by Kam Williams
Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete
By William C. Rhoden, Crown Publishers, Hardcover, $23.95, 304 pages, illus.
ISBN: 0-609-60120-2.
"The Belt carries young black athletes out of black America and introduces them to a world with very few African-Americans, a world of white agents, real estate brokers, bank presidents, trustees, and lawyers. The fact that so many of the athletes’ closest advisers are not African-American means that they’re never around black models of leadership, a situation that undermines their own ability to become leaders, rather than pampered, passive followers.”
-- Excerpted from Chapter 7, The Conveyor Belt
Once upon a time, prominent African American athletes were inclined to leverage their fame as a means of confronting racism. From Paul Robeson to Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali to Jim Brown to Arthur Ashe to Olympic medal-winners Tommie Smith and John Carlos, there is an abundant legacy of commitment to the Black community.
But judging by today’s socially-unenlightened crop of sports icons, one might suspect that rich history of activism and advocating for the underclass to be more fairy tale than fact. For the once-widespread dedication to hard-fought, collective advancement has been all but abandoned by the current generation of superstars, at least according to William C. Rhoden, author of Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete.
The tone of today’s ballplayer is perhaps typified by the NBA’s Grant Hill who acknowledges that, “When you’re making $200,000 every two weeks, it’s hard to get angry about anything.” Rhoden, a sportswriter for The New York Times since 1983, concedes that most pros now make more money in one season than his childhood heroes could accumulate over the course of their entire careers. But he also argues that these financial rewards ought to translate into an even more effective advocacy bloc for African American advancement.
Yet instead, we have entered the age of the apolitical mega-star, carefully-packaged product such as Michael Jordan, who Rhoden says went to great lengths to cultivate a non-threatening, ever-neutral public image. The author points out that Jordan was a ferocious competitor of unparalleled drive on the court and in the corporate world but not “when it came to confronting racism.”
Insights such as this, are what make Forty Million Dollar Slaves a priceless and prophetic discourse on the path of Blacks in sports, dividing its time between African American history and the present-day dilemma where we find individualism, commercialism, materialism and blasé attitudes celebrated at the expense of any concern about a Black agenda.
Also of interest is how the book, posthumously, gives credence to most of the notions which cost the late Jimmy the Greek his job when he related anecdotes about ante bellum plantation owners breeding slaves for muscularity. Now we learn that Blacks did dominate the field back then, whether in horseracing as the country’s first jockeys or in track as sprinters at events staged to entertain white spectators.
Perhaps most significantly, it asks some very meaningful questions about franchise ownership, pointing out that the integration of baseball simultaneously signaled the demise of the Black-owned Negro League. For while Brooklyn Dodger owner Branch Rickey has invariably been hailed for having signed Jackie Robinson, here, he is blamed for helping keep Black competitors out of the big leagues, rationalizing preserving a white monopoly with “There is no Negro League as far as I’m concerned.”
Overall, Forty Million Dollar Slaves still offers an optimistic message since thousands of Black athletes are now blessed with the means to make major statements about the way their industry is run, provided they remember their roots and somehow develop the wherewithal and inclination to get involved. Nonetheless, such a salvation is not guaranteed, since as the Bible states in Proverbs 29: 18: “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”
The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic by Chalmers Johnson, Owl Books, Paperback, $16, 400 pages, ISBN: 0-8050-7797-9.
“Since 9/11, our country has undergone a transformation from republic to empire that may well prove irreversible. It suddenly became un-American to question the Bush administration’s War on Terrorism, let alone a war on Iraq, or on the whole Axis of Evil.
Most Americans do not recognize -- or do not want to recognize -- that the United States dominates the world through its military power. Due to government secrecy, they are often ignorant of the fact that their government garrisons the globe. They do not realize that a vast network of American military bases on every continent except Antarctica actually constitutes a new form of empire.
This book is a guide to the American empire as it begins openly to spread its imperial wings. As of September 2001, the Department of Defense acknowledged at least 725 American military bases existed outside the United States. Actually, there are many more.
As militarism, the arrogance of power, and the euphemisms required to justify imperialism inevitably conflict with America’s democratic structure of government and distort its culture and basic values, I fear that we will lose our country. Nowhere is it written that the U.S., in its guise as an empire dominating the world, must go on forever.”
Excerpted from the Prologue
After the fall of the Soviet Union, America was left as the world’s sole superpower. According to Chalmers Johnson, rather than reacting to this development as an opportunity to de-emphasize militarism, the U.S. has instead escalated its efforts to expand its influence around the planet. In his thought-provoking opus, The Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic, Johnson, Professor Emeritus at the University of California at San Diego, issues some dire warnings about the likely consequences if this policy continues unchallenged and unabated.
For according to the author, something went seriously wrong with the country in the wake of 9/11, when it suddenly was deemed unpatriotic to question the President’s unilateralist agenda of aggression. Virtually everyone in positions to challenge the administration in this regard failed to do so, capitulating to a compromise of American values in deference to the dictates of the Military-Industrial Complex.
Johnson states that, “Our newspapers began to read like official gazettes, television news simply gave up and followed the orders of its corporate owners, and the two political parties competed with each other in being obsequious to the White House.” If allowed to continue unchecked, he predicts that the U.S. will ultimately collapse, due to a combination of imperial overstretch, economic impracticalities and an inability to reform itself.
Though The Sorrows of Empire has just been published in paperback, this timely edition proves Chalmers Johnson to be even more prophetic, as more and more of the fears he first expressed a couple of years ago have come to be realized. A most informative and revealing read, and a surefire antidote to the social sedative that seems to have lulled the masses into a lemming-like acceptance of a fatal philosophy accelerating the tragic demise of Western Civilization.
Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America and What We Can Do About It by Juan Williams, Crown Publishers, Hardcover, $25, 256 pages, ISBN: 0-307-33823-1.
“Reparations sends a message to Americans of every other race that blacks are wards of the state because they are a broken people. Social ills in the black community would be exaggerated as black people, flush with one big check, decide they don’t need school, don’t need a job, and remove themselves from the vitality of mainstream American life.
The suffering of ancestors is not a claim ticket for a bag full of cash. Who wants money in their pocket that is stained with the blood of slaves? That is obscene.
The great civil rights struggle has always been for the right to an equal opportunity to compete… Why start begging?”
-- Excerpted from Chapter 3, The Reparations Mirage
Bill Cosby ignited a firestorm of controversy a couple of years ago when he delivered a speech to the NAACP suggesting that poor Black folks must shoulder a share of the responsibility for their ongoing economic, education, housing and social woes. The debate inspired by those caustic remarks continues to rage, the latest being Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America and What We Can Do About It, an eloquent endorsement of Cosby by Juan Williams which unfortunately appears to be a calculated attempt to twist the comedian’s message into Republican recruitment propaganda.
Williams, a columnist at the Washington Post for 21 years and a frequent guest on National Public Radio as a senior correspondent, is currently best known for his appearances as a panelist on the Fox News Channel. While he ostensibly serves as a counterbalance to the right-wing network’s parade of neo-cons, any casual observer of his deferential demeanor on Fox can easily infer that his true leanings tend to be more middle-of-the-road than liberal. Plus, his son, Antonio, is an up-and-coming Republican in the District of Columbia.
So, it comes as no surprise, that the political pundit would now hijack Cosby’s theme to use it as the cornerstone of a diatribe which basically blames African Americans themselves and their Democratic leaders for the assortment of ills which still beset the community. Williams has rather harsh words for everyone from Reverend Jesse Jackson to Julian Bond to reparations advocate Randall Robinson to former mayors Sharpe James (Newark) and Marion Barry (Washington, DC). But he reserves perhaps his cruelest criticism for Reverend Al Sharpton whom Juan alleges to be an opportunist financed by Republicans, an FBI informant, a con artist with a cocaine problem, a self-serving charlatan, a front man for predatory lenders, and more.
When not indulging in character assassination, the author devotes his attention to topical issues such as the handling of Hurricane Katrina. Enough’s most mind-boggling passages are those covering the tragedy, especially since the book is dedicated to “the people rising above Katrina’s storm.”
Yet, rather than question how the city, state and federal authorities could have all abandoned thousands upon thousands of poor Black folk for days on end, Williams conveniently concludes that, “The government response was the result of ineptitude, not racism.” Instead, he has issues with Black “paranoia” about New Orleans and sees the Black church, strong families, and a tradition of “self-help” as a viable solution to rebuilding the Ninth Ward.
I wonder whether Democratic strategist Donna Brazile, who was born and raised in New Orleans, even bothered to read this book before allowing herself to be quoted on the cover praising its often offensive contents. Her blurb reads, “Enough is a breath of fresh air and a long overdue, critical insight into today’s stereotypical nonsense that has unfortunately been passing as the new Black culture.”
May I humbly suggest that Ms. Brazile, in the future, think twice before placing her stamp of approval on a tome which reads more like a series of Republican talking points than an honest assessment of the state of African Americana. Enough is enough!
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