NBA News: Prejudiced E-Mail Ends Atlanta Hawks Ownership

Whenever we are asked to accept a lie, to purchase it, to embrace it, whenever we are asked to suspend everything we know about race and class and its 200 years of American privilege, something unexpected happens to jar us back into the reality of a prejudiced world. Hello Donald Sterling. Hello Bruce Levenson.

Apr 29, 2014; Los Angeles, CA, USA; Clyde Davis, of Long Beach, at a demonstration in front of Staples Center demanding the sale of the team. The NBA handed down a lifetime ban on Clipper owner Donald Sterling after it was confirmed that he made racist statements capture on a recording by his girlfriend. The Clippers and Warrior play game five of the first round of the 2014 NBA Playoffs at Staples Center. Mandatory Credit: Robert Hanashiro-USA TODAY Sports

Bruce Levenson, owner of the Atlanta Hawks, self- reported to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver a race-baiting e-mail he had written.

Levenson, a billionaire,  created his wealth through the information technology sector which he began as a co-partner in 1977. (He launched his firm in a storage room above his father’s Washington D.C.’s liquor store). United Communications Group grew to assist clients in the areas of healthcare, energy, telecommunications and financial services.

Levenson’s educational background began in journalism at the Washington Star.  As evidenced over decades, a quality journalist has the ability to attach their lens to a variety of political, social and worldly perspectives absent of judgment and bias. So how does one trained in the ethics of journalism write an e-mail that elevates and nurtures stereotypes and racial fears ingrained in American culture?

Levenson’s e-mail to general manager Danny Ferry is the reason for his downfall and the ultimate reason he has to sell. The e-mail was written in 2012; the chronology is irrelevant. Donald Sterling’s exile has put every sports league and everyone in it on notice. There is no statue of limitations and the consequences can be decisive. Privilege no longer has rewards, especially in a financial empire in which the labor is predominately African American and the owners are wealthy and white. It is not an equal balance of power and that is not what is at stake here anyway.

A few months ago there was the lie of omission the NBA tried to perpetuate. Defrocked owner Donald Sterling, they said, was an exception to the rule. He was an owner whose radicalized views on race were grounded in his very tortured, monomaniac personal history. It was specific only to him. Donald Sterling’s view on minorities in the general sense and his views on his paying customers in the specific sense, were a byproduct of an out of touch owner who was xenophobic. Omitting the rest of the members of the Billionaire Boys Club was a purposeful strategy by Adam Silver though many players privately wondered if their team’s owner thought like Sterling?

One of the persisting images of the fall of Donald Sterling was his age: 80. He was nurtured in an America in which segregation was legal, preferred, and endorsed, where the White Citizens Council was a proud organization, where lynchings never made the news outside of the black press. When Rosa Parks refused to abandon her front seat on bus #1132, Donald Sterling was 21 years old. When 4 little girls were killed inside the 16th Street Baptist Church by way of bombing, Donald Sterling was 29 years old. When Martin Luther King was murdered on a Memphis balcony, Donald Sterling was 34 years old. But as he aged the racial ideology that upheld his privilege no longer fit the changing world.

Jun 12, 2014; Miami, FL, USA; NBA commissioner Adam Silver prior to game four of the 2014 NBA Finals between the Miami Heat and the San Antonio Spurs at American Airlines Arena. Mandatory Credit: Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports

Bruce Levinson was born in a different era than Sterling but his thought is the same; that is the cruel irony of how generations separate one another and at the same time they support one another, siphoning off nothing. Shifts in decades affect little in regards to assumptions. In Levenson’s e-mail he outlined the fear of white southerners that is so dated you may have read the same thing about Bear Bryant when he wanted to integrate Alabama football in the 1970’s. Predictably, there is the marginalization of black personhood even as money doesn’t discriminate. Perhaps Levenson was not aware of that technicality.

Levenson goes on to say in his e-mail that in 9 years of ownership he is not aware of one single incident of crime around Phillips Arena, where the Atlanta Hawks play, as if the absence of malice is somehow abnormal but a relief. It says more about the pathology of entitled and prejudiced men of Levenson’s standing than of the ordinary people who congregate and pay to be entertained by basketball.

The e-mail pleads his case: affluent blacks are too small in numbers to be a season ticket base. He wants white cheerleaders and white fans on the Kiss Cam and white participants in the fan contests at Atlanta Hawks games. The customers are 70% black. The surrounding bars are 90% black. The music is hip hop. There are few fathers and sons at the games. His moaning continues.The after concert games are hip-hop or gospel. Clearly, as Bruce Levenson sees it, this is not a post-racial world, nor does he want it to be.

Two things are obvious. First, regarding affluent blacks. Clearly Levenson has not been to a Mercedes or BMW dealership, he has not been to Buckhead, Cascade or Stone Mountain neighborhoods, he is clearly unaware of the southern history of Spelman College and Morehouse College and Morehouse Medical School that routinely churns out black professionals with the affluence to purchase million dollar homes, vacations to Paris and season tickets. But did Levenson ever consider that young, black, educated and moneyed professionals don’t want to buy season tickets because the Hawks are garbage. Intelligent and fiscally savvy, they looked at the product and said no thank you.

Secondarily, the e-mail reveals a culture Bruce Levenson is uncomfortable in even as he profits from it. I am struck by his honesty because it is sobering, the idea that like Sterling, Levinson is just one more rich guy who is having trouble living in the current times. That is an obvious explanation. What is incontrovertible is Levenson as one more rich guy who sees the members of his very private club shrinking and shrinking and so he unleashed his sword.

The NBA has a problem. Donald Sterling was easy to loathe, his empire was based upon discriminatory practices and he profited from prejudice. It was easy to stand at the bully pulpit, as Adam Silver did a few months ago, and create a villain (Sterling) and create a hero (Silver and the other NBA owners). But now what? Bruce Levenson is a philanthropist. He was once president of I Have a Dream foundation which pays for underserved minorities to attend college. He is on the board of Hoop Dreams Foundation which encourages minorities to achieve academically. He is not a villain, he is not a revolting Donald Sterling archetype.

Bruce Levenson is affluent like every other NBA owner. He has a primary black clientele which makes his stomach hurt. And he feels marginalized in the absence of white superiority. The only thing missing from Levenson’s e-mail was asking Danny Ferry to sign more white players because, well, that would bring in the white customers. Wouldn’t it?