He’s gone. The Celtics’ management traded Jaylen Brown and I’m upset. Look, I know the world doesn’t even begin to revolve around me or cater to my wishes. I have a drawer full of old lottery tickets to prove that. But this sucks, not just for basketball, but for the community.
The ink was barely dry on my new mortgage in Boston in July 2023 when Jaylen Brown began to detail his plans for Black Wall Street in Boston to address the racial wealth gap. He blazed a new path in his nine years in Boston.
But off the court, Brown’s impact is even more profound and hard to measure. Since he arrived in Boston, Brown decided he wanted to make an impact in the community, connect with the kids who live in the city, and invest in entrepreneurs and creators from underrepresented groups. He launched multiple endeavors — first the 7uice Foundation, and later Boston XChange — immersed himself in the city, and became a fixture in the community.
Jaylen Brown’s legacy in Boston is so much bigger than basketball
Colin Cowherd said Jaylen Brown has a disease: “He thinks he is the smartest in the room.” In what world? I can’t. Actually, I can. Colin Cowherd has explained the trade of Jaylen Brown, to summarize, as being Jaylen’s fault.
“I’ve worked with people in the media. You get into a really bad space and you make a lot of money. Suddenly, you’re absolutely sure. You don’t wanna listen to your bosses. You don’t wanna listen to consultants. You don’t wanna listen to teammates. One executive told me this was always a little bit of Jaylen Brown’s personality: the smartest guy in the room. Live streaming, throwing it out there, and it’s just not a good space.”
Colin Cowherd
So, it’s nothing that he’s done, it’s just the appearance? Maybe the idea of Boston as Black Wall Street, or that Brown lecturing at MIT and Harvard. Maybe the audacity of Brown starting his own apparel and footwear company rather than “collaborating” with one of the major brands. Maybe we’re talking about a world where athletes fall in line and follow a playbook, Brown doesn’t even have an agent. As a black athlete in the NBA franchise with all white owners, is Brown’s sovereignty an issue? The irony as this coincides with America’s 250 years as a country and sovereignty from Great Britan.
At the founding of the country, as a business decision, Africans were enslaved starting in 1619 to plant, harvest, run, and build things. The enslaved were kidnapped from countries in Africa according to expertise needed. But, to do this, the “business” of enslavement and selling human beings required a justification system. Racism.
At this point I need to define racism1 because I keep hearing and seeing “reverse racism,” particularly around DEI rollbacks, and that’s not how it works.
Racism is a system of oppression that assigns value and structures opportunity based on race. It manifests through prejudiced beliefs, discrimination, and systemic advantages or disadvantages that harm individuals and communities based on their ethnic or racial background. Racism uses laws to enforce this construct — in the US, laws forbade Africans and those of African descent from reading, owning weapons, or owning land. There were laws that prohibited where African Americans could live, and they were unable to pass down or inherit property. There are numerous examples, and yet, still today, through ignorance, there are those — like the Patriot Front2, whose members numbered over 400 and marched on Washington this weekend — who believe the country needs to be “reclaimed.”
In 1619, this “racial construct” was marketed and implemented. You cannot take comfort and say that was hundreds of years ago. In 1851, American physician Samuel A. Cartwright described a mental illness for why the enslaved tried to escape, called drapetomania3. The cure was violent beatings and lashings and possibly the amputation of limbs. In 1857 came the Dred Scott case (mathematically 238 years after the enslavement of Africans began), in which Supreme Court Justice Taney wrote that Africans and their descendants
…”had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit.”
Read it again because not only does it hurt and sting, it is untrue yet reflects a widely held belief. …no rights in which the white man was bound to respect. That taken with drapetomania, the idea that anyone trying to flee enslavement must be diseased?
In July of 1868, the 14th Amendment gave citizenship to African descendants, which brings us to this week. Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14160, titled “Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship,” which sought to end birthright citizenship. President Trump stated on Truth Social, “We cannot live with the shackles of Birthright Citizenship.” The executive order ended up in the Supreme Court.
The court upheld the 14th Amendment by a vote of 6-3. Clarence Thomas, in his dissent, said that the 14th Amendment applied to slaves only. The 14th Amendment was used in the Wong Kim Ark case. A Chinese man was denied reentry into the US after the Chinese Exclusion Act because he was not an American citizen; in that case, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-2 decision that the 14th Amendment’s Citizenship Clause guarantees birthright citizenship to almost any person born within U.S. borders, regardless of their parents’ race, nationality, or immigration status.
How did we get here, in something that started with Jaylen Brown? The question of racism.Colin Cowherd and a narrative that the Jaylen Brown trade is his own fault. Is it rooted in the belief that he is too smart? Stephen A. Smith says Jaylen Brown was overvalued. Y’all stop. Businesses sometimes purchase smaller ones to eliminate the competition. Businesses will quietly “settle” to avoid court or admission of wrongdoing (just look at the egg price-fixing settlement this week). Is the idea of a pro-Palestinian, Muslim, community advocate, All-Star athlete, and successful businessman too much?
It started in 2016 during the draft, that he was too smart for his own good; his response: the bar is too low. Jaylen Brown will be missed in Boston. Cheers to raising the bar. Philly, you got a real one.
Note: For a different take on the trade see Astonished: The Trade of Jaylen Brown on my Substack.
- This does a great job of setting the context for Racism. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DaANTe4NadB/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
- Patriot Front is an exclusively white nationalist and white supremacist hate group. Founded in the aftermath of the 2017 Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, the organization requires its members to be of white European descent and operates on the core ideology of creating a white ethnostate in the United States.
- Many thanks to Malcolm London for inspiring this post https://www.instagram.com/reel/DaT1hVgxjDq/?This does a great job of setting the context for Racism. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DaANTe4NadB/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Balancing on Unstable Surfaces 