In an excerpt from his new book, Jumpman, the birth and significance of Michael JordanAuthor Johnny Smith explores the cultural context and commitment that led black athletes like Jordan to become the face of corporate America.
Everyone seems to love Michael Jordan and what he represents. His agent, David Falk, recognized Jordan’s potential to live up to American ideals better than anyone. In 1987, after Jordan came on the scene 60 minutesFalk told sports illustrated, “If you’re going to develop a media athlete and star…talented, average build, well-spoken, attractive, approachable, old values, healthy, clean, natural, not a goody two-shoes, and a little Evil – you would invent Michael. He was the first modern crossover in team sports. “We thought he transcended race. “
Jordan isn’t the first black athlete to be praised for transcending race. Ambitious and entrepreneurial OJ Simpson set the standard for Madison Avenue’s coveted crossover athletes. Simpson consciously sought white approval and corporate approval, displaying disdain for anything that seemed too political. When he first became a national football star at the University of Southern California in the late 1960s, he rejected the Black Power movement and dismissed the debate surrounding black athletes’ boycott of the 1968 Olympics to protest racism. While the “black athlete revolt” disrupted the sports world, Simpson acted as a counterrevolutionary, suppressing any expression of black anger.
His breakthrough as a corporate spokesman came when he portrayed himself as a “good black man,” an advertisement for color-blind Americans. Simpson fans find him charming, affable and non-threatening. Before he played a game in the National Football League, he signed endorsement deals with Chevrolet and RC Coke. In 1975, Hertz launched a national advertising campaign around Simpson, whom the rental-car company’s consumer surveys revealed was considered “distinctive.” A Hertz advertising executive later explained: “People thought OJ Simpson was OJ Simpson, not OJ Simpson, the black athlete.” The recognition from white America made Simpson proud. “My greatest achievement,” he said in 1969, “is that people see me first as a man, not as a black man.”
Two decades later, Jordan echoed Simpson’s color-blind remarks. “Sometimes I think I’m viewed not just as a black man but as a human being,” he said. “I think this is new territory for us and for society. I’m happy to be a pioneer. When I say ‘Don’t think of me as white or black,’ what I’m saying is: think of me as a human being .” Jordan aims to position himself in America more as an individual than as a racial ambassador. Maintaining his respected reputation across racial lines and being respected for being articulate, fit, and intelligent required him to refute the myth that black people did not possess these characteristics. The narrative about Jordan transcending race thus reflects a larger myth: that once he overcame the country’s racial barriers, he was liberated from his skin color, making him more American and more heroic.
Paul Natkin/Getty Images
Some white people thought embracing Jordan meant they couldn’t see skin color. In this kind of thinking, they hardly notice race or care about racial differences anymore. But identifying someone’s race isn’t a problem. The problem with color blindness—the denial of the existence of race—is that it allows people to deny the continued existence of racism. By the early 1980s, surveys showed that 90 percent of whites believed black and white children should attend the same schools, 71 percent opposed segregated communities, and 80 percent said they would support a black candidate for president—this was America A profound sign of white support for racial equality. But the reality is that white America’s romance with Jordan and other black celebrities has done little to dispel stereotypes about black people. 1989, ABC/Washington post Three-quarters of white people believe avoiding black neighborhoods is “common sense” rather than racial bias, the survey shows. A year later, a survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago showed that a majority of whites viewed blacks as lazier, less intelligent, less patriotic, and more violent than whites. This phenomenon of color blindness has swept the country.
In Jordan’s America, color blindness meant different things to different people. Liberals associate colorblindness with racial equality and legal protections against institutionalized white supremacy, while conservatives see it as a means to promote elite values and hinder the progress of the civil rights movement. Conservatives believe that focusing on race strips people of their individuality and gives unnecessary advantages to certain groups, especially black Americans. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan opposed affirmative action, declaring: “We want a color-blind society—a society that, in Dr. King’s words, judges people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Reagan misrepresented King’s message, which made no mention of the slain civil rights leader’s lifelong commitment to fighting white supremacy or his advocacy of affirmative action programs.
Yet for many Americans, black and white, colorblindness offers a meaningful aspiration that all should strive to achieve, including Jordan.i have already told chicago tribune The writer said his parents raised him to be color blind. “I’ve never seen your color before,” he said. “I don’t see you as black or white, just as a human being.” He also said he faced no racial barriers during his career, a comfort to white fans who appreciated that he didn’t harbor any Racial resentment. His and Magic Johnson’s popularity proved to NBA Commissioner David Stern that the league had addressed its racial woes. Although the racial makeup of the NBA hasn’t changed much since the mid-1970s, no one is complaining that the league is “too black.” To white critics, the real problem seems not to be that there are too many black players, but that there aren’t enough black players in the NBA. the right kind of black players. In 1990, when a reporter asked Stern if racism contributed to the NBA’s difficulty attracting white fans, he responded: “It’s a dead question; our fans grew up color blind.”
Company executives agree with Stern. “The public, especially young people, are color blind when it comes to their sports heroes,” said McDonald’s senior vice president David Green. In the late 1980s, Jordan’s sponsors—McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and Chevrolet—repeated this message in his ads. At a Chevrolet promotion in Chicago, through the city and its surrounding suburbs, two young friends, one white, one black, meet their heroes. At one point, the boys met at Chicago Stadium and ran to their seats, beaming, knowing they would see Jordan play. Chevrolet is not selling a specific car in the ad. Instead, the theme is that Jordan, like Chevrolet, represents “the heartbeat of America.” In another ad, the boys meet Jordan on a city street at night before he drives off wearing a shiny red blazer. Likewise, McDonald’s tells the story of Jordan joining a children’s integrated group at a local franchise. Surrounded by his children, Jordan appeared approachable and friendly, a hero parents could trust with their children. In The Coca-Cola Company , Jordan plays the role of a good neighbor, offering a six-pack of soda to three friends playing in a treehouse. Wearing red and white Air Jordan sneakers, he ran out of his mother’s house holding the can like a basketball. As his biological mother, Delores, cheered him on from a rocking chair on the front porch, Jordan jumped into the air, stretched toward the top of the treehouse, and handed Coca-Cola to the three ecstatic boys.
In every commercial, kids surround Jordan. Viewed together, the ads convey a simple message he’s already expressed in multiple interviews: “I don’t believe in race. “I believe in friendship. Jordan didn’t just carry American products. He sold a story of racial integration that linked business to democratic ideals. If white Americans once looked to O.J. Simpson as a role model for blacks who dismantled racism, Jordan followed in his footsteps. .Black athletes have enjoyed commercial endorsements for years, but before Jordan, no athlete was truly promoted as an inspiring force for racial unity.
His commercials and NBA broadcasts demonstrated a “virtual integration” in which black athletes such as Jordan became imaginary playmates for white fans. Television creates an artificial experience that allows white Americans to feel like they have meaningful contact with black people without having to interact socially with them in real life. The medium brought Jordan into the living rooms of millions of Americans, turning him into someone people believed they truly knew. Reflecting on fabricated images of black people on television, Harvard University historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote: “When American society failed to successfully achieve the social reforms sought in the 1960s through the Great Society, television simply invented symbols. That solved the problem with the shift in the 1980s.”
Much of Jordan’s appeal stems from the fact that he really looks like the innocent, happy guy he plays on TV. “Over the past few years, he’s told us to drink Coke, eat Big Macs, drive Chevys, wear Nikes, use Johnson products, sport Guy LaRoche watches, play Wilson basketballs, wear Bisbees and Crewe Suit, don’t drink and drive, stay away from drugs, work hard, live happily and listen to your parents.” QDavid Breskin wrote in 1989. “People were not only in awe of Michael Jordan; like he. “They believed him.”
By 1990, Michael Jordan had become a ubiquitous figure. His name appeared in a hundred daily newspapers and his face appeared just about everywhere: on television, T-shirts, trading cards, billboards, posters, ads and magazine covers. Most importantly, he has become a national symbol, a bridge between white Americans and black Americans, evoking the country’s past and the promise of a better future.write for gentlemanBlack novelist John Edgar Wiedemann said that for some, Jordan “proved that race had no rules, that there were no limits to what black people could achieve in our society. Or maybe he was the exception that proved the rule, The lack of rules.” Americans’ desire for a black star who could transcend the country’s complicated racial history helped make Jordan a national hero. For those celebrants who claimed the Bulls star “liberated us from our obsession with race,” Jordan gave them a brief break from the world’s troubles.
Soon, though, he would discover that extricating himself from the country’s racial woes was as easy as taking off his straitjacket.