Before the Sacramento Kings basketball game February 1, the players were wearing shirts celebrating Black History Month. However, in the stands they had about 20,000 shirts with monkeys on them. Not intentionally rude (as they celebrated the upcoming Chinese New Year on February 8th), but utterly clueless. You would have to be living in a cave (a whites only cave at that) not to know that comparing black people to apes was part of the most virulent racism in this country. I love monkeys (I have two company logos that include monkeys) and Chinese New Year is something to celebrate, but damn, not on the first day of Black History Month, and probably not ever for a sport that is almost 80% black athletes.

I’m guessing that it was not a black executive on the team (yeah, I’m sure there are lots of black executives in the King’s office…) who dreamed up this night of promotions. Management is not representative of black participation in our major sports (e.g. one owner out of 92 teams.)Players spoke up and the shirts were removed before the fans arrived. Somebody has a lot of test shirts…