Episode 136: The 'Ungrateful Athlete': Anti-Black, Anti-Labor Currents in Sports Media
Added 2021-05-19 16:11:21 +0000 UTC"A good, hard working kid." "A 4.0 student." "He's asking for too much money." "They get paid to play a child’s game." "He shows up and does his work and never complains."
Despite the fact that the concept of paying college athletes has gained some mainstream support in recent years, much of the ideological scaffolding that exists to justify their lack of fair compensation is still very popular and widespread in sports punditry and writing, AM radio and play-by-play broadcasts.
Scrutinizing GPAs and work ethic, talking about how "kids" are "becoming men," racialized claims of lazy or ungrateful players, and wildly different double standards for players and owners for when they attempt to maximize their economic interests all prop up a system that, despite liberal hand-wringing and box checking concern for not paying players at the highest levels, still relies on withholding compensation from college athletes for their labor.
The stakes go beyond just sports. This conservative cultural contempt for athletes as a whole mirrors and informs that of other workers as well. Whenever, say, nurses organize for better pay and safer working conditions or, in the era of COVID, teachers unions seek to continue virtual rather than in-person classes for the sake of public health, they’re dismissed as self-interested and domineering.
On this episode, we parse the racist, anti-labor characterization of athletes in media, how they are both scary threatening men and tiny children whose should be paid and breakdown how this topic has cultural implications to other labor struggles, by informing and reinforcing anti-union tropes across the board
Our guest is Penn State professor Amira Rose Davis, co-host of Burn It All Down.
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Guest
Amira Rose Davis is Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies at Penn State University, where she specializes in 20th Century American History with an emphasis on race, gender, sports and politics. She is the author of the forthcoming book, “Can’t Eat a Medal: The Lives and Labors of Black Women Athletes in the Age of Jim Crow” and co-host of the sports and feminism podcast, Burn It All Down.
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Show Notes
How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football
David Dayen | September 20, 2014 | Politico
The Man Who Built the N.C.A.A.
Joe Nocera | May 29, 2015 | The New York Times
Taylor Branch | October 2011 | The Atlantic
Racial Divide on Athletes' Rights
Allie Grasgreen | March 28, 2014 | Inside Higher Ed
The O’Bannon Ruling: ‘Student-Athlete’ Is History
The Editorial Board | August 13, 2014 | The New York Times
Pay for play: NCAA schools keep eye on legal cases
Alicia Jessop | March 13, 2015 | CNBC
Racial prejudice is driving opposition to paying college athletes. Here’s the evidence.
Kevin Wallsten, Tatishe M. Nteta, Lauren A. McCarthy | December 30, 2015 | The Washington Post
Kevin Wallsten, Tatishe M. Nteta, Lauren A. McCarthy and Melinda R. Tarsi | March 2017 | Political Research Quarterly
Does Racial Resentment Fuel Opposition to Paying College Athletes?
Patrick Hruby | March 7, 2017 | VICE
NCAA’s amateurism rule exploits black athletes as slave labor
Brandi Collins-Dexter | March 27, 2018 | The Undefeated
Out of Bounds: A Critical Race Theory Perspective on "Pay for Play"
Kevin Brown and Antonio Williams | 2019 | Journal of Legal Aspects of Sport
California Governor Signs Bill Allowing College Athletes To Profit From Endorsements
Colin Dwyer | September 30, 2019 | NPR
College athletes and Ph.D. students both work for the university, but only one earns a salary
Jhacova Williams | January 8, 2020 | Economic Policy Institute
Big-Time College Athletes Don’t Get Paid. Here’s How This Amplifies Racial Inequities.
Craig Garthwaite, Jordan Keener, Matthew J. Notowidigdo and Nicole Ozminkowski | February 4, 2021 | Kellogg Insight
'I signed my life to rich white guys': athletes on the racial dynamics of college sports
Nathan Kalman-Lamb, Derek Silva, and Johanna Mellis | March 17, 2021 | The Guardian
To pay or not pay college athletes is not the issue
Paul Newberry | April 2, 2021 | Associated Press
Knight Commission Urges NCAA And Schools To Tackle Racial Inequity
Becky Sullivan | May 12, 2021 | NPR
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Transcript
For a full transcript of this episode, go here.
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Comments
If you are bored, you should check out the published script. There are some really clunky lines about race in there that didn't make it into the final cut of the film. Thank gods. It would not have aged well. Thanks for the reply!
Jeannette
2021-10-20 20:14:49 +0000 UTCI’m sort of a Jerry Maguire apologist in that I think it MOSTLY does this but has a bit more nuance and humanization than other contemporary sports depictions. Also I just kind of like the movie (a great shame of mine) - Adam
Citations Needed
2021-10-20 19:21:07 +0000 UTCI know this is an old episode but it left a great impression on me. I recently rewatched "Jerry Maguire" (I was stuck on an airplane) and to the surprise of no one, the main obstacle for Cuba Gooding Jr.'s character (Rod Tidwell) is that he is an ungrateful athlete. There's many lines in the script about how he's getting beat up, how he only has a shelf life of a few years, and how he needs to maximize his earnings to protect his family. And the movie treats what he's saying like it's a bad thing! Anyway, keep up the good work. You two are improving the bullshit detectors of thousands of people with each episode.
Jeannette
2021-10-20 19:19:29 +0000 UTCIt just occurred to me that the whole "getting paid in an education" line implies that a structure that is equivalent to company pay for the company store is good. So, if its at the very least some Guilded Age horseshit.
2021-06-30 05:29:51 +0000 UTCI want to add to a point the guest made San Antonio’s Covid task force was and still is working in the same complex as the women’s tournament.
Ben Gialenios
2021-05-21 03:09:21 +0000 UTCwell i think that was the point of the "sort of" modifier, didn't want to dwell on it, but noting that the nationalist line of X ethnicity for X ethnic country is far more complex when half the population isn't X ethnicity as is the case in Sweden. definitely didn't mean to erase their racism.
Citations Needed
2021-05-20 07:26:31 +0000 UTCThe point you make contrasting PhD students and college athletes is good, and the whole situation totally maddening. Once I heard that there were a bunch of students who were also paid by the university to do research work (later becoming one myself), the entire "student-athlete" narrative crumbled. Also, FWIW, PhD students also still have a shit deal b/c they're frequently "encouraged" to work above and beyond the stipulations of their contracts and frequently get shafted; then, after they graduate, a bunch get funneled into underpaid adjunct positions, with horrible job security to go with the abysmal pay. All this is to say universities are really just garbage institutions that are as exploitative as private capital despite their ostensible non-profit status.
Alex
2021-05-19 21:17:11 +0000 UTC
