Book Review: Forty Million Dollar Slaves

I deliberately abstained from immediately reading William C. Rhoden’s Forty Million Dollar Slaves when it came out this past summer. I wanted to develop my own opinion of the incendiary 270-page polemic independently of the surrounding maelstrom it generated in the sports journalism world. Now that the furor has long died down, and I can only dimly remember the details of its strongest criticisms, I recently picked it up and consumed it with as open and detached a mind as possible.

My first comment is that everyone who cares about sports—particularly the Big 3 (MLB, NBA, NFL)—should read this book for a number of reasons. First, the veracity and cogency of Rhoden’s opinions aside, the subject matter is worth investigating. Race and racism remain pertinent issues in sports and society, and as depressing as it may sound, neither phenomenon will diminish in the near future—witness NBA guard Steve Francis’s remarks that racism informed the media’s coverage of the Knicks-Nuggets brawl in December. Second, Rhoden, who writes for the New York Times, is admirably passionate and wrote this book with a sincere desire for systemic change in both the overall sports industry and the mindset of contemporary African-American athletes and executives; thus, we should consider his ideas. Third, I am hesitant to be presumptive, but I believe Rhoden would encourage discourse and debate on his book from all races. And finally, one cannot read the book without doing some critical self-examination along the way, and I would endorse any product in which rigorous internal reflection is a side effect.

According to Rhoden, though African-Americans have gained numerous benefits from professional athletics, their persistent lack of real power in the modern sports industry remains a glaring travesty. By “power,” Rhoden is referring to “owning teams, owning networks, owning the means of communication, and owning our collective image” (interestingly absent from his evaluation is any lengthy attention to sports agents, a field in which many blacks have made considerable strides). In Rhoden’s mind, the reason for this dilemma is a long history of systematic subjugation of black athletes by white owners, culminating in today’s fragmented group of wealthy but indifferent African-American athletes.

After establishing his thesis, Rhoden chronicles some key historical developments in the evolution of the African-American’s place within today’s “sports-industrial complex.” His recurrent theme is that of slaves competing for the amusement and benefit of their white owners. In pre-Civil War America, this dynamic was literal: slaves of neighboring plantations frequently competed in races, boxing matches, and the like for their masters, who would often bet on the outcomes. Any athletes who were consistently successful frequently earned respect from their fellow slaves and pittance from their overseers.

After emancipation, the slave-owner relationship became metaphorical, though in Rhoden’s mind hardly more defensible. Antebellum white society was fearful of blacks achieving success in athletics for two reasons. First, there was a concern that black dominance in head-to-head athletic competition with whites would have a detrimentally empowering impact on the rest of the African-American population. Second, white America recognized the growing financial vitality of professional sports leagues and needed to bar blacks from realizing any of the potentially lucrative payoffs. As a result, whites kept blacks in marginalized roles (if they were allowed any roles at all) in sports by using a variety of methods.

One of those methods was outright exclusion, which Rhoden terms the “Jockey Syndrome.” Under the Jockey Syndrome, African-American athletes such as boxers Tom Molineaux and Jack Johnson, horseman Isaac Murphy, and cyclist Major Taylor were never given fair opportunities for achievement in their respective sports, at least on U.S. soil. In each sport, white organizers, controllers, and competitors restricted black participation through formal prohibition and “gentlemen’s agreements” on biased rules and regulations.

As outright segregation and banishment became less viable tactics, whites began allowing African-American integration, but only under unfavorable conditions. Rhoden cites Major League Baseball’s raiding of the Negro Leagues in the 1940s to illustrate how white owners used the noble concept of integration to shield their ruthlessness. By signing away all of the top African-American talent and refusing to regard any of the Negro League franchises as financially and culturally significant commodities worth preserving, white team owners effectively crushed what might have been a prosperous black institution. Rhoden also points out that athletes such as Jackie Robinson, though lauded for being color-barrier breaking pioneers, did a disservice to their fellow African-Americans by failing to negotiate better terms for their ex-Negro League employers.

Finally, Rhoden describes today’s sports landscape, one of “inclusion without power” for blacks. To Rhoden, the situation for blacks and the overall African-American society is more grim than uplifting. In the modern system, black athletes with athletic potential are plucked from their communities at an early age, attend “big-time” colleges largely isolated from their culture, and are trained to compete against each other. If they are good enough, these athletes eventually enrich their white owners with their grace and aesthetic style of play. The impetus for these black athletes, of course, is the allure of huge salaries. Although some have sacrificed greatly to bring about greater empowerment, such as Curt Flood with his quest to expunge MLB’s Reserve Clause, most have been content to “not rock the boat” and enjoy instead their tremendous personal wealth. For Rhoden, Michael Jordan is the most egregious example of an athlete with more means than anyone to advance the causes of African-Americans, but who instead has stood for nothing except his own commercialism. Meanwhile, black representation in the coaching, management, and especially ownership realms are nearly nonexistent. The lone exception is Robert Johnson, the owner of the Charlotte Bobcats, but Rhoden is even skeptical of his motivations, fearing he may be nothing more than a callous, profit-oriented businessman.

The degree to which one acquiesces to Rhoden’s arguments will depend largely upon one’s stance on a number of issues—integration, for example. “Integration,” writes Rhoden, “stopped a growing momentum toward independence and self-definition within the African-American community.” Further, integration to Rhoden was simply a “winning proposition for the whites who controlled the sports-industrial complex. They could move to exploit black muscle and talent, thus sucking the life out of black institutions, while at the same time giving themselves credit as humanitarians.” If you feel it would always better to be a blended, culturally-overlapping society, you will probably be inclined to disagree with Rhoden’s opinions of integration. However, if you think that maintaining robust, impregnable ethnic and sub-cultural identities—even at the expense of outright separation—are imperative, you will probably readily accept Rhoden’s conclusions.

What if you are an interloper, as I am, and you think that a certain degree of ethnic autonomy is fine and even laudable, but on the whole you would prefer that we all “play together”? Then you have to parse Rhoden’s points one at a time (after which you still may not be any less agnostic). Regarding Rhoden’s treatment of Jackie Robinson’s pioneering integration into Major League Baseball, I completely agree that it was wrong for white owners and officials to not treat the Negro League franchises more respectfully. On the other hand, throughout history, large sports leagues have regularly subsumed less powerful ones, even when race was not a factor. For instance, the NBA had a highly inequitable merger with ABA, as did the NHL with the WHA. Even today, European soccer leagues lure away Americans from the MLS with unmatchable contracts, relegating US soccer to continual “small-time” status. The truth is that sports owners are profit-driven, and if they have the financial means to sign the best players and thereby increase their team’s value, that is what they will do, with little regard for the poorer teams they victimize. Two leagues with uneven levels of market capitalization rarely can coexist for long, and if there is a primary culprit for this, it is arguably capitalism before it is racism.

Further, though the means MLB used to acquire Robinson were nefariously exploitative, he did end up having a much larger stage to captivate and inspire millions of Americans—black and otherwise—than he would have had with the Negro Leagues. And if you think that the lessons and legends of heroes such as Jackie Robinson should be shared by all American cultural and ethnic subsets, it is hard not to see this as the most important outcome of baseball integration rather than the extinction of the Negro Leagues. I was also left wondering how ideal it would have been had one or more Negro League teams been incorporated wholly intact to MLB. Rhoden laments that this did not happen, but he fails to really flesh out this alternative scenario. Would these former Negro League franchises, were they still in existence today as a part of MLB, continue to be segregated? And if so, would that even be desirable? Again, if your opinion on integration is fixed one way or the other, you would not require an answer to this question. However, if you are undecided, you will likely remain that way.

Another philosophical fault line that—depending on which side you stand—will inform your reaction to Forty Million Dollar Slaves is the relationship between athlete and community. Rhoden firmly believes that African-Americans should be using their wealth to advance the overall black community and insists this notion has shamefully declined since his college days. During several interludes, Rhoden recounts his experiences playing football for historically black Morgan State in the late 60s and recalls the uplifting, inspiring effect the big football games against other black colleges had on the greater African-American population. Unfortunately, Rhoden believes that since then, black colleges have lost out to the large “white” universities in terms of recruiting, facilities, scholarships, and media exposure. The result is a vicious circle: the top black athletes no longer have an interest in attending their “own” colleges because of the allure of playing for big-time schools, and the gap between “white” and black universities continues to widen. Worse still, in a process Rhoden dubs “The Conveyor Belt,” black athletes are targeted and isolated the moment they show superior aptitude in a sport, are lured by mostly white recruiters to attend predominantly white schools, and essentially lose touch with their culture. Ultimately, if these athletes do eventually become millionaires at the professional level, they are less inclined to help the communities that raised them, because they no longer identify with them.

This is a pretty sweeping theory, and one that I am not sure Rhoden successfully proves. First, how “separated” are big-time schools from black communities? If a black athlete grows up in rural Alabama, for instance, and ends up playing for the University of Alabama, is the athlete really in danger of forgetting his roots? I believe that the onus is on Rhoden to prove this, and in my opinion he fails to do so. Though Rhoden cites a Sports Illustrated series that “chronicled the crippling social isolation the (black) athletes endured, and the various ways in which they were used and abandoned by the machinery of big time sports,” these articles are from the late 60s. Perhaps I am naïve, but I am positive things are better now. Rhoden also mentions the story of Tates Locke, the former Clemson coach, who lied to recruits about Clemson’s non-existent black fraternity. But again, this incident is from the early 80s—Rhoden needs to provide more current evidence to make me believe that colleges continue to behave in such a sinister, culturally-brainwashing way.

Even if Rhoden is correct in his assertion that many if not most black athletes involuntarily turn their backs on their upbringing, the question remains: exactly what do they owe their communities? For a lot of athletes, their “community” is the immediate group people who raised them, and to that end it seems as if they largely do repay their debts. Though I only have anecdotal evidence, it seems that nearly all professional athletes, regardless of race, see to the welfare of their parents, guardians, extended family, and friends immediately after they sign their first huge professional contracts. These entourages receive money, homes, improved living standards, and often financial backing for their own entrepreneurial endeavors. First, Rhoden does not really acknowledge any of this. Second, what else should these athletes be required to do? A good number of athletes do donate to their high schools, universities, and a variety of charitable organizations, many of which reside in their local communities. But if an athlete grew up in a dangerous urban environment, does he really have an obligation to everyone in the neighborhood? Certainly it would be nice if they felt that way, but I have a hard time taking any athletes to task who feels differently.

A third and final potential grey area with which some readers might potentially grapple: what actions should be considered progressive? Rhoden uses some interesting behavioral examples from black athletes in the past that he believes to be admirably constructive, as well as others that he decries. For instance, in June of 1999, popular New York Knick Larry Johnson refused to talk to reporters in a league-mandated media session, later berated them in a profanity-laced tirade, and finally likened himself and his teammates to “rebellious slaves.” He then got into a public spat with white NBA television commentator Bill Walton. Walton called Johnson a “sad human being,” and Johnson retaliated with the accusation that Walton’s ancestors were slave-owners. To Rhoden, Johnson had made a “rudimentary start to thinking of his own evolution and commitment to his community in broader terms than merely hanging out there or celebrating his ‘escape.’” Perhaps so, but Johnson also reamed a number of innocent reporters for no particular reason in the process and hurled a baseless accusation at Walton, who was in all likelihood focusing more on Johnson’s poor on-court play than on his societal views. It seems as if Rhoden could have chosen a more clear-cut example of a black athlete acting sociologically conscious.

A similar ambiguity occurs when Rhoden discusses Michael Jordan’s failure to intervene in a black student movement at his alma mater, the University of North Carolina. In 1992, a number of black student athletes protested UNC Chancellor Paul Hardin’s decision not to fund a separate campus center dedicated to the study of black culture. Hardin’s rationale was that such a center would not be inclusive to the rest of the school’s various ethnicities. The black athletes responded by threatening to boycott their teams’ games and petitioned Jordan to get involved. Jordan happened to agree with Hardin and declined to back the athletes, although he did offer to fund a library for a more general purpose, such as family life studies. Eventually, Hardin acquiesced and the students got their cultural center. Reading about this event for the first time, I found myself believing that both Hardin and the student athletes had valid points, that the entire debate hinged once again on one’s overall opinion of the value of integration vs. the need for cultural identity, and that there was not necessarily a “correct” answer to the impasse. Thus I found it hard to criticize Jordan’s decision not to side with the black student athletes. Rhoden, however, writes that Jordan, “with one eye on his corporate masters, mouthed his mealy demurrals and stayed on the sidelines. A lion on the court, he was a lamb when the community needed him...Black athletes like Jordan have abdicated their responsibility to the community with an apathy that borders on treason.” As with the Larry Johnson example of “good” behavior, I would have liked to see more straightforward examples of “bad” behavior from Rhoden.

My final criticism of Forty Million Dollar Slaves involves a technical aspect of the book: I believe Rhoden uses very questionable documentation procedures. The book does have endnotes, but it does not contain footnotes, and this posed a problem for me, particularly on a number of statements in which I was unsure whether Rhoden was stating fact or conjecture. For instance, at one point Rhoden writes, “(Jackie) Robinson had been conditioned to the ‘white life’ at UCLA and in junior college. He had heard the white crowds roar and may have longed for the right to live that life.” With no footnotes and no obvious reference to this statement in the endnotes, on what exactly is Rhoden basing his (arguably slanderous) opinion of Robinson? If you are going to write a book featuring several potentially inflammatory statements, leading to conclusions such as “racism is more virulent and determined than ever before,” having copious and specific documentation is necessary, and I feel Rhoden’s efforts here were inadequate.

In the end, although I failed to see eye-to-eye with Rhoden on culpability issues and some of his interpretations of past events, I do agree with his overarching principle: proactive black athletes leveraging their wealth and power to gain greater institutional control in sports is a desirable goal. My biggest worry is that Rhoden is not interested in—or even hostile to—achieving a greater degree of integration in sports and in society as a whole. And I also do not believe the “sports-industrial complex” remains as actively opposed to black control as it once did, nor that black athletes are as derelict in their responsibilities to the community as Rhoden asserts. Ultimately, your opinion on the level of black power in sports may rest on how fast you think progress is occurring. For Rhoden, it is clearly not occurring fast enough, but one fundamental problem with blaming racism or indifference (or whatever) is that professional sports teams are not easy to acquire for anyone; besides being extremely expensive, they are also rarely for sale. Black television commentator Chris Carter said as much recently on HBO’s Inside the NFL when he mentioned that he would love to acquire a team as part of an ownership group; the problem is, no one’s selling right now. But Carter, like me, is confident that things will change and are changing (if not fast enough to suit Rhoden). Nonetheless, I thank Rhoden for bringing these issues to light, and I want to see the debate continued.