Can the Raiders Lead Oakland Into 21st Century?

The silver and black playing football in a stadium named after a computer company headquartered in Taiwan? Twenty years ago, before the Raiders left Oakland for Los Angeles, it would have been unimaginable. Today, it is a reality.

The announcement that UMAX Technologies Inc. has bought the name rights to the Oakland Coliseum is a clear indicator of the dramatic demographic and economic forces that are reshaping Oakland and the East Bay. The ability of the Raiders, UMAX and Oakland officials to translate this deal into a lasting partnership may prove to be an important measure of the East Bay’s capacity to adapt to the twin revolutions of globalization and digitalization.

In their glory years, the Oakland Raiders were a quintessential representation of postwar industrial America. Their fans, among the most loyal in the country, carried lunch boxes, not briefcases. They were the children and grandchildren of the hundreds of thousands of workers who flooded into the region during World War II to work in the East Bay’s booming shipyards and factories. They lived in either the mostly white suburbs of Alameda and Contra Costa counties or the mostly black inner cities of Oakland, Richmond and Berkeley.

Former Raider stars--players like Kenny “The Snake” Stabler, Fred Biletnikoff and Willie Brown--mirrored their fans. They were tough and hard talking. They didn’t have the social graces of a Joe Montana or Steve Young, and it would have been a strain to imagine any of them carrying around a laptop or surfing the Internet, but they knew what it took to win a brawl.

In 1982, Al Davis, seeking to take advantage of the Los Angeles Rams’ flight to Anaheim to get a more profitable stadium deal, forsook the Raiders’ loyal working-class fans and moved his team south. When the Raiders returned to Oakland in 1995, they were a very different team--and Oakland and the East Bay a very different place.

The Raiders have adopted a marketing strategy that places a premium on attracting corporate sponsors and building an affluent white-collar fan base. Their old fans, meanwhile, struggle to cope with a new set of economic, social and political realities created by the decline of traditional manufacturing, the closure of the East Bay’s military installations and an influx of immigrants, mostly from Asia.

Over the long run, for the Raiders--and the East Bay--to prosper, they must devise ways to exploit the opportunities created by globalization and the shift from an industrial society to a digital one without leaving their old fan base on the sidelines. The UMAX deal could provide a model of how to do so.

The San Francisco Bay Area has reaped tremendous rewards from globalization--the rapidly growing flow of capital, goods and people across national boundaries--and digitalization--the translation of information, images and sounds into computer-readable digital formats. In fact, since 1980, more new wealth and influence have been created here than in any other metropolitan region in the world.

But along with winners, there have been losers--and the two biggest have been the old industrial working class, white and black, and inner-city residents, mostly black, both of whom are concentrated in the East Bay. The shift in manufacturing from heavily unionized, high-wage areas like the East Bay to non-unionized, low-wage countries has cost jobs. Blacks who have traditionally held a large share of the jobs in the low-wage service sector face new competition from Asian and Latino immigrants. These economic pressures have been exacerbated by the end of the Cold War and the consequent closure of the Oakland Army Base and the Alameda Naval Air Station.

Black inner-city residents also suffer from the increased demands placed on public schools and medical facilities by new immigrants. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why some black leaders in the Oakland schools wanted to declare “ebonics” a distinct language, thereby making black students eligible for some of the resources now set aside to teach English as a second language.

Digitalization, which goes hand-in-hand with globalization, further disadvantages the working class and inner-city poor since they have the least access to computers and the most difficulty in acquiring the technical skills necessary to compete successfully in a digital world.

But aside from the effects of globalization and digitalization, one of the most important changes in the East Bay socio-political equation is the growing size of the Asian American and Asian immigrant communities, especially the Chinese. Before World War II, blacks constituted less than 3% of the total population of the East Bay. During the 1940s, nearly 60,000 blacks moved into the area; by 1950, they had supplanted Asians as the largest minority. As of 1970, blacks represented roughly 15% of the total population of the East Bay and, as a result of a steady exodus of whites to the suburbs, they were on the way to becoming the dominant political force in the city of Oakland.

These trends began to change in the 1970s, when a large influx of new immigrants from Asia and Latin America began. According to the latest projections, the East Bay’s Asian population is now roughly as large as its black counterpart. Beyond their numbers, however, Asians have become a major force in the East Bay’s economy. The inflow of capital from Asia, especially Hong Kong and Taiwan, is one of the major engines of the rapid growth of the local economy.

In light of these realities, there is danger in putting the name of a Taiwan-based computer company on a football stadium located in one of the most economically disadvantaged parts of Oakland. UMAX could become synonymous with the yawning divide in the East Bay between the winners and losers in the post-industrial era.

But it also could provide an opportunity to address some of the issues that are creating that divide. In the letter announcing his company’s decision to sponsor the Coliseum, Frank Huang, UMAX chairman, noted the Raiders’ commitment to helping East Bay youth, health and school programs, then declared a similar commitment to extending its partnership with the Raiders “into charities for the communities we and the fans collectively call home.” Unfortunately, such sentiments can be quickly forgotten once the political controversy blows over. But UMAX and Oakland officials have a real interest in making sure that this does not happen in this case.

UMAX, the Raiders and Oakland officials need to make a commitment to expand the Coliseum sponsorship into a partnership that can be used to build bridges among ethnic groups in the East Bay and that can help establish mutually rewarding connections between U.S. metropolitan regions and foreign counterparts. Toward this end, UMAX and the Raiders could set up computer centers on the Coliseum’s grounds and make them regularly accessible to young fans and neighborhood residents. Players, computer professionals and teachers could be encouraged to volunteer time to help kids (and possibly even their parents) interact and develop digital skills. Or UMAX and the Raiders could sponsor development of a sports-oriented curriculum that could be used in East Bay schools to help teach computer and other academic skills, including math and geography.

More generally, UMAX and the Raiders have an interest in presenting the UMAX stadium sponsorship as a way to strengthen economic connections between the East Bay and Taiwan. For example, the Raiders could commit to playing an annual pre-season game in Taipei, which could be a catalyst for other exchanges.

It would be ironic if Oakland, not its much wealthier and more famous neighbor, San Francisco, became a model of how foreign participation in a local community can facilitate adjustment to a globalized economy and ease ethnic tensions. And that the agent for this remarkable development was a football team with a bad-boy reputation.