You are the Makers of History!
  • Home
  • More Historic Pictures!
  • Books
  • Hit Us Up
  • Blog
  • Coming Events
  • Videos
  • Donations

BLM, the NBA & Serious Analysis on Class & Race Politics

10/13/2020

1 Comment

 
Picture
This past Sunday the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team from the National Basketball Association (NBA) won the league championship.  The 2019/2020 NBA season was reshaped, along with everything else, by covid 19.  As a result, a season that typically ends in mid-June extended through October, the month the NBA season usually kicks off.

The covid influenced season, and social unrest that has also plagued this society during these last several months, was punctuated by NBA players, who are almost 80% Africans, using their platform to demand justice against police terrorism against African people.  The way the players facilitated their voices was in using their Players Association, their union, to demand that the league – which is made up primarily of right wing billionaire owners – openly express their support for player sentiments previously expressed.  The league did this primarily through having the words “Black Lives Matter” painted on the courts used for games in the covid protected arenas nicknamed “the Bubble” that all games were played once the reason resumed in July.  Players were also permitted to wear jerseys that displayed slogans like “I can’t breathe” or “Say her name”, slogans generally connected to the Black Lives Matter movement, on the backs of their jerseys where their names usually are.
The Laker championship culminated with a television rating share of 5.7 million viewers which represented the lowest documented watched NBA Finals game ever.  Typically, ratings are in the 20 million people range.  Most television sports pundits are crediting the loss in viewership to the masses of white basketball fans who own politics that oppose the Black Lives Matter movement, whatever those people believe that movement to be. 

The overt racism displayed by white people towards the messages articulated by African and white athletes in all sports supporting African people against police terror, has impacted me in ways I never imagined possible.  I love basketball.  Especially NBA basketball.  Over the years, many people have tried to throw shade at me for this.  Their claim is that revolutionaries cannot love NBA basketball.  These are people who smoke, toke, drink, whatever they want to bring balance into their lives.  None of those things I do.  Instead, I watch a game, or at least portions of a game, every so often.  This past NBA season, I probably watched no more than about five or six games in full so I’m not trying to hear those critics, but what was strange was how the social upheaval impacted this process.  I actually found myself hoping the Lakers would win.  This is overwhelmingly shocking.  I’m a life long Sacramento Kings fan.  My Kings are almost always a bad team, but that’s my squad, ride or die.  No Kings fan ever wants the hated Lakers to win anything.  Yet, the soaking racism, so apparent at the NBA in general, and LeBron James in particular, made me want him to win no matter what, even if he is playing for the Lakers now.

Besides my personal realities, the NBA announced after Sunday’s game that the measures enacted over the summer will not be continued for the 2020/2021 season.  This is clearly a move to get the perceived loss of white fans back.  And, it will work because most people in this society operate on an extremely superficial lack of memory.  A few clever promotional moves and no league efforts like those displayed this summer, plus good basketball, will definitely get a lot of those shameless people back in front of their televisions, if not this next season, surely not long after that.

The above is not that difficult to figure out.  Capitalists are obviously experts at deceiving and manipulating the people in this society.  As Malcolm X told us decades ago, the American propaganda machine is so strong that during World War II it got us “loving the Soviet Union and China and hating Germany and Japan.  After World War II, it got you hating the Soviet Union and China and loving Germany and Japan!”  What’s much more interesting is the method in which bourgeoisie nationalist politics came to undermine genuine sentiments of struggle among the NBA players.  During the month of August, players, reacted to the brutal assault against Jacob Blake in Wisconsin when police shot him seven times in the back, by deciding to not play.  The players of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team refused to take the court for their playoff game.  Their bold action influenced African tennis player Naomi Osaka to boycott her match.  The Women’s National Basketball Association cancelled games (it should be noted that the women’s league has been the most militant in all of sports in speaking out against social injustices).  Even traditionally conservative Major League Baseball cancelled games that day in solidarity.  This was an unprecedented militant work stoppage.  A strike.  A demand for better results.  Back to the NBA, players met to discuss whether to cancel the entire season at that point and respected players like LeBron and Kawhi Leonard were leading that charge.  Then, the usual sabotage of the bourgeoisie nationalist circuit stepped in.  Barack Obama encouraged LeBron and other players to not strike, but vote.  In our view, that development did more to lead the way for the NBA to officially abandon its support for African people than anything that has happened in the last couple of days.

The role of the bourgeoisie is always to redirect and defuse genuine militancy.  The African bourgeoisie, most clearly represented by Obama’s presence, exists specifically to control the African masses.  The broader (white) bourgeoisie, leaving the African bourgeoisie to quell the African masses, can focus on the white masses to ensure they continue to believe that the interests of capitalist America are always the same as theirs.  You can see this happening as people who couldn’t name a book about China’s history, let alone read one, if you put a gun to their head are now trying to compare the protests in Hong Kong to the Black lives matter movement.  They are claiming that Africans like LeBron are silent on Hong Kong which they are arguing is a contradiction.  Nevermind that there is no analysis of the Britain’s colonial relationship to Hong Kong and the agreement Britain signed with China to return Hong Kong to China (where it rightfully belongs) in 2047.  No discussion about the fact the decline of capitalism is clearly the reason for any reduction in life for people in Hong Kong, not the imminent return to mainland China which isn’t even going to happen for another 27 years.
​
The point tying all of this together is the imagery of the NBA over the last couple of months has been nice, but as is always going to be the case in capitalism, they will always give you little concessions, but eventually, its always going to be back to business as usual.  This will continue to be the case until people start getting serious about getting involved in ongoing organizational work to build capacity to fight back against injustice on a protracted and ongoing basis.  Otherwise, again its like Malcolm told us.  “You been bamboozeled!”

1 Comment
Ms A
10/13/2020 06:53:56 pm

Insightful! Will see what changes in next season.

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    Picture

    Author

    I don't see disagreement as a negative because I understand that Frederick Douglass was correct when he said "there is no progress without struggle."  Our brains are muscles.  Just like any other muscle in our body if we don't stress it and push it, the brain will not improve.  Or, as a bumper sticker I saw once put it, "If you can't change your mind, how do you know it's there?"

    Archives

    April 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    December 2024
    November 2024
    March 2023
    February 2023
    January 2023
    June 2022
    March 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.