Etan of Bricks

Etan Thomas’s recent column for Slam Online recounts what he believes was an example of racism in the NBA. In my opinion, the incident seems unworthy of the reading he provides—i.e., the ref’s comment seems more anti-jock than anti-black. In fact, the ref probably isn’t even anti-jock (why work ballgames if you can’t stand muscle?) so much as stupid and avuncular.

That does not mean, however, race wasn’t significant in Thomas’s encounter with the referee; it just wasn’t significant in the obvious way.

Race proved to be a significant category for the way Thomas interpreted the experience, rather than for the way the ref did (at least on the surface of things). In other words, the ref wasn’t thinking of Thomas’s race, in my opinion (and Free Darko’s), when he made the comment. Nor was he thinking of his own. He’d probably say the same thing to Jason Kapono, Wally Szczerbiak, maybe even his own nephew.

Nevertheless, Thomas extracted meaning from the comment because of the way race filters the way he (and all of us) comes to knowledge about the world.

Don’t twist what I’m saying. I don’t mean Thomas is actually the one guilty of stereotyping while the white ref makes off like a colorblind freedom-fighter. That’s Limbaugh / O’Reilly bullshit, and I’d bury them and their bullshit in Grant’s tomb.

Thomas actually points us to the way race provides a meaningful lens for understanding the hum and buzz of daily life. Race can bring knowledge, nuance, and subtlety to experience. That’s why a complete education requires that the classrooms get filled by students from the streets and suburbs alike...the same classrooms, I mean.

It’s why you can teach Kate Chopin in New Haven for the rest of your life and still not understand what a fourteen-year-old boy from the 9^th Ward might know about New Orleans.

These are the philosophical grounds for arguing against Ward Connerly and his minion—those who think the ideal world would be colorblind and without race.

Instead, I’d argue that the ideal world is without the hierarchies of privilege, status, resources, class, and power that are attached to race—but not without race itself.

We learn from race and its many histories. The perspective race provides offers insight not otherwise available without it. There are rich differences of life-interpretation that are developed via race—differences in both cultural practice and knowledge production.

A colorblind world would look a lot like the San Antonio Spurs: a cohesive group, solid in fundamentals, but in the end, not that much fun. (And totally ignorant about the legacies of racism and how they continue to benefit some at the price of many.)

It’s liberation from the oppression and inequality based on race that demands a struggle, but not liberation from race as a concept for understanding the world.

The very fact, I think, the referee would make the same comment to Kapono (though Kapono is as dumb as he looks) doesn’t mean race wasn’t / isn’t important. Rather, it suggests the way white people tend not to see whiteness as crucial to the way their life is experienced. That’s why the ref made the stupid joke in the first place, failing to imagine how Thomas’s race might lead him to view the encounter differently—perhaps even more accurately.

White people don’t often see the importance of whiteness because they don’t have to. That’s called white privilege, and it’s the result of racism and institutionalized white supremacy. And it ain’t right.

You may not see race when you see white Wally; you may not think whiteness matters or impacts your life in anyway at all. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t help you get that loan for your house in the suburbs.

Ask the owner of the Clippers about that.