We have at least four basketball nets on our small street. At any point during the evening hours, I can hear the relentless thump, thump, thump of a basketball being dribbled on the ground. I know that sound. I know the pitch the ball makes as it?s dribbled on the driveway asphalt, I know the bang of every missed shot. I also know I would never think to walk over to my neighbours and ask them to take their hoop down because the noise of the bouncing ball was bothering me. But that?s exactly what several community members did in Toronto, when a local school put up a few new nets. The local school board removed the nets removed the nets due to multiple “noise complaints.” 
When I first heard this news, I had two thoughts. Firstly, you can bet those same neighbours were cheering the Toronto Raptors as they worked their way to championship glory. My second thought was, I bet a lot of the kids who frequent the nets are Black. It turns out this happened in a community that is extremely multi-cultural, with the court being mostly used by kids from Regent Park (a lower-income neighbourhood with a higher representation of visible minorities) and one of Toronto’s multiple Chinatowns.  So they may not be all Black, but they are largely all racialized.
The reality is basketball as a professional sport is dominated by Black men. It is accessible, there are hoops in every inner city, and its association with Black culture and Black identity cannot be denied (despite t...