The Bigger Picture

Stephen A. reacts to Charles Barkley criticizing the NBA for social justice efforts | First Take

This video shows Stephen A. responding to a quote by Charles Barkley criticizing the NBA regarding their approach to the black lives matter movement. This is a vital item to our project because it highlights the NBA's hyperfocus on consumerism and making a profit off of the movement instead of focusing on a specific strategy to help black communities across the country.

Source: ESPN

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TQSSPojtDg

‘Black Lives Matter, people’: How the NBA’s social justice efforts dominated the season

This article discusses how the players within the NBA have made their voices heard in the social justice movement and how millions of people are to be impacted by their words. We chose to add this item because we felt that it was important contextual information needed to understand how impactful the players are to the movement.

Source: Andscape

Link: https://andscape.com/features/how-the-nba-social-justice-efforts-dominated-the-season/

How the NBA Bubble Became a Platform to Fight Social Injustice

This film depicts the history of the NBA leading up to covid-19 and how the NBA became a social justice movement platform. This is an important item because it takes the ideas we've mentioned throughout the media project and presents it in a documentary format.

Source: Youtube

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5YS_BoOc38

One key concept that is important to our project would have to be how the NBA players continued to kneel after backlash from managers of teams. In ‘From Savage to Negro’ white people were tarnishing the race of African Americans and thought they were beneath them. But all the hate did not stop African Americans from believing that they were more than what they were stereotyped to be.

Another key concept would be how in ‘The Central Frames of color-blind Racism’ blacks are seen and treated as ‘sub-human’. Blacks were also seen as having their own types of materials separate from others. In one of our items, there is a time when African Americans are told to not join the NBA and stay in their own league because of their skin color.

Additionally, another key concept is found in the class reading, ‘White Privilege’ that white people are treating blacks as subhuman because of their skin color. In our items, there are white coaches and general managers saying they don’t want black people in their league. Agents in the NBA even thought that it would be a bad idea to invite the “BLM” movement into the NBA because it would hurt their pockets with ticket sales and finals crowd percentages.