… Or Jrue, or maybe Malcom or Kemba, or perhaps even Tobias, Khris or Klay.
Your agent tells you there’s possibly a very good basketball move for you to Utah this summer, depending on how thing work out between now and them.
You respect the organization, and like the fit with the team, but you’ve heard that Utah might be a tough fit culturally. You know there’s hardly any African Americans there and the nightlife isn’t much to speak of; but more importantly, there’s this rumor going around the league that Utah is kind of a racist place. And, oh yeah, wasn’t there just that thing there where Russell Westbrook was taunted racially by a couple of fans?
You realize that the Jazz organization acted quickly against racism in their house – good on them. But of course the organization’s actions only go so far. You need to know about the community, as well. You recognize (as any reasonable person does) that the majority of people in any place are good and decent. But it doesn’t take a lot of bigots to ruin a place. You still want to know if this racism tag is real. So you ask a few friends in the league if they’ve ever experienced racism from the community—just for fun, let’s call them Donovan, Raja, Ekpe, Jae, Thabo, or maybe even Jabari (who himself may have interest in moving to Utah). They respond that their personal experiences have been relatively good; so that’s a plus, … but…
… But they know of others who haven’t had such great experiences. A couple even wonder if the respect would be there for them if they weren’t wearing a Jazz jersey. You know that disposability is part of the NBA experience. The team will let you go when it no longer needs you. And fans will root for whoever is in their team’s jersey. But you want assurance that basic human decency is not entirely contingent on utility to the team in this community. So you (or your agent, if he’s doing his job properly), decide to look into things more deeply. You want to know how the Utah community responded to the Westbrook issue. So you decide to check out the responses to the issue in fan forums, twitter, and so on.
You notice first a large number of fans are on board with the team’s effort to increase community awareness on racism and refuse to accept racism as part of Jazz fan behavior. But then you also see that an alarming number of people seem to have no idea why Westbrook took the fans’ behavior as racist. Yikes … But maybe Utah is really that different a place. At least once it’s explained to them, they’ll understand, you hope. And most seem to.
But there’s a minority (surprisingly vocal and stubborn) who continue to insist that those fan behaviors are not racist. And probably a smaller, but still vocal minority who argue that because so many Utahns didn’t know those behaviors were racist, Utah is really a much less racist place than most.
Then you start to see there’s another minority (though again fairly vocal) that say the Jazz should just stop talking about racism because it’s making all the fans and everyone in the community look bad. If we want racism to go away, we should say as little about it as absolutely necessary. Talking about it makes things worse, they say. Closely aligned with this group seems to be another that says racism is everywhere: stop making it about Utah.
Then there's a group (again a minority, but fairly persistent) who continually turn the discussion about racism in Utah into a call to have Westbrook arrested (or at least much more heavily punished than he was).
Then, as you’re doing this research, you can’t help but notice all the people making it known how long they’ve known that Dante Exum is a bust and that the Jazz were foolish to trust him. Word of his injuries, rather than leading to well wishes, as came from his teammates, seems more of an occasion for (in the metaphor of a leading fan forum) dancing on his grave. Some fans want to remind everyone that Exum’s injuries are proof (of their long-held assertions) of his weak-mindedness and psychological unfitness for the NBA.
Dennis Lindsey is going to tell you that the Jazz have the most passionate fan base in the league. That seems fair enough. But is that what you want?
Your agent tells you there’s possibly a very good basketball move for you to Utah this summer, depending on how thing work out between now and them.
You respect the organization, and like the fit with the team, but you’ve heard that Utah might be a tough fit culturally. You know there’s hardly any African Americans there and the nightlife isn’t much to speak of; but more importantly, there’s this rumor going around the league that Utah is kind of a racist place. And, oh yeah, wasn’t there just that thing there where Russell Westbrook was taunted racially by a couple of fans?
You realize that the Jazz organization acted quickly against racism in their house – good on them. But of course the organization’s actions only go so far. You need to know about the community, as well. You recognize (as any reasonable person does) that the majority of people in any place are good and decent. But it doesn’t take a lot of bigots to ruin a place. You still want to know if this racism tag is real. So you ask a few friends in the league if they’ve ever experienced racism from the community—just for fun, let’s call them Donovan, Raja, Ekpe, Jae, Thabo, or maybe even Jabari (who himself may have interest in moving to Utah). They respond that their personal experiences have been relatively good; so that’s a plus, … but…
… But they know of others who haven’t had such great experiences. A couple even wonder if the respect would be there for them if they weren’t wearing a Jazz jersey. You know that disposability is part of the NBA experience. The team will let you go when it no longer needs you. And fans will root for whoever is in their team’s jersey. But you want assurance that basic human decency is not entirely contingent on utility to the team in this community. So you (or your agent, if he’s doing his job properly), decide to look into things more deeply. You want to know how the Utah community responded to the Westbrook issue. So you decide to check out the responses to the issue in fan forums, twitter, and so on.
You notice first a large number of fans are on board with the team’s effort to increase community awareness on racism and refuse to accept racism as part of Jazz fan behavior. But then you also see that an alarming number of people seem to have no idea why Westbrook took the fans’ behavior as racist. Yikes … But maybe Utah is really that different a place. At least once it’s explained to them, they’ll understand, you hope. And most seem to.
But there’s a minority (surprisingly vocal and stubborn) who continue to insist that those fan behaviors are not racist. And probably a smaller, but still vocal minority who argue that because so many Utahns didn’t know those behaviors were racist, Utah is really a much less racist place than most.
Then you start to see there’s another minority (though again fairly vocal) that say the Jazz should just stop talking about racism because it’s making all the fans and everyone in the community look bad. If we want racism to go away, we should say as little about it as absolutely necessary. Talking about it makes things worse, they say. Closely aligned with this group seems to be another that says racism is everywhere: stop making it about Utah.
Then there's a group (again a minority, but fairly persistent) who continually turn the discussion about racism in Utah into a call to have Westbrook arrested (or at least much more heavily punished than he was).
Then, as you’re doing this research, you can’t help but notice all the people making it known how long they’ve known that Dante Exum is a bust and that the Jazz were foolish to trust him. Word of his injuries, rather than leading to well wishes, as came from his teammates, seems more of an occasion for (in the metaphor of a leading fan forum) dancing on his grave. Some fans want to remind everyone that Exum’s injuries are proof (of their long-held assertions) of his weak-mindedness and psychological unfitness for the NBA.
Dennis Lindsey is going to tell you that the Jazz have the most passionate fan base in the league. That seems fair enough. But is that what you want?
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