Well everybody is talking about Montrezl Harrell and Luka Doncic, two NBA players who were involved in a little back and forth during a game the other night. Basketball is a game where people talk trash to each other. Everybody knows that. If you played a pickup game at anytime in your life you know that it is almost as much a part of the game as dribbling the basketball. 

The other night there was some good old fashioned trashing talking on the court between Messieurs Harrell and Doncic. During the heat of the game some words were exchanged, and after making another play Harrell let Doncic know what he thought of him. “B***h a** white boy” said Harrell to Doncic. What! Did he really just say that? Well he did! 

In the woke era of the NBA when SJWs reign and standing up against racism is the cause supreme, you would expect that the NBA and players like Lebron James to be outraged would speak out loudly against Harrell’s bigoted insult, as commissioner Adam Silver comes down hard on Harrell right? Only one thing! Harrell is the right color and Doncic is the wrong color. Harrell gets a pass. Doncic needs to understand his privilege, and just take it. 

Now we all know that people say things when they are angry, sometimes people say things just to get under another person’s skin. In the heat of the moment the goal might be to gain a psychological advantage in saying something really offensive. People understand that. The truth is that Harrell may be a cool dude. Who knows? The fact that he said what he said to Doncic does not prove that he is a racist black man who just hates white people. 

He apologized to Doncic after the game and Doncic says that he was not even bothered by the insult. Good on the both of them. Here is the issue though. If this issue was the other way around, and Luka Doncic had called Montrezl Harrell a b***c a** black boy, the story would have been quite different. The story would be the lead sports story for days, and there would be an extensive discussion on race in America. 

Doncic would be fined, suspended and perhaps even thrown in a lake of fire where he would be tormented, not forever, but at least for about six months. He would have to go on an apology tour, do outreach in the black community and then have to walk on pins and needles for the rest of his NBA career, Montrezl Harrell on the other hand…? 

The question is why the double standard on these issues? We could refer to a few recent incidents and ask that same question. We saw it recently when a prominent black player from the Philadelphia Eagles by the name of DeSean Jackson thought he was being cute and posted some fake Hitler quotes to his instagram page. After an immediate backlash, but no major outcry like we see if a prominent white person was to do something like that, Jackson apologized and all was forgiven. 

Another prominent former athlete by the name of Stephen Jackson who played in the NBA came to DeSean Jackson’s defense and said that DeSean was only “speaking truth” with his fake Hitler quotes. When people called out Stephen Jackson on defending the other Jackson, he doubled down on what he said until he too eventually went on to “explain” what he meant, and he too apologized. All’s forgiven! End of story. 

There are many more similar examples, not only in sports, but across the culture. Remember Nick Cannon anyone? We had a University of Georgia professor say some time last year that “some white people may have to die for black communities to be made whole in this struggle to advance to freedom.”(saying this type of stuff in academia is almost as common as writing assignments). When confronted on his controversial statement, the professor said he did not understand what all of the controversy was about. The University defended the professor and he kept his job.

Back in 2017, black students at Evergreen State University designated a no whites day at the campus. One white professor showed up because he refused to participate in the blatant show of bigotry, and he had hell to pay for defying the no whites day mandate given by the students. 

Okay, so after digressing, back to the original story. It is sufficient that after the game, Harrell went up to Doncic and apologized like a man. That should be the end of it, but in the current environment where precedent has been set, everyone should be treated the same way. One wonders why the gracious attitude extended to Montrezl Harrell is selodom meted out to white people who slip up like Harrell did. What is good for one should be good for the other. 

There should be no skin color privilege one way or the other.