Slave Owner - Slave Dynamics on Today's Basketball Court?

A recent development with Mike Rice, now former head coach of the Rutgers men’s basketball team, shows footage of Rice beating his players at practices. Here is a clip:

I was shocked when I heard news of a Division I basketball coach (a school moving to the Big Ten next year) beating his players, but knew immediately how relatable it is to my studies in school at this time. I am researching around the question: Why are there more black players and fewer black executives, or positions of importance, in the NBA?

My studies have been anchored behind the book "Forty Million Dollar Slaves" by Bill Rhoden, a black sports columnist for the New York Times (Click here to read further about Rhoden's book). The book talks about blacks struggles in sports throughout history and their failure to collectively cash in on positions of authority.

Rhoden talks about Muhammad Ali and his refusal to join the U.S. Army, risking everything: "When Ali was stripped of his title, it was as if he were being whipped by the overseer" (Rhoden 18). While Ali being stripped of his heavyweight does not relate directly to the players of the Rutgers basketball team, it has relevance. On a basketball court dominated by blacks, these players were being stripped of their dignity by Coach Rice with his actions. Mike Rice is representing the "overseer," physically throwing basketballs and abusing his players.

Rice's actions against his players were completely out of line, and the university did well by firing him. This reflects negatively on white coaches, but especially on the progression of integration in the sports world. If Mike Rice, a white coach, is beating his (predominantly black) players like this in 2013, how far have we really come regarding racial issues and sports in America? An interesting question to consider. Feel free to respond in the comment section below.

America and Discrimination Against Blacks

In my American Studies class in highschool, we were asked to read and complete the 1965 Alabama Literacy Test. The test was required for legal voters whose grandparents were not citizens. This may seem fair in theory, but in practice it targeted blacks living in the South. We also learned how difficult the test was. I scored a 33/68 on the test, a score that is way below the minimum requirement to be allowed to vote.

One might think America has learned from unfair disenfranchisement of blacks and minorities, but the theme of legal loopholes to convict these same groups of people is still present today.

In fact, I am living just outside of the central hub of this discrimination. Nationwide, blacks are incarcerated at 8.2 times the rate of whites. The book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness gave me the following information about blacks in Chicago: “The total population of black males in Chicago with a felony record (including both current and ex-felons) is equivalent to 55 percent of the black adult male population and an astonishing 80 percent of the adult black male workforce in the Chicago area” (Alexander 188). The police efforts in cities such as Chicago fall disproportionately on blacks.

Chicago police also often wrongfully convict young blacks. According to Steve Mills of the Chicago Tribune, Daniel Taylor, 17 when convicted of double murder, was actually in the Chicago police lockup when the crime was committed, yet he is still trying to seek justice twenty years after he was arrested.

One main problem is that young black people are vulnerable to the phenomenon of false confessions. While false confessions might not seem prevalent to my community and I, living in a particularly affluent suburb of Chicago, the inner city is, as co-founder of the Innocence Project Peter Neufold says, “what Cooperstown is to baseball, Chicago is to false confessions. It is the Hall of Fame. There are more juvenile confessions in Chicago than any place else in the United States.”

I see the issue of false confessions and wrongful convictions of blacks today as unfair discrimination that needs to be addressed. As the title of Michelle Alexander's book suggests, we are supposedly living in the "Age of Colorblindness," but if we cannot protect these American's rights, not as much progress as possible is being made in my opinion.

I hope this post makes you think about how history is always repeating itself; Or, is it less that history is repeating itself and rather that America has not learned from its past? Let me know in the comment section below.