The Dress Code

- Game Over: There is one last thing that I'd like to say about the dress-code:

“The Jordan crossover [appeal], as engineered by [his agent David Falk], succeeded because white Americans got to participate fully in what was ‘Jordan’ without ever having their race guilt triggered. Jordan’s white fans didn’t think of him as black the way Ali’s white fans thought of him as black; Jordan didn’t construct his public persona out of his blackness. As a result, the world’s most dangerous man on the hardwood was utterly unthreatening as a symbol; he ‘transcended’ race, which is to say that in his planed, smiling face, white Americans (unconsciously) sought and found permission to forget about race--both his and theirs. Thus the Jordan appeal, while giving the impression of having ‘overcome’ race--of having ‘solved’ the race problem--merely sidestepped the issue altogether.”
-- Only the Strong Survive by Larry Platt

-e