For Jeanie Buss, the threat has never been spelled out more clearly — on a white page in black typewriter font.
The Lakers’ owner and governor shared a letter on Instagram on Friday morning from a self-described fan of 60 years with a hateful message, addressing Buss with an epithet for women.
“I now say to hell with the overpaid n—– traitors and the NBA,” the man wrote. “Go to hell and join (redacted) Kobe Bryant.”
In her own post, Buss said she received the letter on Monday, and decided to share it for Juneteenth, a holiday celebrating the end of American slavery that has gained symbolic prominence during the country’s reckoning with problems of race. Over the years, Buss said she’s ignored a lot of similar messages — but not anymore.
“On this day, Juneteenth, I ask my white friends to join together, acknowledge the racism that exists in our country and around the world, and pledge to stop ignoring it,” Buss wrote. “We all must do better.”
The NBA finds itself as a major player and stakeholder in the unfolding tensions in the country, as major figures in its playing ranks have called for the league and its teams to take a more active role in the social justice issues players have long supported. For the Lakers, part of that effort is hiring a new director of racial equity and action, UCLA assistant professor Dr. Karida Brown, who hopes to transition the Lakers to an “antiracist” organization and help stamp out the sort of sentiments that Buss received in the mail this week.
The distinction, Brown said in a conference call on Friday, can seem subtle even to well-intentioned people. But the phenomenon of “color blindness,” where people of privilege claim not to see how skin color affects social and economic opportunities, is a pervasive force that keeps institutional racism alive, she said.
“Non-racist means that, ‘I don’t see race, I just see people.’ (Or), ‘I’m so sorry that happened, I’m offering you thoughts and prayers,’” she said. “It is situated in a disposition that perhaps has good intentions, to do no harm to others and to wish good to your fellow human being, however it is not action oriented and it allows one to not see the racial inequities that are rooted in systems.”
Lakers’ COO and president of business operations Tim Harris spurred along the process that led to Brown’s hiring, reaching out to UCLA recently to ask for an educator on race and racism. Brown talked to members of the Lakers’ organization initially as a one-off session, but eventually she and Harris came to an understanding that the Lakers wanted to do more to pivot into anti-racism.
Brown’s mandate is not necessarily to be a resource to players, many of whom have supported anti-racism causes on their own, but rather the whole organization. She will develop a curriculum to help educate employees and show them how they can affect the kind of societal changes they wish to see in the world.
Sports, she said, has the power to influence social attitudes.
“Sports organizations are a source of entertainment, inspiration, aspiration, identity,” she said. “So all of these kind of intangible ephemera that make us who we are. Sports is one way that we express that. So that platform to take a stance to take action, to demonstrate what it looks like in everyday life has the potential to have great impact in influencing others, even if it’s just making them think, ‘Am I a nonracist? Or am I an antiracist?’ That’s a very important question.”"strategy" - Google News
June 20, 2020 at 01:49AM
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Lakers unveil strategy to become ‘anti-racist’ organization - OCRegister
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