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Great article try to read it all ;-)
Politics of Race in Professional Football
www.blackcommentator.com/160/1...n.html
The majority population members in this society are in a constant state of denial: about the war, about the intelligence of their President, about their role in the perpetuation of racial segregation. The success of sports as a leisure activity is supposed to be a way to allow them to get their minds off of everyday necessities and realities. But since sports is becoming increasingly black and brown, these people must think about “race” even as they work to get their minds off of it.
Few people want to write or talk about “the politics of the pigskin and of pigment” in professional football. And why not? The whole society is afraid to talk about race and most of the pundits sit around wondering why. Here’s why: to talk about race in America would be an indictment of the people who are in the majority, that’s why! Look at how they ducked and dodged the obvious conclusions of the Katrina evacuees: what that incident showed the world was what we have been trying to tell them for two centuries. This avoidance of reality extends to every institution that these people have created to support their system: law, health, labor, education, religion and so on.
So why should those involved in sports be any braver or honest than those who sign their paychecks, build their stadiums, manage their League office or write about their sport? All are involved in segregationist realities, stereotyped thinking, and eurocentric value systems inevitably resulting in avoidance and a refusal to deal with the politics of pigmentation.One newspaper airs a commercial featuring a black man and a white man sitting in the football stands arguing over a statistic. Up comes a man who represents the newspaper, and he corrects them both. He is then joined by other writers from the sports department of this same newspaper. In an attempt to promote how “accurate” this newspaper is supposed to be, this team of people actually proves an even greater point: an all-white staff writing about and sharing their views on sports that are dominated by non-white people. But in the newspaper’s collective eyes, this is the sign of “greatness.” Again, the power of pigmentation.
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About Terrell Owens
If you think slavery ended, then just look at the Terrell Owens situation and you will see the plantation mentality, the master-slave relationship, the manhunt tradition and modern day “nightriders” in action, no doubt about it.
It is clear that the plantation still exists. And for the first time, there are “slaves” among black folks. In those ante bellum days, those were not slaves, but captives. As LaRue Nedd pointed out in his pamphlet, Why We Shouldn’t Call Our Foreparents Slaves, we fought back during those times. Marshall Taylor of Omaha’s Aframerican Bookstore confirms that there were more than 1,500 recorded uprisings back in the day. Black people resisted. How could we have been “slaves”? We were, in fact, prisoners of war. Today we are slaves because we have options that we are too cowardly and assimilated to consider. That’s what makes a slave: the refusal to consider all options.
The master-slave tradition is therefore evident, not only in terms of the NFL’s control of these powerful black men, but look again at Owens’ situation. While slated to apologize for dogging out another black man, Donovan McNabb (the QB, no less), Owens had his pitiful attempts dampened even further by his big mouth agent, Drew Rosenhaus. It was Rosenhaus who convinced Owens to ask for a new contract, Rosenhaus who stood by and instigated Owens’ antics and then when the heat came, in typical fashion, Rosenhaus ran for the hills crying “no comment, no comment.” Remember: whatever amount of money Terrell earns dodging huge men, getting hit and busting up his body, Rosenhaus gets a huge percentage for merely sitting behind a desk and talking on the telephone.
Manhunt tradition – that’s what Oliver C. Cox called it in his classic, Caste, Class and Race. Those folks were out to get Terrell to make an example of him. To them, he was an “uppity n------,” just like the NBA’s Littrell Sprewell who wouldn’t let a coach verbally abuse him, and just like wideout Keyshawn Johnson in 2003 – traded to another team when the coach couldn’t “control” him. The media helps stigmatize Owens even more; almost every picture is one with a scowl, or Owens smelling his top lip. This is the same thing Time magazine did to O.J. Simpson and local newspapers do to black youth who are arrested. The worse they can make them look, the more physically menacing they can make them appear, the less empathy they’ll get from society.
Indeed, others had done far worse: Ray Lewis, a member of the Baltimore Ravens football team, literally got away with murder – but was found “not guilty” so that he could continue playing ball (the O.J. Simpson syndrome). Bill Romanowski was and remains a racist who not only spit in Owens’ face while with the 49ers, but used the N-word – then, when busted, kowtowed and whimpered, claiming in essence, “some of my best friends are black” (akin to Howard Cosell calling Art Monk “a little monkey” and then later claiming he didn’t see anything wrong with it).
And there’s more atrocities taking place that never make the news. Why? Because sports reporters can be bought, that’s why. This is why the ESPN series, “Playmakers” was cancelled. When that show dealt with homosexuality in the NFL, dealt with players going to bed with their teammates’ wives, and the drugs and gambling – it hit too close to home.
