Black men talking about black men. That is what Your Black Brothers is all about. Whatever affects you as an African-American male is fair game for this blog. Black men discuss everything from black sports, to black health, politics, religion and everything else. Brothers unite and talk it out...that's what we do here.
You can make fun of me for being a goody two shoes, but I've never finished a beer in my entire life. I am, however, willing to drink a beer with President Obama if that will open the door to an honest conversation on race relations in America.
President Obama's announcement that he will get together today with Dr. Henry Louis Gates and Sgt. James Crowley for a beer sounds, honestly, like a bit of political posturing from a man who is trying to reverse the stain of tremendous embarrassment. But like a political pro, the president is getting chummy with police departments across the nation, and this will help him recover from his own "George Bush moment," in which he attacked the Cambridge Police Department while admittedly not knowing all the facts.
Perhaps the first beer in the White House will turn into a second and a third. People let it all hang out when they get drunk, so maybe open bottles of beer will encourage the three parties involved to have an honest dialogue on race. In fact, why don't the rest of us drink a beer too? The American racial conversation should not only include three people behind closed doors, it should include all of us.
Quick FYI: I will be on the Jesse Jackson Show tomorrow morning from 8 - 10 am. A list of cities is here.
Some of you know that I have been in an on-going campaign to challenge the NCAA on the fact that they do not compensate the families of college athletes for what they bring to campus. Below is an article I contributed to in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and Sunday, there should be a syndicated column I wrote opposite NCAA President Myles Brand on the topic. You know that I am pretty candid in my thoughts (love it or hate it), so here are some reasons I feel that we should be outraged over this issue. I speak on this issue based on my 15 years teaching on college campuses with big time athletics programs, as a Finance Professor who understands how money works, and also as a black male who has seen the devastation of this system up close. Also, as a faculty affiliate with the College Sports Research Institute at The University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, I made it clear to the director that I intend to pursue the racial element of NCAA compensation inequity. I am not a fan of preferential treatment for athletes. I only want fairness for the athletes and their mothers. I am sick of seeing an athlete generate millions for his coach, while simultaneously watching his family struggle to pay the rent every month:
1) The NCAA extracts somewhere near $1 Billion dollars per year from the black community. The revenues earned by collegiate athletics are on the magnitude of the NBA, NFL and NHL. However, unlike these other leagues, the players are only compensated with a scholarship. Scholarships are valuable, but only a drop in the bucket relative to the money players bring to campus.
2) The NCAA contract with CBS sports for the TV rights to March Madness was worth over $6 billion dollars. This does not include hundreds of millions earned each year in concessions, endorsement deals and other extraneous benefits. This money goes into someone’s pockets, so the question is “Who takes this cash home? Those who earn it, or those on the sidelines?”
3) NCAA coaches in revenue generating sports earn as much as $4 million dollars per year, with a large percentage of that revenue coming from endorsement deals based on the clothing that players wear and appearances that players make on national television.
4) In contrast to the luxury experienced by NCAA coaches and their families, nearly half of all black college basketball and football players come from dire poverty.
5) The NCAA spends millions every year in a massive propaganda campaign. Their goal is to convince the world that paying college athletes or their families would be unethical and impractical. At the same time, many of the arguments they make about player families do not apply to their own families. For example, in the CBS Sports special I was on last year, nearly every single person on the special (Coach K from Duke, Billy Packer, Clark Kellogg, NCAA President Myles Brand, etc.) was earning hundreds of thousands, even millions from athletes, while simultaneously explaining why athlete families should not be paid. That’s worse than Dick Cheney and George Bush sending young people to die in a war that they or their families refuse to fight.
6) The mission of collegiate athletics, unfortunately, is more commercial than educational. Players are admitted to college every year with full knowledge that the player is only going to be there for a little while. Also, athletes are not allowed to miss big games or practice sessions to prepare for exams. Finally, coaches with high graduation rates who do not win games are fired, while winning coaches with low graduation rates are promoted and given raises. This creates poor institutional incentives and leads to a mountain of academic hypocrisy.
7) As an African American, I find it ironic that many HBCUs can’t pay the light bill, yet the NCAA is earning over a billion dollars every year from black athletes and their families. This amounts to a massive wealth extraction from the black community, where some of our most valuable financial assets are being depleted, no different from mining being done in Africa.
While one might wonder why the players don’t simply take another option, the problem is that the NCAA is allowed to operate as a business cartel, effectively allowing them to implement nearly any and every rule they wish in order to keep athletes from having other options. This form of operation is due to a political blank check being written by Congress that allows the NCAA to do things that would be illegal in nearly any other industry. The very idea that they’ve warped our minds to the point that we think it should be illegal or immoral to fairly compensate a young man or his family for their labor is simply unbelievable. Players don’t even have the same rights to negotiation that are given to coaches, administrators, or sports commentators, all of whom earn millions from the activities of players on the court.
Personally, I think this is wrong. The article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution is below, and I believe the op-ed is going to be in the Sunday edition (also in the LA Times, Chicago Tribune and some other places around the country). Finally, I am working on a CNN special to deal with this topic. I’ll keep you posted.
From the Atlanta Journal Constitution
Like some of his Boston College teammates, Ron Brace has played the new “NCAA Football 09″ video game. Many of the animated players look and play a lot like the players they’re patterned after.
Brace has one thing in common with every player depicted: he’s not getting a nickel from the NCAA or game maker EA Sports.
Brace, and others, take issue with the fact that college athletes are not paid beyond scholarships and aid even as their efforts earn millions of dollars for the NCAA, schools and coaches at the Division I level. Since the players are the reasons for the revenue, they say they should get a cut.
“It’s like a job. We get up early, work out, meetings, class and practice,” Brace said. “We’re giving up a big chunk of our life. I see no reason we shouldn’t be paid.”
Others say that the value and experience of a college education is the equivalent of getting paid. They point out that many athletics departments don’t make a profit. Paying athletes would make those bottom lines worse.
“Few players truly move the needle in terms of attendance, TV ratings, or merchandising, but it would be like the free agency system in baseball; you’d get a few guys making a lot of money, and others fighting their way onto campus,” Tech basketball coach Paul Hewitt said. “I think in the long run, the majority of student athletes would lose in that type of market.
“The idea is to provide educational opportunities for a lot of kids who could not afford one. I would hate to treat the few and leave out the many.”
Paying athletes is a topic that won’t go away because there is seemingly so much money to be had. Consider:
• At least 68 of 119 Division I football coaches have contracts for at least $1 million, according to coacheshotseat.com. Seven coaches in the SEC, including Georgia’s Mark Richt, make at least $2 million. Seven in the ACC, including Tech’s Paul Johnson, make at least $1.5 million. To compare, only five coaches in the nation earned as much as $1 million in 1999, according to USA Today.
• CBS is paying the NCAA $6 billion over 11 years to televise its three-week postseason basketball tournament.
• The Big Ten and Mountain West conferences have launched their own TV networks, which are projected to generate millions of dollars. The SEC is considering doing the same.
• Nike and Reebok, among others, negotiate million-dollar deals with colleges for the players to wear their apparel. Georgia receives $1.3 million a year from Nike, as part of a 10-year deal signed in 1999. Tech has deals with various companies, depending upon the sport. In 2006, those deals were worth about $325,000. Tech will announce a new deal with Russell in August that will cover most of its teams, according to assistant athletics director Dean Buchan.
NCAA president Myles Brand defends the system.
“You have to ask yourself why do universities engage in sports?” Brand said. “The answer is because it adds education value to the student experience. It [helps a student-athlete grow] as a person and acquire attitudes and skills that will carry through life.”
A year ago, there was speculation that former shoe company czar Sonny Vaccaro was set to go barnstorming over in Europe with a group that would include O.J. Mayo, Bill Walker and a few other elite players coming out of high school. At the time, it seemed pretty far-fetched that an American-born player would bypass the college experience to play in anonymity outside his home country.
It didn't end up happening, but now it appears as though Brandon Jennings, arguably the top incoming freshman in the country, could become a trendsetter of sorts and opt for overseas money over a one-year college experience at Arizona.
"He's definitely considering it," said Kelly Williams, the father of New Jersey Nets point guard Marcus Williams and also a close advisor to the Jennings family. "Why wouldn't he?"
"If it's a sweet enough deal, why wouldn't he look into it?" Williams added. "But there's nothing definitive right now. They are in the process of investigating it, but he's not going to go just to become the first kid to go overseas. We're not going to put him in a bad situation. We'd try and put him in a situation where he can grow and develop."
Jennings first hatched the idea from Vaccaro, who is on a personal crusade against the NCAA and NBA because of the restrictions that those organizations impose on young basketball players.
Jennings' camp said that whether or not he achieves the SAT score (he's expected to get the results of his latest test any day now) that will make him eligible to play college ball at Arizona is irrelevant with regards to his decision to play overseas.
Interview with Harvard fellow, Peniel E. Joseph, by Tolu Olorunda.
Peniel E. Joseph is one of the nation’s leading scholars of African American history. Although Joseph’s formal expertise includes the Black Radical Tradition, Pan-Africanism, Black Social Movements, and African American feminism, he is currently embarking on a re-evaluation of the Black Power Movement. Professor Joseph is associate professor of African and Afro-American Studies and affiliate faculty in history at Brandeis University. Joseph is the founder of a growing subfield of historical and Africana Studies scholarship that he has named “Black Power Studies.” Joseph's dynamic presentation style and innovative scholarship, place him on the cutting edge of a new generation of public intellectuals. Joseph’s book “Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour: A Narrative History of Black Power in America,” was a “Washington Post Book World” Best Nonfiction Book for 2006. It was also a finalist for the Mark Lynton History Prize. It received honorable mention for the 2007 Gustavas Myers Center Outstanding Book Award; and received the inaugural W.E.B. Du Bois Book Award from the Northeastern Black Studies Alliance. It was also a Boston Globe paperback bestseller in 2008. Joseph is currently working on a biography of Civil Rights and Black Power activist, Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael), and a study of postwar African American history. For the 2008-2009 academic year, Dr. Joseph will be a fellow at Harvard University’s Warren Center.
I had the pleasure of speaking with Dr. Joseph on a wide array of issues. With topics ranging from politics to culture, and education to sports, he was insightfully-enlightening in his observations:
Thanks for joining us. Can you tell us about your background, and the journey leading up to Harvard?
I’m from New York City, born and raised, and I’m just raised by a single mom. My mom was a trade unionist for 40 yrs in New York City – just retired. So, I was always into social and political activism; I was on my first picket line by the time I was 9 yrs old, so I was always active. I was always interested in Black history, Caribbean history, Asian history and African history, so after college I got my PhD from Temple University. At the same time, I was still involved in community and social activism. I wound up teaching at Arizona State University for a couple of years; then I taught at University of Rhode Island and Stony Brooks University in New York -- which is my alma mater. And now at Brandeis University, but this year, I’m a fellow at Harvard University.
Is the continued presence of Black and Brown intellectuals in Ivy League schools emblematic of any substantive progress for us?
Yes, I think it’s an example of progress, but I also think it that -- well, I’ll do the ‘positives’ first. I think it’s a tremendous example of progress, given the fact that when we think about higher education and academe, especially predominantly white institutions; these we’re set up as spaces for the white, elite and the rich. So as soon as you get any kind of African Americans in there, it’s very positive. And, obviously we owe a lot of these to people like Carter G. Woodson, W.E.B Du Bois and Ida B. Wells; the generation of the 19th and early 20th century intellectuals. Some we’re PhDs and others we’re just organic intellectuals in that degree, such as Marcus Garvey and Hubert Harrison. By the time you get to the 1960s, there’s really a second wave of Black Studies, vis-à-vis the Black Power movement that forces some of these predominantly white institutions to open up their doors, through the implementation of Black Studies majors in programs across the country. So that’s the positive. But the negative is the fact that I think most of these spaces are still overwhelmingly white and racist. So, having Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson and Manning Marable is great, but at the same time, it provides cover for some of these racist institutions as well.So, you have this representative-nature of Blackness, but you don’t have enough Black Undergraduates, or Graduates, let alone Faculty and Administration; because we are sorely underrepresented in all those categories. It’s the same thing with Senator Obama. You might have a black president, but you might also see a lack of Blackness in the federal judges or the news-media. So, there’s the good and bad to the process.
What is your overall perspective on the Senator from Illinois -- especially being that he hails from your very Harvard?
Well, I’m a critical supporter of Mr. Obama, and what I mean by that is that I support Obama’s candidacy; and at the same time, I think that if he is elected, we have to be very vigilant and very critical. So that we force ‘President Obama’ to publicly confront things like, the Prison Industrial Complex and the pervasiveness/viciousness of institutional racism – locally nationally and internationally. But again, I think that trying to run for president is a hard thing to do.
Do you believe that Cynthia McKinney from the Green Party can help in exerting some ‘progressive-pressure’ upon the political landscape?
I think that Cynthia McKinney is obviously a very progressive person -– whom I admire. I think that when we talk of Cynthia McKinney, a lot of activists get confused with Third-Party runs and Community Organizing. Nowadays, some people think that ‘trying’ a Third-Party run - in and of itself - is community organizing, and there’s a problem there. I think that the bankruptcy of that strategy is shown when you have a candidate like Barack Obama, who’s actually energizing millions of people. The Third-Parties don’t seem to have a parallel-outreach and success. When people like Malcolm X and Kwame Ture would say, “We got to follow the people, because the people are ahead of us;” how come they’re following Obama? Masses of the American people are following Obama.
Do you think Senator Obama’s struggle for the White-House is one which we must all embrace?
I think we should be critically supportive of Barack Obama’s candidacy. We’ve seen a lot of debates over this. We saw Tavis Smiley come out and catch a lot of flak for it. But, I do like the idea of holding Barack Obama accountable, but I also feel that he’s in a very difficult position, because he is the first black man that could actually become president. I think the African American community should embrace his candidacy - but critically - and then really watch what’s going on, and try to influence it within the next four years. And then if our needs aren’t being addressed, we can begin making intelligent calculations on what to do next.
I’m sure you’ve heard of the Father’s Day Speech that he gave last Sunday. Did you have a problem with it, or did you feel that it was indeed a legitimate critique?
Well, certainly the speech was pandering, but if you’re from that background, where you’re raised by a single parent, you realize that you do need to speak to Black Men about this. And I thought Obama did it in a way that wasn’t quite as condescending as the way in which Bill Cosby did it in 2004. You have to talk about the politics of self-responsibility vis-à-vis our failures, and also the system that is perpetuating that failure, and that’s a dialogue that we haven’t had in a really complex way. If you’re speaking of the politics of self-determination, whether it’s Marcus Garvey or the Nation of Islam, you’re supposed take personal responsibility. But, one big issue with a Barack Obama presidency is that he might not be able to preach responsibility all across the board.
In matters of education, how does the next president rehabilitate the dilapidated public school system?
To be honest with you, all the president can do is propose laws to the Congress for passage. Certainly, he can give more money to public schools and have further accountability by putting more ‘teeth’ behind “No Child Left Behind;” but it’s really based on spending bills.
As an expert on issues pertinent to race, what are the major obstacles threatening our progress?
I think the biggest things are probably lack of access to higher education, the Prison Industrial complex and the Criminal Justice System. Unemployment, Violence and drugs also are power-brokers in our stagnancy. And we’re talking of Black Americans who happen to be part of the so-called “underclass.”
Do the recent victories of Tiger Woods and the Boston Celtic (being overwhelmingly black) have any substantial impact upon the lives of everyday black folk?
I think they might be an inspiration to some, but a Barack Obama presidency would be even bigger. You know, sports is different from politics, and I think if you have a black President, it will transform the way a lot of young people look at themselves. And, I think Obama’s presidency would bring about reverberations in other aspects of American society. I think that newspapers and television and media would be forced to re-examine aspects of how they’re made up vis-à-vis the shock of having a Black President.
What is your advice for the average brother and sister trying to gain access to higher education?
The pursuit of literacy would allow you to really excel; because, a lot of us are woefully unprepared after graduation from High School. The way it is now, so many of our people have a star-crossed relationship with school, and it is not perceived as something which would impact their lives. I think that what the older folks have to do is educate the younger ones about our history and the struggle that took place to get to this point. And, I think that can provide a context for a way to move forward in the present.
Once again, thanks for speaking with us Dr. Joseph.
This interview was conducted by Tolu Olorunda, Staff Writer for YourBlackWorld.com
While one might wonder why the players don’t simply take another option, the problem is that the NCAA is allowed to operate as a business cartel, effectively allowing them to implement nearly any and every rule they wish in order to keep athletes from having other options. This form of operation is due to a political blank check being written by Congress that allows the NCAA to do things that would be illegal in nearly any other industry. The very idea that they’ve warped our minds to the point that we think it should be illegal or immoral to fairly compensate a young man or his family for their labor is simply unbelievable. Players don’t even have the same rights to negotiation that are given to coaches, administrators, or sports commentators, all of whom earn millions from the activities of players on the court. 
