Rather than relating the all-too-familiar rags-to-riches stories in which underprivileged black athletes reach the so-called “Promised Land” by way of their athletic ability, he paints the system as one in which those athletes are isolated from their backgrounds, used to maximize profit and instilled with a mindset “whereby money does not necessarily alter one’s status as ‘slave,’ as long as the ‘owner’ is the one who controls the rules that allow that money to be made.” And Rhoden certainly doesn’t pull any punches here. In fact, he even admitted that his original title – the symbolic Lost Tribe Wandering – lacked punch. The title and the notion behind it are certainly attention-getters, and I’m sure Rhoden was fully aware of that when he came up with the idea. The primary difference is, today’s shackles are often the athletes’ own making. The power black athletes have today is as limited as when masters forced their slaves to race and fight. He also sets his sights on athletes like Michael Jordan, who he says have abdicated their responsibility to the community with an apathy that borders on treason. He details the “conveyor belt” that brings kids from inner cities and small towns to big-time programs, where they’re cut off from their roots and exploited by team owners, sports agents, and the media. Rhoden reveals that black athletes’ “evolution” has merely been a journey from literal plantations-where sports were introduced as diversions to quell revolutionary stirrings-to today’s figurative ones, in the form of collegiate and professional sports programs. Provocative and controversial, $40 Million Slaves weaves a compelling narrative of black athletes in the United States, from the plantation to their beginnings in nineteenth-century boxing rings to the history-making accomplishments of notable figures such as Jesse Owens, Althea Gibson, and Willie Mays. But for all their money, fame, and achievement, black athletes still find themselves on the periphery of true power in the multibillion-dollar industry their talent built. In short, New York Times sports columnist Rhoden offers a provocative, loaded assessment of the state of black athletes in America, using the cutting metaphor of the plantation to describe a present-day sports industry that’s essentially defined by white ownership and black labor.įrom Jackie Robinson to Muhammad Ali and Arthur Ashe, African American athletes have been at the center of modern culture, their on-the-field heroics admired and stratospheric earnings envied. It’s not a work of fiction, so assuming a fictional scripted account based on the book is the goal, it would require some imagination. Rhoden’s 2007 best-seller, Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete. There couldn’t be a better time than the present for a Hollywood studio executive, or intrepid indie film producer, to option the rights (if it hasn’t happened already) to William C. Rhoden, author Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete. “Sports on the plantation were used as diversions to dull the revolutionary instinct.” William C. Harry Belafonte waxing metaphoric in 2016 on the outrage over Colin Kaepernick’s decision to not stand during the national anthem, in protest: “To mute the slave has always been in the best interest of slave owners.”
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