The Warriors' part-owner's gaffe: no one cares about Uyghur oppression (some do, but NBA can't care much)

Warriors Part Owner’s Uyghur Comments Fuel More NBA China Controversy, Yahoo reported 1/18/22:

Warriors minority owner and billionaire venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya drew unwanted attention after saying on The All-In podcast that “nobody cares” about the genocide of Uyghur people in China’s Xinjiang region—an ongoing human rights issue criticized by the U.S. and other countries worldwide. “Of all the things I care about, it is below my line,” Palihapitiya said on the podcast.

The Human Rights Project called his comments “revolting,” while the Campaign for Uyghurs said the comments “were unacceptable and contribute towards an environment of apathy towards one of the greatest atrocities of our time.”

Then he apologized, and the Warriors said his views “certainly don’t reflect those of our organization.”

But this was a "gaffe" in the sense that he spoke an uncomfortable truth, that few care, and that the NBA relies on the China market.

And if it came to the Brooklyn Nets, owner Joe Tsai would certainly be more politic in his remarks, but he is a staunch defender of the Chinese regime.

Author David Rieff noted that Palihapitiya said he did care about “the fact that our economy could turn on a dime if China invades Taiwan. I care about climate change. I care about America’s crippling and decrepit health-care infrastructure.”

And those in Silicon Valley, observed Rieff, "don’t fear a Chinese invasion of Taiwan because Taiwan is a democracy and China is a tyranny, but because they know it will be a catastrophe for their businesses, international trade, and the stock markets."

Do we care?

Do Uyghur Lives Matter to Americans? wrote The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf, noting that that some do care:

Last month, the U.S. government passed bipartisan legislation––the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act––to prohibit imports from China’s Xinjiang region, where hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs are imprisoned, absent proof that the goods were not made using forced labor.

And while most people probably don't care, Friedersdorf took aim at Palihapitiya 's argument that we should focus on our own problems:

Contra Palihapitiya, imperfect countries and people should speak out against the most grave human-rights abuses on the planet. If it were “deplorable” for any country to object to another’s mass imprisonment and abuse of an ethnic minority group until they can “take care of themselves” beyond the quality of America’s current health-care system, or until their own domestic human-rights record surpasses that of the United States in 2022, it would dramatically and counterproductively diminish the number of countries with standing to criticize mass atrocities that warrant universal condemnation.

....Empty virtue-signaling can be annoying. America is far from perfect. Some Americans are wrongly incarcerated. And none of those facts bolster the conclusion that fewer Americans should speak up about abused Uyghurs. China reacts negatively when figures associated with the NBA flag the country’s human-rights abuses because they believe such attention can matter.

In other words, the NBA matters. Joe Tsai too.

Zirin on the NBA

NBA silence on China proves it's less interested in human rights than the bottom line, Edge of Sports columnist Dave Zirin wrote for MSNBC:

The NBA says it is committed to social justice everywhere — apparently except in China, its No. 1 profit partner. This hypocrisy doesn’t only harm the public image of the NBA. It also hurts the movement against racism that the NBA purports to support.
But the NBA has more than just a China problem. Several members of the NBA’s billionaire class of franchise owners have made the league look hypocritical because their business interests are at odds with the league’s social justice pretension.

So that includes Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores, whose private equity firm owns the largest prison phone service in the country, Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, contributor to the subprime mortgage crisis, and that most NBA owners’ political donations go to the GOP.

(Tsai can't make political contributions, as a Canadian citizen.)

As discussed by True Hoop's Henry Abbott and Jarod Hector on their Bring It In podcast, the NBA isn't saying anything.