Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete

“Each group has had its cross to bear, but although Jews and Italians and Irish and all the other mingling European races could look forward to assimilating, assimilation was practically impossible for African Americans. The indelible marking of skin color made it so.”

Those immigrant people with European features could fit into the greater American society once they learned the language and could understand, and replicate, the behavior of the power majority. They could, in effect, disappear, never to be questioned, scrutinized, or doubted because of their appearance. African American people, though, are still highly visible and subject to scrutiny, regardless of their achievements, according to Rhoden.

“The paradox and dilemma of virulent racism is that our exclusion became the basis for our unity. The next two hundred years of our existence were defined by reacting to racism.”

Rhoden frequently notes the ironies prevalent in sports. On the one hand, African American players before integration could unify on the basis of their shared, enforced separation. On the other, that same style of resistance—commandeered by white corporate America—was a byproduct of the very systems that held black people down.

“Even as more young white athletes become influenced by urban black mannerisms, there is a fundamental, if subtle, tension between their respective approaches to sport. The tension is an extension of age-old, deeply rooted differences in what sports have meant to survival.”

While trying to emulate black style and attitude, white athletes have gotten lost in their own lack of historical understanding. They simply imitate, using self-celebratory gestures and postures, without an understanding of how those styles and attitudes were essential for the psychic survival of African American athletes.