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<div class="entry-date">Weekend Edition May 2-4, 2014<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/02/racism-in-sports/">http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/05/02/racism-in-sports/</a><br>
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<div class="subheadlinestyle"><big><big><b>Not Donald Sterling But the
Washington “Redskins”</b></big></big></div>
<h1 class="article-title">Racism in Sports</h1>
<div class="mainauthorstyle"><big><big>by AJAMU BARAKA</big></big></div>
<div class="main-text"><big><big> </big></big>
<p><big><big>The hypocrisy of race discourse in the U.S. is
breathtaking. A week after Cliven Bundy, the white supremacist rancher
in Nevada, voiced his views on slavery and the current plight of
urban-based black communities that many white Americans either believe
or have considered, the public is now collectively outraged by the
silly, racist comments of NBA massa Donald Sterling. We are all
supposed to pretend that his views on the social undesirability of
associating with black people were something that just emerged from his
sick imagination and not a sentiment shared (though not openly spoken)
in polite white society.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>But what really reveals the superficiality and dishonesty
of the supposed outrage about racism in U.S. society and in sports is
the complete cognitive dissociation between this outrage against black
people and the ongoing degrading assault in the world of sport on the
Indigenous people of this land.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Indigenous people of this territory called the United
States have for years, as a simple matter of dignity, been involved in
efforts to remove the racist names, mascots and other practices in
major league and college sports that have perpetuated their
de-humanization, with only mixed success. In the last few years, a
major focus of these efforts was to change the name of the D.C.-based
football team, the Washington Redskins – something one might think
would be completely obvious in 2014. But the campaign has met with
fierce resistance. Why?</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>How is it that people can pretend to be outraged by
Sterling’s comments, while the owners of the Redskins and the Atlanta
“Braves” are not questioned as to why they insist on defending brands
that Native peoples and others have condemned as racially offensive?
Not only do the names remain in place, but they are defended by large
cross-sections of society, including by many African Americans.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Not seeing or making the link between these two issues
illustrates for me that the discourse on anti-racism in the U.S. is not
to be taken seriously. These “conversations,” whether it is Obama’s
pathetic appeal to white vanity and defense of integrationism in his
“race speech” or the current discussion around the meaning of the movie
<i>Twelve Years a Slave</i>, reveal themselves as phony, diversionary
and racist exercises. Rather than advancing change, they provide cover
for the real element that must be identified, deconstructed and
abolished – the ideology of white supremacy and the material privileges
that come along with it.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>When the ideology of white supremacy that permeates all
aspects of culture, politics and social being in the U.S. is reduced to
a focus on the more crude expressions of anti-black racism, it is easy
to jump on a Sterling, Cliven Bundy, or Ted Nugent and completely miss
the more pervasive, and thus insidious, structural and ideological
expressions of white supremacy. I couldn’t care less about the racist
rants of Donald Sterling when the more devastating expressions of
white supremacy are reflected in national and global institutions
dedicated to upholding the power of a racialized, white male,
capitalist/colonialist elite.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>Those expressions are reflected in the racist NATO assault
on Libya; IMF-imposed structural adjustment to force the “profligate
natives” in the global South to stop wasting state resources on such
trivialities as education, the arts, sports and health; the
rationalizations for the West’s “responsibility to protect;” the
accepted racist musings of Charles Murray on black culture and
educational ability; and the racist obscenity of attempting to wipe out
a whole people and then subjecting their survivors to ridicule and
disrespect with sports team names. Is there really a big leap between
being unconcerned about the continued dehumanization of Native peoples
in the U.S. and being similarly unconcerned about U.S. drone state
terrorism that has killed thousands?</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big>The new slogan for the LA Clippers is “we are one.” It is
a slogan that captures the hypocrisy, dishonesty and denial that
characterizes the non-confrontation with the reality of white supremacy
and white power in the U.S. Something that I am sure the originators
of the slogan did not see or intend – but that is precisely the point.</big></big></p>
<big><big></big></big>
<p><big><big><em><strong>Ajamu Baraka</strong> is a long-time human
rights activist, writer and veteran of the Black Liberation, anti-war,
anti-apartheid and Central American solidarity Movements in the United
States. He is currently an Associate fellow at the Institute for
Policy Studies in Washington D.C.</em></big></big></p>
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