3 ms·
no, it’s because he’s a white guy and kobe was not. note that it doesn’t require explicit racism, just implicit bias, to create such disparities (though it woul
by clairity 5y ago
no, it’s because he’s a white guy and kobe was not. note that it doesn’t require explicit racism, just implicit bias, to create such disparities (though it would be statistically unlikely that no explicit racists contributed to this state of affairs).
- acjohnson55 5y agoI'm a Black guy and very much of the activist mindset, but that's just not a reasonable comparison. The first John Madden Football came out in 1988, when Kobe was 10 years old. Jordan vs. Bird came out that same year, which was a cool game. Michael Jordan had all the opportunity to be a better franchise maker, but AFAIK, the next effort he lent his name to was Chaos In The Windy City, and it simply wasn't a very good game, let alone a franchise. Jordan (and Shaq) were conspicuously absent from most NBA products, having negotiated video game rights prior to the NBA negotiating collectively. This is all from memory, so I may not be 100% on this. I don't know if John Madden did anything particularly special or if he just got a bit lucky, but my point is he is embedded in tech history.
- clairity 5y agoi wasn't denying that madden had a tech tie-in via a video game endorsement deal, but rather, noting that implicit racism plays a role in his memorialization being arbitrarily 'on-topic' and upvoted here as opposed to kobe, whose memorial posts were viciously suppressed. kobe had a tech investment fund in LA and was developing his own media/tech company, so he's arguably more connected to the tech industry despite he's notoriety largely coming from playing basketball. madden indeed got lucky, as he didn't do much more than hawk his name & voice to EA. he wasn't personally developing or marketing the games, so his tie to tech is pretty tenuous.