Make sure you include her APOLOGY, CelticsElite.
ESPN’s Jemele Hill wrote this past Saturday that, "rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It’s like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan."
Apologies
Jemele Hill's personal apology:
"I deeply regret the comment I made in a column Saturday. In expressing my passion for the NBA and my hometown of Detroit I showed very poor judgment in the words that I used. I pride myself on an understanding of, and appreciation for, diversity - and there is no excuse for the appalling lack of sensitivity in my comments. It in no way reflects the person I am. I apologize to all of my readers and I thank them for holding me accountable. This has been an important lesson for me and illustrates that, like many people, I still have a lot of growing and learning to do."
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/31219-fool-me-onceespn-suspends-jemele-hill
If you REALLY care to read down further in that article, OP - you'd see CLEARLY why she made this comment. Does NOT make it right, but it echoes why MANY, MANY of my classmates while in high school hated BOS and wondered quite often why "I" loved BOS (they were African American, as I am).
Many of them loved The Lakers and Magic, Kareem...
I guess you can call me the odd ball - especially being that this was the 80s....Reagan in office, etc, etc...
LOOK - I'm not trying to send this thread off the rails but some folks here need to let stuff GO. She apologized, LOL.
I read it, and frankly I regret it. It's a crescendo of nonsense: "Rooting for the Celtics is like supporting inflation, unemployment and locusts. It's like praying for Eva Mendes to get married and for Brad Pitt to be disfigured."
i/We all know the facts here, which is the first team to draft an African American and the first team to have an African American coach. And if we are going to discuss racism in America, few places can boast to have had the anti-slavery activism of Boston in the in pre Civil War era. I understand the peer pressure you were under at school, and how intimidating this might have been at the time, but these facts have more relevance to the Celtics identity than the stereotypes of teenage students.
As for Hill's claim of Massachusetts being "responsible" for Reagan, that's plain nonsense. In 1980, Reagan won everywhere except seven states, so she might as well "blame" the whole US. In Mass. Reagan got 0.15% over Jimmy Carter. For comparison, Reagan won by more than 6% in Michigan. (To be clear I do not consider Reagan to be the devil or these numbers to have any deep significance, if anything I abhor this misuse of data. But if Hill is going to write a libel she should at least spend 5 mins on Wikipedia to check her facts).
ii/ Not all Celtics fans are from Boston. I can't stress this enough. If someone has a problem with the city, good, go ahead and make your case with evidence.
iii/ It's bigotry that uses lies to spread. Unfortunately, sports fans everywhere repeat unfounded stories to the point of unsuspecting people starting to take them seriously. Over here in Greece, there is a fabricated story about Panathinaikos playing a friendly game with the SS during the German Occupation. This has been repeatedly demonstrated to be a hoax, but the rumours continue because there are enough bad journalists to keep them alive. The similarity is stark because Panathinaikos fans are also stereotyped as urban, middle class and conservative (despite a heap of evidence suggesting that all sorts of people support the team, just as it happens with the Celtics). Good journalism is about responsibility and knowledge. I don't see either in Hill.