Revolution#133, June 22, 2008
Talk by Bob Avakian – available online
The NBA: Marketing the Minstrel Show and Serving the Big Gangsters
Whether or not you’re into basketball, the talk “The NBA: Marketing the Minstrel Show and Serving the Big Gangsters” will open your mind to some revealing truths—through humor, anecdotes, and science. This talk is one of the “7 Talks” by Bob Avakian, pathbreaking explorations in communist theory and its application to a broad range of questions. The “7 Talks” can be found online at bobavakian.net and revcom.us.
Avakian begins the talk with a discussion of minstrel shows in the history of America, in which performers—usually whites in blackface make-up, but sometimes Blacks with blackface—presented a buffoonish caricature of African Americans. Drawing from a book by author Mel Watkins (On the Real Side), Avakian notes how minstrelsy provided overtly racist whites as well as whites more broadly with the opportunity to be “entertained” by degrading depictions of Black people, in a way that was clearly non-threatening, and which allowed whites the “luxury of remaining aloof” while reinforcing their sense of superiority.
As Avakian gets into, these insights about minstrelsy are directly relevant to understanding the nature and role of the NBA and the ways in which it reflects, and in certain ways helps reinforce, white supremacy and overall oppressive relations in U.S. society. Avakian points to a major shift in marketing strategy by the NBA—a multi-billion dollar capitalist enterprise—in the early 1980s. Since that time, the main target “demographic”—in terms of who attends the game as well as who the TV ads are aimed at—has become overwhelmingly white, corporate, suburban, and well-off. But there is a stark contradiction here, given that the league is made up overwhelmingly of Black players.
The NBA’s “resolution” to this contradiction has been to make sure that the young Black men who play in the league are kept under control—so that they remain non-threatening to the main target audience of wealthier whites. This control is exercised through dress codes and other rules as well as a “devil’s bargain” where the players know, or are made to understand, that if they step out of line, no matter how “big” they are, they could quickly find themselves “back where they came from.” And an integral part of this setup is the whole element of “fakeness” and rigging, where the NBA makes sure that the outcome of important games, especially the playoffs, are NOT determined by what the players and coaches are capable of doing in actual competition with each other. Avakian brings out this reality through various lively examples.
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