Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

Freddie Gray and Why the Wealth of Sports Franchises Matter
Gustavus Griffin
06 Jan 2021
Freddie Gray and Why the Wealth of Sports Franchises Matter
Freddie Gray and Why the Wealth of Sports Franchises Matter

A significant portion of sports franchise wealth can be traced directly to the oppression and displacement of Black and Brown bodies.

“The Black athlete has a unique platform to not only raise awareness about these issues but to foster the type alternative grassroots organization-building.”

As a die-hard and longtime Los Angeles Laker fan, I was certainly happy about the outcome of the NBA season and am optimistic about the new season. On the other hand, there is a side of me that wishes the brief athlete protest in the wake of the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin would have continued. With the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Aubrey Ahmed still fresh in the consciousness of the public psyche, the Blake shooting, for one moment, seemed to be the tipping point for Black athletes so much so that they refused to play. For about a 48-hour period, they had the very foundations of the capitalist sports structure shaking in its boots. 

And then they stopped, in no small part due to the intervention of Barak Obama. It was a classic example of the Black mis-leadership class talking them down to surrender the one piece of leverage they had over ownership and that was the withholding of their labor.

My question is, what was gained?

“For about a 48-hour period, they had the very foundations of the capitalist sports structure shaking in its boots.”

I will concede that it was a massively successful get out to vote campaign, which in essence was the recruitment bidding for the Democratic Party and likely help defeat Donald Trump.

I am also reasonably sure that it will lead to a boost in dollars for the non-profit industrial complex which has a far better record at recycling such dollars than it does in effectively tackling the issues it claims to address. 

For some, this was enough. I am not among those.

I cannot identify any other return that Black athletes secured with their protest that are likely to address the issue of police brutality. For many, a tangible demand would be to remove quarterback Colin Kaepernick from being blackballed from the National Football League. It was his courageous stand along with then teammate Eric Reid that sparked the current wave of protest. It was clear that was not secured when the Denver Broncos lost all three of their quarterbacks to COVID-19 protocols and they still would not call him.

“A tangible demand would be to remove quarterback Colin Kaepernick from being blackballed from the National Football League.”

I’m sure some are saying now that I am being too hard on the athletes. Afterall, they are well paid, and could have simply kept quiet. Furthermore, many were previously apathetic about voting and this effort politically engaged them like never before. 

To that I say it is not merely about their intent. I don’t doubt their intent. I do insist that intent should not be conflated with concrete results. 

By that I mean that, though I believe folks should vote, I do not believe that the conditions and factors that led to all of the afore mentioned incidents of police brutality can be addressed via electoral politics. Furthermore, the Black athlete has a unique platform to not only raise awareness about these issues but to foster the type alternative grassroots organization-building that can help to effectively address such issues.

Still, some have become desensitized to athlete protest and insist that sports franchises are not the source of the oppression of Black and Brown bodies.

“Intent should not be conflated with concrete results.”

It is here where the backdrop to the story of Freddie Gray is relevant. It was his killing that sparked the uprisings in Baltimore in 2015. 

Gray grew up in Baltimore housing projects most of which were contaminated by lead poisoning in the paint which undermines cognitive development, especially in children. Though lead was banned by federal law in 1978, it had already been used on many urban housing projects. In 1997, over 1200 children under the age of six were poisoned and nearly 8000 were found to have elevated levels of lead poisoning, to include Gray and Koryn Gaines who would also be a victim of police violence. According to her mother, Rhanda Dormeus, Gaines had four to five times the levels of lead deemed healthy. 

Gray and many of the other youth and families would be represented by an attorney named Peter Angelos. Angelos would accumulate the bulk of his wealth representing the victims, overwhelmingly Black, of asbestos and or lead poisoning and would use that wealth to buy the Baltimore Orioles.

This is neither new, nor exclusive to Black folks. In 1959, ground was broken in a Los Angeles community called Chavez Ravine over the objections of the majority Latino residents. The original rationalization was for the construction of public housing. That housing never materialized. Instead, the recently arriving owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers purchased the land for pennies on the dollar to construct Dodger Stadium which is still the home of the world champion Dodgers. Hundreds of Latinos were forcibly removed from their homes and displaced.  

“Angelos would accumulate the bulk of his wealth representing the victims of asbestos and or lead poisoning.”

A more recent example was the gentrification process in Brooklyn to make way for the construction of the Barclay Center which is the home of the National Basketball Association New York Nets. Thousands of Black and Latino residents were displaced by this process. Insult to injury was the fact that the public relations front person for the project was none other than rapper Jay-Z. His reward: he was allowed to buy 1.5% ownership of the Nets. In other words, he came cheap.

The significance of the arenas or stadiums is that after the actual athlete labor, it is typically the most valuable asset of a sports franchise. In the case of the Dodgers, since their stadium’s opening in 1962, it has led the National League in attendance 33 years including the past eight consecutive seasons. In the case of the Nets, it’s New York, location, location, location!

I say all of this to insist that the basis for the Black athlete’s protest is not merely anecdotal. It is much more direct than being descendants of slavery or the fact that a large number of them are from the very over-policed neighborhoods where the brutality is most likely to take place. The fact is that a significant portion of sports franchise wealth can be traced directly to the oppression and displacement of Black and Brown bodies.

It is on this basis that we should continue to push Black athletes to play a role in our movements for justice regardless of how compromised they may be by the allures of their place within the capitalists’ system. As they learn more, I am confident that they will do more. We need not rely on the likes of a Charles Barkley or the role model he refuses to be. But the would-be Colin Kaepernick’s need to know we have their backs!

The writer is a Maryland based freelance sportswriter, scholar and activist and a member of the Black Alliance for Peace.

COMMENTS?

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comment by emailing us at [email protected] 

#Black Liberation Movement

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.

Trending

Elizabeth Warren Wants Green Bombs, not a Green New Deal
Parallels Between Black and Palestinian Struggles
Cory Booker Hates Public Schools
Bill Cosby Should Have Been Denounced by Black America Long Ago
The Black Wall Around Barack Obama: Who Does It Protect Him Against?
How Complacency, Complicity of Black Misleadership Class Led to Supreme Court Evisceration of the Voting Rights Act

Related Stories

Reaching Beyond “Black Faces in High Places”: An Interview With Joy James
George Yancy
Reaching Beyond “Black Faces in High Places”: An Interview With Joy James
03 February 2021
White supremacist culture is a permanent site of predatory consumption, extraction and violation.
Return to the Source: Democracy is Dead
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
Return to the Source: Democracy is Dead
20 January 2021
By what stretch of the imagination can the US be a democracy when ordinary citizens have virtually no influence over what their government does? 
Caste Does Not Explain Race
Charisse Burden-Stelly, PhD
Caste Does Not Explain Race
06 January 2021
The celebration of Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste reflects the continued priority of elite preferences over the needs and struggles of ordinary
Racial Capitalism, Black Liberation, and South Africa
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
Racial Capitalism, Black Liberation, and South Africa
16 December 2020
The phrase racial capitalism first emerged in the context of the anti-Apartheid and southern African liberation struggles in the 1970s.
We’re All Living in a Future Created by Slavery
Ameer Hasan Loggins
We’re All Living in a Future Created by Slavery
28 October 2020
The carceral class is made up of persons of African descent who are systematically stigmatized as unfit for freedom and deserving of the dehumaniza
Free Ruchell “Cinque” Magee!
Kameron Hurt
Free Ruchell “Cinque” Magee!
28 October 2020
Ruchell Magee is the longest-held political prisoner in the United States and the world.
Getting to Freedom City
Robin D.G. Kelly
Getting to Freedom City
14 October 2020
In the 1960s LA communities of color prioritized a radical tradition of care and the transformative power of art and politics.
Freedom Rider: Breonna Taylor and Black Life
Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
Freedom Rider: Breonna Taylor and Black Life
30 September 2020
Reactions to the Breonna Taylor murder, settlement and verdict all have one thing in common: Black people’s inability to protect our lives.
The Role of the Black Bourgeoisie in Coopting Our Movements
Ahjamu Umi
The Role of the Black Bourgeoisie in Coopting Our Movements
09 September 2020
The Black bourgeoisie, including the next generation of them after Obama, will continue to derail us with their empty promises of inclusion.
BAR Book Forum: Vicky Osterweil’s “In Defense of Looting”
Roberto Sirvent, BAR Book Forum Editor
BAR Book Forum: Vicky Osterweil’s “In Defense of Looting”
02 September 2020
Looting and rioting appear as immediately effective tactics in the struggle against whiteness, property and the police.

More Stories


  • About the Ray Wood 'Confession' 
    Zayid Muhammad
    About the Ray Wood 'Confession' 
    03 Mar 2021
    The Malcolm X Commemoration Committee speaks on Ray Wood’s deathbed 'non-confession' to crimes committed before and during the great leader’s assassination.
  • The Biden Administration Spent Black History Month Deporting Black Immigrants: Why Aren’t People in the Streets? 
    Tina Vásquez
    The Biden Administration Spent Black History Month Deporting Black Immigrants: Why Aren’t People in the Streets? 
    03 Mar 2021
    Black immigrants are among the most vulnerable and we always have a target on our back and it has been no different under Biden.
  • Freedom Rider: The Minimal Minimum Wage
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: The Minimal Minimum Wage
    03 Mar 2021
    Most Democrats either don’t want a minimum wage increase or are too afraid of bucking their party’s donor class.
  • Joe Biden: The Expect Nothing Presidency
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    Joe Biden: The Expect Nothing Presidency
    03 Mar 2021
    Biden’s brand of American exceptionalism has run up against the general crisis of the U.S. imperialist order.
  • MANIFESTO: “The Crime of Being Born Black on American Soil”: Claudia Jones’s Statement Before Being Sentenced, February 2, 1953
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    MANIFESTO: “The Crime of Being Born Black on American Soil”: Claudia Jones’s Statement Before Being Sentenced, February 2, 1953
    03 Mar 2021
    Claudia Jones’s arrests and eventual deportation were part of the expansion of the US government’s Cold War attacks on immigrants—Black immigrants included—who were affiliated with the Communist Pa
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us