Geez. I wasn't thinking about racial issues and stuff like that while writing that. I'm an European. There was no derogatory intent on my statement. And no insinuation whatsoever.
OK, fair enough. Things can be taken in differently different contexts (and different continents), and if no harm was meant, maybe my comment was too harsh.
Ghettos have been around well before the foundation of the US. Lighten up. Case closed.
Closed, hardly. Sure, there were ghettos in Europe long before the US existed. But this is a US-based blog about an American team in an American city in a North American league, and most of the members are obviously concentrated in the Boston area. So you should be aware of what "ghetto" means in modern US usage, and it's quite different from what it meant in Venice centuries ago.
Here in the US, it usually means a neighborhood in a city, where most of the residents are predominantly poor and Black. And in such neighborhoods, the economic and politial situation leads to land-use patterns that aren't conducive to a lot of the sports that are played at a high professional level, such as baseball, football (gridiron or soccer), or ice hockey. Basketball is common in American ghettos, and many NBA players grew up in ghettos.
There is a lot of terminology that is frequently used as commonly understood code words for racial stereotypes, and "ghetto" is very often used as a thinly-veiled racial slur. Other terms like street-baller and thug are only rarely used in reference to white players, and often there's intentional irony when they are so used. It's easy and all too common for players to be criticized in terms that imply that people who come from poor families or African ancestry behave badly because of their race or economic status.
The Celtics were despised by a great many Bostonians for years, as the first NBA team to draft a Black player, and the first NBA team to have a Black head coach. Black players were threatened and assaulted. In the 1980's, the Celtics were one of the "whitest" teams in the league, and a lot of people thought that was important and intentional. Some derided the team, others idolized them, for this real or imagined racial profiling. Racial relations are still a touchy issue, and there is a lot of history of tension in Boston and specifically with the Celtics. If you use loaded words that can be taken as racial slurs, it can exacerbate those tensions, even if you don't intend the words that way.
If you find that Americans sometimes say things that might be considered outrageous in Europe (which I think is the case), maybe that will help you understand what I'm talking about. I think it's good to understand the implications, and what may be inferred as racially insulting comments, even unintended. There is a lot of unpleasant history behind some of these issues and you can't simply dismiss them by saying that Americans should lighten up and stop seeing these issues. For many of us, these issues are real and in our faces on a daily basis. Pretending they don't matter is not going to make them go away.
Case still open.
Topic: Alston Suspended (merged threads, suspension on page 9) (Read 37222 times)