Isiah Thomas is a lot of things, and lately many have been calling him petty for bringing up the decades-old feud with Michael Jordan. But his latest beef with ESPN over a photograph isn’t petty.
It’s absolutely right.
While appearing on ESPN’s Keyshawn, JWill & Max earlier this week, a photo of Thomas was used that he didn’t like and he immediately took the show to task over it.
The image showed him as serious, bordering on annoyed and angry.
If you know Isiah Thomas, most of the time he’s smiling, so that image was in contrast to the way he’s often seen. And while he didn’t like it, his feelings are rooted deeper than the actual image for he recognized the image’s impact.
He told Keyshawn that when the photo first appeared onscreen.
“By the way, I’m looking at my picture, come on Keyshawn. Y’all doing that to me?” said Thomas.
As Max and Keyshawn stumbled over his critique, Thomas continued.
“I saw Max Kellerman’s picture up there. I saw your picture up there. Y’all smiling. Y’all just had my man up there doing the football, he was smiling. This is the picture you put up there of me?”
Max did his best to play it off and inject humor into the situation, but Isiah wasn’t having it. And rightfully so.
This wasn’t about Isiah being petty, dramatic or egotistical.
It was about history, control and the way Black men are portrayed in the media through coded language and imagery.
How many times have we seen a news story on television involving a Black man and the images they use of the individual are unflattering and humiliating? Oftentimes those photos show them with a serious face, trying to act tough or intimidating.
That’s not because they didn’t take those photos, because they obviously did.
But rather, it’s the media’s way of portraying an individual and casting a narrative around them. And when it comes to Black men in particular, that narrative is often a negative one.
The coded language used by the media to describe and portray Black men is often infuriating and disrespectful.
The National Education Association defines coded language as:
“Substituting terms describing racial identity with seemingly race-neutral terms that disguise explicit and/or implicit racial animus.”
“Thug”, “brute”, “danger”, “angry”, “posse” are just a few of the terms used by media outlets to paint a picture of Black men that reifies and triggers every negative stereotype surrounding them. Coded language perpetuates false narratives and helps strengthen the fear of Black men, and that often has deadly repercussions for far too many innocent Black men.
While words are powerful, and the pen is mightier than the sword, a picture speaks a thousand words.
When innocent Black men are murdered, the media rushes to find unflattering photos and arrest records so that they can object to his innocence through a narrative they help illustrate.
That’s why Isiah was completely right in calling out ESPN for using that image of him, for it speaks to a harmful practice employed by the media of demonizing and criminalizing Black men through words and images that isolate and highlight racial stereotypes. And while that wasn’t their intent, the outcome was basically the same.
Isiah told the crew he would hang up, give them time to change the photo and call back. Although the Twittersphere laughed at the interaction, it wasn’t funny. It was about Isiah controlling the narrative and not letting himself be portrayed in a negative light, in this case as a stereotypical angry Black man.
Most won’t see it that way and will think it’s just Isiah being petty again. But for Thomas and those of us who understand history and the media, and who have to live with demoralizing stereotypes circling us, we recognize the situation for what it was and what it could have evolved into.
So good for Isiah for calling them out. Next time they’ll know better and that’s the point.
