Kyle Korver Wrote A Fascinating Player's Tribune Piece On White Privilege In The NBA
There’s an elephant in the room that I’ve been thinking about a lot over these last few weeks. It’s the fact that, demographically, if we’re being honest: I have more in common with the fans in the crowd at your average NBA game than I have with the players on the court.
What I’m realizing is, no matter how passionately I commit to being an ally, and no matter how unwavering my support is for NBA and WNBA players of color….. I’m still in this conversation from the privileged perspective of opting in to it. Which of course means that on the flip side, I could just as easily opt out of it. Every day, I’m given that choice — I’m granted that privilege — based on the color of my skin.
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Kyle Korver wrote a long, thoughtful piece on race in The Players’ Tribune. I’ve included only a tiny part of it here because of copyright rules or something, but read the piece. There is a lot to digest. To begin, Korver has a unique perspective on race in the NBA because he is, as he acknowledges, one of the better-known white players in the league. He talks about the hostility of the crowd in Salt Lake City, about closed-door meetings with owners, and about his evolving mindset on racial issues in America. It’s a fascinating peek behind the curtain of racial tensions in the NBA.
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That paragraph I pasted above was the most interesting takeaway for me, about opting in to the conversation. That was an explanation of white privilege that I’d never heard before, and it really stuck with me. That’s as close as I’ll come to offering an opinion here. Simply put, Korver’s words are a lot more interesting than anything I could offer. And as he says, “I have to do my best to recognize when to get out of the way.”