Controlling Black Athletes

An excerpt from the Washington Post -

Bob McNair, other NFL owners demonstrate their true intent: Controlling black athletes
By Kevin B. Blackistone

Control of black athletic talent in this country was then, before and now — as Houston Texans owner Bob McNair reminded not once but twice over the past few days — of paramount concern to ownership and management. There was, for example, the concerted effort of white lawmakers to wrest the heavyweight championship of the world over a century ago from boxer Jack Johnson, the first black man to hold it, to restore the fallacy of white superiority. There was reduction of college athletic scholarships from four-year contracts to single-year agreements at the start of the 1970s, which just so happened to coincide with teams ramping up through integration, reducing the power of new stars, primarily of color, from managing their destinies. There was the NBA under commissioner David Stern in 2005 managing to impose a dress code on the predominantly black league to rebut an increasingly urban image that Stern was worried might have made it less marketable to advertisers and white fans.

And there is the NFL’s response to free agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick and those players who have dared use the national anthem as a stage to protest grievances against police lethality vs. black men or the dog-whistle (if not foghorn) firebrand of this country’s latest president.

What the upper echelon of the NFL began reacting to earlier this year, with its conspiratorial defrocking of Kaepernick, wasn’t about the anthem, per se. It wasn’t about the massive flags it so often unfurls before games. It wasn’t about the military it recognizes at almost every game with a presentation of the colors or an expensive flyover of armed forces weaponry.

It was about, as McNair allowed his subconscious to let slip, corralling the players and returning them to their place.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/nfl-bob-mcnair-demonstrate-their-true-intent-controlling-black-athletes/2017/10/29/437685d4-bcd2-11e7-959c-fe2b598d8c00_story.html?utm_term=.d247ebd2aeb9