Despite the franchise’s groundbreaking racial history, hating the Boston Celtics used to be the birthright of black basketball fans everywhere. Now, like so much else, that is changing, too. Green is the new black.

Hating on the Celtics: You Know How We Do?
By David Aldridge

Among the things that have, until now, been universal truths in professional basketball:

·        Someone, every three years, will be compared to Michael Jordan. It will be a fallow comparison, and the poor fellow will soon be playing in Europe, if playing at all.

·        The Miami Heat, year in and year out, will have the finest dance team in the league.

·        Black people will hate the Boston Celtics.

It has been a contradictory relationship between African-Americans and the Cs, as they are known throughout the league. Boston was the first team to draft a black man (Chuck Cooper, in 1950). It was the first team to give a black man its head coaching job (Bill Russell, in 1968). The Celtics, who have won more titles than any team in league history (16), often did so with three and four black players on the court at the same time–when that wasn’t accepted practice among the league’s more racist owners, and their legendary coach and general manager, the late Red Auerbach, famously allowed his black players to walk when they refused to play in an exhibition game in Kentucky in 1961 after being refused service at a local restaurant.

Yet the Celtics have been a pariah for most of black America that pays attention to the NBA, and that’s much of black America.  And, now, the Celtics are again in the NBA Finals, with a chance to win their 17th championship tonight at home against the Lakers. Their home court, TD Banknorth Garden, will be filled to capacity. It will be loud. It will be intense.

And there will be a lot of black people wearing Celtics green.

Trust me, this is new. Having been to Boston a couple dozen times over the past two decades, one thing you never used to at Celtics games was many black folk. But last week, I watched in amazement as the Jumbotron scoreboard above the floor showed picture after picture of black fans rooting alongside their white counterparts for Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and the rest of the Celtics’ stars.

I saw black women, lots of black women, cheering and laughing. I don’t recall ever seeing a black woman at the Garden before that didn’t have a mop or a ladle in her hand. I wish I were making that up.

I have no empirical evidence. It’s anecdotal; like my friend Lanell, who lives in Atlanta, and who suddenly announced to me last week that she’s rooting for Boston. But it’s a real feeling. The old Boston Garden used to be filled with fans who had no problem calling Patrick Ewing an ape in front of black sportswriters. There surely are still many of that kind around. But it has felt much different this season.

 For the rest of the story, click here.

Tim Russert Dead

NBC Meet The Press host Tim Russert died suddenly of a heart attack on Friday. What do you think?

Grant Coopey,
Graffiti Remover
“He’s dead? But I just watched Meet The Press four years ago.”

Karen Burton,
Dog Groomer
“Anyone who thought Cheney was going to let him off the hook for his Valerie Plame testimony was kidding themselves.”

Matthew Dull,
Masseur
“You know who would have done a great job covering such a stately Beltway funeral? Tim Russert.”

Today’s photo of the day show Barack Obama along with Al Gore, who publicly endorsed  the presumptive nominee last night. Could he have chosen a more insignificant, uncourageous, or anticlimactic time to endorse Obama?

Today’s video of the day shows classic footage of Aretha Franklin singing “One Step”. This song was sampled in one of my favorite rap songs of all time…

What black people call white people…and it ain’t ‘whitey.’

Whiteygate
By Kim McLarin

And so continues the conundrum of being a post-racial black candidate in a still-very-racial world. To speak the truth about anything involving race is to be accused instantly of dragging out that famous racial deck we’ve all been dealt that stands us in such good stead in America.

The campaign of Barack Obama has had to rebut, not once but several times, the wild rumors that his wife Michelle used an insulting term for white people while railing from the pulpit of Trinity United Church in Chicago. His campaign has had to set up a website to refute the charge, and Obama himself has had to chastise mainstream reporters for spreading the lie.

What he hasn’t done—because he cannot if he wants to win the presidency—is roll out the clearest and most obvious knockdown of Whiteygate. Namely this: “When the hell was the last time you heard a black person call somebody ‘whitey?’”

I mean, come on. White man, please.

Speaking as a person who has been black all of my 40-plus years on the planet, I can say with some authority that no self-respecting black, African-American, Negro, colored or even “there’s only one race: the human race” person I know would use the word.

Not unless they were quoting Rush Limbaugh. Or maybe George Jefferson.

The accusation is insulting not only because it so clearly reveals the desperation of right-wing zealots terrified of losing their stranglehold on a gasping America by playing to baseline anxieties and sad, unfortunate fears of those hard-working white Americans we’ve heard so much about; but because, frankly, it’s so ham-fisted in its mendacity.

I mean, ‘Whitey?’

For the rest of the story, click here.