Sports Blog Wars
I’m Jewish; Nazis suck. But I also recognize that had Hitler not pussied out on Operation Sea Lion and invaded the UK, we’d all be speaking German. Likewise, had he not gone south to annex Czech-ville before heading to the USSR, the German Army may well have taken Stalingrad pre-winter and we’d all be sprechen deutsch. Actually, I’d never have been born, but whatevs.
Somehow, our boy ‘Dolf came up in a b-ball column on ESPN’s website a few weeks ago. A black woman, Jemele Hill, compared rooting for my beloved Celtics as akin to rooting for Hitler. What I think she meant was that it was like rooting for Citi or GE, but her next sentence featured Gorby, so she was on a politically metaphorical level. It was a dumb statement, that’s all.
But these b-ball fans at Red’s Army ran a “Let’s Get Jemele Hill Fired” post:
For those who don’t know,Jemele Hill is a horrible sports journalist. I once watched her host Jim Rome’s show and thought to myself, “A high-school kid could do a better job.” She’s attacking the Celtics in her latest ESPN Page 2 column…but here’s a line sure to piss some people off:
“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.”
Amazingly, that line made it past the editors at ESPN.com (Journalism 101 - Rule 1.1 - Never reference Hitler). As Deadspin so deftly points out, someone finally had the smarts to take it down. For me, that’s not good enough. Let’s email ESPN and demand Hill be fired for the simple reason that we shouldn’t be exposed to her garbage any longer.
Jemele got fired, and gave this interview:
You posted something on your personal blog saying you got e-mails calling you the N-word. How many such e-mails did you get?
A lot. But I hesitate to get into that because I’m not a victim and I don’t want it to come off like I’m saying, ‘Oh, look what happened to me.’ These are the consequences of my action. It doesn’t give anybody the right to call me that, and this is the nastiest batch of mail I’ve received, ever, in my 11-year career. But I don’t want that to be the focus.
To which Red’s Army responded:
I’m hoping… HOPING… that none of you sent that sort of email to her. If you did… I would invite you to never come back. That beyond worse than what she wrote. What she wrote was dumb. What people said in those emails was disgusting and hateful. It kills me to read things like that.
I just don’t get people sometimes.
In between these episodes (Red A’s firing campaign, her firing, the n*gger emails, and Red A’s denouncing of n*gger emails), we at Med A engaged in a battle with Red’s A over whether Boston was a racist city. Red A accused Anthony of using generalizations when describing Boston’s racism. In fact, Anthony used specifics. He along with many others at Med A have seen the Boston police single out people of color for lesser crimes than we were committing at the exact same time. We’ve seen entire black neighborhoods paved over to make way for college dorms. And so on.
Red’s A countered by saying: “Racism, obviously, still exists in EVERY city… not just Boston. Boston has gone to great lengths to combat it. But times change… and even incidents of racism in certain cities shouldn’t color the entire city as racist.”
Actually, few northern cities are as racially segregated as Boston. Fewer still have as deep a pervading mistrust of one another as Boston’s blacks and whites.
Finally, it seems Red A’s campaign against Hill led to many-a-racist emails, further proving that racism is a Boston forte. Red’s A should have listened to us when we said a crusade of protest against a young, female, black sportswriter would lead to further racism. We suggested their petition would be better directed at, say, the genocide in Darfur or crisis in Zimbabwe. Or maybe they should have just stuck to sports writing and not ventured into journalism ethics.
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June 26th, 2008 at 12:42 am
It’s easy to sit there and say “Boston Is Racist” because that’s the perception and few will disagree. But, you can go into any city… north, south, east, or west… and find someone who got let go by a racist cop… or some neighborhood that didn’t want some ethnic tribute.
So yes, I still contend that sniping from the belltower and calling Boston racist is lazy… and it continues to be. The issue of race in Boston is no more pronounced than it is an any major city. Does racism exist in Boston? Yes… as it does in many other cities. Are you really going to say New York, Los Angeles and Chicago are less racist? Can’t we come up with multiple displays of racism (and even more violent ones) in those other cities?
So please, stop perpetuating the lazy stereotype that Boston is racist. It paints its majority of decent residents with a very ugly brush that is not deserved. Yes, work needs to be done… but its the same work that needs to be done in every American city.
June 26th, 2008 at 2:40 am
I spent a good amount of time in Boston in the early part of this decade and was immediately appalled about how white people so flippantly referred to black people as “niggers”, sometimes even by friends of mine. I quietly questioned them and it seems they were raised that way. I also figured that because Im from San Francisco I was disgusted by it because I come a from a super liberal area and that many cities were like this, but NYC and Chicago didn’t prove to be so open either, maybe its because you can get beaten or killed by saying words like that in those areas. Sorry but this basic form of racism pretty much has ended in many cities. It still exists in -other- ways, definitely, but white people calling black people the n-word isn’t something thats tolerated at all in cities the way it is in boston. Why wasn’t that guy ejected/beaten for calling Milton Bradley one in a game a couple years ago?
Are African Americans are so oppressed in Boston that they cant even fight back to end the basic racist dialogue? Looks that way to this guy…..”lazy stereotype”? There’s nothing lazy about wanting to end prejudice. The writer is from Boston, therefore is starting in his own backyard, why would he write about Miami or Houston?
June 26th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Actually, my opionion comes not from the belltower but from the “streets.” From 99-04, I worked selling bootleg t-shirts at Fenway and the Fleet (Yankees Suck, PJ Stock Asskicker, The Truth—that was me). Based on Boston’s policing—-which is an overall bellwhether for a politiy’s mechanism for justice—state-sponsored racism exists.
During that time I traveled to dozens of other cities in the US doing the very same thing. In EVERY other city, black guys were on the streets sellling tickets, hats, shirts etc. Boston was the only city to target black kids. This was per Boston Code Enforcement and BPD Captian Joe McDonald, admitting, “We don’t want the gangster kids down here. Fenway’s for families. You college kids, eh—it’s ok.” They said so!
Boston’s scalpers, of course, are related to BPD, so they get off free. So aside from crazy Wally (who was in and out of jail every Sox homestand), there isn’t a single black scalper in Boston.
Apply this to the areas around NU and BU, or to Back Bay and the North End. Once again, white kids run around wasted, fighting, destroying stuff and NEVER GET ARRESTED. Trust me, I was one of them for a long time. But as soon as the ghetto kids show up, the BPD is on them.
Now I live in New York, where the NYPD is just as racist, except they will actually arrest all criminals not just the black ones. College kids aren’t given a free pass—in fact, quality of life targets them.
This is not a myth. Boston remains a racist city, esp from a policing stand point.
Were Hill calling Knicks fans Hitler rooters, would as many n*gger emails have come in? I doubt it, though Long Island is pretty racist haha.
The point is, don’t ignite a public lynching of a black jounrnalist then be upste or surprised Boston fans called her a n*gger in droves.
June 26th, 2008 at 11:32 am
There’s no point in continuing this conversation. You are coming to a conclusion based on too small a sample. You see a few cops harrassing some black kids at Fenway Park… you add in Boston’s reputation… and then you’ve got a conclusion.
Boston is more than just the couple of city blocks on which you used to sell tshirts. And racism….. espeically the kind of institutionalized racism you’re so casually heaping on Boston… is far too complex to sum up in your myopic experience.
And quite frankly, I don’t appreciate the racial overtones you’re throwing on me by saying I ignited a “public lyinching of a black journalist.” That’s a blatant attempt to imply I myself am racist and I’m not going to fall for it. I’m calling you out on a cheap, dirty trick. And I find it laughable that this site would chide me on journalistic ethics in one post… then throw out such an inflammatory phrase in the other. Our beef was the equation of Celtics fans with Hitler sympathyzer. Her race was never mentioned in anything we did… and we even specifically told people to stick to topic when emailing her.
The laziness around here is astounding. You peer through a knot hole in the fence and make a conclusion about the whole yard. Then when you’re called on it, you make thinly veiled attempts to color me prejudiced with most inflammatory language you could use but still hide behind the literal wall of not calling me “racist”… but you know by saying I ignited a lynching would do just that.
I hope none of you are truly aspiring journalists…. the Murrows and Peabodys of the world would be rolling in their graves.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:42 pm
Too small a sample? I wrote a book about this shit (Babylon By Bus, Penguin Press 2006). For six years Boston’s black market economy was my life. Don’t question my methodology until you check who I am. I never wanted my home city to be racist. It is what it is.
And what BPD cops do you speak to? Really? Because when I was at Game 6, I was with Sgt Stockbridge, who was—big surprise–going after the Bronx kids who came up from NYC with bootleg tees.
Secndly, you did push for her firing—a black female journalist—in a city that has a horrible record on race relations. You did it, not me. I respnded by saying it was a waste of your time (she said something dumb and obviosly didn’t love Hitler). I said it would contribute to further racism, and that you should focus on other things.
Then you were shocked that people would call her a n*gger. So who was right?
Thrid, of course Hill’s race was involved: She was an anti-Imus/Nappy Ho commentator. It was on your site.
When you take on a petition to fire someone over a racial offense (ie Hitler), you must take into account the race of the person you’re demonizing. That was my point. If said person is black, and you’re attacking her—ne trying to ruin her 11-year career—in a city that historically has racial problems, “lynching” is an apt term.
I peered through 10 years of experience. I moved to Boston in 97 and have followed the city’s sports and black market culture since. I’ve written about it. It was my profession.
And finally, this is a blog. We aren’t using NYT standards. Were this for a magazine the voice and tone might be different. But the fact remains: We said going after a black female journalist who made a mistake would contribute to further racism—and it did. So you in effect tarnished Boston’s oh-so-glorious reputation on a national scale, not us.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
PS: That fence metaphor sucks.
June 29th, 2008 at 6:52 pm
As the originator of the Red’s Army post calling for Jemele Hill’s firing, I must say race was not a factor…at least in my mind. I called out Jemele for the horrible reference to Hitler…and would have done so if she were white, black, Jewish or Asian. It’s truly disturbing that you would use the term “lynching” in any context with this debate.
In response to this comment:
“Or maybe they should have just stuck to sports writing and not ventured into journalism ethics.”
It should be noted the two originators of Red’s Army are credible journalists (yes, we actually hold Bachelor’s degrees) who collectively have spent more than 20 years working in the Boston media. So I’m in my element.
Furthermore, in your post you stated Hill was fired, when in fact, she was suspended.
June 30th, 2008 at 11:31 am
Whenever you demonize an individual in regards to Hitler ( a racist murderer), said person’s race must come into account. By calling for Hill’s firing, you were personally launching a public attack—on a black woman. In a city like Boston, placing a black woman under the bus (pun intended) is a racial act. With Hitler is involved, it’s a political act too. No matter what your intentions, race and politics were issues in this case. And “lynching” certainly is an apt term given a headline of “Let’s Get J Hill Fired” over a Hitler post written by a black chick in f–king Boston…
What did you think would happen? Some nice letters to the editor? These are Boston sports fans…
Hill made a mistake. I said pushing for her firing would lead to further racism (given the context) and it did.
My mistake on saying Hill was fired. You guys run a fine site.