The NBA Draft will soon take place on Thursday, June 22nd, which means that in a few days a select group of young men will see their lives transformed. Given the demographics of the NBA, a high percentage of these draftees will be young black men. In particular, the University of Washington’s Markelle Fultz and UCLA’s Lonzo Ball could be selected early by the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers, respectively, and add to the rich history of the NBA. Year-after-year, I have always enjoyed watching young, black soon-to-be-millionaires claim their new jerseys, fortune, and fame. However, since there seem to be more and more black boys who have become household names for all the wrong reasons, it will be disorienting watching this year’s NBA Draft as I think about the players' contemporaries who were not even allowed to try on their young adulthood.
Michael Brown could not run faster than a speeding bullet. Trayvon Martin could not shoot. And Tamir Rice did not have a killer crossover. These boys were thus dispensable in the eyes of many.
They were not the type of black boys whose bodies made them prized, potential superstars by the time they entered high school. They were not the type of boys that businesses salivated at the chance to employ. They were not the type of boys whom cities excitedly threw out a red carpet for and hoped to integrate into their communities. Rich kids in the suburbs did not want to walk in their shoes.
Whereas many basketball fans will pay attention to even the slightest injury that an NBA player suffers, whether it is his toe, ankle, elbow, or finger, many of these observers will not lose a second of sleep if they hear that an unathletic black human being was brutalized by racism. These same fans may obsess over their favorite players’ statistics like points, rebounds, and assists, but they could not care less if a black child with poor hand-eye coordination is racially insulted three times a month, stopped and frisked twice per year, or fatally abused once a lifetime.
Of course, even though NBA players may generate more societal concern than most of their peers, they will still never be completely free from the racism that can eviscerate financial force fields at a moment’s notice. For example, although a superstar like LeBron James has his pick of homes as an adult, his property was recently vandalized with the N-word. Furthermore, even though a player like Draymond Green has his dream job, he has still been racially harassed at work by customers. And NBA players like Thabo Sefolosha have also directly suffered from police brutality themselves.
Maybe it would actually be helpful for race relations overall if diehard NBA fans felt that the more progressive the country was, the better their new stars would perform once they entered the league. If NBA fans felt that young black men would shoot better, jump higher, or run faster if they did not have to worry about being racially profiled themselves, hearing about a family friend who was victimized by a racist stranger, or reading about a young woman who died under mysterious circumstances in police custody, then who knows how different the nation would be. After all, even the casual fans of black life would finally have a reason to ensure that real equality plays a role in their cities.
.
