One Jazz Fan’s Call to Unite Against Inequality

Jazz fan Blair Hodges, in a screen shot from his Jazz Fans Against Racism channel on YouTube.

As the lines separating sports and social issues blurred like never before in the past year, one basketball fan decided to invite his online community of Utah Jazz supporters to join him in pushing back against racism.

A wave of protests and calls for racial equality became defining characteristics of 2020 after more unarmed people of color died in fatal encounters with police. The renewed urgency bled into everything — including sports. When NBA teams resumed their season after a months-long suspension of play brought on by COVID-19 mitigation efforts, they did so with Black Lives Matter emblazoned on the court, and social justice messages sewn onto the backs of player uniforms.

Blair Hodges of Salt Lake City noticed all of that and felt a growing sense of responsibility to contribute to the conversation somehow. Engaging the already-assembled audience of online Jazz fans seemed as good a place as any to start. The age of social media and ubiquitous camera phones makes it harder to maintain the convenient compartmentalization that keeps sports separate from weightier topics anyway. Hodges was reminded of that one day as he scrolled through his Twitter feed on the day the horrific video of Philando Castile’s shooting first became public.

“I’m watching a man get murdered on my phone,” Hodges said. “It was just shocking. And I didn’t know what to do with those feelings.”

The more he thought about, the more he saw those feelings as a call to action.

“I felt like it was time: I had to say something, I had to do something.”

Hodges sought perspectives from historians, scholars, and friends of color. And pretty soon, that “something” took shape: he launched Jazz Fans Against Racism, a cross-platform social media presence aimed at bringing more racial awareness to people who follow the Jazz, but perhaps haven’t engaged with the sensitive and sometimes uncomfortable conversation about what people of color experience in America.

He started by amplifying conversations about race under the AntiRacistJazz handle on Twitter and Instagram, and soon after started developing short videos to give fans context around different parts of the conversation about race and equality.

“I saw it as an opportunity to connect with a fan base who’s already here for Jazz basketball,” Hodges explained. “And to do it in that register, where these people might not be interested in reading a book by Ta-Nehisi Coates or watching a Black Panther documentary. But they’re watching the Jazz. I thought, this is something I can do to bring more people into the discussion.”

In the introductory “5 Minutes Fights Against Racism” video, Hodges spoke about the psychology of how we mitigate the discomfort around racial dialogue. In the next, he tackled what it means to be racist and actively anti-racist. And he kept going. In all, he produced nearly a dozen videos over a two-month span, sharing historical context and challenging some of the tropes that are common in a sports environment where some fans want athletes to shut up and dribble. Each video featured Hodges himself, clad in Jazz gear and addressing nuanced issues in a reflective, unassailing tone.

The video production slowed down as Hodges focused on a career change in early 2021, but he maintains the social media presence, where he interacts with Jazz fans and shares perspectives and articles about the experiences of Black Americans, as well as other communities that experience discrimination and disadvantages. For Sunday’s playoff opener, Hodges was at the arena distributing stickers he had produced, and inviting more fans to join him in the fight against racism.

“I believe that is a really excellent response,” said Dr. William Smith, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Utah, upon learning about the Jazz Fans Against Racism project. “What Blair is trying to bring to the table is to say, ‘Let’s check ourselves. Let’s see if we’re doing everything we can to help the situation.’ I applaud him for doing that. That’s what allies or people who are trying to be allies should do.”

Social Scripts

Donovan Mitchell (#45) has been increasingly outspoken about social issues. (Mike Ehrmann via espn.com)

Last June, at the height of the racial tumult, Jazz star Donovan Mitchell chose to make a post on the anniversary of Emancipation Day that he hoped would spark some thought among his three million Instagram followers.

The All-Star guard posted an image with the words “Free-ish since 1865,” a commentary on inequalities that Black Americans still experience, long after the abolition of slavery in the 19th century.

Many of the fans who replied to Mitchell’s post were supportive of the young star using his platform to speak out. But, of course, a barrage of sadly predictable criticisms accompanied the sympathetic responses. Some responders didn’t think a wealthy professional athlete had any room to complain, and others didn’t want the bubble protecting their experiences as sports consumers to be punctured by the social justice conversation. Mitchell later expressed disappointment in the way some of his fans responded to the post.

As Hodges frustratedly read through the replies, he noticed a lot of common language. The phrases people used to discount Mitchell’s call for equality sounded eerily familiar, echoing dismissive sentiments he’d heard whenever the conversation about race and equality intersected with sports dialogue. Hodges and others call these learned reactions social scripts.

“We have these ways of getting out of self interrogation, and the social scripts that we’re raised with just tell us how to deal with the cognitive dissonance and discomfort that we feel,” Hodges explained.

Smith added that social scientists have been examining these learned responses for decades. He pointed to the work of a Texas A&M sociologist, Dr. Joe Feagin, who has written about the ways white people are taught to frame issues surrounding race.

“There are scripts within that frame that whites have been taught,” Smith said. “It almost makes you feel like you’re on auto-pliot. Other people feel those bumps and that turbulence, and to you it’s a smooth flight.”

One example of such a social script: the often defensive retort that “there are racists everywhere.” It’s one of those phrases that comes up any time Utah’s racial awareness is called into question after a high-profile incident — like in 2019, when a Jazz fan was barred from attending future games after directing offensive remarks at Russell Westbrook. While it’s objectively true that racism exists everywhere, it’s the kind of response generally used as an abdication rather than an acknowledgement.

“What it means is: ‘Racism is everywhere, so I don’t have to do anything about it,’” Hodges said. “We use that truth to excuse ourselves from doing anything.”

Hodges’ hope is that he can help people recognize those automated, socialized, unhelpful scripts and replace them with something more useful.

“If I can just inject stuff into that discourse and provide some new one-liners and give people different ways to think about it,” he said, “I really believed there was an audience that would actually welcome that.”

“I’m preaching to myself”

Hodges is well aware that countless others have more convincing credentials to facilitate a nuanced discussion about race. He is not a scholar on racial issues, at least not in a formal sense. His Master’s Degree is in religion, not sociology or ethnic studies. And then there’s the obvious and perhaps ironic thing that stands out to anyone who watches a JFAR video: he’s white.

“Any time we talk about these issues, we can’t separate our own identities from it,” Hodges said. “I am a white guy in a predominantly Mormon state talking about these issues. And that can’t be disconnected from how I talk about them, or the people I can reach.”

Hodges believes that it can be an advantage in connecting with some people. He also knows it will make certain others less inclined to listen to him. (“That’s OK,” he says, “someone else can reach those people.”) Ultimately, he has decided to err on the side of authenticity.

“I want to be myself. I’ve seen my own ignorance, and instead of avoiding it, I decided to lean into it, which is a painful thing to do. It involves shame and guilt and embarrassment.”

That pain helps inform the tone of the JFAR videos. In some of those early social media interactions, he noticed he would get more response and engagement when he was, in his words, “trying to dunk on” people for their racially insensitive remarks. But he also saw right away how that tenor was counterproductive when it came to opening minds and encouraging people to recognize their own blind spots.

Instead, he has tried to make humility the hallmark of the videos. The overarching tone is a blend of informational and curious, without being heavy-handed or sanctimonious. And that, he insists, is because he knows what it’s like to confront one’s own shortcomings in this area.

“I’m preaching to myself a lot in these videos,” he said. “Most of the things I’m talking about are lessons I’ve had to learn. I still have lessons to learn.

“I’m just going to speak from my personal experiences and (research) and speak from a certain perspective.”

“It’s an attack on the system”

Nicole Durham, pictured here with Jazz center Derrick Favors in 2019, is a Jazz Twitter fixture at @nicoletishaa.

At the same time, he wanted to make sure he was striking the right tone, so he did reach out to pressure test specific ideas with certain people whose input he trusted. One friend of color, Utah-based social worker Dr. LaShawn Williams, reviewed every script. Hodges also consulted other historian and scholar colleagues as he was shaping the early vision. And he reached out to Nicole Durham, whom he’d gotten to know through Jazz Twitter.

Durham, whose Brooklyn home is some 2,000 miles from where the Jazz play, became a fan of the franchise somewhat randomly during the 2017 playoffs. After the Jazz advanced to the conference semifinals that year, she became curious about this unheralded team, and her devotion grew from there. But that has meant being part of a fan base that has had its racial literacy called into question. She admits to feeling disheartened at how portions of the fan community react whenever issues of race and social justice pop up.

She was flattered when Hodges reached out to her for input — but also felt a bit of pressure about being her fan base’s go-to sounding board for all things related to racial equality.

“If it takes using a vehicle such as the (Jazz online community) to bring to light racism and social justice, then go at it,” Durham said in an email. “But to me, it’s just bigger than sports and entertainment.”

Hodges understood that hesitancy, and said some of those early requests he made for feedback were “touch-and-go” at first. The people he reached out to wanted to know that his commitment was real, and that he wasn’t out to make himself a hero.

He grasped all of that, as well as the reality that it’s not Black people’s responsibility to educate the rest of us about the nature and origins of systemic inequality. And when we put that burden on them, we can add to their weariness, even when we mean well.

“There’s a real exhaustion there,” he added sympathetically.

A defining theme in Smith’s scholarship has been studying that exhaustion. The brain and body respond to micro-level and macro-level aggressions in a way that mirrors the response to any threat, and that process exacts a toll over time, Smith explains. In his scholarship, he has defined this as racial battle fatigue.

“It is a psychological, physiological, emotional and behavioral stress response from dealing with racism on a daily basis,” Smith explains. “So what happens is the body is stressed, it responds as if it’s being put under threat.”

That stress puts a physiological strain that Smith says literally shortens the lifespan of Black men and women, even when compared to their white peers in similar income and education groups. “It’s an attack on the system,” he says, quite literally.

There are plenty of avenues for would-be allies to learn more without compounding the racial battle fatigue their friends of color may be feeling. In this day and age, it’s likely that an article or podcast already exists explaining why something seemingly harmless to many can feel oppressive or insensitive to another group of people. For that matter, curious, empathetic, open-minded people can literally type their uncomfortable questions into a search engine.

Durham’s advice is even simpler. “Just listen. Really listen to people,” she said. “If you’re asking them what you can do or what to read, that’s not allyship. You have to do the work within yourself first to be an ally.”

She is encouraged to see some of her fellow Jazz fans doing that work. But as she and millions of Americans know all too well, there are no quick fixes in this centuries-old struggle. She hopes the urgency to address inequality — among her fan base and in society at large — isn’t a fleeting interest.

“Social justice is more than just a hashtag,” she said. “It’s more than a 24-hour news cycle topic. It’s more than your favorite athlete, singer or public figure’s concern. It’s more than black squares in your social media profile and letters in your bio. While all those things bring awareness, awareness is just the stepping stone to being able to make the changes.”

“It’s not complicated”

This banner image created by @colby_colonel for the @AntiRacistJazz Twitter feed depicts the various messages Jazz players chose for their jerseys in 2020.

That broad awareness was Hodges’ primary goal when he started producing JFAR content. He had no specific targets or benchmarks in mind as far as views, followers or engagement. (For the record, the Jazz Fans Against Racism accounts have over 4,000 combined followers as of this writing across Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.)

His objective was always more qualitative than that: he just wanted to nudge Jazz fans who needed to hear some simple truths:

“We need to stop denying that this is a problem, and we need to take responsibility for it… (We) can contribute to the situation in good ways or in bad ways.”

According to Smith, the key to converting people into allies starts with that awareness and culminates with an ability to put oneself in another person’s shoes.

“When (you) hear something shared as racist, offensive or oppressive,” Smith exhorted, “ask one question: how would I feel if that were me, my wife, my daughter, my husband, or someone else I deeply love? Once you imagine that as someone you deeply love, if that situation disturbs you, then it’s time to take action.”

“It’s not as complicated as one would think it could be if you open yourself to have that moment of listening and understanding,” Durham added. “Empathy goes a long way.”