Are the Harlem Globetrotters Racists?
(Not that I know of, but read on.) On Saturday, January 8, I attended the Harlem Globetrotters show at America West Arena with my family. Just as the last time I last saw the Globetrotters 35 years ago, the show was good, clean fun apparently well received by all. It did, however, prompt the following comment. The Globetrotters’ humor included elements of racial stereotyping. First, a black Globetrotter got the purse of a white woman in the audience. During this round of fun, at one point a group of Globetrotters huddled around the purse as though they were a gang of urban punks that had just snatched it and were preparing to rip through the contents. A bit later, when the official was trying to get the Globetrotter with the purse to return it, he asked what the owner looked like. The player whispered something to the official, and the official responded, “Well, what did the white woman look like?” The response was something like “I don’t know, all white people look the same.” There we
