The New Slavery in America (and at Florida State)

Two and one half years ago Steve Siebold contributed an article to the Huffington Post, "NCAA's Football Slavery Scheme." And since then the NCAA has opened the gates for pay-for-play in Division I College Football, so you might ask the relevancy of this post?



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.

The President v The Constitution

The last time Lafayette Park was surrounded by fences, it was undergoing renovations. The 8-foot fences that surround it today, a mere 15 hours after peaceful protestors were violently removed by our military, are QUITE SYMBOLIC.



Last night, around 6:30, while our President was beating his bully pulpit (with tiny hands), he had given the green light for militarized Secret Service and Military Police to clear Lafayette Park using force, authorizing the same police brutality these American citizens were there to speak out against. There's that portion of the First Amendment which allows for our citizens "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

But this raging lunatic has absolutely NO REGARD for the rule of law OR the rights afforded to his constituents by the United States Constitution. While Captain Bonespurs was beating his chest about an antiquated 1807 act giving him, basically, the power to declare war in America ON AMERICANS, he was stomping all over our rights, our constitution!

And after all his grandstanding and bluster, in a prepared speech read from teleprompters, he made a huge show of walking out the White House gates, through that park and over to a boarded up church. The sacred ground, known as the nation's "protest park," was sullied by feet that had just minutes before trampled the Constitution, so he could stage a photo op with a Bible in his hand and a boarded up church in the background. He made his stupid point. We get it. You're President Palpatine. You believe you have unlimited power. And you're such a good Christian. You really know how to pander to your base, like the snake oil salesman and con artist you are.

Palpatine then walked back to OUR White House, presumably back to the safety of his basement bunker, then called for the erection of fences around OUR protest park. If that doesn't just symbolize this whole situation in one stark image, I don't know what does.

The black, 8-foot, chain-link fence might as well be bars erected across American rights and the Constitution which protects them.



As a nation, I believe about 70-80% of us, watched in horror as the President derided cities and states for not taking the current situation seriously enough, for not "dominating" it's citizenry. We watched with equal horror as his gestapo cleared the sacred grounds of Lafayette Park--a memorial to the American Revolution--of it's peaceful protestors. And that split screen image on our electronic devices--one side the police riot against Americans; on the other, the Liar-In-Chief saying, "I'm an ally to ALL peaceful protestors." We see your hypocrisy, Mr. Drumpf. We see the huge overreach and power grab for what it is. You're great at bluster and chest-beating. You're HORRIBLE as a leader, as a unifier of these United States. You WILL be kicked out of OUR white house in January!

Black Lives, Do Indeed, Matter

I wrote one year ago, "It's SO scary being a white person these days!" During "KneeGate" that "marred" the 2017 NFL Season, I wrote in White Angst - Black Protest, "The failure here is of white people to empathize and to understand." And we're still, by and large, FAILING!

We don't WANT to understand.
We REFUSE to walk an inch, let alone a mile, in anyone else's shoes.
This is AMERICA, by God!
(built on the backs of slaves, mind you)

In the ramp up to the 2016 election, I wrote, "white privilege breeds fear and it has ever since the end of slavery." And we're seeing that play out on television and the Internet today. White (older) America still can't understand what has all these young people--black, white and brown--so riled up. It's made them fearful and they are lashing out.

Just yesterday, I got called a racist on a friend's Facebook page. BTW, you can't be a racist against white people. They invented the word. And I'm white!

The 'baby boomers' are, by and large, digging into their trenches and foxholes. They see now this is going to be a prolonged war. It's long overdue.

MLK, Jr., said 52 years ago, "This may well be mankind's last chance to choose between chaos and community." I think that ship has sailed. The minute he was gunned down by a white man in April 1968, that sent us into the chaos that persists today.

I'm only encouraged by the diversity I see in the crowds rallying around the #blacklivesmatter movement. THIS is the new millennium! It gives me hope that we're FINALLY. MOVING. FORWARD.

Which reminds me, I was told by an older white male "we have made progress" and he posted a photo of Obama's inauguration. Um...that was 2008...and here we are 12 years later with rioting in the streets because of how far we've actually regressed. I told him it was "one step forward and three steps back."

Fear not, white people, "the blacks" aren't trying to diminish your rights in anyway. They're not saying your lives DON'T matter, just that BLACK LIVES MATTER, TOO! Are you listening yet? Why does it take the burning of cities across the country to get your attention? Why do we keep repeating this cycle?

I mourn with the families of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor. I shed angry tears with my black brothers and sisters. I'm not an "ally," WE'RE FAMILY!

I'm asking my white brethren to stand for social justice and racial equality. This fight's been going on my whole life...more than half a century. It's about time that progress won out.

Good Morning, White America

Dateline--May 31, 2020 (USA)

Good Morning, White America.
How'd you sleep while our cities were burning and tensions boiling over?

Oh, you thought I meant last night?

How about the last 401 years?

I'm talking to you Karen Van Winkle. Are you awake now? Did it really have to come to this?

You thought it was "all better" once we afforded a few civil rights to our neighbors of color. You told them, in essence, to "Calm Down!" when they protested by taking a knee. Your white, American sensibilities got all riled when they wouldn't stand for the anthem. Well now your cities are burning, both literally and figuratively. And you're going to sit there, in your Anglo-Christian self-righteous indignation, and call them "thugs" and "savages" for burning it down?

Where ya been, Karen?

This didn't start with George Floyd in May 2020. It started in 1619 when your white ancestors brought African slaves to this continent. It's been going on ever since. Maybe these images will remind you of our long history of brutality towards blacks. OUR COLLECTIVE KNEE ON THEIR NECK.

In the 52 years that I've been alive, I have seen with my own eyes the stain of slavery on American society. It was mere months before I was born that we took out Martin Luther King, Jr., because we didn't care to hear his message of freedom.

And over that half century, we've taken out countless numbers of black men who we didn't care to hear. Well, their blood is crying out to be heard.

How long did you expect them to remain silent, peaceful, "in their place," white America? Racial tension was already at a boiling point, with black America dying at a significantly higher rate from COVID-19. And while we were all home, watching from our living room, more racial injustice played out in living color across our devices. What did you expect them to do, Karen, just take it? More abuse, more death by cop, more senseless killing, more white outrage over their method of protest while ignoring their message?

They are starting fires because you weren't listening. They are rioting in the streets because in four centuries not that much has changed. They are demanding justice because we pretended like all footing was made equal in the 1960's.

For 52 years, I've watched you turn a blind eye to their plight. Generations of poverty, oppression and marginalization didn't affect you, white America, so you went about your "Leave It To Beaver" lives in your white suburbs, pretending like all was good across this great country of ours.

Then our nation was forced to deal with our ugly scars. A once-in-a-lifetime pandemic hit and forced us to shut down for about 8 weeks. Karen Van Winkle got restless. Her hair grew out in all it's natural glory. We saw her roots. She demanded her freedom. She likened the lockdown to slavery and oppression. White America was finally getting a taste of it's own medicine--limits on liberty, joblessness and in some cases, hopelessness. How do you think it's felt for so many of our neighbors to be black in America? That's been their existence for generations, dating back to 1619.

You were inconvenienced for 6-8 weeks, unable to get your hair done, have Girls Night Out and attend Celine Dion concerts. That's not even in the ballpark of centuries of oppression and marginalization, Karen! Get over your pasty white self.

Your city is on fire. Are you paying attention, yet?

It is burning because you failed to give proper attention, proper respect and human dignity to your neighbors of color. It is burning because from 1619 on, you didn't see them as fully equal, fully human or fully American. It is burning because white people started this violence, not the "thugs" and "savages" looting your precious Target.

White America doesn't understand this at all. They don't understand that this has been a violent struggle since the beginning. Instead of crosses burning, police vehicles and businesses are burning. Why? Because you started this mess, Karen!

Do you think the African slaves boarded ships because your ancestors told them to? No they were bought and sold and herded like cattle. The white men took what they wanted violently and made them their property.

Fast forward about 340 years and you have the civil rights marches of the 1960's. White America didn't understand why black America couldn't just be happy "in their place." And when these peaceful protests fanned out across the South, we released the dogs, the hoses and the police brutality. WE were the aggressors, Karen, the purveyors of violence! Not them.

Fast forward another 50 years and you have black athletes taking a knee in silent protest. Even that, you met with vocal outrage and faux patriotism. White America still wasn't listening. They drowned out the message with attacks on the protestors, turning their backs and a blind eye toward what was still going on right under their white noses.

You know, if you ignore it, it might just go away, right?

We've been ignoring it for the 52 years I've been a natural-born American citizen. And now our cities are burning.

We reached a boiling point. The death of George Floyd, an American murdered on the streets of Minneapolis, was a catalyst, a tipping point. Blame the pandemic, blame the jobless numbers, the deafness and ineptitude of our leaders in the face of crisis, but the tone deafness of white America towards 400 years of racial injustice and inequality is the real culprit.

We've had our collective white knee on the neck of African-Americans this whole time. You think 8 minutes is a long time (and I grieve with you Floyd family), try 401 years!

It's time to wake up and to own this culpability, white America. You've remained silent and willfully ignorant for too long. Your silence has spoken much louder than your words.

Stop pinning the blame on protestors, rioters, your neighbors...take your own knee off their neck and STOP THE VIOLENCE!

Have a great day!

Real Outrage v Faux Outrage in White v Black America

https://amp.indystar.com/amp/3103252001?__twitter_impression=true&fbclid=IwAR11MdUxeLWRlQ6uVO3w1V4QEu87ZZkHGAj-X2Euqz_aFaGKBU2ieNgUyZE

"ALL LIVES MATTER" remember?
But do they?

This kid's life didn't seem to matter.

For the last month, we've seen mostly white protestors, some armed with AK-47's, up in arms over "stay-at-home" orders in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, even right there in my hometown, Indianapolis, where this kid was gunned down. Why were these white protestors so riled, so triggered, so full of angst and anger? Because Karen couldn't get her nails done, her haircut or go out for GNO. White people were filled with rage--said Karens getting nose-to-nose with cops in one video spraying vitriol in their stoic faces (SAY IT DON'T SPRAY IT, KAREN!). They carried signs equating a month-long lockdown with 400 years of institutionalized slavery. They waved anti-American flags and symbols, like at a KKK or Hitler rally. They openly carried semi-automatic weapons, some into statehouses (I'm looking at you Lansing, MI).

The images that filled my newsfeed and that of cable news for weeks was of white privilege flexing it's collective muscle to get our economy "reopened." Oh the faux outrage!

Despite the show of force, Vanilla Isis or Flu Flux Flan (take your pick) wasn't met with any police force WHATSOEVER! Hell, in some photos and video, you couldn't pick out a uniformed officer. The ones who did get spit on by raging Karen just stood there, no expression, no reaction of any kind. White protestors didn't get sprayed with hoses, shot with rubber bullets, teargassed, attacked by K-9 units or anything even resembling force. Nope. There was none of that.

When white people used their cars to form a blockade in downtown Lansing, preventing ambulances from safely getting to emergency rooms, there was no armada of police vehicles or charges of "obstructing traffic."

America, this is a perfect portrait of what white privilege looks like. Still don't think it exists?

White people, by and large, lost their collective SHIT when some black athletes started a silent protest during the playing of the National Anthem. They knelt. You went berserk.

Now, protestors in Indianapolis, with something to TRULY get angry and worked up about, protest in small numbers their outrage over police violence claiming one of their own...and they get charged with "obstruction of traffic?" Did you see how many of them were standing on a street corner with signs, not guns? I sure didn't see any blockade of vehicles, fat Karen straining to lean out her window and yell insane slogans. This was real outrage.

Police violence against people of color is systemic racism.

We see it play out ALL THE FUCKING TIME!!! Yet, where's the outrage by whites? When a kid in Indy is gunned down, when a man in NY is taken down to the pavement and beaten, when a jogger in Georgia is stalked like prey, confronted and gunned down--IN THE STREET ON FUCKING VIDEO--where is all the outrage, White America???

You know what, you disgust me! Karen's of the world, in a lather because you can't leave the comfort of your own home, you fucking disgust me. You wouldn't spit on a black man if he were on fire in your front yard! You get all hot and bothered if he or his family hold up signs saying "Black Lives Matter," or GOD FORBID, he KNEEL during your beloved Anthem! That's when you get enraged. Saying nothing of your faux patriotism, holding up the confederate flag or one with a swastika, but you don't really believe that "ALL lives matter" you just want to silence and marginalize the black ones. It's what you've ALWAYS done!

It's time for white America to wake up and smell the coffee. It's time to own up to your centuries of privilege and acknowledge how you've perpetuated systemic racism!

I can't even type anymore. There's a gnawing sickness in the pit of my gut.