Oprah Will Have Another Chance to Buy an NBA Team
Another white guy has been revealed to have made some racial statement. As a result, he will sell his NBA team. Earlier this morning both NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson announced that Levenson would sell the team after he had informed Silver that he has written an email including what Levenson called " racial stereotypes".
In the email, which was sent to the team's General Manager and was meant to explain low attendance and lack of season ticket holders, Levenson claimedwhites were afraid of the black crowds and that there were not enough affluent blacks in the Atlanta area to make up for the lack of white season ticket holders. He also said Southern whites did not like to attends games because they did not like being the minority group in a crowd of black people. Levenson did say that some of what kept white fans fans from the game was just "racist garbage" and that he felt the claim that Philps Arena was in the wrong place was just code for there are too many black people. He later stated that there were too many black women as cheerleaders and that he wanted there to be more music that a 40 year old white guy would know because they were the team's season ticket holder base.
http://sports.yahoo.com/news/hawks-owner-bruce-levenson-to-sell-team-after-revealing-he-wrote-racist-email-155827737.html
Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson will sell the franchise after the revelation of a 2012 email he wrote stereotyping African-American fans.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver and Levenson made the announcement Sunday morning with joint statements. Silver discussed the issue with some owners late last week, but many other owners and team officials did not know of it until Sunday's announcement, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
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In the email, Levenson complains that too much of the Hawks' fan base at games is made up of black fans, keeping white fans from attending games.
"My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a signficant [sic] season ticket base," Levenson wrote in the email. "Please don't get me wrong. There was nothing threatening going on in the arean [sic] back then. I never felt uncomfortable, but I think southern whites simply were not comfortable being in an arena or at a bar where they were in the minority. On fan sites i would read comments about how dangerous it is around [Philips Arena] yet in our 9 years, I don't know of a mugging or even a pick pocket incident. This was just racist garbage. When I hear some people saying the arena is in the wrong place I think it is code for there are too many blacks at the games."
Levenson also complained the team had too many black cheerleaders.
"I have told them I want some white cheerleaders and while I don't care what the color of the artist is, i want the music to be music familiar to a 40 year old white guy if that's our season tixs [sic] demo," Levenson wrote in the email. "I have also balked when every fan picked out of crowd to shoot shots in some timeout contest is black. I have even bitched that the kiss cam is too black."
