Well, yesterday in Tallahassee, we nearly saw a player revolt on Florida State's campus. In this highly charged atmosphere of civic unrest due to police brutality and social injustice in the wake of Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd lynchings, the players dared to speak out against their coach. Ultimately, it led to a team meeting that brought peace and understanding and resolution. But it took a Twitter-storm by upset players to get there.
In the midst of this brewing storm, white Seminole fans got stirred and took to Facebook and other social media. I also posted to a Seminole fan page on FB and watched as all the cockroaches came scurrying from the darkest reaches of the Florida State fanbase. I knew they would. I'd seen it before.
Back in 2015, during all the Jameis Winston fallout, they were all feasting on the corpse of a strawman, a black strawman, but a false narrative, nonetheless. It seems like any time a black athlete at our University does anything to ruffle the white Establishment, they are ready to lynch the poor kid. It was true of Jameis in 2015, and yesterday, it was true of Marvin Wilson after his tweet started the firestorm. Again, it was quelled by yesterday afternoon, but I'd like to reflect on the space in between, when white Seminole Nation seemed at odds with black Seminole Nation.
I tried to side with the players when I took to social media. I retweeted Marvin's angry tweet where he called bullshit by way of an emoji. I commented on the FB page, "they're not going to sit quietly on the plantation anymore!"
This got the white fan base stirred. I was, in fact, called a "pot stirrer," a "race-baiter" and a "racist." The second comment in the photo, above, was liked 4 times on this thread and umpteen times on another, by 99% black Seminole Nation. I think one white or Latino fan liked it overall.
Because our black fanbase get's it. The plantation mentality is REAL in college football. And maybe you just can't relate because you're not a POC. Maybe you're willfully choosing ignorance, like so many in white Seminole Nation.
I'm labelled a racist because I see it and I call it out, like I did in 2015 and again now.
Think about it, though. Poor kid in the South, allured onto the new slave ship, the USS College Recruiter, by a smooth talking Overseer/Coach who wants to get maximum results from his unpaid worker.
This is the point in the analogy where whites start yelling the loudest. "UNPAID?!?!? What do you call tuition, room and board?" To which, I simply say, plantations had slave quarters, too. Their workers were fed and looked after. I mean, they were worked in the summer heat until they fell out and some died (have you seen two-a-days in August in Tallahassee?). They were put in harsh, combative situations, where they got whipped and brutalized (have you watched contact sports much?). "But the tuition, the education..." and I nod to that as an in-kind contribution, but it hardly seems a pittance for many reasons, including:
1) These kids will risk life and limb to perform for it;
2) If one of them falls out or dies, they are quite literally replaceable ("next man up"); and will their families be compensated for that loss of a dearly loved young adult?;
3) Most of them have sights on an NFL contract, followed by a TV, coaching or consulting contract;
4) College degrees aren't quite worth what they used to be, about the value of the paper they're printed on
I could go on, but why belabor the point? To many of these kids, a college degree won't help them in life. They aren't striving to be doctors, though some of them will be (nod to Neurosurgeon Dr. Myron Rolle). They aren't striving to be lawyers, playwrights or CEOs, though some will succeed at those things, too. A great number of them are hopeful to take that leap to professional sports, here at home in the NFL, or in the Canadian or European leagues, or even as coaches. Some, like Neon Deion Sanders, will create a brand image and capitalize on it BEFORE going onto a second or third career. They might even achieve his legendary status as a Hall of Famer. Do they need a college degree for any of that? NO, not really. So for #3 above, the argument about "free education" doesn't hold any weight. Also, see #4. So save me your crocodile tears over their amateur status and being paid by the plantation to be there. (Side note: these kids get a free education all their life up until the 13th grade. Why does it stop there? Why is college so out of reach for most of these kids? It should be a free education regardless of athletic ability, but that's fodder for another post).
Paying these players actual cash, while still a pittance, is a baby step OUT OF the plantation system of American College Football, but it doesn't erase it's thriving existence for nearly a century. And white denial of it's existence is just as futile and pointless.
The fat cats who own and run these plantations have gotten insanely rich for decades. Their black workers were expected to be happy in their slave shack dorms. Come eat at the table, we'll take real good care of ya! Now get out there and run that ball to the end of that field...
In Tallahassee, I've watched as the cotton field named after a former white coach, Doak Campbell, has transformed from an erector set in the 80's to the palatial brick fortress it is today. It's truly impressive, but every last brick in what was in the early 90's the largest masonry job in America, has an athlete's name on it, most of them black men who never made a dime in the NFL/CFL/Pro Sports. Much like our great country, that brick behemoth was built on the backs of black men. The Overseer who's given a posh office in that fortress is also put up in Tallahassee's finest, gated neighborhood. He's given a massive contract and all kinds of additional perks. His workers are put 2-to-a-room in what until recently were trailer-level apartments, walking distance from the fields. Still don't see the analogy coming into focus?
Then, I feel for you whitebread. Must be nice to have such a skewed vantage point from your ivory tower.
I guarantee you lots of my friends in black Seminole Nation see it this way. And it's been this way for FAR TOO LONG! Yesterday, as the cockroaches scurried out from their hiding places, brave keyboard warriors that they are, their evisceration of black athletes who dared to speak out on social media shows you who wants that plantation mentality to remain unchecked. I see you closeted racist--you who called for these 'ingrates' to be kicked out of the program. Our program and the whole of Seminole Nation would be a lot better off without YOU! Period.
