The NFL is a plantation!
The NFL is a plantation!
Hiii I saw a friend I haven’t seen for in a while yesterday and it brought me so much joy! Today I’m sharing my feelings about Kendrick Lamar’s performance during the superbowl. Onto the news…
News that made me say the Black bourgeoisie are going to bourgeoisie.
The NFL is a plantation! There is absolutely no way to perform on a plantation in a revolutionary manner unless your performance leads to a revolt that burns down the plantation. Performing on a plantation is as revolutionary as buying a Che Guevara t-shirt. Vapid and does nothing but support the system you claim you are objecting to.
Most people who buy a Che Guevara t-shirt do not care about the masses rising up and revolting against the ruling class. If you are wearing a Che Guevara shirt and are currently doing mutual aid, I’m so sorry for my generalization. I was scarred by too many white kids who wore Che Guevara shirts and converses.
Nonetheless, my point is commodifying Black revolutionary symbolism while dancing on a stadium built on the trodden bodies of Black men who aren’t paid enough for their labor reifies white supremacy, it does not denigrate it. It’s not even reformist. It’s harmful. It creates the narrative that to be a revolutionary is to be a member of the Black bourgeoisie who will figuratively roast America on stage for a payday while doing absolutely nothing to threaten the existence of a fascist state. It creates the narrative that acquiring wealth from white supremacist structures as long as you tacitly “resist” is revolutionary. Roasting America figuratively will not lead us to freedom, only literal roasting will do so.
If Kendrick Lamar wanted to challenge white supremacy, he would have refused to perform on that stage. Even better, he would have organized concerts all over the country to rival the super bowl, charged white people double for tickets, and used that money to fund Black communities so Black men don’t have to turn their brains into soup in a coliseum to support their communities. Kendrick will not do this because at the end of the day the Black bourgeoisie are going to bourgeoisie.
In her book killing rage bell hooks states, “Black consciousness cannot be radicalized as long as the black bourgeoisie maintains its radical hold on the black imagination.” I wholeheartedly believe this and I encourage every single one of us to look within and ask ourselves what do we imagine when we think of liberation? Do we imagine individual wealth beyond imagination or do we imagine communal liberation? If your liberation is wearing a gucci suit and driving a maserati, your imagination is incorrect. If your imagination is smoking weed at the beach with your homies smiling at each other because the empire has fallen and everyone has free healthcare, your imagination is correct. Yes, today I’m giving people Fs for improper imagination.
Furthermore, I would also like to ask where did your imagination of freedom originate. Did it originate from the pages of The Wretched of the Earth or did it come from following your favorite “woke” celebrity on Instagram? You can substitute the Wretched of the Earth for any book written by a Black leftist. You do not need to read the Wretched of the Earth to understand freedom, but I highly recommend it. Almost as much as I would have recommended dipping your french fries into your Wendy’s frosty as a teen. Don’t hate it until you try it. I’m a vegan now so I can’t recommend the frosty.
However, teenage me would be oh so bold to tell you to rethink investing your time and energy on the NFL and other white supremacists organizations. I don’t know much about football so I asked someone close to me who used to love football and was even a hot jock in high school to write why you shouldn’t support the NFL. The following are their words…
The majority, fifty-three percent, of NFL players are Black men. Seventeen percent of NFL quarterbacks are Black men. Quarterbacks earn significantly more than the other players and have the longest careers (after kickers and punters who are also almost all white). As someone who used to watch football games, at first glimpse it seems like a celebration of athleticism and shared enthusiasm; however, it doesn’t take long to see what is on display. The players who are entertainers, workers, are pushed to their limits, and beyond their limits, so masses of people can have a short respite from their daunting lives.
These workers are pushed by predominantly white coaching staffs who are empowered to demand more and more from their bodies all for a trophy that provides the vast majority of them little other than cheers and pats on the back. These same workers are employed under a league of franchises that are owned almost entirely by absurdly rich white men. Furthermore, these white owners extract public funds, subsidies, and advertisement dollars year after year while paying the workers who are the actual product and value of the league the lowest possible wages through government enforced monopoly status. (These same government subsidized organizations offer barely more than minimum wage jobs to the workers in their publicly-funded stadiums.)
The violence of the game leads to on-the-job injuries on a regular basis; those who can no longer perform are not even entitled to the salaries for which they signed. (Typically in an NFL player’s contract, only a fraction of their pay is guaranteed money. Much of it the player may never receive due to injury and other factors outside of the player’s control.) When these, predominantly Black, players speak up and speak out, challenge labor conditions or societal injustices, they are reprimanded, told to shut up and “play”, often sidelined and, ultimately, no longer employed. We all know the famous examples, there are countless lesser known examples. These players are instead told to be grateful and reminded that they are lucky, fulfilling the “childhood dream of millions”, yet often times retiring with little funds to subsist after a few years, chronic physical problems from years of the violent sport (much of which was sustained before becoming a “professional”), and slowly losing their minds from years of repeated head trauma, more recently named chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).
It’s hard to find a worse form of entertainment to embrace as a society and instead of a “childhood dream” to pursue, becomes a nightmare to endure. For some, sacrificing all other means of financial security, only to have a few years of glory under the lights followed by decades of suffering in the shadows. But all this actually supports why football is America’s most popular sport, culminating in the annual Super Bowl extravaganza. It is a showcase and embodiment of the American system and society. Brutal, violent, competitive capitalism for people who have only their labor, their bodies to sell, while privileged white workers with clipboards and megaphones oversee them, monitor them, analyze them, and order them around. And all this is happening while white owners sit and watch as the “players” smash their bodies against each other, the coaches scream at the players at the top of their lungs, the masses cheer, and all the riches from all this work goes into the pockets of those few white men, owners, who don’t have to do or know anything and sacrifice nothing.
That’s it for the news but don’t go yet
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