This holds true across almost all of professional sports except in the NBA, where Michael Jordan is an owner. So you only have to be the greatest athlete ever and one of the most successful commercial brands in history, and you get to be an owner. We are integrated only on the level that people see on the field, yet all sports celebrate this half-view of integration. When Major League Baseball memorializes Jackie Robinson, they leave out that he wanted to be a manager or executive but they would not give him the opportunity.
In the NFL, we don’t see former Black players in the Monday Night Football booth, but they’re bringing back Hank Williams Jr.—a guy who performs with a big Confederate flag—to do the opening song. It shows not just their target audience but also their incredibly low opinion of those people. They assume that their white audience doesn’t want to see Black faces or hear Black voices but loves a Confederate country singer. I think they’re wrong, but owners are also conditioning people to be racially biased by sending these messages.
Even the word “owner” sounds terrible. I wish I could wave a wand or get one of those devices from Men in Black and change all our brains so we call them CEOs or chairmen of the board like in any other business, instead of owners. Players talk about how weird it is—a majority Black sport, and we’re talking about our “owners.” If you think I’m being too sensitive, go to work tomorrow and call your boss your owner in conversation, and see how that feels. We owe our ancestors better than that. Players want to see a Black “owner” (there I go) simply because the hope is that they would be able to understand the reality of what it means to be a Black athlete. I wonder if the discussion around Colin Kaepernick—and if he would be signed—would be different if there were Black ownership.
Starting with more Black coaches would make a big difference. Not just in terms of opening closed doors, but for a better working environment for Black athletes. Many league executives, media members, coaches, and fans assume all Black players come from the same circumstances. They don’t understand that although every Black person has experienced some kinds of racism, we come into this world from all kinds of backgrounds. I’ve had white coaches try to be a father figure to me, telling me how to tuck in my shirt or talk to the press or save my money. That’s patronizing as shit. I’ve had to say, “Not only do I have a father, but I’m a father myself, so you can speak to me like a man.” Even if I didn’t have a father and had a tough upbringing, it would be hard for a white man to turn a Black man into a Black MAN because we go through so many different things. I feel lucky that my coach is Pete Carroll. He is the only white coach I’ve ever met who really tried to understand the Black experience, who listened more than he talked, and even asked me what he could do to increase Black participation in coaching and executive jobs. It makes life a lot easier.
It is true that a lot of African American players grew up in hard circumstances, in a certain type of America that most fans and definitely most coaches and execs don’t understand. You take a kid from Miami-Dade County, an all-Black environment where poverty is life, and put them in a place like Texas A&M, where they’re a tiny minority and everyone else has spare bills in their pocket. After four years, at twenty-two, a very small percentage of them will be pushed onto a pedestal and handed a sack of money, and most aren’t remotely ready.
A lot of athletes, when they’re speaking about their own powerlessness, particularly in NCAA or NFL football, reach for the metaphor of the plantation. They talk about slavery. Inevitably, responses slam them for that: “How dare you trivialize the experience of slavery? How dare you call yourself a $40 million slave? You got money, so why are you saying that you feel like you have no voice?” But your money is tied to your silence. Your money is tied to walking the line. It’s not like you created your own business, where if you wanted to say, “I don’t fucking like this. If you don’t want to buy my product, don’t buy my product,” you could feel free to do that. Your product is you, so you have to look out for what people don’t want you to say. You have no freedom to just be. You are not allowed to be successful unless you wear the mask.
You can see this so clearly in the curious case of Colin Kaepernick. By the time you read this, maybe Colin Kaepernick will be on a team, maybe not. Either way, it’s shameful to the league that he was “whiteballed”—as 1968 Olympian John Carlos says, Colin was whiteballed, not blackballed—for standing up for his rights and the rights of his community. He’s a great player who gives back, and his teammates love him. But the league and too many fans wanted to teach a lesson, not only to him but to every athlete who might want to step out of
