The Art of Coming Out Traditional and Social Media Frames Surrounding the Nbaã¢ââ¢s Jason Collins

Jason Collins, a veteran NBA heart, has become the starting time male professional athlete in the four major American sports leagues to come up out as gay. Collins wrote a first-person account posted Mon on Sports Illustrated'south website. He finished this past flavor with the Washington Wizards and is now a free agent. Michael Dwyer/AP hide caption

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Michael Dwyer/AP

Jason Collins, a veteran NBA center, has get the starting time male professional athlete in the iv major American sports leagues to come out as gay. Collins wrote a first-person account posted Monday on Sports Illustrated's website. He finished this past season with the Washington Wizards and is at present a gratuitous amanuensis.

Michael Dwyer/AP

"I'1000 a 34-year-old NBA eye. I'yard black. And I'yard gay."

That declaration yesterday by the journeyman NBA big human Jason Collins in Sports Illustrated sent stupor waves around the sports earth. As yous've probably heard past now, Collins is the first actor in a major professional American team sport to come up out of the cupboard while pursuing a career in his sport.

But we were a fiddling intrigued by the "black" role of Collins' construction. Fifty-fifty though there are plenty of out African-Americans, in that location still haven't been terribly many who were celebrities, although that'due south changing.

We decided to wait at some recent coming-out stories to come across what they had in common with Jason Collins, and what was different nearly their stories.

Frank Bounding main

Not long before his anticipated solo debut, Channel Orange, was set to drop last year, the vocaliser/songwriter affiliated with the, uh, temperamental hip-hop collective Odd Hereafter had starting facing questions about his sexuality when he used male pronouns to describe a love interest on several of his songs.

Ocean eventually took to his web log to address the swirling rumors.

"In the last twelvemonth or 3 I've screamed at my creator, screamed at the clouds in the sky, for some explanation. Mercy mayhap. For peace of mind to rain like manna somehow.

"4 summer ago, I met somebody. I was 19 years old. He was too. We spent that summer, and the summer subsequently, together. Everyday almost... Slumber I would ofttimes share with him. By the time I realized I was in love, it was malignant. It was hopeless. At that place was no escaping. ...

"I don't know what happens at present, and that's alrite. I don't have whatever secrets I need kept anymore... Thanks to my starting time dear, I'm grateful for you. Grateful that fifty-fifty though it wasn't what I hoped for and fifty-fifty though it was never enough, it was... I experience like a free homo. If I heed closely... I tin hear the sky falling likewise.

But the heaven didn't fall. Body of water'south coming out was trumpeted as a seminal moment in hip-hop, and other rappers and hip-hop luminaries publicly expressed their support for him. His nervous performance of "Bad Religion" on Tardily Nighttime With Jimmy Fallon just days after he published his blog post became ane of the most riveting TV moments of the summer. Oh, and Aqueduct Orange was a huge critical success and ended up on many best-of lists at the stop of the year.

Only Bounding main, a singer, is more like hip-hop-side by side. No rappers of prominence have come up out of the closet, although rappers like A$AP Rocky have expressed optimism that there will be people in the hip-hop universe who would welcome whomever chooses to practice so.

Fifty-fifty if Jason Collins signs a new contract next yr (something the statistician Nate Silver says is a improve than l-fifty possibility), he'due south undoubtedly in the twilight of his NBA career. Ocean, on the other hand, is going to exist effectually for a minute.

John Amaechi

Amaechi made news when he came out back in 2007, only it was several years afterward he'd retired from basketball and was living overseas in England, where he'd grown upward. Similar Collins, Amaechi earned his living as a serviceable backup centre for several dissimilar teams. (Neither is the kind of player who would have had jerseys for sale at their squad's arenas.)

But unlike Collins — whose twin blood brother, Jarron, didn't fifty-fifty know he was gay and said that he never got too close to any of his teammates — Amaechi was sorta, kinda out to a few of his teammates on the Utah Jazz, including Greg Ostertag and Andrei Kirilenko, the latter of whom he referred to as "Malinka" in his memoir, Human being in the Heart:

"Some time after Christmas of my last Utah season, equally the squad was sliding out of contention, Malinka instant-messaged an invitation to his New Year's Eve party, explaining he was just inviting his 'favorite' friends. Then he wrote something that brought tears to my eyes: 'Please come, John. You are welcome to bring your partner, if yous have one, someone special to you. Who information technology is makes no difference to me.' I was hosting my own political party that night, and then I had to decline his sweetness invitation. But I was moved. I had Ryan evangelize Malinka a $500 bottle of Jean Paul Gaulthier-dressed champagne.

"The whole exchange was a revelation. Malinka's generous overture made the season more bearable. It likewise showed that in my own paranoia and overwhelming desire for privacy, I'd failed to give some of my teammates the benefit of the incertitude. The sense of welcome and belonging, so oftentimes denied gay people even by their own families, meant the world to me, especially in the middle of a dreadful flavor in a strange desert state that in the stop provided some of the best days of my life."

Although Amaechi's experience every bit a semi-out pro was pretty dissimilar from Collins' very closeted one — Celtics coach Md Rivers said that Amaechi's sexuality was already pretty much assumed among his teammates, who didn't care very much — it suggests that if Collins were to return to the league next yr, he might be pleasantly surprised by some of the reactions.

Brittney Griner

Probably the most intriguing contrast to Collins is Brittney Griner: They're on opposite ends of their careers and occupy entirely different places in the basketball ecosystem. Just ii weeks ago, the six'8" eye from Baylor, who is probably the most ascendant women's higher basketball histrion e'er, casually best-selling that she's gay during a press briefing following her selection equally the No. 1 pick in the WNBA draft. But her revelation was greeted with relative indifference.

So why the collective shrug from the sports world? As Patrick Burke of the sports advocacy group You Can Play told The New York Times, many people tend to presume that a preponderance of female athletes are gay. "In sports right now, there are 2 different stereotypes — that in that location are no gay male athletes, and every female athlete is a lesbian," he said. "We've had tremendous success in getting straight male players to speak to the result; nosotros're having a tougher fourth dimension finding straight female person athletes speaking on this issue considering they've spent their entire careers fighting the perception that they're a lesbian."

But Griner, who is merely 22, is probable to be one of the WNBA's nigh recognizable players for a infinitesimal — she was already well known for routinely dunking in games and is one of those athletes who could actually change how the game is played and officiated — so it'll exist worth watching only how she is marketed and packaged by the league and their sponsors. She'southward already inked an endorsement bargain with Nike.

Collins' game isn't almost as dynamic as Griner's; he's never been one of those players with a substantial side-hustle equally a product pitchman. Merely what'due south different is that his next act (in the NBA or otherwise) will be much higher profile because he's come out, and it could have all kinds of consequences for the way the league thinks about its employees and its fan base of operations. Where Griner'due south coming out was greeted with silence, Collins' touch on volition be nigh inverse to his on-court utility. His coming out may be seismic in means we can't actually game out nevertheless.

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Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2013/04/30/180029196/whats-new-and-not-new-about-jason-collins-coming-out