That Time When a Chicago Bull Asked the President for Reparations

That Time When a Chicago Bull Asked the President for Reparationsby Mark Anthony Neal | @NewBlackMan | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
San Francisco 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick is just the latest in a tradition of athletes using the relative visibility to make important political statements.  As the #BlackLivesMatter generation finds voice and purpose, there was much nostalgia -- in this Olympic year -- for the now famous protest by American track & field sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos during the 1968 Olympics, which produced a now iconic photograph. Smith and Carlos were sent home by the the United States Olympic Committee.
The bar on what some Americans might deem as unpatriotic acts by athletes was considerably lower when Gabrielle Douglas chose not to put her hand on her heart during the National Anthem in Rio, and perhaps even more so as Kaepernick -- who by most accounts will be the backup quarterback for the 49ers -- chose to not stand for the National Anthem at a recent preseason game, protesting the very conditions that #BlackLivesMatter have brought national and international attention to. Kaepernick’s protest occurs twenty-years after retired NBA player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf was suspended one-game by NBA commissioner David Stern for also refusing to stand during the anthem, in what was a vastly different world.
Given the impact of social media and its capacity to naturalize State surveillance, via celebrity and fandom, one can only imagine how Abdul-Rauf -- or his league-mate Craig Hodges, would have fared when the latter joined his Chicago Bulls teammates at the White House in 1991 after the first of the Jordan-era championships -- with a letter addressed to then President George Bush, demanding reparations for Black people.
To be sure, most of the attention at that gathering was on the absence of Michael Jordan, the most popular athlete in the world at the time, who chose not to accompany his teammates to the White House. Though few remember or cared that John Paxson was also not in attendance, everyone was aware that Michael Jordan chose to skip the event, to vacation with his family.  Could you imagine if Lebron James had done that, even during the Obama Presidency?
The subsequent criticisms of Jordan for missing the event, were the first sustained criticism that he faced during his emergence as the quintessential sports brand s. Michael Wilbon wrote at the time, Jordan “had an obligation to his team, and as the world’s most famous basketball player, to his sport.”  Even Jordan’s teammates were critical, notably Horace Grant who admitted, “there’s been a double standard the four years I played here.”
For the record, Jordan only remarked, “I’ve seen George Bush, so it wasn’t like I was missing out on another big opportunity,” bringing attention to the fact that President Bush probably needed Jordan’s presence to boost his sagging popularity a year before a presidential election. The criticism directed at Jordan had a racist tinge, given that Larry Bird had also skipped a White House visit in the 1980s, without the same level of criticism.  Bird reportedly remarked that the president knew where to find him. Again imagine if Lebron James had said that?
As Wilbon remarked, Jordan “didn’t have to go there to show respect, not when the president has, in my view, a record on Civil Rights that disrespects people of Jordan’s color.” While such of principled stance would have made a great story, the reality is that Jordan was not motivated by such issues.  Only a year earlier, Jordan famously refused to endorse Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt, the first African-American to hold the office, in his attempt to un-seat Senator Jesse Helms, in a campaign noted for Helms’ deliberate attempts to scare Whites into voting for him.
While of this was playing out, Craig Hodges was laying in the cut; there were many in the NBA front office who probably wished that it was Hodges who stayed home that day. Hodges was a nine-year league veteran and three-point shooting specialist — the reigning champion of the Three-Point Shooting Contest held at the NBA All-star game — when he joined his teammates in the White House rose garden.  Whereas his teammates came adorned in suits and ties, Hodges joined the festivities wearing a Dashiki and possessing the letter demanding that more attention be paid to the plight of Black Americans.
Hodges brashness went virtually unnoticed in all the concern about Jordan’s absence, until a year later, when he was released by the Bulls and none of the remaining teams in the league showed any interest in him, despite being able to sign him for half of his salary the previous year.  Hodges, who was very active in Chicago’s Black communities and was a vocal supporter  of the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, felt as though he was being blackballed from the league for his political views.  Hodges eventually filed a lawsuit against the league, saying as much.  
Craig Hodges’s experience is a reminder that at the intersections of politics and sports, the only politics that matter are the politics of image and symbolism, and Hodges like Smith and Carlos before him, and Kaepernick after him, represent a politics, whose image and symbolism have always been at odds with the American status quo -- with or without, the selfie stick.