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The Fact Behind the Video game
Sporting activities are commemorated as enthusiasm, technique, and teamwork. However below the surface, there’s a harder truth: the Black body is still being pressed, sold, and eaten for cash. This isn’t almost competition– it has to do with a system built to profit off ability while maintaining possession elsewhere.
From Vineyards to Playing Area
The idea of the Black body as labor commercial has deep origins. On ranches, Black men and women were dealt with as residential or commercial property. Today, their descendants fuel billion-dollar markets.
• Scholar E. Yeboah states commodification means turning an individual right into a valuable object– something to be offered.
• Bell hooks called it “eating the other,” where leading teams consume Black labor and society for profit.
The video game looks various now, however the auto mechanics feel familiar.
University Sports: A Modern Vineyard
Take a look at college football and basketball.
• Black males are only about 2 % of the U.S. university populace– however they compose over half of the athletes in Department I football and basketball.
• At huge colleges, their labor produces billions in ticket sales, TV civil liberties, and merch.
• Researches show Black professional athletes in the Power Five seminars shed over a billion bucks a year from 2005– 2019 due to the fact that the NCAA outlawed them from being paid.
The schools and coaches get abundant. The athletes? Most leave with little more than a degree, if they even complete.
The “Amateur” Lie
The NCAA conceals behind the word amateurism. They suggest professional athletes are “trainees initially,” so they should not be paid. Yet these same “students” fill arenas, drive March Madness, and maintain entire sports divisions afloat.
In 2021, the Supreme Court situation NCAA v. Alston called out this system. Justice Kavanaugh wrote clearly: “The NCAA is not over the legislation.” Still, the myth of amateurism keeps the money streaming to institutions, not players.
⛓ Exploited, Packaged, Changed
Here’s the cycle most Black professional athletes recognize too well:
• Exploitation: Their labor generates millions, but several still go starving. (Shabazz Napier, after winning a championship, admitted he sometimes went to bed starving.)
• Commodification: They’re valued for what they can generate, not that they are.
• Disposability: If they obtain harmed or underperform, scholarships vanish. The machine just changes them with the next hire.
The Story We’re Informed
The media plays a huge duty also. Black professional athletes are frequently praised for “raw skill” or “all-natural capability,” while white professional athletes are commemorated as “leaders” or “students of the game.”
This isn’t simply bias– it shapes just how the public sees value: Black bodies as muscular tissue, white minds as method. And behind the scenes, management roles in sporting activities continue to be overwhelmingly white.
The Toll on the Body
Sports do not just take time and energy. They take health.
• Countless athletes entrust to concussions, damaged bones, or lifelong injuries.
• Lots of end their jobs without safeguard.
• Once their efficiency dips, they’re let go– while the system maintains cashing in.
Athletes Combating Back
And yet, athletes have actually always resisted.
• Muhammad Ali declined to fight in Vietnam, running the risk of everything.
• Colin Kaepernick knelt for justice and shed his profession, yet stimulated a worldwide motion.
• Today, stars are developing their very own media firms, developing investment firms, and finding ways to reinvest wealth in Black areas.
The message is clear: the video game will certainly no longer own the players.
Final thought
Sports still push the Black body for cash. The attires are new, the agreements larger, but the system feels acquainted: performance is commended, revenues are removed, and possession avoids of reach.
The adjustment will come when athletes aren’t just performers on the area however decision-makers at the table– when the Black body isn’t promoted profit, however recognized for its full humanity.
Resources
• E. Yeboah, “Race, Religion, and Commodification of Black Bodies,” Augustana Digital Commons, 2019
• bell hooks, Black Appearances: Race and Representation, 1992
• University of The Golden State Riverside, Black Man Student-Athletes and Racial Inequities in NCAA Division I College Sports, 2015
• National Bureau of Economic Research Study, 2021; Axios, “NCAA Amateurism Cost Black Professional Athletes Billions.”
• Time Magazine, “How the NCAA Exploits University Athletes,” 2021
• CBS Information, “UConn’s Shabazz Napier states he often goes to bed hungry,” 2014
• Kenneth Shropshire & & Collin Williams, The Miseducation of the Pupil Professional athlete, 2017
• Ben Carrington, Race, Sporting Activity and National politics, 2010
• USC, College Sport Racial Report Card, 2020
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