As the US military was blowing Fallujah, Iraq, to bits to make it safe for elections in January, some pro basketball players fought with some fans who heckled and harassed them in Michigan on November 19. The brawl was shown on TV nationwide. Later, prosecutors filed criminal charges against five Indiana Pacers players and seven fans involved in the melee at the Pacers game against the Detroit Pistons.

Mass media generally showered attention on this example of sports violence. In contrast, there was scant information from the same media outlets on US military violence in the streets of Fallujah. US reporters embedded with the American military had few chances to show and tell readers and viewers what really happened in Fallujah. Thus Iraqis--kids, women and men--killed and wounded by the US military were largely hidden from Americans' view.

Yet in plain sight were the penalties handed down to the fighting players by National Basketball Association (NBA) Commissioner David Stern. With no hesitation, he suspended nine of them. "Stern earned universal plaudits from sponsors and marketing experts for his swift actions," Sacramento Bee sportswriter Debbie Arrington wrote on Dec. 7. Apparently, he soothed the nerves of businesses invested in the NBA, meaning corporate America.

Perhaps Stern's heroics took him off track for a minute from doing what he does best. I mean lobbying local government officials to build new arenas for NBA owners. As the lives of America's working majority become less stable under President Bush's economic policies, Stern works hard to funnel tax dollars to NBA billionaires. They include the owners of the Sacramento Kings basketball team, Gavin and Joe Maloof.

Earlier this year, the Maloofs and the well-heeled consultants who speak for them to elected officials had pleaded for local taxpayers to pay for a new Kings arena with luxury suites.

Stern backed the brothers Maloof as some working people opposed such funding. In fact, Stern telephoned politicians to try and persuade them to see things the Maloofs' way. Otherwise, other cities would quickly greet the Kings with open arms and tax dollars, Stern said, ready to give away public funds to this NBA franchise. Not that long ago, Sacramento politicians inked a deal to sell about $73 million in bonds to help keep the Kings financially solvent. Here was a case of ordinary people paying debt service to bondholders for the "privilege" of keeping pro sports in town.

When Wall Street plays, Main Street pays. Got game?

Speaking of pro sports, the fans-players fight in Michigan got me thinking about the OJ Simpson case. Black like the suspended NBA players, retired pro football player Simpson had a murder trial that became a kind of referendum on race relations. This set a (low) standard by which some black pro athletes are measured by that favorite of American society, skin color.

Writing about NBA fans and players, Arrington noted: "Many players' bad-boy, hip-hop image--so embraced by the media and advertisers--further widened the cultural divide." It is worth noting that many US youth of every skin color embrace hip-hop. Meanwhile, most of the players in the NBA are blacks, with fans being mainly whites. In brief, the NBA's "cultural divide" is a coded term for race and class relations that conceals more than it reveals.

In "Colored White: Transcending the Racial Past," author David R. Roediger has an essay titled "Still White" (University of California Press, 2002). In it, he considers whether or not the US is in the process of becoming a so-called nation without races. Interracial marriages and new migration patterns have been cited by some as evidence of a move towards more fluid racial divisions. In some appearances, the US is inching towards becoming a nation in which the color of people's skin will count for no more than the shoes they wear.

This is basically the line from affirmative action opponent Ward Connerly in California. It is simple, and simply off track. Without question, abolishing racial inequality is desirable. Crucially, Roediger points out that simple formulas for creating a nonracial future in a country shaped so profoundly by the color line overlook the processes of transcending deep-seated racism and sexism. Both are deeply irrational, hence not easily overcome.

Likewise, there is no easy road to overcoming US class relations. Its current phase features the NBA, a multi-billion dollar business. As the NBA grows, more Wal-Mart workers earn low wages nationwide, as factory workers in Michigan see their jobs flee to low-wage nations such as China. Who profits? Corporate CEOs. They get richer as working families struggle, a conflict not made clear by mass media, unlike the pay of NBA players.

Arrington wrote that the NBA players suspended for a total of 143 games lost a combined $11 million in salary. On average, that is $76,923.07 per player per game. Compare this with a yearly salary of $32,926.40, or $15.83 per hour, the average hourly earnings for production or nonsupervisory workers on nonagricultural payrolls last November, the Labor Dept. reported.

For workers who can afford NBA ticket prices and the price of beer at these games, heckling players can be a way to express anger from being squeezed by the boss. This is a little like getting drunk to speak your sober mind. What the heck, huh? Of course attending NBA games is not for most Wal-Mart workers.

"As of last spring (2003), the average pay of a sales clerk at Wal-Mart was $8.50 an hour, or about $14,000 a year, $1,000 below the government's definition of the poverty level for a family of three. Despite the implied claims of Wal-Mart's current TV advertising campaign, fewer than half--between 41 and 46 percent--of Wal-Mart employees can afford even the least-expensive health care benefits offered by the company (See edworkforce.hoU.S.e.gov/democrats/walmartreport.pdf, 2-26-04). Meanwhile, the five owners of Wal-Mart, the Walton family, saw their net worth rise to $20.5 billion each in 2003 from 2002 (AP, 9-18-03).

--Seth Sandronsky, a member of Sacramento Area Peace Action and a co-editor of Because People Matter, Sacramento's progressive paper.