It's interesting to hear this. A lot of the commentary has been that this isn't unique to Utah, so Etan pointing out that from his experience it is worse in Utah is a perspective that deserves a minute to think about.
Living just south of SLC I can say that there's a lot of sensitivity here to the perception that Jazz fans are worse when it comes to this stuff, and that they are worse because the region has a culture that permits it. I do see that as a possibility, and there are a few reasons why. The Jazz are the only game in town among the 4 major sports, so I suspect that both competitors against the Jazz end up receiving very narrowly focused vitriol, and that the fanbase is represented by a relatively small number of people and judged accordingly. With Silicon Slopes there's also been an infusion of money into the area, and a very clear rise of "sales bro" culture. These types of guys are pretty obnoxious and have just about zero self awareness. Add in that the community was founded by a religion that remains fairly predominant that for a missionary church can inadvertently create fairly insular communities, I think you can see a naive insensitivity to racial issues at times. A minority is almost certainly racist, but others simply don't realize how some of what they do or say appears. This has been my experience as a member of the predominant religion there in a mixed race marriage with children that are clearly mixed race too.
That said, it will be interesting going forward to see how things are handled. It seems like the Jazz organization and Gail Miller have handled things in a productive manner so far. Etan being dissatisfied with some of the organization's actions shouldn't be confused with them not doing anything, or not doing the right thing. The organization seems to me to be taking steps to galvanize the community to move forward with a renewed consciousness that their conduct matters and that their actions as individuals represent the community as a whole. If that's internalized, that should net out to a positive for the fans and the players.
