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Poll: Champs
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By David Shields, 1999.“The NBA is a place where…white fans and black players
enact and quietly explode virtually every racial issue
and tension in the culture at large. Race, the
league’s taboo topic, is the league’s true subject.”
Thus novelist and basketball fan David Shields begins
his exploration of race in the NBA, an arena where the
cultural script is flipped, where black men hold (or
at least share) power, where they are the majority,
and where they earn the big money.
While the subject of race bubbles away beneath the
slick, commercial veneer of the NBA and only
occasionally gets blown to the surface, (e.g. the NBA
dress code which a number of players opposed on the
grounds that it constituted an attack on black
culture) Shields tackles race head on by analysing the
relationship between the white fan and the black
player.
Following the Seattle Supersonics through the 1994-95
NBA season Shields, in diary form, chronicles his
assumptions, observations, and emotions as a fan, then
questions why, as a white man, he holds these views.
He looks at every aspect of the game, from the way
Shawn Kemp celebrates a vicious dunk to the antics of
the Sonics’ mascot to the dialogue between Kevin
Calabro (who is white) and Marques Johnson (who is
black) in the announcing booth. He looks at the way
players interact with each other and with “outsiders”.
He looks closely at the way the Sonics are treated by
sports writers and commentators, by the fans who voice
their opinions on sports shows and message boards.
The result is a study of racial tensions, divisions,
myths, misconceptions and stereotypes in a game which
Shields sees as a “photo negative” of contemporary
America. It is honest, unguarded stuff, brave in its
provocativeness and remarkable for its deeply
personnel accounts.
But while Shields’ analysis makes a number of
interesting points regarding the white fans quest to
relate to the players, (points which were particularly
relevant at the time with the emergence of the NBA’s
“generation X” in the early 2000s) it often feels as
though Shields is reaching; that he is searching too
hard for the racial subtext in the game’s minutiae.
Towards the end of the book, Shields questions this
himself: “Is race racing through Calabro’s mind every
time he talks to Johnson, or am I just imagining it?
Is race on my brain, and am I screwed up?”
Because the account is a series of diary entries
offering disjointed thoughts with largely meaningless
chapter divisions, the book never reaches a
satisfactory conclusion. Instead, like the Sonics’
season, the book peters out, leaving you wondering if
you missed something.
However, while Shields fails to make a coherent
message regarding race relations in America, there are
still passages in the book that are gems, particularly
regarding the nature of fandom: “Why do I care so
much?” he asks. “It’s a safe love, this love….it’s a
frenzy in a vacuum, a completely imaginary love affair
in which the beloved is forever larger than life.”
To Shields being a fan is not just a “love affair”
with the game of basketball or an obsession with the
Sonics position in the standings. It is the players
(particularly Gary Payton, Shields’ antihero)
language, their swagger, their confidence, the way
they refuse to change themselves for fans and media
that Shields loves, admires and wishes to emulate.
Watching the NBA’s “concentration of triumphant
blackness” is escapism for the white, middle class
fan. A Sonics game is an arena separate from the
sickly liberal, socially conscious Seattle where a fan
can forget his “whiteness”, his insecurities and the
weight of his social straightjacket.
Black Planet is certainly not your typical sports book
and it doesn’t pretend to be. It is less about the
sport and more about what the sport means to the fan.
While overly ambitious and bogged down by
over-analysis, it is a rare look at the NBA from a
perspective that many sports writers would be fearful
to think about, let alone write about.
Post your comment
Comments (2 posted)
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Posted by michael, 25 September, 2007 23:26:32Check out Amazon, Dandy. They should have a copy in stock.
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Posted by Dandy, 25 September, 2007 23:21:40i haven't red the bk it sounds interesting. where can i by it
The Point
