For a number of years, the league has celebrated such occurrences as MLK Day and Black History Month. However, the Sacramento Kings organization took steps that have been deemed questionable in the eyes of many Black fans, and especially one particular Black player. Demarcus Cousins is a five-year vet who plays center for the Kings. Known affectionately to fans as “Boogie”, Cousins is considered one of the NBA’s elite players, perhaps one of its most outspoken as well.

Earlier this week (Feb. 1), it was announced by the Kings organization that they had planned to give away shirts commemorating the “Year Of The Monkey”, in conjunction with February 8th’s Chinese New Year. Cousins, sensing the suspicious intentions of his team’s marketing campaign, immediately stepped forward to announce his distaste for the t-shirt giveaway.

Photo of the shirts that were slated to be given away to fans this past Monday

According to the Sacramento Bee, the team actually had placed the “Monkey” t-shirts on seats in Sacramento’s Sleep Train Arena in the hours leading up to that evening’s game against the Milwaukee Bucks. Fans in the dominant society were outraged by Cousins’ stance on his team’s promotion, engaging in slanderous and sarcastic posts via social media. Below are just a few examples of the backlash that Demarcus Cousins received from white supremacists and suspected white supremacists alike.

https://twitter.com/whatdyouxpect/status/694876482343141376

https://twitter.com/scenesetter91/status/695081840793616384

By yanking the lunar year t-shirts, the Sacramento Kings have shown that they value Blacks over Asians. #SacramentoKings #demarcuscousins

— Johan (@johanbaka1) February 3, 2016

Pretty sure the #ChineseNewYear has been around longer than #BlackHistoryMonth get over it #demarcuscousins sheesh!!

— Joel (@jmar_82) February 3, 2016

https://twitter.com/mice_eatcheese/status/694653694340636673

While people outside of Black Society were in an uproar over the teams’ decision to scrap the giveaway, it should be noted that the originally planned date of the giveaway coincided with the first day of Black History Month–a month in which all of the NBA’s players are already wearing pre-game warm-up shirts in honor of.

Given the longstanding history of white supremacists’ false claims that Blacks and monkeys are related and/or resemble one another, it was necessary that the shirts were not given to the general public. It was an even better move that the team’s best player (who also happens to be Black) stood up in opposition to what his team wanted to do.

B. Clark

The mother of a 5-year-old Melanoid boy was shocked and disgusted by what she saw while assembling his birthday gift, which was purchased from Toys R Us. The contents of the packaging were something she’d never saw before. From first glance, the toy that her son was to receive as a gift appeared to be a pirate ship, inhabited by small figurines that were included with the toy ship. However, one of the figurines in the box has dark skin, and comes with a slave collar. In fact, page 13 of the toy’s instruction manual gives a clear description on how to place the collar on the neck of the dark-skinned figurine.

This is the instruction manual photo which shows how to place the slave collar on the figurine’s neck.

“It’s definitely racist,” the boy’s mother Ida Lockett told CBS Sacramento. “It told my son to put a slave cuff around the black character’s neck, and then to play with the toy.” Upset, Lockett had more to say about the racist overtones of the toy’s features.

“You cannot have this specific accessory and call it anything else. The fact that you can Google it, look it up, say what it is — it’s a slave collar.” The toy not only is dark skinned, but is also wearing torn clothing, as if to imply that it has been a P.O.W (Prisoner Of War) captured in the infamous Slave Trade. The toy is also barefoot, and has dark colored coarse hair, which resembles the locs originally worn by people of African descent. Check out the video below for more on the story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R107qmFciQo

B. Clark

Earlier this week, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agreed to stop profiling Black women because of the diverse hairstyles that Black women are known to wear, particularly those hairstyles of the natural persuasion. Complaints surfaced from Northern California, when Novella Coleman–a staff lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)–filed one in 2012, after reported cases of searches executed on her by TSA agents.

Coleman stated that she was being searched by the TSA due to them being required to check passengers with hair that appeared to have “extensions” or “abnormalities”. Another woman by the name of Malaika Singleton experienced the same caliber of harassment from TSA agents. Singleton, a Sacramento, CA based neuroscientist, was in the process of departing for a business trip in London, England at the time she experienced the same harassment as Coleman.

As a result of the inconveniences the women experiences, the TSA is making claims that it will implement “anti-discrimination training” for its employees to follow to prevent this from happening again.

Here  is an older video clip of Black women giving commentary on how they were violated at the airports by TSA agents because of their hair.

by B. Clark