Liberal sports media have learned the hard way that not everyone is as race-obsessed as they are, and some people prefer to define themselves by their beliefs rather than their skin color.
In between Games 1 and 2 of the NBA Finals, Boston Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla was asked if he thought this year’s Finals was a “significant moment” and if he took “pride” in it, not because he was coaching in the NBA Finals, but because both he and Dallas Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd are black. Mazzulla was asked how he viewed this “given the plight … of black head coaches in the NBA” and it being the first NBA Finals with two black coaches since 1975.
“I wonder how many of those have been Christian coaches,” Mazzulla said before moving on to the next question.
The reporter who asked that question, Yahoo Sports’s Vincent Goodwill, already had the angle of his story ready. He claimed that “Race is one of the defining issues in this country, and it’s not easy to talk about, but when one avoids it, it adds fuel to an already complicated fire.” Joe Mazzulla is contributing to racism, you see, because he does not want to constantly call attention to his race and define his character by it. Make that make sense.
Much as liberal media figures cannot comprehend people holding devout religious views, they cannot comprehend people defining themselves by their faith or beliefs rather than by their skin color. This has become a plague in sports media, which whittles down all professional coaches and players to their skin color, reducing them to numbers in a spreadsheet rather than the individuals that they are.
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It is also a way for media figures to continue to perpetuate their narratives about racism. Tampa Bay Buccaneers head coach Todd Bowles told an ESPN reporter insistent on crafting a narrative about racism that those narratives paint coaches like him as “oddballs” and that “the minute you guys stop making a big deal about it, everyone else will as well.”
In case it isn’t obvious, Mazzulla isn’t the one making racism worse by not centering his identity on his skin color. It is reporters such as Goodwill who are looking to create racial stories around anything and everything who are making racism worse by insisting that everyone be defined by skin color.