Sometimes It’s Just About Business, Racial And Not Racist

Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson

After reading Atlanta Hawks majority owner Bruce Levenson’s email from 2012 that was labeled, “racially insensitive” in many headlines I was puzzled to why he felt the need to sell the team.  His choice of words could have been better, but I wasn’t personally offended by his remarks.  The email came off as a ramble.  It doesn’t negate the observations and concerns he had owning a team. 

According to Hawks CEO Steven Koonin, the Hawks held a meeting in early June to discuss potential free-agent targets. General Manager Danny Ferry cited a background report that included an "offensive and racist" remark about a player.  Yahoo! Sports and the Journal-Constitution reported in subsequent reports Monday, quoted Ferry as saying of Deng: "He is still a young guy overall. He is a good guy overall. But he is not perfect. He's got some African in him. And I don't say that in a bad way."

After the meeting, one of the Hawks' stakeholders called for an internal investigation based on the remark being in the team's research of a player, which lead to Levenson’s email being discovered.

Many business' use words such as “demographics” to justify their approach.  Whole Foods grocery stores and 4-5 star restaurants are one end of town and liquor stores and checking cashing establishments on the other side for a reason.  These business owners want profits, they will pick locations to customers that their respective businesses are convenient for and will support, like it or not.  In many instances those reasons touch on class and race and when it is publicly revealed it touches on the sensitivities we have. 

The Atlanta Braves announced in November 2013 they were moving to Cobb County, GA outside of Atlanta bucking the trend of building stadiums downtown.  The Braves claim their fan base is out in the suburbs. They claim there’s “nothing around” [Turner Field, current stadium] that people want to go to.  Atlanta said no when the Braves asked for hundreds of millions of dollars to make improvements or build a new stadium. So, the Braves found a place that would give them their $392 million.  They made a business decision.

Levenson states in the e-mail in reference to season ticket sales being low:

“…I was told it is because we can't get 35-55 white males and corporations to buy season tixs and they are the primary demo for season tickets around the league. when I pushed further, folks generally shrugged their shoulders. then I start looking around our arena during games and notice the following:

— it's 70 pct black

— the cheerleaders are black

— the music is hip hop

— at the bars it's 90 pct black

— there are few fathers and sons at the games

— we are doing after game concerts to attract more fans and the concerts are either hip hop or gospel.

Then I start looking around at other arenas. It is completely different. Even DC with its affluent black community never has more than 15 pct black audience."

He mentions further in the email that he is not threatened or heard any incidents at the games, but knows that white southerners may not have a comfort level.  He raised the issue of disposable income that differ in the black and white communities in Atlanta.  I live in the Washington, DC area, which has an affluent black middle class.  The difference is that Atlanta, GA is a southern city and state and race relations there are much different than a transient city like DC.

This is coming off the tail end of Donald Sterling and the Pandora’s box it could open that Mark Cuban was concerned about.  "I think there's a [league] constitution for a reason, right?" Cuban said before Game 4 of the Mavericks-San Antonio Spurs series. "Because this is a very slippery slope. What Donald said was wrong. It was abhorrent. There's no place for racism in the NBA, any business I'm associated with, and I don't want to be associated with people who have that position.  But at the same time, that's a decision I make. I think you've got to be very, very careful when you start making blanket statements about what people say and think, as opposed to what they do. It's a very, very slippery slope.”

These are discussions that every business owner has especially when offering entertainment, product and/or services.  That is why when you turn on a program like “The Voice” on NBC they always make sure they have a black male and white female as judges along with Adam Levine and Blake Shelton whether it was Usher, CeeLo Green, Pharrell Williams or Christina Aguilera, Shakir, and Gwen Stefani.  They desire to appeal to a broad audience and those respective artists represent different genres.  Is that racist or sexist or a thoughtful business decision?  I would say the latter. 

I watched CNN drill the mayor and Police Chief in Ferguson, MO regarding the lack of police officers in the city coming off the tragic death of Michael Brown.  They both explained the lack of black applicants.  St. Louis, MO is only 20 minutes away and their police force offers better opportunities.  The residual affect of that impacted Ferguson not having police offers that could relate to the community they serve.  The Michael Brown tragedy as been well documented and discussed ad nauseam.  But the issue of black officers in Ferguson speaks to the issues of those who run the city and police department have to face and think of ways to solve that involve race.

As Kareem Abdul-Jabbar stated in his piece for Time magazine, business people should have the right to wonder how to appeal to diverse groups in order to increase business. They should even be able to make minor insensitive gaffs if there is no obvious animosity or racist intent. This is a business email that is pretty harmless in terms of insulting anyone — and pretty fascinating in terms of seeing how the business of running a team really works.

Unfortunately for Levenson a scouting report about a player resulted in an investigation that revealed his email.  The comments in the scouting report are offensive, Levenson’s email context was not the same but somehow the two got lumped together and now he felt forced to sell the team.  I am hoping we can get to the point that when a comment or issue is racial it doesn’t make it racist. 

It is easy to get intellectually lazy and not look for context behind comments.  The majority of commentaries I have seen in reference to Levenson appear to see the difference.    Levenson was addressing the issue that was affecting the profits for his business, the NBA with a predominately black league and marketing to a broad audience and corporate sponsors.