“Obama” Bestows Presidential Medal of Freedom on Unregenerate Racist

By Nicholas Stix

That would be NBA legend Bill Russell.

As Dennis Watkins writes in “Obama awards Medal of Freedom to White-hating Russell,” at Youth for Western Civilization, Russell “refused to sign autographs for young White basketball fans, on the basis of their skin color.”

However, Russell had no inhibitions about making whites pay for his signature.

For the pro-racist side, a Celtics blogger named Jay King writes,

In those days, Boston was seen as a racist city. Russell himself once called it a “flea market of racism.” In fact, Russell experienced so much racially-motivated hatred Sports Illustrated once quoted him as saying, “I dislike most white people because they are people… I like most blacks because I am black.” When he left Boston, Russell claimed the city’s media was corrupt and racist. He couldn’t even accept his fans’ adoration; he felt the white folks who asked for his autograph only liked him because he played basketball well. If he couldn’t block shots at a phenomenal rate, Russell felt, the same fans clamoring for his signature would have seen him as just another black man….

I’m not here to impart blame on either the city or Russell. The city was wrong for judging black people and treating Russell poorly.

King does not provide a single example of Bostonians treating Russell badly. On the contrary, the only example he gives took place in Kentucky. Meanwhile, he speaks vaguely of Russell abusing adoring Boston fans, but censors himself from recounting Russell’s unforgivable racism towards white children.

And Russell’s own words, which King indirectly quotes, are the most damning indictment I can think of, of Russell’s racism: Why should fans have “clamor[ed] for his signature,” if he hadn’t been an incredible player? How did it that make them racist? The implication is that in order for them to prove to him that they weren’t racist, they would have had to walk up to every black man on the street who had no basketball talent, and ask him for his signature!

What such “logic,” or lack thereof really means is that no matter how well white fans treated Russell, he was going to be racist towards them, and rationalize his own racism by projecting it onto them.

And try and make sense out of that “I dislike most white people…” quote. The online New World Encyclopedia offers the following explanation:

Russell's thinking became increasingly militant, so far that he was quoted in a 1963 Sports Illustrated interview with the words: "I dislike most white people because they are people... I like most blacks because I am black," expressing that "human" was a negative trait and "black" was a positive trait which were mutually exclusive.[52] However, when his white Celtics teammate Frank Ramsey asked whether he hated him, Russell claimed to be misquoted, but few believed it.[52] Also, [author John] Taylor remarks that Russell overlooked that his career was only made possible by the white people who were proven anti-racists, namely his white high school coach George Powles (the person who encouraged him to play basketball), his white college coach Phil Woolpert (who integrated USF basketball), white Celtics coach Red Auerbach (who is universally regarded as an anti-racist pioneer and made him the first black NBA coach), and white Celtics owner Walter A. Brown, who gave him a high $24,000 rookie contract, just $1,000 shy of the top earning veteran Bob Cousy.[49]

Bill Russell wasn’t just a racist, he was a moron.