Athletes Modern-Day Slaves?

In his book, Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of the Black Athlete, New York Times columnist William Rhoden shares how he came up with the title: “The title of this book comes from a remark made by a white spectator during a professional basketball game in Los Angeles. The comment was aimed at Larry Johnson, then a player with the New York Knicks. The previous season, Johnson had referred to some of his Knicks teammates as “rebellious slaves,” unleashing a storm of controversy. That night in Los Angeles, as his team headed toward the bench during a time-out, a heckler yelled out: “Johnson, you’re nothing but a $40 million slave.””

Rhoden was affected by that statement, and began writing the seminal book in 1997;  it was copyrighted in 2006. And now here, in 2014, we Americans who want to believe so badly that racism is gone are hearing the disparaging and disturbing statements allegedly made by Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, telling his then-girlfriend that he didn’t want her to bring “blacks” to his games.

His comments were not surprising; anyone and everyone knows that people in all ethnic groups have conversations where they say what they really feel about issues and people when they are in “safe” spaces.

What was particularly angering, however, was the fact that it i predominantly black players who are making Sterling wealthy. A new plantation system, professional sports, yields big earnings for the players, yes, but also huge profits for their owners. That Sterling would not want his mixed-race girlfriend (Mexican and African – American) to bring blacks to his games, or to pose publicly with black people, smacks of historical racism, historical paternalism, the system of slavery, which exploited black labor to make the rich richer and make the slavocracy thrive.

Athletics was and has been for many black people a way out of poverty and the hopelessness that poverty necessarily breeds and inspires. How wonderful it has been for a very few to make it out of hopelessness and have a shot at the American dream, doing something they love. But the parallels between the old system of slavery and this new slavery are daunting; as in history, white people “own” the workers. White people are the biggest beneficiaries.  All or most of the owners of the professional teams are white. Former NBA great Michael Jordan is majority owner of  the Charlotte Bobcats, acquiring the team in 2010 from Robert Johnson, the founder of Black Entertainment Television (BET) , who was the first black majority owner of a major U.S. pro sports team.

The driving force for any owner, black or white, is not the need to make the world better for democracy, or to set up an example of “how we can all get along.” No, the motivation is profit; those who are after profit don’t care who makes the money for them as long as someone does. In the area of sports, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on where one’s mind is, the workers have been, for the most part, black, and the owners and managers have been white.

New plantations. Sports teams and the sports organizations seem to be nothing more and nothing less than new plantations, where owners and managers “take care” of  “their” boys until the usefulness of those boys wears off, and then they are discarded. Sterling, it seems, is just a good old plantation boss who “takes care of his boys” and doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about.

Sterling also placates the community of people he apparently despises by giving away free basketball tickets every year. The Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP has thought that that gesture was “nice” and was going to give an award next month.

Many sports players would undoubtedly tell me to shut up. They’re making good money; what Sterling said was not all that big a deal, as long as they get paid. But they fail to see how they are being used – for the sake of, or in the name of – making a profit. Rhoden writes, “History suggests that African-Americans should ever be on the lookout. Their predecessors were excluded, blocked, persecuted and eased out when white owners decided they weren’t needed or wanted.”

Plantation thinking, it seems.

Sterling may suffer some for his faux pas; wealthy white men, like Donald Trump, will come to his defense, at a time when there is no defense. The good old boys, however, protect and support each other. Sterling hasn’t said anything that many of them most likely say…

But black people, black athletes, should pay special attention to the new plantations called pro-sports. We are being used again to bolster the economy and support the life style of those who “own” us, and while the players make good money, the fact of the matter is that too many of those who love pro sports and who dream of making it out of despair will never achieve that dream…even as they continue to make the white owners more and more wealthy.

A candid observation …

Cliven Isn’t the Only One

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy has caused  a stir, talking all that racist stuff.

But the “outrage” expressed by his Republican buddies seems a bit disingenuous, and their distancing themselves from him publicly is nothing more than politics at its best … or worst …depending on who you are talking with and in what venue.

Cliven Bundy wonders if black people were not better off being slaves.  He said, “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom,” he was quoted as saying. (http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/24/politics/bundy-and-race/)

And everybody is in a tizzy. For what? Because of what he said, or because he said it OUT LOUD, exposing the way many white people probably talk in private?

I have had so many white people talk to me, with hushed voices, about how bad the racism is, about how many white people hate President Obama, and about how so many white people are anxious to “take the country back” from …black people.

According to these folks with whom I have talked, many of these people are obsessed with “saving” America from the influence of being governed by a black man. They are worried that Mr. Obama’s foreign policy has made him come off as weak, thereby plunging the country into morbid danger. They believe that the rise in Americans receiving food stamps, due to the break of the American economy, speaks to the president’s deficits and the danger of “big government,” although it was the economic policies of the previous, Republican administration that drove our country nearly to the depths of economic despair.

“All they want,” one white woman said to me, “is to get that black man out of the White House. They can’t see the good he’s done for the simple reason their vision is clouded by their hatred of him, just because he’s black. They’re afraid that he’s done too much for ‘the blacks,” and not enough for white people.”

Enter Mr. Bundy. Say what you want, Bundy might very well have spilled the conversation content of many a cocktail party attended by the very rich. “Big government” seems to be a government which attends to the needs of the underclass, and rich people seem to resent that, like poor people are getting something for nothing, and off their backs.

I guess they don’t see how it is the labor of the poor people who have propelled their corporations into economic bliss, even while the poor people become poorer.

Bundy said, “maybe I sinned.” But, he quickly added, he said what he meant. It’s in his heart, this opinion about what “the Negro” is like, and how blacks are lazy and how they abort their children and will not work…And …he added that if “those people” cannot take hearing what is his truth (I am paraphrasing), then Martin Luther King hasn’t done his work.

Huh?

Racism and white supremacy and the desire to hold onto it smolders right under the surface of the American psyche.  Every now and then somebody messes up and says out loud what is often said in private.

That’s what happened with good ol’ Mr. Bundy.

He’ll smart a little, but white Conservatives will never leave him. He’s a rich white man with a lot of resources. They might smack him on the wrists, and their strategists are probably telling them to distance themselves from  Bundy for the sake of the upcoming mid-term elections – not for the sake of the people he offended.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bundy will continue to be a welfare rancher, letting his cattle feed on land owned by the federal government. He has a subsidized ranch, seems to me, and it’s no less a drain on the federal coffers than is public housing or food stamps.

Thing is, he can afford to eat. He hasn’t paid for that land in years and owes millions. He won’t go to jail, or probably even get a fine. That, while blacks who have committed non-violent drug crimes are languishing in prison …making even more white people rich via the Prison Industrial Complex.

So, I’m not surprised at what Bundy said. He is giving voice to a lot of people who have wanted to say just that for a long time.

People get uptight if anyone says anything about racial inequality and injustice in this nation. As soon as anyone says anything about those phenomenon, describing how some policies absolutely work against black people,  we are playing “the race card.”

He played it like a champ. I suppose he is. And he’s not going to change and he’s not sorry. Neither are the Republicans who are voicing outrage.

Please.

Republicans, your outrage rings hallow because of your actions and policies. You have been so interested in making Mr. Obama a one-term president that you have felt free, in fact, compelled, to talk in private about how you feel about this race thing.

Damn Bundy! You let the cat out of the bag, in this, our post-racial society.

Who’s going to get it back in? The cat is running freely…

A candid observation…

Boyz 2 Men…Maybe

When my son Charlie was a little boy, people used to stop me on the street and proclaim how absolutely cute he was. (He really was!) Added to his inherent cuteness, he had a smile that went from ear to ear, teetering on being a grin. That smile drew people into him, and they adored him.

But he was a little boy. He was African-American …but a little boy. He had not yet developed his deep, baritone voice, nor had he grown to his 6’4″ stature. He was a little boy with fuzzy, wooly hair, little chubby legs and arms, a big smile and wide, glistening eyes.

While I was proud of people saying Charlie was cute, I also found myself annoyed inside when white people would compliment him, because I knew he was only “human,” and therefore, capable of being humanly “cute,” while he was little. All too soon, I knew, he would be seen as “one of them” by these same white people who were smiling at him now, and he would become a live member of the endangered species called black men.

I thought about that as I read the story of a former professional baseball player who was racially profiled in his own driveway in Hartford, CT. as he shoveled snow. (http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/04/i-was-racially-profiled-in-my-own-driveway/360615/) His account of what happened to him was all too familiar. The white officer who questioned him, assuming he had no right to be in that neighborhood left without apologizing after being told that the man was in the driveway of his house. This man was well-educated and knew enough protocol to know what to say and not say, do and not do, to this young, white police officer, but what if he had been less educated, and had not been schooled on what to do when stopped by police? It is very possible, in fact, probable, that this man would have been gunned down, with the police officer giving the excuse that he had to shoot because he was “in fear for his life.”

There have been all kinds of “conversations on race” in this country, and yet, racism sticks to American society, culture and life like human skin sticks to crazy glue. Most people don’t want to have a conversation about race, white or black; most Americans want to believe that racism is gone. After all, we have a black president …

But the facts of our existence as Americans say otherwise. Black kids in school are expelled or suspended more often than white kids for the same offenses; more black people than white are in prison for non-violent drug offenses; one black man is killed by police every 28 hours according to a recent report published by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. (http://mxgm.org/operation-ghetto-storm-2012-annual-report-on-the-extrajudicial-killing-of-313-black-people/). The information contained in this well-researched report is not surprising for those of us who are African-Americans, but it is troubling that in this, the 21st century, black people, and more specifically, black men, are still at risk. Black actors still find it hard to get good roles because Hollywood still sees the world and the stories to be told through a primarily white lens. Lupita Nyong’o, the award-winning and stunningly beautiful actress who played the role of a mistreated slave in “12 Years a Slave” may very well, despite her beauty and talent, find herself out of work because there will simply not be enough casting agencies willing to cast her or roles suited for a very black woman.

Ah, this is America.

My son is now 25 years old, tall, bronze-skinned, handsome…and so smart. That really isn’t a guarantee, though, or a shield against racism, and the fear that undergirds racism and causes people to make assumptions about black people in general. If he were on a corner waiting for a taxi in New York, where he lives, and a white guy was near him, also waiting for a cab, guess who’d get the cab? The most important thing is that he has made it out of boyhood into manhood. He was a boy; now he’s a man. Getting from one status to the next as a black man is not a guarantee, so I should be happy. I will be happy. I am happy…but yet sad, because many young men will not get to experience that blessing.

A candid observation …

 

Black Kids, Dying

There are no vigils when black children are killed.

I have always noticed the difference in spirit and attitude when white children are killed, as opposed to that which is operative when black children are killed.

For the white kids, there are counselors sent immediately to the schools, prayer and candlelight vigils, and a sense of sadness that such young lives have been lost.

For the black kids …nothing.

To be fair, I haven’t heard many stories of killers going into urban schools – i.e., predominantly black schools – and shooting at random.

That’s not where black kids die.

Black kids die on the streets. Sometimes, they are killed by other black  people. Sometimes, they are killed by white people – not an ordinary white person, but, far too often, by a white law enforcement officer. Because they die at the hands of law enforcement officers so often, the attitude in the wider community seems to be “ho-hum. If the kid is dead, he/she probably deserved it.”

Nobody really seems to care …about black kids dying.

Can’t say much more about it now. It’s really a very painful …candid observation.

 

 

 

When People See

Only when people think a problem is THEIR problem do they mobilize … and work.
Activist Chip Berlet said that people have to SEE trouble before they act on trouble. When people SAW, for example, women and children being attacked by police dogs and hosed down with fire hoses like they were pieces of burning wood, they acted – or reacted. From President Kennedy on down, people reacted. What they SAW horrified them.
When people SAW residents of New Orleans stranded on rooftops, standing in the heat on the Danzinger Bridge and outside of the Convention Center; when they SAW pictures of old people, sitting dead in wheelchairs after that horrific storm …they reacted.
We like to think that we are nice people; we like to think that we care about things. Thing is, our “niceness” usually needs a bump to get it activated and we usually care most when a situation touches and affects us directly.
Heroin addiction is on the rise; it apparently is no longer a “ghetto drug” but has made its way to people who are affluent. Now, THEIR children are overdosing; now THEIR families are being affected. Now they can SEE how devastating the drug is (and always has been) and because THEIR children and family members are falling because of it, they can also see that it’s not BAD people who become addicted.
Because THEIR children, THEIR family members, are not bad.
Right now, there is a pandemic of black and brown and poor people going to prison. Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow, has told the story well, and in such a way that nobody can escape its power. At an event at which she recently spoke, she said something profound; she said, “All of us are sinners, and all of us are criminals.”
When the Prison Industrial Complex begins to really affect children other than black, brown and poor children, that statement will have new buoyancy.
But right now, what’s far too isolated, far too removed from THEM …is this whole issue of extrajudicial murders. Black children, black men and young boys, are being murdered. Some of the murdered’s organs are being removed. It is not a small problem; it is large and it is growing. And yet, there is silence…
THEY are not connected; THEY have not seen the horror for themselves. Who is “THEY?” Anyone who needs to see a problem but who does nothing. “THEY” are white and black and brown. “THEY” like to keep their heads in the sand and pursue their own material success and THEY do it well …until THEY see what’s going on because it affects THEM.
These kids and young people being murdered is a problem, an American, not a black problem, and it is spreading like a thick, black ink across our nation, city by city. Mothers and fathers and relatives are wailing, unable to get justice for their slain loved ones, because it has not touched THEM.
But it will. Spreading ink doesn’t make choices on who it stains; it stains anyone in its way …and the truth of the matter is that all of us are in its way. Some of us are just closer.
Trust and believe, the ink moves toward us all. The slain children and young people …are calling out to us all to SEE what’s going on …before it touches US.
A candid observation …