One of the best writers parked at the bustling intersection of Race and sports is William Rhoden. To be honest with you, Rhoden has built an impressive career offering insightful commentary at this increasingly busy thoroughfare his entire career. Although it seems to be decades ago when Rhoden delivered the classic book Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete to a nation that has been embattled by racial problems since the initial Africans arrived in the Jamestown colony.
The shocking title of Rhoden’s book, Forty Million Dollar Slaves, was a recalling of a public insult that a white fan shouted in the public arena at a black player in Madison Square Garden during a New York Knicks game. The insinuation that black athletes are nothing more than commodities whose lone use is to entertain whites was neither new nor subtle.
Unfortunately for black women, one of the primary consequences of Black Liberation being conceptualized and frequently articulated as gender specific is that the population that Malcolm X cited as “the most disrespected person on the planet,” has been an after-thought in robust discussions of Black liberation. Make no mistake about it, Black liberation has historically been very BLACK and very MALE. Most “race men” behave as if it were a given that if black men were saved, black women would also be saved; there is little in the recent historical record that supports such assertions. Make no mistake about it, black women have been the mules of every liberation struggle as they have had to simultaneously fight on multiple identity politic battlefields that involved some combination of race, class, gender, and sexuality.
Put simply; it is difficult being a black woman in America. They are expected to aid others in their liberation fights while remaining silent when their opportunistic allies simultaneously enjoy the fruits of the labor of black women while passively viewing their never-ending struggles.
This understanding that black women alone are solely responsible for improving their plight sits at the center of others silence when Kelly Loeffler, a Senator (R) from Georgia and co-owner of the WNBA franchise the Atlanta Dream, delivered a relatively rudimentary attack. According to Loeffler, WNBA players, the black one’s in particular, need to mute themselves regarding this nation’s pressing racial matters. According to Loeffler,
The truth is, we need less — not more politics in sports. In a time when polarizing politics is as divisive as ever, sports has the power to be a unifying antidote. And now more than ever, we should be united in our goal to remove politics from sports.
It is no stretch to say analogize that if the black NBA players that William Rhoden wrote about are “40 million dollar slaves” then Loeffler considers WNBA players “4 million dollar wenches” that need to be taught to shut-up and dribble.
Were it not so sad, Kelly Loeffler’s political tone-deafness would be somewhat hilarious. At this unprecedented moment of social activism and racial progressivism, she wants American Flags stitched on the warm-up suits of WNBA players instead of Black Lives Matter or “Say Her Name”, a reverberating tribute to Prairie View A & M University’s Sandra Bland.
Unfortunately for Loeffler, today’s athletes are too savvy to remain voiceless on substantive political issues. Current activism flowing from the sports world harkens back to the 1960s when athletes such as Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, and Bill Russell took on pressing racial matters. If the co-owner of the Atlanta Dream were not blinded by a desperate attempt to earn political currency via her resistance to progressive movements, she would realize that a veritable dream team of WNBA stars such as Sue Bird, Natasha Cloud, Skylar Diggins-Smith, and Alysha Clark oppose her.
It is ironic that Loeffler, a political figure steeped in a special election to replace Johnny Isakson in the U.S. Senate has chosen to use her prominent position in the WNBA to rally potential supporters by opposing racial progressivism and politics in the sports world. Her hypocrisy is startling, yet predictable. Only time will tell if this well-timed gamble to trade in her partial ownership of the Atlanta Dream for a U.S. Senate seat will payoff for Loeffler.
The world watches while WNBA players are seeking to remove Loeffler from their environs. The fact that players are now wielding so much power leads one to muse “My how things have changed.” However, if Loeffler is able to stave off calls for her to sell her stake in the Atlanta Dream and win her bid to become a U.S. Senator, one will be forced to question if things have changed at all?
Dr. James Thomas Jones III
© Manhood, Race, and Culture, 2020.