Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete
 
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From Publishers Weekly New York Times columnist Rhoden offers a charged assessment of the state of black athletes in America, using the pervasive metaphor of the plantation to describe a modern sports industry defined by white ownership and black labor. The title and the notion behind it are sure to raise eyebrows, and Rhoden admits that his original title of Lost Tribe Wandering, for all its symbolic elegance, lacked punch. And Rhoden isn't pulling any of his. Rather than seeing rags-to-riches stories where underprivileged athletes reach the Promised Land by way of their skills, he casts the system as one in which those athletes are isolated from their backgrounds, used to maximize profit and instilled with a mindset "whereby money does not necessarily alter one's status as 'slave,' as long as the 'owner' is the one who controls the rules that allow that money to be made." Rhoden's writing is intelligent and cogent, and his book's tone is hardly as inflammatory as its name. It's possible that his title and working metaphor will turn off readers who will simply refuse to consider young men making millions of dollars playing a game to be disenfranchised. Nevertheless, this is an insightful look at the role of blacks in sports they dominate but hardly control. (June) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com "A well-paid slave is nonetheless a slave." So declared Curt Flood during an interview with Howard Cosell on Jan. 3, 1970. The Gold Glove centerfielder had appeared on ABC television to discuss his grievances with Major League Baseball. Flood uttered his memorable reply when Cosell questioned his description of baseball players as "indentured servants" and "slaves," pointing out that $90,000 per year wasn't exactly "slave wages." Decades and many millions of dollars later, notable sports figures have continued to second Flood's bold notion. For example, former pro basketball player Larry Johnson once described his fellow members of the New York Knicks as a group of "rebellious slaves," a term similarly used by basketball star Rasheed Wallace and and football All-Pro Warren Sapp. William Rhoden, in his brilliant Forty Million Dollar Slaves, chronicles the saga of Flood, Johnson and numerous other black male athletes who have toiled on America's athletic plantations. Along the way, he shows how their promise as athletes, leaders and agents of social change has long been restricted by the forces of racism on and off the field. Like Flood, he disputes the widespread belief that athletes (and black male athletes in particular) with seven-figure contracts and commercial appeal cannot be slaves. While recognizing that today's athletes are immensely wealthy, Rhoden links the absence of black ownership, the institutionalization of rules to regulate black athletic styles, and the common description of black athletes as "hot dogs" or "showboats" as evidence of black athletes' subservience to white interests. He makes clear that the absence of power leaves black athletes in a continuously precarious position, still hampered by a history of being "kept out, persecuted, and eased out when white owners and management decided they weren't needed or wanted." As evidence of black athletes' continuing vulnerability, Rhoden writes about Michael Jordan, often cited as evidence of black male athletic success and the powerful ways in which sports have facilitated colorblindness in post-civil-rights era America. "Flying too high to notice" that he was on the plantation, Jordan was fired by Washington Wizards owner Abe Pollin. Like Curt Flood before him, the superstar was "used for his muscle, then discarded." "As long as black people don't take control of the industry that feeds them, they will always work at the pleasure of the white power structure," writes Rhoden, "a structure that would like nothing more than to wean itself from its dependence on black muscle." Linking the NBA's efforts to create an international (and l

Submitted On:

09 Sep 2007

File Author:

Rhoden, William C.

File Size:

2.70 MB