Nonwhite Privilege
by David Cole
January 15, 2019
Shaun King
Did you hear the one about the white and the Asian who went to court over a black man’s ball? It was October 2001, and the San Francisco Giants were about to play their final game of the season. Slugger Barry Bonds, who’d already broken the single-season home run record for an MLB player, was looking to add at least one more homer to his tally. Needless to say, thousands of fans were in the stands that day hoping to catch the record-setting orb.
Bonds, true to form and totally not due to steroids, homered in his very first at-bat. A white guy named Alex Popov caught the ball. Well, for an instant, at least. Before he knew it, a mob of peace-loving San Franciscans tackled his alabaster ass. A rolling melee ensued, and when the dust cleared, a little Japanese-American critter named Patrick Hayashi emerged with ball in hand, triumphantly displaying it for the camera as if he’d caught it. But no…Popov had caught it. Hayashi only had it because the mob knocked Popov down.
https://www.takimag.com/article/nonwhite-privilege/
