Objectify This

This Cinco de Mayo, Arizona’s NBA team, the Phoenix Suns, will denounce their state’s immigration policy on their uniforms.

NBA.com reports that the Noche Latina tradition includes uniforms displaying the team name “as spoken by the Latino population. . .  The Miami Heat, for example, is called “El Heat”; the San Antonio Spurs are “Los Spurs.”

The Suns will wear their Noche Latina uniforms today to show their solidarity with Arizona’s Hispanic/Latino community. In the 2000 census (the last time the question was asked, according to Businessweek) 34% of the population of Arizona was Latino or Hispanic.

That affinity with the Hispanic population is more important to the NBA, it seems, than to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, who signed SB 1070 on April 23. The New York Times reports that “It requires police officers, “when practicable,” to detain people they reasonably suspect are in the country without authorization and to verify their status with federal officials, unless doing so would hinder an investigation or emergency medical treatment.

“It also makes it a state crime — a misdemeanor — to not carry immigration papers. In addition, it allows people to sue local government or agencies if they believe federal or state immigration law is not being enforced.”

In other words, some citizens are now second class citizens. Those who are legal residents or citizens of the U.S. who in any way resemble immigrants are being forced to carry identification. This kind of “Pass Law” was the first step in the Apartheid Regime’s systematic segregation and mistreatment of black South Africans.

While such procedures are arguably threatening individual citizens’ constitutional rights to “liberty”, the larger problem is the blatant incitement to racial profiling.

The American Civil Liberties Union had already reported that racial profiling was “a widespread” and “pervasive problem” in 2009, when they submitted a study to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination explaining that “Government polices are a major cause of the disproportionate stopping and searching of racial minorities by law enforcement.”

In the San Francisco Chronicle, Geraldo Cadava, a history professor at Northwestern, argues that while Arizonans have historically”attempted to justify [their actions] in nonracial terms”, they have a consistent record of racial discrimination.

Yet this law goes a step further. As an explicit mandate for state and local police to enact racial profiling against immigrants in Arizona, it represents a formal indictment of immigrant communities in general and Hispanic and Latino communities in particular, in a time when the country is lead by Obama, whose ethnic makeup embodies the ‘melting pot’ metaphor.

It’s ridiculous from lots of angles: Mexico used to own Arizona, so Latino Arizonans potentially have an older claim to the state than white residents; the University of Arizona estimated in 2007 that immigrants add nearly $1 billion to the state’s economy. This law bars communication between over a third of the state’s population and the law, which stands to endanger public safety.

The NBA’s Senior Director of Marketing, Saskia Sorrosa proudly reported, in 2009, that it “has one of the largest and fastest-growing Hispanic fan bases in U.S. professional sports, and we want to continue building their interest in the game through participation, programming and events.” She stated that Noche Latina “celebrates the NBA’s unique and dynamic fan base with a focus on our Spanish-speaking communities.”

It is in that same spirit that the Phoenix Suns will bring back their “Los Suns” jerseys for their game against the San Antonio Spurs this Wednesday, in honor of the Cinco de Mayo holiday and “to honor our Latino community and the diversity of our league,” the team’s Managing Partner Robert Sarver stated in an interview with Businessweek.

He continued, “However intended, the result of passing this law is that our basic principles of equal rights and protection under the law are being called into question.”

NBA Executive Director Billy Hunter added, “The recent passage of the new immigration law in Arizona is disappointing and disturbing. . . The National Basketball Players Association strongly supports the repeal or immediate modification of this legislation. Any attempt to encourage, tolerate or legalize racial profiling is offensive and incompatible with basic notions of fairness and equal protection. A law that unfairly targets one group is ultimately a threat to all.”

Let’s just hope that pressure for justice in the basketball court will be felt in other courts as well, and that Arizona’s intolerance won’t be copied by Pennsylvania or other states. Read the ACLU’s denouncement of SB 1070 here or take action with them to stop it here. Hat tip to my bro Logan for the lead on this one.