Black planet
Subtitle: facing race during an NBA season
By: David Shields.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Harmony Books
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 223
Subjects: Shields, David -- Diaries; Seattle SuperSonics (Basketball team); Basketball -- United States -- Sociological aspects; African American basketball players -- Social conditions; Basketball fans -- United States -- Social conditions; Discrimination in sports -- United States; United States -- Race relations
Genres: Diaries.
Description: "The National Basketball Association is a place where, without ever acknowledging it, white fans and black players enact and quietly explode virtually every racial issue and tension in the culture at large. In Black Planet, David Shields explores how, in a predominantly black sport, white fans - including especially himself - think about and talk about black heroes, black scapegoats, black bodies."--BOOK JACKET.

"During the 1994-95 NBA season, Shields went to the Seattle SuperSonics' home games; watched their away games on TV; listened to interviews and call-in shows; talked, or tried to talk, to players, coaches, and agents; attended charity events; corresponded with members of the Sonics newsgroup on the Web.

He kept a journal and over the next few years transformed that journal into this book, which is focused sharply on white spectators' relationship to black athletes, in particular Shields' own identification with Gary Payton, the team's language-besotted point-guard."--BOOK JACKET.