This Is Not What We Bred These Slaves To Be!

This Is Not What We Bred These Slaves To Be!

Whoa! Lock the gates!
Quick! Tie up the horses!
The field hands are rebelling!

Look at the outrageous clothes they're wearing!
They sport gold rings and diamond bracelets and silver amulets!
Every visible orifice of their bodies is multi-pierced!
They're scrawled like blackboards with brazen tattoos!
Their mouths are teeming with gleaming gold teeth!
What is that horrible angry noise they're listening to on those headphones?
They're wearing their own endorsed sneakers and fragrances on our business trips!
What is it with all of this loose living?
It's so very... unkempt!

This Is Not What We Bred These Slaves To Be!

Perhaps it was a mistake to allow them to elect their own representatives and govern their own unions! What was so wrong with the signing bonuses and the lucrative contracts they used to accept? For God's sake! We even gave them coaches of their own kind!
What do they want, REAL fathers?

Goodness! They're making REAL money!
They even have days off, medical benefits, seasonal vacations!
We even let them pray at our biggest events, which is somewhat a constitutional breach!
What more do these individuals want?

This Is Not What We Bred These Slaves To Be!

We let them graduate the finest universities without knowing how to read or to speak well!
They have so much cash; it's not necessary for them to know how to add!
They don't even have to sign their names; they all have agents!
They have the grand luxury of not needing to think!
Look! Their mothers all have new houses!
Hey! They can support all of their kids... and all their babies' mamas!
What is going on here?

Do you think, perhaps, these ingrates might understand what we're doing for them?
They don't have to rise well before dawn anymore!
They don't have to work all day in the scorching sun anymore!
They don't have to tote overladen barges or lift impossibly heavy bales anymore!
Has anyone reminded them of their history of hardship?
We freed them from all of those old burdens and taboos!
They can even marry up now, if they want to! (you know what I mean)

This Is Not What We Bred These Slaves To Be!

Damn it, what we need in professional sports is a behavior code!
We took you savages out of the jungle, clothed you, Christened you and taught you how to live!
We know it's been a long, hard road for 400 years but look at how you've improved!
Yes! We acknowledge that this country is greater for your presence!
Yes! We concede that your culture has shaped the very fabric of America!
Yes! We now allow you to walk, unaccompanied, through the halls of ALL of our precious institutions!

So, you see, we can't let your stupid, little social transgressions undo all that we've accomplished!

This is OUR plantation!
This is OUR field!
This is OUR crop!
This is OUR game, not yours!

Bling, fling and swing on your own time, Toby.

This Is Not What We Bred You Slaves To Be!

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Epilogue:

Yes, it is about Black American image and perception vs. Professional Corporate Sports image and perfection.

No one speaks to the fact that these plantations, I mean, institutions, harvest so much of this young, undone Black youth right out of the "hood", without as much as an expressed thought as to their educational, historical or community station - past, present or future. They are herded through established institutions of higher learning, emerging with dubitable diplomas. Through agents, they are issued exclusive contracts, the simplest clauses of which many cannot even read, lest comprehend. They are baled into and bailed out of a myriad of legal transgressions with nary a deterring exemplar. They are thrust onto a national platform, upon which so many express the most unadvised and shameful actions and opinions.

They are excused from representing social excellence not because of their professional abilities or their societal potential, but because they generate millions of thrills and billions to the tills of Corporate America, its affiliates and extended business partners. They blindly endorse products which our own children might one day maim each other to abscond with.

Suddenly, Professional Sports in America has a "problem" with its image and league commissioners now believe that the solution is suspensions, expulsions and behavior codes!?

If these young, rich players had a single ounce of real corporate savvy or real union power, or real self-respect, they all should have resigned, immediately. Professional Sports would have bent to its knees in half an hour, rescinding every non-game related edict they ever imposed.

But that won't happen because these beholden, misdirected adult children love their their dollars more than their druthers and their money more than their mind and Corporatism knows it.

Can you imagine that, in its final denial of responsibility, America will hold the slave responsible for the failure of the plantation?


IGNORANCE IS BLING!

"Action, without forsight, is confusion;
Forsight, without action, is illusion."

Richard A Cummings
An American In Thought

R.A. Cummings (2005 revised 2014)
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