“Tackle That Nigger” & Other Sights and Sounds At The Pittsburgh Steelers Game
I was one of the big believers that some of the intense criticism (not so much the criticism itself, but the tone and language and unwarranted passion of the criticism) of President Obama was based on race. People spoke of the tenor of the national conversation becoming increasingly hostile and aggressive. Well, fortunately football fans in Pittsburgh do need the nuance of political arguments because they are more than happy to simply blurt out rude and offensive slurs. Let me take you on a tour of this past Sunday’s Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Cleveland Browns game.
As I walked to Heinz field with my brother we observed several classy t-shirts. “Baltimore sucks, Cleveland swallows” was one such shirt that was clearly debasing the national conversation on football and city supremacy. Another shirt, however, caught our attention. It simply said “Burn the Brownies.” We joked to each other that there could be a not-so-subtle racial tone to that shirt.
Everything seemed pretty normal walking to the stadium. Fat men in Steelerjerseys mocked other fat men wearing Cleveland Browns jerseys. My brother andI were actually quite surprised at the absence of homophobic slurs that usually abound at professional sporting events. Maybe this would be an extra classy day at Heinz Field.
After we took our seats we were quickly joined by three men in our row. They were all approximately 6’1, 220 lbs of high school football and college drinking weight. They looked like they were about 22 years old. They spoke like they were from the antebellum south, both in content and accent. Here is what happened.
Sidenote- Can anyone explain to me how trailer parker/redneck is a uniform accent throughout the country? I have met trailer parkers/rednecks from places as different as Alabama, Colorado and Michigan, but they all seem to have the identical twang. Weird.
1st Quarter
Comment one from Billy Bob (that is what I will call their ring leader) came at the expense of a black man wearing a Browns jersey. Billy Bob yelled at this man, (loud enough for close by people to hear, but not loud enough for the man to actually hear) “Sit down Brownie, and I don’t just mean your jersey.” I gave Billy Bob the benefit of the doubt – either he had seen the former FEMA director or he was trying to be intentionally provocativefor his friends’ benefit, which as a comic I could understand a little. Nothing to get to worked up over.
2nd Quarter
Listening to fans at a football game is generally like being at Church – don’t expect tons of logical or scientific words to be uttered. In the former it makes sense because it is predicated on faith. However, I am amazed at how dumb football fans can be, despite honoring it andfollowing it like it’s a religion. In this quarter Billy Bob went to get some beers from the concession stand. However, he was taking his “Terrible Towel,” which his buddy, Cletus, wanted to continue waving. As soon as it was clear Billy Bob was going to throw the towel I knew it would land on my head. Four seconds later as I sipped my hot chocolate, a terrible towel landed on my head.
This angered my brother more than it did me, but what happened afterwards was even more awful. Cletus, in his drunken 81 IQ way explained to me in these exact words, “Oh man, I’m sorry. He was trying to throw the towel at me and hit you in the head.” Oh, thanks for clarifying that for me! I would have never known that that is what happened, except for the fact that I saw Billy Bob throw a towel and felt it land on my head. Moron.
Then Cletus, with a chance to star as lead idiot while Billy Bob got beers, turned and spilled his entire current beer on an 11 year old kid in front of him. Moron.
3rd Quarter
This climax of this experience occurred during this quarter. With the Cleveland Browns running the Wildcat offense with a black player playing the quarterback (I don’t know most of their players’ names because they suck – oh correction – they swallow according to the Pittsburgh area literature) the Browns began to make some good plays. And then, after a particularly good play, Billy Bob uttered the words that ruined my day and possibly won Eastern Pennsylvania for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Primary against Barack Obama:
“Tackle That Nigger.”
This was one of those moments for me where time sort of stopped. I felt like Zach Morris in Saved By The Bell where only I could speak or hear what was happening. My thoughts were, in order:
1) I need to Tweet this (shameful, but very modern reaction)
2) Wait, did Billy Bob just really say that? And that loudly?
3) Why is no one looking around? Did anyone hear that? Or are they ok with it?
4) Damn – I am sure this guy has little interaction with mixed race people, but even so, I am going to have hit up a tanning bed. But he’d still be thinking it even if he was too embarrassed to say it. I have had numerous experiences like this where white people have felt free to tell me all sorts of racist things because it was winter and they had no idea I was half black or half anything besides white.
5) Does Billy Bob realize that he is wearing a Santonio Holmes jersey, who is quite black? Or is this just emblematic of America’s tradition (diminishing, but still existent) of embracing blacks as entertainers only (even Obama had to brand himself as “cool”), while fearing, dehumanizing and/or denigrating blacks in other contexts.
My reaction was sort of dumbfounded and as I looked around, based on the composition of the immediate 5-6 rows (white, lots of rednecky accents) I did not think an argument, let alone a fight, would be advisable. But hopefully my letter to the Steelers organization identifying the date and seat numbers will ensure that these guys have a tougher time getting into games and will have to just watch games from the Aryan Nation Father-Son Sunday Brunch.
4th Quarter
My brother and I sat with sort of a vomity look on our faces, not really enjoying the remainder of the game sitting in the KKK box.
As I sit writing this now I am reminded that racism is alive and well in America. However, I am just as annoyed with people who would read this, be disgusted and outraged by such overt racism, while reassuring themselves that they are not racist simply because they don’t speak the same language. The people who did not even flinch when he said “Tackle That Nigger” are the bigger worry to me and there are a lot of them. Perhaps I should have hit the guy or started something, but it felt like a useless reaction. Not sure what I should have done exactly, but I wish I could of thought of something more satisfying than just “be pissed off.”
Of course all of this could have been averted if the Steelers tackling was better.
10 COMMENTS
I hope the guy chokes on a his tabacco chew!
This is just another reminder that while I like sports quite a bit I hate “sports fans”. I put it in quotations because there are people that like sports (me) and then there are “sports fans.” If it’s any consolation I’d guess that this guy has little in his life but his love of the Steelers, his hatred of minorities, a love of beer that will slowly turn into alcoholism, and an almost complete collection of those cool state quarters.
Optimistic hope on why no one batted an eye: Everyone, like you, was offended but also thought “what can you do, they’re idiots.”
Hey, JL. Hope all is well by you, and sorry about the incident; however, I feel like I should point out that it works both ways.
There is an African-American Muslim who often sits outside the Mott Avenue train station in Far Rockaway and spews anti-Caucasian and anti-Jewish rhetoric. Policemen have said that they can’t do anything about him, and I’d like to tell you about one instance in particular. After baiting a Jewish man with a long-winded spiel, the vendor distracted the Jewish man while an assailant snuck up and struck the Jewish man’s head. The Jewish man fell, got up, and realized that the assailant had already fled the scene. Not only didn’t the large African American crowd, which had formed during the anti-Caucasian and anti-Semitic tirade, complain; but when policemen arrived on the scene, nobody, other than the Jewish man, was questioned. The Jewish man asked one of the policemen why the crowd members, who had seen the assailant, weren’t being questioned. The policeman explained that none of the crowd members would say anything even if questioned, presumably, because this had been his experience over a number of years.
While it’s sad that some racial slurs made by Caucasians are met with silence, is anyone suggesting that African-Americans don’t do the same thing regarding slurs made against Caucasians and Jews? Many African Americans support Jackson and Sharpton, despite their “Hymie town” and “Diamond Merchant comments, respectively. A major New York rabbi who would have been involved in an equivalent incident regarding African-Americans (still waiting for that to happen) would have been immediately shunned.
If you want a much larger-scale sporting event example, after questionable, and possibly anti-Jewish, comments were attributed in an article to some Knicks players, events transpired that lead to MANY African-Americans (and others, I suppose) at the Garden to engage in a chant, encouraging Jews to go home. The Jew-run media hushed that one up pretty well.
Caucasians don’t need to apologize for what is said by other Caucasians any more than African Americans need apologize for what is said by other African-Americans. I would therefore like to assume that your blog is a commentary on the silence with which racial slurs, of all colors, are met.
No – it was just a comment on what I observed. It was a personal experience. I am in no way condoning what you have described, but I think there is less irony in Jewish-Black resentment and conflict in New York, where the comunities have had a history as social, political and probably most importantly, economic adversaries in NYC, than in my situation where a white guy wearing a black guy’s jersey is still ok with throwing out the word nigger and no one appeared to blink.
I get uncomfortable and annoyed with any of this crap, but my blog was just detailing an experience that I would naturally feel more strongly about. Discrimination and hatefuly language is wrong, no matter who the target is, but the word nigger is still the most potent word IN AMERICA, because of the history associated with it. That said, I believe when a black person yells out “white bitch” or “white motherfu-ker” or my personal favorite said to my (white) Uncle many years ago at the school he teaches at, “white nigga,” that person is guilty of the same racist animosities that would be associted with the word nigger, even if the words themselves do not sound as harsh. I do feel there is more acceptance of that, so on that point I think you are right.
I have had the advantage or at least the unique experience with coming from a mixed race household, with attending a private elementary and high school that was a majority Jewish and with attending a Church that was majority Irish. I have seen and heard things that have made me sensitive to prejudices from and towards many different communities. Can’t we all just get along?
Speaking of sports fans… This country has a long way to go: http://sports.espn.go.com/ncaa/news/story?id=4586847
[…] At a Pittsburgh Steelers game, – just read my write up – https://jlcauvin.com/?p=1212 […]
You were probably right to have to “swallow it” and not say anything as it surely would have erupted into some violence. I am sure there are no bounds to their volatile repressed racist rage! The classlessness you describe, like the child having to endure this all by wearing the beer of a redneck, sharing oxygen with knuckleheads who have no regard for humanity, all highlights the deep divide we all blindly live in, the uselessness we feel and the shock and dismay we have experienced seeing those exposed retrumplicans who came out of hiding and showed their spots. The road ahead seems impossible to fix, heal or even find ways to educate those in households across America (not just trailers) and mandate those in blue to pass a litmus test challenging bias beliefs and psychological fitness. These retrumplicans won’t simply wash away like we hope our memories will from 2016-20!
My faith is in You to heal from this and heal our world by doing your part…. turn your disgust into your comedic genius) and please make a maga video on this one ! Heal us from evil JL
Thank you for reading!
I apologize for using the n word n’at. After storming the capital a few weeks ago and getting hit really hard upside the head by an American flag, it knocked some sense into me that my high school diploma never gave me.
I’m a racist, dumb, poor white trash redneck and I still have white privilege.
That’s the first step to true freedom.
God bless you, America and the Stillers. Oh and god bless even bill peduto too.
[…] me). So let’s do an epic recap of my Pittsburgh trip – my first time back since 2009, when a white guy called a Black player on the Cleveland Browns a ni**er. Good to be […]
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