Proposed All-White Basketball League Claims It’s Not About Race

Every so often a news item comes along so absurd that you must shake your fists at our nation’s fiction and satire writers for not preparing us for something so plainly outlandish and contradictory. And so it is with the All-American Basketball Alliance, a start-up basketball league open only to American-born males who were born to no fewer than two white parents (I would assume no greater either). The league wants to start its opening season in June with “licensees” in 12 cities (the league will own all the teams). It just ran the idea by officials in Augusta, Georgia, and was flatly rejected. Possibly because the idea is ridiculous on its face and backed up by reasoning couched in the language of imagined white persecution. Oh, but it’s totally not racist, according to its founders. ↵↵⇥Don “Moose” Lewis, the commissioner of the AABA, said the reasoning behind the league’s roster restrictions is not racism. ↵⇥↵⇥“There’s nothing hatred about what we’re doing,” he said. “I don’t hate anyone of color. But people of white, American-born citizens are in the minority now. Here’s a league for white players to play fundamental basketball, which they like.” ↵⇥

↵⇥↵⇥Lewis said he wants to emphasize fundamental basketball instead of “street-ball” played by “people of color.” He pointed out recent incidents in the NBA, including Gilbert Arenas’ indefinite suspension after bringing guns into the Washington Wizards locker room, as examples of fans’ dissatisfaction with the way current professional sports are run. ↵⇥

↵⇥↵⇥“Would you want to go to the game and worry about a player flipping you off or attacking you in the stands or grabbing their crotch?” he said. “That’s the culture today, and in a free country we should have the right to move ourselves in a better direction.” ↵⇥

↵↵↵Ah, so much racial coding in just a few paragraphs. As though white basketball players aren’t capable of or haven’t already done the things they’re bemoaning. As tempting as it is to rail against the wrongheadedness of this idea, it’s moot. You’re not going to find a locality willing to financially support a sports league based on racial exclusion. And if you can, then woe to them. Still, the league will be derided and protested as it should until it and those behind it creep back into their hole. ↵

↵↵(H/T to With Leather) ↵

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