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The stands at an Atlanta Hawks game. The team's owner drew outrage with an email on its relative lack of white ticket buyers.Credit Grant Halverson/Getty Images
"My theory is that the black crowd scared away the whites and there are simply not enough affluent black fans to build a significant season ticket base."
That was one of many offensive quotes that emerged a little more than a week ago from an email that Bruce Levenson, the owner of the Atlanta Hawks basketball team, sent to his colleagues two years ago. That email -- and an internal investigation -- pushed Mr. Levenson, a longtime businessman, to apologize and put the team up for sale.
The email, which included the comment that the "kiss cam is too black" and expressed the need for white cheerleaders, set off a firestorm in the sports world and beyond.
It has also ignited an important, yet quiet -- perhaps too quiet -- conversation among leaders in corporate America and on Wall Street about both the singling out of certain demographic groups and the language used internally and externally. What is business and what is bias, subtle or otherwise?
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Bruce Levenson, the Hawks' owner, has put the team up for sale after a two-year-old email drew widespread condemnation.Credit John Bazemore/Associated Press
Discrimination remains a real issue in the business world. Studies show that Wall Street, for example, long charged African-Americans and Hispanics higher interest rates on mortgages than whites. Wells Fargo paid a $175 million fine two years ago to settle accusations that it charged blacks and Hispanics more than others.
Newport Cigarettes still openly singles out African-Americans and has been accused of marketing to black youths as well.
Mr. Levenson's email revealed a different form of discrimination. He appeared to be actively seeking to replace his predominantly black audience with a whiter crowd. "Even D.C. with its affluent black community never has more than 15 pct black audience," he wrote.
Before we go any further on this sensitive topic, a little background:
Mr. Levenson self-reported his email to the NBA earlier this year. The note was intended to explain -- or rationalize -- why his team's season-ticket and merchandise sales were so low compared with those of other teams. Mr. Levenson wrote, "I start looking around our arena during games and notice the following," ticking off a list that includes "it's 70 pct black," "the cheerleaders are black," "the music is hip-hop" and "there are few fathers and sons at the games."
Mr. Levenson was quickly condemned in many circles, with some people describing his comments as worse than the racist rant of Donald Sterling, who was forced to sell the Los Angeles Clippers and was barred from the N.B.A. for life.
Yet others suggested that Mr. Levenson's remarks were simply those of a rational executive. That was the conclusion of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the former N.B.A. star, who has long written about race.
"Levenson is a businessman asking reasonable questions about how to put customers in seats," Mr. Abdul-Jabbar wrote on Time magazine's website. "If his arena was filled mostly with whites and he wanted to attract blacks, wouldn't he be asking how they could de-emphasize white culture and bias toward white contestants and cheerleaders? Don't you think every corporation in America that is trying to attract a more diverse customer base is discussing how to feature more blacks or Asians or Latinos in their TV ads?"
Autry J. Pruitt, a syndicated radio host, said he was initially furious when he read about the comments but changed his mind after he read the email in full. "For many black-owned small-business owners like myself, it sounded infuriating. Here was another rich, entitled white man http://millbrookmsart.weebly.com
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