Deep in the Heart of Atlanta

When Congress passed Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it justified the legislation based on the discriminatory burden on interstate commerce generated by the inability of racial minorities to travel for lack of reliable public accommodation. Where an establishment like the Heart of Atlanta Motel could discriminate racially, minorities encountered “exclusionary practices… nationwide.” But in defending Title II and exploring these conditions, Justice Clark and his brethren had little reason to scrutinize the motives of these accommodations. Why was the Heart of Atlanta Motel racially discriminatory? Why did it forgo the profit to be gained from minority customers?

One explanation could certainly be that the owners of the Motel fostered negative stereotypes about racial minorities. These could be very overt or very subtle, explicit or implicit.

Another explanation could be that the other customers fostered these stereotypes. Perhaps the owners did as well, but not to the tune of the cost of a room. Filling an empty room with racial minorities could simply cost them in that many more empty rooms.

Suppose it is the latter and only the latter; it hardly seems salutary to deny racial motivations and merely replace them with economic motivations on the basis of race. Between these two explanations, that is all that is at stake.

How different then is the stadium from the motel? Not very, of course, since the stadiums themselves appear to be public accommodations under Title II. And how different are the teams and leagues that fill the stadiums? Their bottom line remains the same. If a race-based decision will save them money, these entities possess the same incentives to make that decision; the same decision not only that the motels and restaurants made, but that the leagues had made for themselves for so many years.

Biases are quieter today than they were in 1964 Atlanta, in many at least. Yet denying a role of bias in sports-marketing seems to either deny the role of bias in contemporary American society on the whole or else to suppose some kind of stereotype-switch that turns off at the ticket gate. We are a nation with biases, perhaps in some ways uncontrollably so. Sports entertainment reproduces these biases on a grander scale. It is the difference between the Heart of Atlanta and the heart of the nation.

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