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.
Bill Russell dealt with extreme levels of racism during his tenure in Boston - he called it a flea market of racism in his memoir. The sentiment that Boston as a racist city isn't a new concept in sports.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/early-lead/wp/2017/05/03/a-flea-market-of-racism-black-athletes-on-playing-in-boston-over-the-years/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.a93d6190761d
There’s a distinction between the city (at times racist; in some locations it still is) and the franchise (very progressive in terms of black players / coaches)
That's a nice concept, albeit a flawed one from an optics standpoint. The franchise can be as progressive as it wants, but it still has the cloud over it of being located in a historically racist city. For some players, there's no distinction to be made between Boston and the Boston Celtics.
Please name a historically *non-racist* major city.
Birnin Zana, also known as 'The Golden City'.
Ya got me!
In all seriousness, I know what RJ87 was saying, she (I think RJ87 is female?) is quite an intelligent poster here. It is just frustrating to me the reputation that Boston has. Of course it has a racist history and still has tons of racist activity- but so does every city in America and seemingly every city outside America.
Boston also has a lot of civil rights triumphs, because there are a lot of strong and good people to make up for the racists. I don't see how Boston is inherently more racist than anywhere else- China for example has a problem with racism that we never hear about, for example- and yet time and time again, it gets (in my opinion) scapegoated as some American face of racism.
As someone who is not afraid to call people out when they are treating others like crap for no good reason, I acknowledge the problems in Boston, but get frustrated when the whole city seemingly gets lumped together as a bunch of racists.
And that figure about Bostonians saying the city is racist- this is one of the bluest states in the country. A highly leftist population would self-report this kind of thing a lot more aggressively. Not saying it isn't true, only that it's a statistic that tells you as much about Boston self-assessment and politics as it does about racism. A city full of racists would probably get a lower 'racism score' because most would deny it or lie about it because they aren't concerned.