The principal owner of the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks announced on Sunday afternoon that he is selling his stake in the team due to a highly inflammatory email he sent to several of the team’s senior officials in 2012.
In a statement released through the team, Hawks co-managing partner and majority owner, Bruce Levenson, said that in 2012 he emailed minority owners Todd Foreman, Ed Peskowitz, and general manager Danny Ferry to throw out some ideas about how to improve attendance at Hawks games. The Hawks missed the playoffs for eight years in a row from 1999 to 2007, and their attendance figures have never recovered. That email, Levenson said, contained a number of “clich?d assumptions” about Hawks’ fans tastes based on their race and contained stereotyped perceptions that white fans were scared of black fans. He admitted that the email sent the “unintentional and hurtful message” that white fans were more valuable than black fans. In July–during the furor over Los Angeles Clippers then-owner Donald Sterling’s horribly racist remarks–Levenson self-reported the email to the NBA, which launched an independent investigation. Levenson cooperated fully with the investigation. Ultimately, he decided “after much long and difficult contemplation” to sell his interest in the Hawks.
In the email, Levenson said that part of the problem was that white males who were between 35 and 55 years old–“the primary demo(graphic) for season tickets around the league”–were scared off by the large number of black fans at Hawks games. He pointed out that since buying the team from Ted Turner in 2005, crowds at Hawks games have been somewhere around 40 to 70 percent black, the dance team is almost entirely black, and the performers at postgame concerts are usually hip-hop and gospel acts. He also said that blacks don’t have nearly as much disposable income as whites do. As a comparison, he pointed out that when his group owned the NHL’s Atlanta Thrashers, sales at the concession stands and team store were nearly three times what they were at Hawks games. Levenson and his group bought the Thrashers along with the Hawks in 2005 but sold the Thrashers to a Canadian-based group in 2011 who moved them to Winnipeg as the second incarnation of the Winnipeg Jets. He urged Foreman, Peskowitz, and Ferry to figure out ways to get more white fans to games.
To his credit, Levenson criticized fans who claimed that the area around the Hawks’ home arena, Philips Arena, is “dangerous.” As he saw it, it was a polite way of saying there were too many blacks at games. Nonetheless, Levenson now says that the rest of the email was a steaming pile of “inflammatory nonsense,” and that he had failed in his duty as a leader to challenge racial stereotypes. He pointed out that he believes the NBA should have “zero tolerance” for racism. Indeed, he was one of the first owners to call for Sterling to be thrown out of the league. Sterling was banned from the NBA for life in April, and was forced to sell the Clippers to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in August.
The thing that surprises me is that Levenson’s comments didn’t come to light much sooner, especially given the chaos?that ensued after it emerged that Sterling didn’t like having black fans attend Clippers games. Regardless, Levenson looks several times better than Sterling from where I’m sitting. For one thing, Levenson didn’t accuse Atlanta’s black leaders of not doing enough to help their fellow minorities. Sterling, if you’ll recall, took a swipe at Magic Johnson for not giving enough back to his community in an interview with Anderson Cooper that was supposed to be an apology.
Levenson didn’t make any attempt at equivocation, nor did he engage in any of this “sorry if anyone was offended” nonsense. He admitted what he did was wrong and fell on his sword. Hmm–maybe others in the business and political world who get caught making racially inflammatory statements should take note.
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edited by h/l
Darrell Lucus, also known as Christian Dem in NC at Daily Kos, is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
