, no pressure. Good luck – and, uh, try not to mess up the words, k?

Thanks to Angry Asian Man for pointing out this story in Georgia: When youth football coach Frank Samuelson isn’t leading the 10-year-old squad for the Brookwood Football Association, he apparently likes to share his adventures around Snellville on Facebook (spelling his):

I was dining in an Asian buffet today [big surpise], and I heard this morning how Asian students are suppodely so much smarter than American kids. My personal observation is that those fishheads still eat with chopsticks. It took Western ingenuity to invent the fork. I’m just saying. … they a’int that friggin’ smart.

According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Samuelson (who is thankfully not an English teacher by trade) also served on the board of the association, a position which, one would think, enabled him to see that POC kids make up half of the league’s participants. Not that he didn’t “admire” some skills beyond the gridiron in another post:

How to solve illegal immigration: Arrest the 30+ million illegals that are here first. Have them build a huge brick wall across the border [those guys do great brick work], and make them build it from the Mexican side of the border. Mount 50 calibre machine guns across the top and shoot anyone trying to climb over.

Samuelson has also been quoted as calling South Asians “red dots” and Mexicans “beaners.”

At a meeting Tuesday night, the newly-lawyered-up Samuelson stepped down from the board – though not his coaching position – and apologized for his outbursts, saying they were taken out of context, which led to this exchange with WGCL-TV reporter Michelle Marsh:

Marsh: In what context would those statements have been appropriate?
Samuelson: It’s, you know, it’s, they were friends of mine.

Samuelson’s take was fleshed out in his apology letter, which was quoted by the Georgia Daily News:

The things I remarked about were meant to be humorous or at least thought provoking in front of the eyes of my friends who make up a variety of different people of from every walk of life, race and many national origins. It really, really bothered me to think that people were offended by any of this because if anything, it was meant to either respond to some of my friend’s posts or poke at them in turn. It was never the intention of mine to make anyone feel offended.

Change.org already has a petition up calling for Samuelson’s removal from the sidelines, but whether it happens is anybody’s guess: on one hand, CNN reported that he had his own contingent of supporters at Monday’s meeting.

On the other, if the dispute lingers on, it could hurt the league where it hurts – in the wallet. The Journal-Constitution noted that the BFA has brought in more than $1 million in revenue over the past five years. And perhaps even more importantly than that, in a region of the country where football really is king, it’s an early development system for the area high schools. Given the specter of neighborhood and economic pressure, the BFA might well decide this guy isn’t worth the trouble.

By Arturo R. García

A report re-published this week in The Quarterly Journal of Economics suggests a racial bias among NBA referees. But the bigger story might be watching the league get forced out of its’ defensive stance on the issue.

According to the study by Joe Price and Justin Wolfers, based on analyzing 13 years’ worth of data on referee calls, the refs are 4 percent less likely to call fouls on players of their own race. (No wonder Kobe looks so surprised there.) Also, players score 2.5 percent more points during games involving ref crews of their own race. But don’t tell that to NBA Commissioner David Stern.

As Price told ESPN’s Henry Abbott, the idea for the study stems from his reading of Blink, Malcolm Gladwell’s book about what goes into split-second decisions in a variety of situations. As Abbott explains it:

Sports presented a special opportunity to learn a lot more, because referees make quick decisions — the kinds that reveal implicit bias — every night.

“If I had as good a set of data on judicial sentencing, or hiring decisions, I would have gone and looked at those,” says Price, who was then getting his Ph.D. at Cornell, and is now an assistant professor at Brigham Young. “In my mind, I don’t have any issues with the NBA. I actually think they’ve achieved racial equality in so many dimensions. They just happen to be a lab setting in which I get quasi-random assignment, I get lots of interactions between a small number of actors. I get a perfect setting to look at racial bias. And in some ways, if it’s happening on a court in front of thousands of people, then it’s probably happening when you go to make purchasing decisions, or hiring decisions, or whatever decisions we can think of as more important.”

But ever since the New York Times reported on Price and Wolfers’ findings three years ago, the NBA and Stern have gone out of their way to knock it, going so far as to say racism “doesn’t exist” in the league:

“This is a bum rap, that’s all,” Stern said after the study’s initial release. “This is a bum rap, and if it is going to be laid on us it should be laid on us by basis of some people who are purported to be scholars in a publication that purports to hold us up to a higher standard — a little bit more should have been done.”

Stern has also said the league conducted its’ own study into referee bias, and crowed about it to Time Magazine:

By Arturo R. García

What happens when a group of Ivy Leaguers tries to get its’ Dr. Horrible on? Why, jokes about poor people and murder, of course!

As Disgrasian’s Jen Wang noted a few days ago, this video by On Harvard Time set out to poke fun at a music video released by the admissions department at archrival Yale. The opening few seconds actually aren’t bad: one of the prospective “Yalies” asks when the school was founded, leading to the narrator, standing right in front of a school banner saying Founded 1701, deadpans, “Great question.”

And then things got ugly. Lyrics and explanation under the cut.

From Jen’s post:

Now, it doesn’t take a Harvard education to know that poverty really fucking sucks. But apparently it takes a Harvard education to think it’s hilarious!

(Sidenote: The majority of New Haven’s poor also happen to be people of color. Make of that what you will.)

Also hilarious: murder! The On Harvard Time video originally included a joke about the murder of Yale grad student, Annie Le–”What happened to that girl that got murdered and stuffed in a wall?” went the line around the :55 mark–which was subsequently changed after Yale students publicly expressed outrage.

After the protests, of course, came an apology from OHT: in a statement, the group said, “This was certainly not our intention in writing it, but we understand this response and sincerely apologize for any offense it may have caused. The last thing we’d want to do is upset anyone personally connected to the incident.”

So what was the change? an obvious overdub of the original line, now asking, “What happened to the original line in this video?” So now the fact that there was an uproar becomes the joke. And the digs at New Haven come early on in the ensuing musical number:

Welcome to the world’s largest bathroom stall
From hookers to hobos, we’ve got ‘em all!
That’s just our undergrads
And the tazings only add
To why I chose Yale

Immediately afterwards, our narrator/tour guide tells us, “Given the crime-ridden streets of New Haven, you’ll probably want to spend most of your time at Yale inside one of our 12 residential colleges.” I was surprised they didn’t bust out with a reference to The Wire. That would’ve been, like, soooo edgy!

Now, was the original Yale video ripe for the comedic pickings? Absolutely. If you’ve got nearly 17 minutes to spare, here you go:

So what instigated this mess, you ask? Why, the annual Harvard-Yale football game, of course! Jen, a former Yalie herself, offered some insight into the event’s, uh, pageantry:

It’s funny that the On Harvard Time spoof was posted to stir up school pride before “The Game,” not because “The Game” is “just a football game,” but because it’s precisely not a football game, but, instead, four quarters of overblown jocksucking. If you’ve ever been to a real tailgate or watched any real football, you know how much “The Game” sucks cocksicle by comparison. (I’m from Texas, which we can all agree sucks Tex-ass, no argument from me there, but I do know from football.) “The Game” is cold, sloppy, and not particularly memorable, kind of like a bad date where you decide midway through that you should get drunk during to try and salvage the night when, in fact, that only makes it suck worse than smooth jazz.

As a San Diego State alum, I can’t really comment on other schools’ programs; heck, this is the first season since 1998 where I can wear my SDSU baseball jersey without having to tell anybody it really means South Dakota State University just so they don’t make fun of me. But if this lowly public school grad can offer a suggestion to the OHT kids, maybe you should look to more classic – not to mention classier – sources for your material. How about CalTech?

The first time I strapped into a snowboard, I was twelve years old. I remember being the only girl in my younger brother’s group of friends, and we all took turns hitting a little jump we had built using the lid of a trash can. The first time I ever went to a resort, I noticed something else. I was the only Arab there. This is something I became used to, being the only brown girl on the mountain. I remember going into the demo center, cash in hand, ready to pick out my very first board. A board that would be all mine, ridden only by me. No more rentals, no more borrowing boards from guy friends that were much too big. All mine. I bought a Burton “Clash” board and the rest was history.

To say I’ve been a loyal Burton customer ever since is a huge understatement. If it had that little bent arrow logo on it, it had to be mine. I felt a loyalty to the brand. They were the only company at the time that made women-specific bindings, that made clothes that fit my awkward body. I liked the message the company propped itself up on. Burton prided itself on being about bringing snowboarders together, creating a community, being inclusive. Being Arab-American, I was having an extremely rough time with being included in post-9/11 American Society. I was an outsider now. And Burton was about creating a community of outsiders. I could finally belong again. I could finally go back to “normal”, back to what I remembered, back to being human.

I grew up with that company. Burton made winter my favorite season. Every year they would put out these amazing products and videos, and I was more excited for them than I was the previous year. I followed them the way a football or hockey fan follows their favorite team. The Burton team was my team. I bought the snowboarding films It’s Always Snowing Somewhere and The B because I wanted to know what my team was up to, what new tricks and runs they were stomping. I eagerly awaited the new catalog because I want to see what gear is good enough for my team to shred all over the world in. Even though the glossy pages were only filled with white kids, that was okay! They were outsiders, just like me. Somehow, they were just like me. I let myself believe that for so long. The Burton team riders were my heroes. I looked up to the people in those glossy catalogs and magazine spreads. Not once after watching a video part or live feed from a contest did I feel disappointed. They always left me blown away, thinking “That’s how it’s done. That’s how you do it”.

So, imagine my surprise upon seeing one of my idols, Burton team rider and Urban/Rail riding legend Jeremy Jones, referring to Arab-Americans as “towel heads” in his personal blog. Being an Arab-American, that hurt me so deeply to know that someone I hold in such high regard only sees me as a racial slur, as some lesser person based on my ethnic background. And he’s doing it, hiding behind the shield that’s shaped like a crooked arrow, behind that name that told me for years and years that I was just like them. Suddenly, everything was back just as it was before. I was excluded and different and worth nothing. And I recalled all the mean looks and whispers thrown at me every time I got in the lift line. Glares and words I was willing to just brush off because I was part of something, and no one was going to take that from me. No one was going to take my escape. Suddenly, I realized just how unwelcome I was, had been. And that shook me. It shook me and hurt me and made me sick.

I wrote a letter of concern to Burton. It took me so long to decide to send it. I was intimidated by Jeremy Jones’ fame, by Burton’s gigantic mark on the snowboarding industry. I was scared I was going to be laughed off as I so often am, to be ignored as I so often am. The snowboarding community is so small. What if someone found out I “tattled” on one of snowboarding’s biggest celebrities? I wrote to Burton, knowing that I could be shunned out of the snowboarding community, knowing that I could be effectively ending my snowboarding career before it really began. I could be snuffing out my dreams of being a professional snowboarder, something I’ve always wanted and I’ve spent years working towards. I thought I could just let it go; I mean, he didn’t mean me, right?

Except that he did. He did mean me. Every time someone decides to throw out a slur, they do mean me. They mean every brown-skinned person, every caricature of the goofy Indian man running the 7-11, every Jihadist with a vest of dynamite, every bent over nanna from the old country with her black chadore pulled tightly under her chin. You didn’t mean me? What makes me so special? Am I from a more desirable country? Is the food of my people better? Is it because I speak English “perfectly”, because I’ll wear a bathing suit at the beach, awkwardly laugh at every version of the 40 virgins joke? When someone throws around epithets like “towel head” or “camel jockey”, they mean me. They may not think they do, but they mean me. Jeremy Jones was addressing me. He was addressing everyone who dares to be born with brown skin, whether they’re from Lebanon or India or Omaha, Nebraska. I will not allow Jeremy Jones or Burton to decide who is us and who is them.

I wrote to Burton because I couldn’t stay silent. Silence is acceptance, and I do not, under any circumstances, accept being referred to as a “towel head” by someone who is being paid to travel around the world to snowboard with the money I use to buy the products he backs. I don’t accept being called that by anyone. Burton hasn’t responded, and the blog post is still up, its hate speech is still glaring back at me through my computer screen, screaming at me “You are less, less, less. You are worthless”. And I don’t accept that, I will never accept that.

And because I believe in the power of speaking directly to those who wrong you: Jeremy, if you have a problem being driven around by a “towel head” in a cab that isn’t up to your standards, fucking walk.