‘Sports only serve as an escape from society if you’re white,’ Carron J. Phillips wrote.
Deadspin, a left-wing sports news site, referred to White fans watching Black players compete in the NBA playoffs as “white supremacy” on Monday.
“White fans were entertained by Black athletes a day after a racist killed Black people in Buffalo — this is what white supremacy looks like,” the liberal site tweeted Monday, including a link to a column with the same headline.
The column, written by Deadspin’s Carron J. Phillips, claimed, “Sports only serve as an escape from society if you’re white,” the Black players on the four teams competing in Sunday’s playoff games “had to play” despite the Buffalo shooting happening just one day prior, and “no one seemed to care or ask them about it.”
Phillips recalled that in the summer of 2020, “the NBA had ‘Black Lives Matter’ on the floor, players had social justice slogans on their uniforms, and Adam Silver was allowing — think about that for a second — Black people to kneel because the police love shooting Black people, the NBA — and the WNBA — were prioritizing the humanity of their players.” Now, he complained, reporters weren’t even asking the players about issues outside the game, mentioning the shooting and the potential overturning of Roe v. Wade as examples.
“When you’re a Black athlete in America, competing at the highest level as a form of entertainment to the rest of the world, all the while knowing that the majority of the people that cheer for you don’t think your life matters, may be the hardest part of the game that you work at that a reporter will never ask about,” Phillips wrote.
Critics took to social media to blast Deadspin over the tweet and the column, with some accusing the site of “racism,” and others mocking it as “clickbait.”
“‘Integrated sports is white supremacy’ is not what I was expecting to read today,” tweeted Matt Rinaldi, Chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, while conservative commentator Jason Rantz wrote, “You have to have shame to feel it but man… y’all are the absolute dumbest people.”
“This site used to do actual, provocative journalism & now it’s clickbait. Mission accomplished I guessed [sic] since it’s trending. Not denying our countries [sic] racial issues but questioning why sideline reporters aren’t asking male basketball players about Roe v. Wade is asinine,” wrote sports commentator Zach Borg.
Fantasy sports guru Dave Loughran wrote that he had “love and respect” for the game and the players while referring to Phillip’s headline as “insane.”
“Can you please compare the salary of those ‘black’ athletes and the ‘white’ fans?” tweeted Republican Florida congressional candidate Erick Aguilar.
“A flat, reductive, insulting, divisive worldview that’s also being exploited for cheap clickbait profit,” wrote Tablet CTO Noam Blum, while writer Emmanuel Rincón tweeted, “Congratulations this is the most racist post I have read this month.”
