NFL 2021 Pro Bowl Headed To Las Vegas, Can Raiders Avoid Racism Of 2007 NBA All Star Game?
ONN – NFL 2021 Pro Bowl Headed To Las Vegas, Can Raiders Avoid Racism Of 2007 NBA All Star Game?
The 2021 Pro Bowl is headed to Las Vegas and Las Vegas Stadium, also called Allegiant Stadium. That’s great. It also marks the first time a professional sports league has had an all-star game since 2007, and the racist disaster that was the NBA All Star Game.
First, the Raiders are overjoyed that the 2021 Pro Bowl is headed to Allegiant Stadium: “The Raiders welcome the NFL Pro Bowl to Allegiant Stadium and to Las Vegas, the Sports and Entertainment Capital of the World,” said Raiders President Marc Badain. “Pro Bowl week is a celebration of the best the NFL has to offer and there is no better place than Las Vegas to celebrate and honor the league’s biggest stars. The NFL, the LVCVA and the Raiders look forward to a world class event that will set the standard for future NFL events in Las Vegas.”
Can the NFL, Las Vegas, the Las Vegas Raiders, and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Bureau avoid the race-based problems faced at the 2007 NBA All Star Game? And what were they? Well, as it was said in the Las Vegas Sun by Jason Whitloch: “NBA weekend: When cultures clashed”
Las Vegas was flooded with a crowd that merged the culture of hip-hop with a four-mile stretch of casinos that, until last weekend, almost certainly had never seen so many blacks.
“It was comparable to the National Finals Rodeo when you see all those cowboy hats,” said one man who walked the Strip Friday and Saturday night. “Except, they were all black.”
So was that it? Cowboys can act out, fail to tip (which many do), and swagger like they own the town. The Strip considers them boors, a term that is mild compared to the descriptions overheard in Las Vegas about last weekend’s crowd. Is it that Las Vegas held a mirror up and saw, as 1954’s March issue of Ebony magazine suggested, a place where “Negroes Can’t Win”?
That was from the Las Vegas Sun.
Now, we are in the middle of an even worse time racially, and yet, here comes the 2021 NFL Pro Bowl to Las Vegas. I was excited, too. Then, I thought about the 2007 NBA All Star Game, and then many, many subsequent examples of law enforcement racism since then.
Las Vegas has to assure everyone that it is a different place: a place were black tourists can come in large numbers and not be harassed. That’s a fair question. Las Vegas, and the Las Vegas Raiders have to answer it.
Stay tuned.
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