Jaylen Brown, Year 7
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Possibly. I guess I'll submit that it's >50% likely. But even if this was a mistake, I'm still fairly certain that he has a lot of questionable/troubling beliefs.
I find the comments from Jaylen over the past couple of weeks to be both alarming and very disappointing. I am also very curious to know what it is about his upbringing that leads you to believe that he is almost unimaginably ignorant.
I dunno, I want to believe he was genuine at this time. Though then again a huge deal was made of him driving from Boston to Atlanta sooo, good for you(edit: good for JB, not Myt)? He's was not some sort of savior, but a voice for the black community in a peaceful, positive light. He had the celebrity status for it, and I think he used it well. This is were I wonder if it went to his head
His father is a former professional athlete, and he’s been touted as a top basketball talent since his youth in GA. If you don’t think that’s a recipe for a worldview and lived experience decidedly different than the average affluent white male New Englander SoSH poster—especially with regard to issues of antisemitism—then I’d invite you to make that case.
I don't see antisemitism mentioned anywhere in this post.
Maybe learn more Jaylen's upbringing because you couldn't be more off-base. I also find your dog whistling unseemly.
Just so I can get a better understanding of how what you posted above relates to your original comment, let me start by quoting in full your original post.
I’d invite you to make the case that having a father who is a former professional athlete and being a star athlete from a young age makes a person an almost unimaginably ignorant man. I guess you’re trying to make the point that SOSH members know more about antisemitism than he does because we are from the Northeast, white, and affluent. I don’t know if that’s true, but if so I find it richly ironic that you go on to characterize Brown’s George Floyd actions and comments as merely the stuff of a precocious savant rather than the informed thinking of someone with a vast amount of lived experience when it comes to recognizing and dealing with white supremacy. Apparently your not being a member of Brown’s “protected class” doesn’t preclude you from possessing a more sophisticated understanding of systemic racism than a Black man who grew up in the South.
The point of all of this is that by all accounts Jaylen Brown is an intelligent man. He also appears to have some deeply troubling opinions about Jewish people. If he’s not an antisemite himself, he is clearly willing to overlook antisemitism in others. Such opinions and views are often not related to levels of intelligence. Bigotry comes from somewhere else.
No, I haven’t said anything like that at all. I have said that his comments on that particular issue are being misused by members here to indicate some baseline level of general political analysis ability. You can tell, because that’s literally what I’ve said, repeatedly.
I think that the issue is that you’re conflating issue of intelligence with issues of ignorance. They’re two different things. Jaylen Brown can be an intelligent man who is ignorant about particular things because his own lived experience does not include them.
Again, if you think that someone with Jaylen Brown’s upbringing and immense wealth at a young age is likely to track the normal SoSH poster’s sensitivity to issue of antisemitism, then you’re free to make that case. If you don’t understand why he might be better suited to speak intelligently about George Floyd’s killing in particular than he is about broader issues of political philosophy (such that his facility with the specific former does not represent some true natural talent as to the latter) with which he has less direct experience, then I don’t know what to tell you. Do you really think that Brown’s knowledge of issues related to Black men and law enforcement translates seamlessly—or even at all usefully—to issues regarding Black “Israelites” and antisemitism?
Mostly, it would be neat if you guys quit the innuendo, and actually just made the accusation you wish to make.
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I’m not saying he wasn’t genuine. I’m saying that maybe his one shining moment with regard to sociological commentary shouldn’t be deemed his true ability, such that future failures to live up to that standard need to be attributed to malice, is all.
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What do you know about his upbringing that excuses his comments/Twitter bullshit?
This kind of post makes me believe the average SoSH poster is Bradley Whitford's character in Get Out.
He’s just trying to imply that I’m simultaneously (1) racist for assuming that Brown grew up poor and black; and (2) antisemitic for excusing Brown’s own antisemitism, is all.
It gets complicated, this taking unwarranted vicarious offense for others.
Your sarcasm cannot mask the fact that, no matter how many times you‘ve said it—repeatedly, even—members here somehow keep misconstruing the point you are making. That’s either because we’re too thick to get it or because what you keep writing isn’t coming across as you think it is. For example, when you write this:
You seem to believe that you have made clear in your original post that Jaylen Brown isn‘t necessarily ignorant full stop, just ignorant of the nuances of antisemitism.The words you actually wrote, unfortunately, do not reflect this distinction that you have subsequently drawn. The words you actually wrote referred to Brown as an almost unimaginably ignorant man. And while I do not presume to speak for Social Chair, I suspect that this is what he was pointing out with his comment that he did not see the word ”antisemitism” in your post. You believe that you teased out some important distinction in your post but at least some of your readers did not see it.
So when I wrote this:
What you took from it was that I was doing was conflating intelligence and ignorance rather than pointing out to you that you were conflating lack of intelligence with antisemitism. OK!
Are we really arguing about whether saying Jaylen Brown is not very smart about politics is racist? Right after he posted some of the dumbest shit imaginable to leave little doubt?
If Auerbach was still around, Jaylen Brown would be called a n*gger by about half the people in the stands while other people vandalized his home during road trips. Who gives a fuck?
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JB could choose to add to his understanding of the history of Jewish people, which could better inform and sensitize him to what hurtful anti Semitism tropes can lead to, (as in the Jewish Holocaust), and how him contributing in any way to fostering anti Semitism today could result in Jewish people being hurt or killed.
I would like to think the better of him, based on what I’ve seen from his off the court social justice initiatives. He tweeted that he mistakenly thought the group that organized in support of Irving was a fraternity, which if true was as sloppy as his handle in traffic, but didn’t take the original post of this hate group down.
Or he could be a believer of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement. If so, I would hope that he would associate himself with the non-anti Semitic branch of that movement, and disavow the anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist branches of it.
I would like to think the better of him, based on what I’ve seen from his off the court social justice initiatives. He tweeted that he mistakenly thought the group that organized in support of Irving was a fraternity, which if true was as sloppy as his handle in traffic, but didn’t take the original post of this hate group down.
Or he could be a believer of the Black Hebrew Israelite movement. If so, I would hope that he would associate himself with the non-anti Semitic branch of that movement, and disavow the anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist branches of it.
Jaylen left that tweet up, so I'll assume he's still a huge supporter of anti-semites. Big fan of people who hate Jews. Loves their energy.
I really haven't been watching much of the Cs, since I find the regular season to increasingly be a waste of time. But it's gonna be hard to muster up much enthusiasm come playoff time. Yay laundry, I guess.
I really haven't been watching much of the Cs, since I find the regular season to increasingly be a waste of time. But it's gonna be hard to muster up much enthusiasm come playoff time. Yay laundry, I guess.
I'm pretty disgusted with Jaylen, but I think its important to give a descriptive account when we're dealing with behavior that seems to be so counterintuitive to our understanding of someone.
One thing to keep in mind is that there's a set of Black folks that are so traumatized and paranoid after living their whole lives in legitimate fears of police, state, and right-wing terroristic violence that they can fall for conspiratorial thinking which entail reactionary and regressive points of views, including anti-Semitism. Being under the microscope of the media does not help.
It's ignorance, sure, but it's also ignorance motivated by fear and by a habit of thought which assumes there are shadowy groups that control the levers of power. I think @Myt1 is right that being a rich athlete raised and surrounded by other rich athletes will lead to further blinkering. on top of that, it's always seemed to me that Jaylen has prided himself on his intelligence and insight into the social/political heart of America, and I think that pride has outstripped by a long shot his actual knowledge of anti-Semitism or politics.
If I'm being honest, I'm not sure if he even fully understands Kyrie's point of view or politics - as incoherent and blabbermouthed as Kyrie is, that shouldn't surprise anyone - or if he's just defending him because he sees a black man whom he considers a friend being attacked. His circumlocutions and vague statements haven't helped clarify anything in that regard. A lot of these guys after BLM would rather die that criticize another Black man: I think in their minds it would be turning their back on their brothers. Ethically, he should understand what he's supporting and defending of course, if he's going to comment on it and retweet photos of anti-Semites, but I'm not sure yet that he does.
Just trying to give a descriptive account of what's going on, if I can try. I don't intend any of this as a normative defense of Jaylen per se. I think he's been arrogant, shortsighted, selfish and defensive in a way that suggests a dangerous lack of humility throughout all of this saga. I wish he knew better than to defend Kyrie. I wish he knew better than to work with Kanye. But the idea that he was some sort of chess-playing social-justice genius was always setting him up for failure. It's awfully hard for a lot of people to see past their own prejudices and rage and fear right now, with the climate of racism, rage, and xenophobia in politics and the culture.
One thing to keep in mind is that there's a set of Black folks that are so traumatized and paranoid after living their whole lives in legitimate fears of police, state, and right-wing terroristic violence that they can fall for conspiratorial thinking which entail reactionary and regressive points of views, including anti-Semitism. Being under the microscope of the media does not help.
It's ignorance, sure, but it's also ignorance motivated by fear and by a habit of thought which assumes there are shadowy groups that control the levers of power. I think @Myt1 is right that being a rich athlete raised and surrounded by other rich athletes will lead to further blinkering. on top of that, it's always seemed to me that Jaylen has prided himself on his intelligence and insight into the social/political heart of America, and I think that pride has outstripped by a long shot his actual knowledge of anti-Semitism or politics.
If I'm being honest, I'm not sure if he even fully understands Kyrie's point of view or politics - as incoherent and blabbermouthed as Kyrie is, that shouldn't surprise anyone - or if he's just defending him because he sees a black man whom he considers a friend being attacked. His circumlocutions and vague statements haven't helped clarify anything in that regard. A lot of these guys after BLM would rather die that criticize another Black man: I think in their minds it would be turning their back on their brothers. Ethically, he should understand what he's supporting and defending of course, if he's going to comment on it and retweet photos of anti-Semites, but I'm not sure yet that he does.
Just trying to give a descriptive account of what's going on, if I can try. I don't intend any of this as a normative defense of Jaylen per se. I think he's been arrogant, shortsighted, selfish and defensive in a way that suggests a dangerous lack of humility throughout all of this saga. I wish he knew better than to defend Kyrie. I wish he knew better than to work with Kanye. But the idea that he was some sort of chess-playing social-justice genius was always setting him up for failure. It's awfully hard for a lot of people to see past their own prejudices and rage and fear right now, with the climate of racism, rage, and xenophobia in politics and the culture.
Here, I’ll bold it for both of you:
“I think that SoSH probably needs to take a step back and recognize that they’re talking about an articulate yet almost unimaginably ignorant (first by upbringing and then by wealth isolation) man who is vanishingly unlikely to know as much as the average member here does about this particular subject matter,”
Were you under the impression that “this particular subject matter” referred to something besides the particular nature of the antisemitism we are talking about here? Maybe I was referring to proper turkey spatchcocking technique, or some nuance of astrophysics?
It seems patronizing and weird to assume this antisemitism is so nuanced and hard to understand that Jaylen is just too ignorant to recognize it. Could be. But I don't think it is the most likely answer. Or that the issue is terribly complicated.
He's been playing footsies on the Kyrie stuff for a while now. Even if he was completely uniformed at the very beginning of the current scandal, I really doubt he is right now unless he wants to be.
He's been playing footsies on the Kyrie stuff for a while now. Even if he was completely uniformed at the very beginning of the current scandal, I really doubt he is right now unless he wants to be.
This is a great post and I think it goes to the heart of why I am not yet ready to be done with Jaylen Brown.
That said, he isn't not criticizing Kyrie - I completely agree that expecting something like that is unrealistic - instead he is actively cheering him on via his social media posts.
Again, for me Jaylen is in the "wants Jews wiped from the face of the planet" until or unless he says otherwise. I am holding out hope that I have him wrong but he is giving zero reason to believe that at present. Its sad and I will stll cheer for him but with a twinge of pain because that person wishes my tribe didn't exist.
I was under the impression that posters have stumbled on understanding WTF you were talking about beyond your belief that a young athlete raised outside the Northeast couldn't possibly grasp the nuances of antisemitism the way that the white, affluent Northeasterners around here can. Obviously, though, it's just a few of us dunderheads who are unable to follow your incredibly precise and sophisticated postings. I look forward to your continuing insights on these topics.
And it was a self-inflicted wound. In JB's quote from the NBA.com article below relaying the 2020 George Floyd protest in Atlanta he's directly saying "you've got to listen to our perspective. Our voices need to be heard." If you are putting that responsibility on your back, you need to be damn sure of the message that is being projected. Notably the other ATL principal in the 2020 story, Malcolm Brogdon, has not provided public comment on the Kyrie punishment itself or his thoughts. It may be that Jaylen can be the meat shield for the entire NBPA on the issue and take the heat, or he disagrees with Kyrie and as Dave Chappelle (problematic opinions noted) said about the black community's lack of response to Jussie Smollett's alleged attack "We WERE supporting him with our silence, because this (guy) was clearly lying."
Given the shameful history of the treatment of black people through systematic racism I definitely understand the sentiment to close ranks and speak out in support of your brother. However there is a difference between supporting the PERSON versus supporting their IDEA. By JB continually chiming in and giving this story more oxygen, he's at least inviting us to speculate this may be his closely held belief as well and not just to support his friend/colleague.
There is also the ongoing story about how this is more collateral damage of the Twitter and "Players Tribute" era, where athletes can bypass traditional means to talk directly to their followers. In a previous generation, the Kyrie recommendation would be amongst like a handful of friends instead of millions of people. And JB's theoretical response to a punishment would be through Jackie MacMullen to be edited and released in a daily newspaper. He'd probably say "Wow those brothers in the fraternity are really showing out to support Kyrie." And Jackie would say before even writing down his quote of support "Hey you know those are Black Hebrew Israelites, right?" There would be plenty of bumpers to keep guys from going off the rails.
https://www.nba.com/news/boston-celtics-jaylen-brown-leads-peaceful-protest-atlanta
This whole post was great, but I want to focus on this a bit more.
To get this out of the way, I fall on @Myt1 side of the aisle on JB. I think he's ignorant, as opposed to an anti-semite. Is he espousing anti-semitic beliefs by retweeting/liking certain posts, yes, but does he understand why they are anti-semitic, I haven't seen any evidence of that yet.
There is a difference between someone growing up who is taught that being gay is bad through some sort of indoctrination, religious or otherwise, and that becomes their worldview. It's another thing entirely to take that worldview and openly mock members of the LGBTQ community, and push for policies in government that oppress them. One is ignorant, one has bought into that ignorance and is now full-on hating and discriminating based on it. I mean, just look at the responses to Jaylen's tweet. Half of them are people telling him he shouldn't apologize, that he's just giving in to "the man," so to speak. I would argue that 90% of the people responding to him have literally no fucking idea why he's even being accused of having anti-semitic beliefs. His ignorant thoughts are being positively reinforced, not on the basis of the foundation of the belief, not because people are saying he's correct, but because he's a black guy now apologizing to the establishment that has kept him and his ancestors down for generations.
So, yes, like Myt, I don't believe that Jaylen even knows a little bit of the underlying issues dating back, well, thousands of years. Shit, I have a mother who was born in Jerusalem, I've grown up around Jewish friends my entire life, I'm a direct descendant of genocide survivors myself and I had to do a lot of reading to even get to the bare minimum of understanding who this group is and what they believe. There is, IMO, way more evidence that Jaylen is ignorant and diving headlong into a defense of his community, as he understands it, than there is that Jaylen has done the legwork and determined what the BHI Movement is or is not? Maybe he does believe that the original Jews were all black, but does he know that they believe that Christianity and Islam (of which he is a member, mind you) are false religions? Does he believe white Jews are perpetrating identity theft? I truly doubt it, and if he does, he has barely scratched the surface.
Responding to this because I think it’s right on and want to amplify it.
I actually believe what he was saying about thinking it was a Black fraternity. Of course, even if that is the truth he probably should have thought better than tweeting about it without checking all of the facts.
Overall, I don’t think he needs to be on twitter at all. It’s not a great platform for him.
Feels like another unforced error posting a picture with the frat guys and the paddles they presumably beat their initiates with.
Ah, so, given your failure of basic reading comprehension, we’re onto the actively mendacious strawman portion of the program. Fun.
There’s a difference between “couldn’t possibly grasp” and “is unlikely to have the same baseline of experience and understanding as the median poster here,” given that the mostly affluent suburban northeasterner SoSH population is simply more likely to actually be Jewish or have substantial exposure to Jewish people and discussions of antisemitism. You know, since the percentage of Massachusetts residents who are Jewish is about 3-4x the percentage of Georgia residents who are Jewish and all.
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Do you think that Jaylen Brown is as informed about issues of antisemitism as @jose melendez ? If not, do you think that difference stems primarily from willful ignorance?
Hell, he could be both ignorant and an antisemite for all I know. I was merely offering a calibration suggestion to a guy whom I respect and like, rather than a conclusion on the ultimate question itself.
And it seems to be pretty much where he landed, anyway.
I reject the idea that Jaylen Brown has to be as informed about issues of antisemitism as Jose or others here to not be antisemitic. But no, I don't think he is profoundly ignorant on the subject either, even though I'm guessing most antisemitic people really are that ignorant.
And yes, once the Kanye stuff blew up, followed by Kyrie doing some more, I do think Jaylen Brown was being willfully ignorant if he didn't dig in a little bit to understand why people were upset about it and hurting.
We are in complete agreement.
OK. Do we at least agree that Brown’s facility with Black Lives Matter issues is reasonably likely to be an outlier with regard to his Informed Political Insight metric?
It means he supports that group. He gets no benefit of the doubt from here onward.
Aren’t most people better informed about issues that affect them personally? Especially when that issue is as series as police violence? Unless your point is that JB’s BLM thoughts shouldn’t have led us to believe he’s an overall wonderkid, which makes sense but doesn’t excuse the low bar he’s failed to meet when it comes to antisemitism.
I'm sure there's an enormous amount of ignorance in the NBA and the population in general about anti-Semitism. And I'm not interested in having Jaylen, Kyrie or even Kanye genuflect and beg for forgiveness. What I am interested in is people who veer into dodgy, stupid stuff-especially those who fancy themselves as smart--get educated. Kyrie or Jaylen should pick up a book--it's not that hard. There's lots of stuff about anti-black racism in the U.S. I wasn't versed in, so I read. My tolerance for people who are "just asking questions" is at an all time low.
It's not that different than the Bell Curve types who insist that it's not that their racist, they're just asking legitimate questions that need to be dug into. If you're going to assert you're intellectually curious, act like you actually are.
It's not that different than the Bell Curve types who insist that it's not that their racist, they're just asking legitimate questions that need to be dug into. If you're going to assert you're intellectually curious, act like you actually are.
I guess it depends what you mean by outlier. I think Jaylen cares about BLM roughly 1,000,000 times more than antisemitism. But it doesn't tell me much of anything about his understanding of antisemitism, which as a concept, isn't very complicated.
And again, I think most antisemites are profoundly ignorant and uniformed. So I'm not sure it matters how smart or informed he is. But now I'm not sure if we are arguing if Jaylen is antisemitic or not, or rationalizing why he could be.
He refuted it afterward. I don't know that trying to hide something shitty one said is noble.
Leaving it up a tweet lauding the "energy" of a hate group sucks. He should take it down. But he won't because I assume he supports their aims. He didn't refute it, just said he thought it was the Qs. He's welcome to stop supporting anti-semitic people anytime now.
He doesn't support their views but he's proud of their support. Doesn't matter if it's support of anti-semitism.
View: https://twitter.com/JamalCollier/status/1594751431860707328?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1594751431860707328%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=
I agree that antisemitism is not particularly complicated at a broad but ultimately superficial conceptual level. I think that there is more nuance here, with regard to this particular application, however.
The last thing I’ll add to the dead horse’s corpse is that Brown had what I view as a reasonably similar shitty response regarding Udoka’s potential hiring by the Nets, likely while being ignorant of the full story regarding the allegations against him. I think this is pretty much just how he rolls at a baseline level.
To bring this back to BHI specifically and whether Jaylen is an anti-semite or just plain ignorant. Jaylen shared a video from outside Kyrie's first game back with one word "Energy." That's it. Now, the group in the photo was a militant, anti-semitic hate group, which Jaylen claimed he thought was a black fraternity, something Jaylen seems to be intimately familiar with and supports.
Like I said, Jaylen Brown is a Muslim. He famously fasted during the NBA playoffs in case people have forgotten. The extreme (or maybe even mainstream at this point) membership of BHI views that as a false religion. BHI is not just anti-semitic, they are anti-Muslim, anti-Christian, not to mention their views on women, LGBTQ, etc.
Jaylen has nothing in common, if he's truly a devout Muslim, with these folks. Anti-semitism is not complicated when we're dealing in tropes like Jews controlling the world, Jews are cheap, etc. But when we're talking about anti-semitism as it relates to religious beliefs, and thousands of years of history, and you're throwing in a group like BHI whose beliefs are so out of the mainstream, it may not be complicated, but it's also nothing like the more straightforward stereotypes that folks do understand. Jaylen, as a Muslim, may be anti-semitic, but I also believe that as a Muslim, he wouldn't be reposting shit from BHI, because they hate him as much as they hate Jews.
Maybe someone should send him this, and tell him to start around the 8:00 minute mark.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCpy8wPBbYs
Like I said, Jaylen Brown is a Muslim. He famously fasted during the NBA playoffs in case people have forgotten. The extreme (or maybe even mainstream at this point) membership of BHI views that as a false religion. BHI is not just anti-semitic, they are anti-Muslim, anti-Christian, not to mention their views on women, LGBTQ, etc.
Jaylen has nothing in common, if he's truly a devout Muslim, with these folks. Anti-semitism is not complicated when we're dealing in tropes like Jews controlling the world, Jews are cheap, etc. But when we're talking about anti-semitism as it relates to religious beliefs, and thousands of years of history, and you're throwing in a group like BHI whose beliefs are so out of the mainstream, it may not be complicated, but it's also nothing like the more straightforward stereotypes that folks do understand. Jaylen, as a Muslim, may be anti-semitic, but I also believe that as a Muslim, he wouldn't be reposting shit from BHI, because they hate him as much as they hate Jews.
Maybe someone should send him this, and tell him to start around the 8:00 minute mark.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCpy8wPBbYs
I really didn’t like this answer. At all. I think it proves what @Fishy1 said in a different thread, that Jaylen is just only concerned with African American peoples rights and is very ignorant otherwise.
However, in general, I am really tired of people just not owning up to a mistake or saying sorry but trying to twist the conversation into something it’s not.
His overall statement would have been perfect if it started with “im sorry, I had no idea what those people stood for and I condemn all hate speech” and then went on about how he saw unity amongst African Americans.
instead he just sounds like he’s pushing the blame on “agendas” instead of taking any sort of self inventory. I hate that and I thought he was better than that honestly
EDIT: And I want to make something clear, I don’t think Jaylen OR Kyrie are truly anti-Semitic.
I think Kyrie is an extreme narcissist and a doofus and posted something he had no idea about and chose to dig in instead of admitting that he actually didn’t watch the movie and look dumb.
Jaylen I think truly wanted to show support for the community.
but honestly that doesnt matter. The bottom line is that they did amplify the thoughts and views of what is essentially a hate group. The only appropriate response, with their platform, is apologizing and denouncing hate. It’s not twisting yourself into a pretzel talking about communities coming together or whatever bullshit
He could delete it and issue a follow up explanation. Matt Barnes did exactly this after reacting in real time to the Udoka suspension and imo he came off well as a result.
Why do people feel the need to explain Jaylen's nuanced position - especially when they cannot possibly know that its an accurate assessment - when all he is doing is telling us directly?. He stands with Kyrie to some degree. We all get that its nuanced but who cares. Kyrie is an antisemite and Jaylen Brown is amplifying Irving's stance via his social posts (not under the auspices of the NBAPA).
I will root for him to do well for the Cs but he probably doesn't want my support. Why do we want to contort ourselves to give the benefit of the doubt? Maybe some people here think Jaylen is kind of right too.