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Rhoden, William.
Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and
Redemption of the Black Athlete.
New York: Crown Publishers, 2006.
304
pages. ISBN: 609601202.
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William Rhoden’s
Forty Million Dollar Slaves
and the Call for
Black Athletic Leadership
By William
Broussard
In his volume of
poetry entitled
More than an Athlete, Washington Wizards power
forward Etan Thomas offers us a window into the mind of
a true scholar-athlete and model for athletic leadership
in our society as he stands up for justice, equality,
and his own humanity and remains committed to using his
celebrity to address issues of importance to a wide
segment of Black Americans. In doing so, he confirms
the long-espoused adage of sport culturists that
athletes have great potential and capability to be
inspirational leaders at the vanguard of the pursuit for
social justice in our society. Thomas not only pursues
social justice in his literature, but also in his
philanthropy and community service, visiting with school
children and prison inmates sharing with them a message
of hope and compassion. It is exactly this kind of
leadership in difficult times that William Rhoden
charges contemporary black athletes with in
Forty Million Dollar Slaves. Unfortunately, it
seems that in his ardor to praise past generations of
black athletes who have answered the call, Rhoden has
suspiciously overlooked the many ways in which
contemporary athletes demonstrate the willingness to
lead that he so ardently calls for, even though he
accomplishes the task of identifying the mechanisms that
predicate the apolitical stances of a majority of
contemporary black athletes.
The book’s
subtitle, “The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black
Athlete,” indicates that Rhoden is more than a
historian, but a nostalgist fully convinced that the
black athlete’s historical willingness to advocate for
social and economic justice for all black people has
diminished—and perhaps disappeared—in recent times. In
order to drive home the suggestion that a vacuum of
leadership has led to black athletes becoming a “lost
tribe,” he relies heavily upon the metaphor that the
relationship between athletes/owners/sport-industrial
complex is akin to the relationship between the
slave/master/plantation (Prologue). In other words,
though contemporary athletes receive lucrative
compensation for their labor, they still rely
exclusively upon white owners—who buy, sell, and trade
them, and ultimately control their fates—and thus are
condemned to exercise silence, complicity, and coercion
when it comes to issues that impact the entire black
community. After all, in the end, “anyone who exercises
power over them is white, and they feel […] that the
owners are taking more value out of them than they are
putting in” (xi). Additionally, as in times of
slavery, their athletic prowess exists solely at the
“spectacle of white owners” (8). According to Rhoden,
as Marvin X points out in “How
to Recover from the Addiction to White Supremacy,”
many contemporary professional athletes’ “Desire to
possess things upon things for no other reason than
greed and selfishness” eradicates their desire to stand
up for others who are excluded from the promises of
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Controversial,
certainly, and hyperbolic, perhaps, but Rhoden carefully
chooses the slave/master/plantation metaphor and
explicates it deftly throughout the text, relying upon
historical examples of athletes who embodied the black
struggle for self-determination through their athletic
exploits, and profiling modern athletes who most aptly
fulfill the slave/master relationship in contemporary
times. His censure of Michael Jordan is gripping and
wonderfully metaphoric. Jordan, Rhoden claims, rose to
global popularity because he was marketed as capable of
transcending race, and Jordan avoided race politics
because of the threat to his brand as a player.
However, when Jordan aspired to executorial ranks in the
NBA and was denied entry, he was spurned after his labor
was exploited to revitalize the Washington Wizards’
brand (206-209). When even arguably the world’s most
well-known athlete is discriminated against because of
his race, Rhoden asserts that no athlete is immune to
racism, heightening his call for activism and quest for
racial justice among contemporary athletes.
In the context of
riveting narratives about the athletic and social
movement exploits of Tom Molineaux (boxer), Jack Johnson
(boxer), Isaac Murphy (jockey), Arthur Foster (Negro
Leagues entrepreneur), and Jackie Robinson (baseball),
whose athletic exploits and pursuant social action
inspired social movement, black solidarity, and paved
the way for future black successes both in and out of
the arena of sport, Jordan’s experience seems all the
more divergent. Rhoden deserves high praise for pulling
no punches when he accuses contemporary black
professional athletes of abdicating their responsibility
to their community with “treasonous vigor” (8). Their
stories serve as blueprints for breaking away from the
plantation and slave-master, and offer useful metaphors
for black independence and entrepreneurship against
great odds.
Rhoden does show
flashes of compassion and even sympathy for the
contemporary black athlete’s condition relative to
engaging in social activism. He believes that their
disconnection from the black community and the reprisal
black athletes face from reactionary sports media has
fractured the “common cause” that once united all black
athletes when they stand for causes for social
justice. He offers an analysis of forces in American
professional sport that disconnect black athletes from
the black community (the “Conveyor Belt,” p. 177-78),
detailing the process by which they are prepared for
professional athletic competition and the ancillary
public relations requirements (5). Throughout the
process, by which potential professionals are isolated
and alienated from their native networks and
increasingly cloistered into new networks as they become corporatized entities, they are excised from their
communities as they fulfill their professional
responsibilities and disconnected from the networks of
people, in many cases predominately African-American,
who once comprised their ‘community’ (177).
This leads
to a general ignorance of the issues impacting a vast
majority of African-Americans across the country.
Furthermore, for black professional athletes who do
remain connected to the black community in significant
ways, Rhoden focuses on the harsh reprisal that they are
likely to face at the hands of a largely white,
reactionary sports media
(209). Also at the root of the problem for contemporary
athletes, Rhoden outlines, is the threat that engaging
in causes and issues that white owners and management
might consider politically unsavory would consequently
lead to the loss of earnings potential.
Rhoden’s accusation
that contemporary athletes have failed to advocate
social justice (as he claims those of previous
generations had done) unravels at the hands of his own
thorough historical research and analysis. Rhoden’s
charge that contemporary black athletes of great import
(think Kobe, LeBron, Donovan, Tiger) have not seized
upon their global popularity in order to take up issues
of racial justice and equality fails to consider the
workings of Gramscian hegemony that dictate their
actions. In
The Prison Notebooks, Gramsci defines
hegemony as “cultural consent” and “force” used in a
society to create compliance with societal norms defined
by the majority. It is easy to see these forces at work
as Rhoden carefully explains the mechanisms of white
supremacy that have disfranchised and excised black
athletes (the “Jockey Syndrome” p. 61) who challenged
racist hegemony and the “Conveyor Belt” system through
which potential athletes develop new cultural values.
One wonders how athletes can answer Rhoden’s call
against such sobering odds.
In fact at times,
when reading about the personal turmoil encountered by
previous generations’ athlete activists,
Forty Million … reads almost as if it
were a cautionary tale compelling contemporary black
athletes to avoid the political arena and avoid drawing
any attention to themselves that could leave them
characterized as ungrateful malcontents. After
centuries of black athletes who faced the most dire
consequences—loss of livelihood and death threats—we
have now entered a period where an unspoken code
encourages contemporary black athletes to avoid ‘rocking
the boat’ lest they risk losing their lucrative
sponsorships and opportunity to compete professionally.
It is no wonder that black athletes more often than not
choose to avoid hot-button political issues and, as
Rhoden puts it, concentrate on “making those in
positions of power feel comfortable with (their)
blackness” (178). Given the swiftness and severity with
which athletes are vilified for publicly discussing
politically sensitive issues, it has become increasingly
dangerous for them to do so.
And yet in the face
of those odds, individuals such as Etan Thomas, John
Amaechi, Warrick Dunn, Joe Horn, and Carmelo Anthony
refuse to, as Dave Zirin puts it, “Be like most athletes
and just toe the line, drink Coke, wear Nike and
tap-dance on cue”.
Each has taken up unpopular causes, using their
popularity to bring vital media attention to important
issues. Etan Thomas has also vehemently challenged
Rhoden’s claim that contemporary black athletes have
dropped the ball, citing his own efforts to reach out to
black youth in schools, prisons, and in the community.
Rhoden, however, chooses to write off Thomas’
contribution, dismissing it as singular and nominal, and
failing, in my opinion, to apply the same vigor and
thorough analysis to uncovering the efforts of
contemporary black athletes to improve their communities
as he did to uncovering and praising the efforts of
black athletes of yesteryear.
As individuals such
as Etan Thomas prove, contemporary black athletes are
capable of carrying on the tradition of their brave
brothers and sisters before them who led their teams to
victory on the field and led the way in challenging
racial disunity and injustice in the world outside the
athletic arena (all while facing the petty and insipid
criticism of reactionary media).
And yet, Rhoden proves that the mind-state of most
contemporary black athletes is akin to a kind of
slavery--and we are at an unfortunate intersection in
history where apathy and approbation have created an
unwillingness and inability to act in the interests of
black social justice.
Though I question
Rhoden’s unwillingness to acknowledge contemporary
athletes who heed his call, there is no doubt that
Forty Million Dollar Slaves is an excellent read on
the peculiar yet vital intersection between black
athletic excellence and black social movement and
provides a reference point for future scholars to
continue this vital line of inquiry. I look forward to
future volumes by Rhoden, who is as excellent a writer
as he is a historian, in which he focuses his analytical
lens on contemporary trends in black athletic
leadership--building on the excellent history he
outlines in Forty Million Dollar Slaves and
perhaps identifying more contemporary black athletes who
have heeded his call. Perhaps other scholars will begin
where he leaves off, theorizing contemporary black
athletic leadership given the parameters Rhoden has
identified.
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