Ja Morant shows how a 'good guy with a gun' can never be Black
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Friday, June 23, 2023
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Ja Morant, the 23-year-old star point guard for the Memphis Grizzlies, was barely 1 year old.
Key Points:
- Ja Morant, the 23-year-old star point guard for the Memphis Grizzlies, was barely 1 year old.
- But his bursting athletic brilliance, so evocative of Iverson, comes with a cost: the perceived menace of the Black gangster.
- On March 4, 2023, Morant posted an Instagram Live video of him displaying a gun at a Denver strip club.
- Even when folks who look like Morant innocuously and legally possess a gun, they find themselves too easily typecast as villains.
Disciplining ‘thugs’ and ‘children’
- When global sports icon Michael Jordan retired from basketball in 2003, the league found itself in a period of transition.
- How would it continue to fill arenas, satisfy advertisers and spread its vision of a global game without its brightest star?
- Not only did the NBA need a new crop of superstars to mitigate Jordan’s exit, but it also needed a fresh attitude.
- Players openly professed their love for rap music, with stars like Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, Iverson and others recording and releasing music.
- “This guy is so worried about being cool: ‘Look at me, man: Life is like a rap video.’”
The NBA’s gun culture
- In 2006, Stephen Jackson was suspended just seven games for firing a gun after an altercation at an Indianapolis strip club.
- In 2010, Gilbert Arenas and Javaris Crittenton were suspended for 50 and 38 games, respectively, after pulling guns on each other in the Washington Wizards team facilities.
- And in 2014, Raymond Felton was suspended four games after pleading guilty to charges stemming from an incident where he threatened his estranged wife with a gun.
- In 2018, during a trip to Israel, Golden State Warriors star forward Draymond Green posed with an assault weapon.
Was this ever about guns?
- To me, the answer is simple: In America, armed Black folks conjures pathological criminality.
- So if people are so sure of Morant’s villainy, I ask without a hint of snark: What does responsible Black gun ownership look like?
- To me, this was never about guns – just as, back in the early 2000s, it was never about rap music or baggy clothing.
- According to this warped, uniquely American fantasy, “good guys with guns” can never look like Ja Morant – and good guys can always kill bad guys.