In the Showtime Original Series “Billions”, the lead Character Bobby Axelrod who is a pedal to the metal Billionaire CEO of Axe Capital, a hedge fund company, gets notified that his bid for a NFL team has been denied. Sanford Bessinger, a character that convinces the wealthy to give away a sizeable portion of their wealth to charity delivers this news to Axlerod once he finds that Axe was secretly having photos taken of their meeting to clean up his image to enhance his bid. “…Sports franchises are how we knight people in this country ...”, “…and you’re not royalty, you’re a robber baron”, says Bessinger before he hangs up the phone on Axlerod.
Courtesy of Showtime Networks, Inc.
This scene is an alarming reminder of what Professional Sports is about at its core. It’s not about “hometown pride” or building manhood/womanhood or teamwork. It’s a Billionaires “pickup game”, modern day gladiator, etc. It’s a display of wealth and status in the Western world. And ownership of sports teams is a good barometer of the level of cache’ a group has in America.
With this in mind, it’s important to not get wrapped up in the sports world to the detriment of our own wealth and progress. It’s been noted that since the financial crisis of 2009, Sports Media outlets like ESPN, have increased the number of Black sports commentators to their daytime programming. Many believe this is due to the rise in unemployment rate amongst black men since that time. In 2007 the unemployment rate amongst black people began to increase at a much higher rate than the rest of Americans which peaked in 2010 at ~16 %.
It’s no secret that we dominate all of the major sports, especially if you include the large Afro-Latino presence in Major League Baseball. And in spite of this presence, we control roughly 0% of the ownership.
Pro Football Hall of Fame LB Ray Lewis describes football as a game that people watch to relieve the stresses of the world as he critiques Colin Kaepernick’s method of protesting injustices against black people in America. Fellow Hall of Famer Chris Carter in a recent episode of Fox Sport’s “First Things First”, passionately expresses how Football saved his life. I’m pretty sure many pro football athletes agree with these two Gentlemen, but one has to ask if this is a healthy relationship to have with sports? Have black people relegated theirselves to being the entertainment of modern rich “noble” men at the expense of our own nobility?
There are plenty of examples where members of other cultures have experienced increased access to material wealth and have leveraged that access to enrich their people as a whole. Are we in danger of Missing our opportunity to capitalize off of the access to monetary wealth from individuals in our community to Benefit the whole? Should we even be participating in institutions that we do not control a significant stake in them? The bottom line is that all evidence from our experience in this country points to the fact that we will never be made “knight” by the contemporary American society, which traditionally will only allow black people to participate as the entertainers and employees, and not as power players in any significant capacity. This is the consequence of a policy of the so-called black leadership in the United States and other western nations fighting for equality instead of focusing on self-empowerment so we can “knight” ourselves and be power players in our community.
-HAR