#ryanharrison

Jon Wertheim has a good interview with Ryan Harrison on a Beyond the Baseline podcast (15:18).  For the most part, Wertheim does a good job conducting the interview, including asking good and pointed questions, which most tennis journalists are either unwilling to do or incapable of doing.

This post, however, takes issue -- hotly I might add -- with one particular thing Wertheim says in the podcast.  He asks Ryan Harrison if Donald Young should be punished for the false accusation.  Harrison says Young should be punished to the same degree Harrison would have been punished if he had made the remark.  

Wertheim replies “I would push back a little bit and say...I’m not sure using a racial slur is symmetrical to accusing someone who may not have used it.”

Frankly, my jaw dropped.  Ignoring the “may not have used it” that Wertheim slides in there to undermine Harrison’s statement of innocence (100% backed by the ATP findings), why is destroying someone’s reputation (based on accused racial bias) less significant than using a racial slur? 

Using a racial slur is a horrible reflection on the person who uses the slur.  In this country, you are allowed to say such things under the First Amendment.  It is ignorant, but it is not a crime and isn’t, without more, even the basis for a civil lawsuit.  Instead, you probably will (and certainly should) incur public scorn for your ignorance.  Had Harrison done this, he should have been fined, suspended, and roundly booed for the remainder of his career.  If Harrison was guilty, I would have ignored Harrison henceforth, unless he managed to rehabilitate himself on the issue down the road -- perhaps a particularly difficult challenge for a tennis fan like me who already diametrically opposes Harrison’s politics.  He would have been dead to me on the Tour.  I would not have watched a Harrison match.  Even in a final.  Even against Federer/Nadal, etc.  Even against Kohlschreiber!

But the accusation isn’t true.  Young’s accusation has no supportive evidence, and in fact is contradicted by every witness within earshot of their argument.  The accusation is a slur of its own.  The fact that it is not racial slur is not a meaningful distinction from the standpoint of the consequences Young should face.  That’s even more true when the false accusation is itself race-based.  

Harrison has received death threats on social media and spent a week fighting off accusations that he is a racist.  Rebuttals never resonate as deeply as the shocking accusations.  Many people will always think Harrison is a racist.  No matter what Harrison does for the rest of his career (and perhaps beyond), many people will think less of him, even though he did nothing to earn that scorn.  

I don’t intend to minimize the effect a racial slur would have had on Young, given the US’s (and other countries’) appalling history.  But if Harrison had slurred Young, none of us would have thought less of Young. Yet Young has slurred Harrison, and Ryan will spend the rest of his life trying to overcome that.  

To put this in a legal perspective, a racial slur is protected by the First Amendment.  The speaker is subjected to the court of public opinion.  Reprisals are, and should be, harsh.  Defamation, on the other hand, is a standalone basis for a civil lawsuit.  In some civil law jurisdictions, defamation is treated as a crime (even in Louisiana, whose codes are based on civil law).  Defamation is not protected by the First Amendment.  There are few categories of speech that are not protected by the First Amendment, and that’s one of them.  

For Wertheim to argue that Harrison uttering a racial slur should carry a greater penalty than Young defaming Harrison by accusing him of making a racial slur is both poorly reasoned and unfair to Harrison.  

It was an off-the-cuff comment from Wertheim.  Because it wasn’t planned, he might not even know.  It was a quick interjection, which I would argue was the product of some latent issues.  My interpretation of those latent issues is threefold:  Wertheim (a) does not really believe Harrison is innocent, though it’s unclear what basis he has for that, given the ATP findings after interviewing every witness, (b) was hedging his bets against the Internet backlash he may have suffered if he appeared to take the white guy’s side in a race-based dispute, and (c) had a spasm of white guilt, where he felt like he needed to impress upon us how strong he feels, as a white man, that racial slurs are way worse than other things.  He tries to soften it a bit, by referring back to the ATP rules, which lack clarity on what to do in this scenario, but his initial comment had nothing to do with the rules. 

I don’t think the ATP will punish Young.  From a PR perspective, it’s probably better to let the race dispute slip quietly into oblivion.  Surely the ATP does not want to wade into the very waters Wertheim was trying to hold back when he let Harrison know that his reputation is less important than sending the right racial message to podcast listeners.