Mayors Elihu Harris of Oakland and Willie Brown of San Francisco took it upon themselves to rush to the aid of the poor downtrodden Sprewell and denounce the actions of the Golden State Warriors and the NBA as unfair. Keep in mind of course that Willie Brown is the same man who publicly denounced the SF 49er's Grbac (a white man) as "an embarrassment to the human race" for playing a single football game badly. I'll blame Harris of poor judgement, (failed) political grandstanding, and following Brown's lead. Brown, on the other hand, is showing himself to have definite racist leanings. I doubt he'd ever come out and actually say, "Down with the White Man", but his brand of politics practically screams it from the rooftops.

Now others have taken up the standard. Basketball is an industry with the majority of players being black and the majority of coaches and staff being white. Is there a disparity there? Absolutely. Does this have ANYTHING to do with the Sprewell incident? Of course not. Coaches get fired all the time. Players get fired all the time. In this case, the player broke the law and assaulted his coach. What if he'd assaulted a verbally abusive black player and choked the player, then got fired? Would Brown, Harris, and the super-sensitized black racist front have jumped up foaming at the mouth quite so quickly? I sincerely doubt it.

Play the race card too much and it loses it's value. There will be situations where it NEEDS to be played. Those situations happen every day. But just because the situation already has a huge spotlight on it does not make it an appropriate situation to play the race card. Brown and Harris are posturing for the public, and doing themselves more harm than good in the process, but more importantly they are hurting those who would defend people against real racism by crying "wolf" far too often and for all the wrong reasons.