PARC Group Sees Basketball Court as Threatening to Their Neighborhood
Planning Commission Says Park Should
Be For Everyone:
Let Basketball Be Played
News Analysis
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| "Destination Park" Fitness and fun maybe but look who might show up in our neighborhood if we build a basketball court in our new park. |
At issue outwardly, is whether at the Sherwin site there should just be a single basketball hoop or an actual court for games to be played, leaving unsaid questions of xenophobia and possible racial motivations behind the insistence of neighborhood locals to keep 'outsiders' out of the public park. The locals are insisting the new park not become a “destination park”.
A majority of Planning Commissioners have said since there’s plenty of space for a full basketball court, people should be allowed to play games in their new park but a group of residents insist that a court would draw people from outside the immediate neighborhood to play basketball games.
An exclusive group of residents that have banded together to weigh in on the Sherwin Williams project called Park Avenue Residents Committee (PARC), has announced that they find a basketball court unacceptable. “We support keeping the basketball area as an informal hardscape with a basketball hoop, rather than a formal full size basketball court” the group said in a November 10th position paper meant for the City Council's purview. Reasons as to why a full court is unacceptable were not offered by PARC.
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| Emeryville Planning Commissioner Miguel Guerrero Thinks a basketball court is a good idea. 'I'm dying to have a place to play in town.' |
The PARC group, exclusive in its membership, is adamant however that there be only a single hoop and the dreaded ‘destination’ concept, what they derisively call a “recreation center” has been strongly rejected they say by the whole community that they claim to speak for. PARC favors instead that the park be a “recreation area.” The group gave no distinction between these two concepts, seemingly nearly analogous in their lexicon but apparently existentially divergent in their practice somehow. PARC is advising the City Council that a basketball court, if one must be built, be located in some other place in the city, not in their backyard.
Ultimately the City Council will decide the question of just who we’re building this park for; the whole community or just local (mostly white, presumably non-basketball playing) neighbors.
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| What's not to like about basketball? |
You see basketball and you think black people. Guess what that makes you? Six letters, starts with an 'r'.
ReplyDeleteRational.
DeleteYou lack reading comprehension skills to such an extent that you can’t understand an easily accessible story about how some Emeryville residents have so much fear of black people that they’re willing to subvert the idea of a public park. What’s that make you? Six letters, starts with the letter ’S’.
You think the word 'rational' has six letters. What's that make you? Four letters, starts with the letter 'D'.
DeletePeople of all colors love to play basketball. I'm white and growing up in suburbia I played on outside courts. Now I sometimes play on the outdoor courts at ECCL and on courts on Hollis and other streets. Adding courts is a good idea. Many friends of all colors play basketball outside. The idea that courts would be magnet for crime is as ludicrous as thinking luxury condos would be a magnet for money laundering scammers, hedge fund two-and-twenty charlatans, hackers and all manner of crooked white-collar criminals who've already stolen billions, if not trillions, from all of us.
ReplyDeleteMaybe PARC should make sure no hedge fund scammers are allowed to move into the neighborhood (I'll bet it'd be easier to a get signatures for that than just about anything). Or how about a petition to prevent PARC members from living in Emeryville since they seem to be wrong type of people for earth, except for maybe Alabama and Marin County?
This looks to me more like these neighbors just aren't very neighborly. It looks like they want the park to themselves. I wouldn't draw the conclusion that they are xenophobic or racist necessarily. More likely not wanting to share.
ReplyDeleteYou really showed yourself on this one.
ReplyDeleteIn your mind, it seems basketball = black. The caption to the photo is offensive. You manufactured racism out of thin air, or the space between your ears, or both.
It may surprise you, but white people aren't the only people who play half court. Black people are just as old and out of shape as white people.
And how long did it take you to find a photo that had your vision of a black pickup game? Nice that you found one without a single white person, Latino, or Asian. Is your entire multi-racial experience a VHS tape of Boyz n the Hood?
Know what? Basketball games around here are about as multi-racial as they come. White people and black people playing basketball together! Surprised? Doesn't matter whether it's half or full court or whether it's Emeryville, Oakland, or Berkeley. Not everyone's a racist. Not everyone sees basketball and thinks black people.
Who knows, black people might actually LIVE at the Sherwin Williams complex. Or does that violate your stereotypes too?
To Mr (colorblind) Anonymous-
DeleteYou are correct, people of all colors like to play basketball. Even white people. They won’t be able to play it at the new park at Sherwin Williams though. Because of….something. It’s not for a lack of money, Sherwin Williams is on the hook for that. It’s not for a lack of space, there’s plenty of that. It’s something….but what?
America is a racist country, to its core to be sure. But not if you ask virtually any individual enabling person and not if you ask the State. Individuals now will publicly deny their racism because of the good job done by civil rights workers of the 50’s and 60’s when they dismantled Jim Crow. Now, admitted racists are pariahs in America. The State will deny racism because the United States is now officially ‘colorblind’. But they use(d) “colorblind” laws in response to those civil rights workers good and effective work to start up a phony ‘War on Drugs’ to mass incarcerate black people; the New Jim Crow. The result? Mass incarceration of black people who face a lifetime of surveillance by a hyper-weaponized criminal justice system promulgated by an immoral society. America is a country, officially colorblind, that has put far more people in prison than any totalitarian regime ever, left or right. And the incarcerated are almost all black even though the vast majority of illicit drug users are white. And that’s by design.
Now we have privileged white people taking refuge behind the shield of a colorblind rhetoric (usually starts with “not all white people are racist…”). These are people who, commonly by willful ignorance, will deny the reality of what our country is. The shield will enable them to deny the racism around them, the racism they benefit from that directs them to rebuke someone who has identified this sickness and abjured, from calling out the motives of a group of privileged white people using racist dog whistles furthering a ‘not in my backyard’ ploy. Colorblind laws and even rhetoric enables racist behavior to flourish with the net result being black lives destroyed by the criminal justice system and even black people being subtly directed away from certain neighborhoods by self appointed neighborhood watch groups using their power to influence the local government’s city planning. A person using this rhetoric can sanctimoniously (attempt) to stop another person from calling out the obvious, safe in his cocoon of colorblindness.
The racism embedded in this move to stop basketball from happening at Sherwin Williams is not manufactured. Your colorblind cocoon is.
Apologies to Michelle Alexander
Wham! You really shut that guy up. The guy was asking for it and you delivered it. Way to go Tattler!
DeleteI’m not trying to shut people up but stupid comments, while permitted, will illicite a response.
Delete"I’m not trying to shut people up but stupid comments, while permitted, will illicite a response."
DeleteWhen insulting your reader's intelligence, you're generally going to want to spell 'illicit' without the trailing 'e'.
And then realize that the word 'illicit' is the wrong word entirely. It's an adjective that means 'forbidden'.
The word you want that will highlight the depth of your reader's stupidity is 'elicit'.
Or you could take a completely different approach and spell 'stupid' with a couple of o's.
That would really sting.
"Wham!"....to borrow a word from another reader (applied more appropriately this time by me in my opinion) . Yes, the word intended was elicit, not illicit with an added 'e' or not. I'll leave my bogus spelling up for all to see how stoopid I am. Next time I go off all half cocked without my copy editor, I'll make sure at least to use the spell check. That'll learn me, durn me. Thanks for catching it.
DeleteI grew up playing half court basketball. Never felt discriminated against. Thanks for opening my eyes.
ReplyDeleteIt's sobering to see the limited extent of thoughtfulness of some Tattler readers. I suppose it's what we should expect in this age of Trump. Thanks for showing us how low it can go. May I suggest a different site for you? One ready made for your level of thoughtfulness. May I suggest the E'Ville Eye?
Delete