I’d call it easy to tell somebody else what to do with his life, because the advice brings no consequences to you. Then again, the person you’re telling what to do has zero obligation to heed you.
That’s the case with Black athletes whom the NAACP and high-profile activists like Dr. Harry Edwards are urging to boycott football programs in the South, which is dismantling political representation of their people.
My friend argues Black athletes lose too much in a boycott. He claims boycotts of Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas or Florida leave them fewer options for playing big-time football. Fewer options mean less money, he argues.
That’s a micro way for my friend to look at it. Isn’t he missing the macro?
No need to wait long for an answer. I’ll weigh in here.
Like my friend, I hate to see college athletes leave money on the table. They have a small window to make it, and they need to fill that window with as many dollar bills as they can.
Now, I’ll get to the answering, which is: Yes, he is. These young Black men must never see athletics as the only way to success. All of them will have careers after their days at Bryant-Denny Stadium, Tiger Stadium and Kyle Field are over.
Then what?
They’ll have to confront the hard edges of racism in America that nobody who looks like them cheers.; they’ll have to stare at economic inequality and judicial injustice; they’ll have to shoulder the burden for Black children in a society that demands more of them but provides less for them.
It’s not an unreasonable request to make of young men, who would be smart to look at life in the long term. Sure, they’ll lose something now, but they’ll better prepare themselves for an America that is intolerant of them. They need to find a way to carry the best aspects of their ancestors and their fights into the next decades.
Besides, it’s not as if elite athletes—that’s what we’re talking about—can’t find wealth and fame in states that don’t marginalize their lives off the field, states that don’t scheme to deny them and their kin their “inalienable rights.”
The right to vote matters more than where they play football.
“Sports recapitulates society,” Edwards said. “So don’t look for a leader such as a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to emerge and spark that imperative, broad scale movement in society. Rather, look for the next Claudette Colvin or Rosa Parks—if history is any guide, she is already on her way—and in this male-dominated, patriarchal society and sports institution, the leader will likely follow.”
Who is that leader? Is someone now ready to drive the politics of sports forward, to show that sports and politics mirror each other.
Decades ago, my brother shared a Southern analogy that spoke to what awaits in unsettling times like these. The analogy goes: The chicken made the commitment, but the hog made the sacrifice.
On the face of it, the analogy seems ambiguous. It is until you realize it’s about a breakfast of bacon and eggs. Who made the sacrifice for Denny’s Grand Slam? Well, not the damn chicken.
Now, with our eyes fixed on the bacon, what hog among college athletes is willing to make a sacrifice? So far, the answer is nobody. My friend isn’t bothered that no one is.
