{"id":352,"date":"2020-07-17T18:12:32","date_gmt":"2020-07-17T18:12:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fredricksonfinancial.com\/blog\/?p=352"},"modified":"2020-07-17T23:44:30","modified_gmt":"2020-07-17T23:44:30","slug":"my-fathers-relevance-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fredricksonfinancial.com\/blog\/my-fathers-relevance-today\/","title":{"rendered":"My father’s relevance today"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Normally, I write about financial matters. This item, which originally appeared as a guest blog on Bill Carey’s blog, The Dystopia Report<\/a>, is something completely different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Tom Fredrickson<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When former National Football League great Dont\u00e9 Stallworth\nquoted my dad in a New York Time<\/em>s op-ed piece, it was cool in a buzzy,\nFacebook sort of way. It also got me to turn off Netflix and start to think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was also glad to see my father cited because this is a\npivotal moment and he spent his career studying the roots and consequences of\nracism. He is deeply relevant, Stallworth recognized. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe N.F.L. has had plenty of\nopportunities to be on the right side of history,\u201d Stallworth wrote. \u201cIt could have supported Colin Kaepernick and other players who\ntook a knee four years ago to protest police brutality and racial inequities in\nthe U.S. justice system. But the league failed to protect them when the players\nneeded them most.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Black Lives Matter movement is boldly calling out racism in\nthe justice system. The N.F.L., though distorted by celebrity and wealth, is\npart of society and reflects it. American history, in turn, illuminates\nfootball and other elements of modern society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was only last month that the league issued an apology of\nsorts, admitting that \u2018it was wrong for not listening to N.F.L. players earlier\u2019\u201d\nStallworth wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHow could the N.F.L. be so blind? The author and historian George\nM. Fredrickson wrote that \u2018societal racism did not require an ideology to\nsustain it as long as it was taken for granted.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An overwhelming\nmajority of owners in the N.F.L.\u2019s history has been white men. \u201cToday, more\nthan two-thirds of the players are Black. But across 32 teams, there are\nonly three Black\nhead coaches and two\nBlack general managers. Over the past three years, there have been 20 head\ncoaching vacancies, but Black coaches filled only two of them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Racism was always present, but no\none needed to express it because there was no concerted challenge to the status\nquo. The league made the implicit assumption that blacks lack the leadership\nqualities, intelligence, and discipline to run teams.  Following the murder of George Floyd, the\noutrage (personal and societal protests) became too great to ignore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Arrogance of Race<\/em> (Fredrickson, 2008) continues where\nStallworth left off:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In citing my father\u2019s quote, Stallworth appears to suggest an analogy\nbetween team owners and slaveholders. I am sure many people would find it\nlaughable to consider men earning millions of dollars a year slaves<\/em>, but\nas in slavery,  players (usually) lack\nagency, are subject to physical battering, and get traded like chattel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Until the revolutionary era no one had seriously challenged slavery and black subordination in the southern colonies. During and after the Revolution there was a challenge of sorts, but the most recent historical studies suggest that it was half-hearted and ineffectual. \u2026 In the absence of a serious political and intellectual challenge to the implicit assumptions of southern biracialism, slaveholders found that they could protect their interests merely by encouraging the belief that emancipation was impractical or, if pushed, by standing firm on their \u2018rights\u2019 as owners of slave property.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More directly, football fits right in the corporate mold. In the\nentirety of the Fortune 500 companies, there are only four black CEOs. Just as\nthere is a paucity of black offensive and defensive coordinators being groomed\nfor coaching jobs, there is a small pool of black executives to tap as corporate\nleaders. Blacks are sharply underrepresented in top business schools, largely\nbecause the tuition is unaffordable. In a sense the N.F.L. is worse than other\nbusinesses: It has many talented black players who could easily be groomed for leadership\nroles. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Young black players are \u201cstacked\u201d (players are slated to compete\nfor certain spots) for positions that require speed and quick reflexes as\nopposed to the down-the-middle \u201cthinking\u201d positions such as quarterback,\ncenter, and linebacker. Black children gravitate to positions held by role\nmodels, reinforcing the pattern. Even players who have developed the requisite\nskills have been pulled in different directions because of the league\u2019s\nprejudice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWalt Frazier, an\nesteemed high school quarterback who received scholarship offers to play\ncollege football, chose to play basketball in college instead, believing he had no\nfuture as a black quarterback when his time came to play professionally (the\nmove paid off, as Frazier would have a Hall of Fame basketball career).\u201d (msgnetworks.com,\nWikipedia<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

American history and the history of football show that black progress\nmainly occurs only when white people are forced to give way. George Preston\nMarshall integrated the Washington Redskins in 1962 only after Mo Udall, U.S.\nsecretary of the interior under John F. Kennedy, and Attorney General Robert F.\nKennedy conveyed that the team would have to because D.C. Stadium was federally\nowned. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The racial path of professional\nsports has a parallel in the Civil War. It took the threat of losing the war of\nsecession for the nation\u2019s military and political leaders to accept blacks as\nsoldiers. The conventional thinking was that blacks would be cowardly and\nundisciplined \u2013 that they would drop their weapons at the first challenge. When\nthe exact opposite proved to be the case, and black regiments fought with valor\nand distinction, public, military, and political opinion started to change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my father\u2019s book, Big Enough\nto Be Inconsistent <\/em>(2008), which was released shortly after he died, he\nexamined in part how the exemplary performance of black soldiers influenced the\nevolution of Abraham Lincoln\u2019s thinking about their capacity to be free\ncitizens. This idea was taken up by historian Eric Foner, who supplied a blurb\nfor my father\u2019s book, yet failed to acknowledge or credit the work in Foner\u2019s\nPulitzer Prize winning book, The Fiery Trial,<\/em> 2010.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fredrickson: \u201cClearly \u2026 Lincoln\u2019s\npersonal view of African American capabilities had become more favorable as a\nresult of (black) military achievements.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foner: \u201cPartly because of the value\nhe placed on the contribution of black soldiers, Lincoln\u2019s racial view seemed\nto change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because of segregation, playing football\nand other sports on white professional teams remained out of reach for black\nathletes. Courageous pioneers such as baseball legend Jackie Robinson helped to\nchange that. The small, difficult openings finally cracked wide and black athletes\neventually took a huge role. But in football, they have bumped up against the\nglass ceiling described by Stallworth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the greatest obstacles faced\nby both slaves who wanted to become soldiers and black players who wanted to\nplay in the N.F.L. was the appeasement of Southern racism. Some Union generals\ntook the initiative to free slaves in areas they controlled. This was upsetting\nto Lincoln, partly because he felt he needed to appease border states of\nKentucky, Missouri, and Maryland, which were insecurely in the Union hold. Both\nmy father and Foner used the same quote in a letter that Lincoln wrote to his\nfriend Orville Browning: \u201cI think to lose Kentucky is to lose the whole game.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The integration of the N.F.L. also\nfaced the obstacle of Southern appeasement. Marshall claimed that integrating the Washington team would\ncause it to lose fans in the South and the team was at the time the\nsouthernmost team in the league.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Marshall said: “We’ll start\nsigning Negroes when the Harlem Globetrotters start\nsigning whites.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Racism, as my father saw it, is the\nbelief that certain races are innately inferior. According to racist\nideologies, no amount of education or culture can bring an inferior race to true\nequality because of inborn biological differences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Racism developed as a response to Northern abolitionism, which\ngrew in force and volume in the 1830s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Prior to the 1830s, black subordination was the practice of white Americans, and the inferiority of the Negro was undoubtedly a common assumption, but open assumptions of permanent<\/em> inferiority were exceedingly rare. It took the assault of the abolitionists to unmask the cant about a theoretical human equality that coexisted with Negro slavery and racial discrimination and to force the practitioners of racial oppression to develop a theory that accorded with their behavior.” (Fredrickson, The Black Image in the White Mind<\/em>, 1971)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blacks were lazy and bestial by nature, the thinking went. The structure\nand discipline of slavery was not only a positive good but necessary. The\ndevelopment of \u201cscientific\u201d views of racial inferiority made long-standing,\nvulgar prejudice against blacks more respectable and actionable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A competing ethos was \u201cromantic racialism,\u201d which posited blacks\nas sweet and simple but in need of paternalistic help or control. Uncle Tom in\nHarriet Beecher Stowe\u2019s Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin <\/em>exemplifies this. At least\nthis form of prejudice sought to offer protection from abuse and, in Stowe\u2019s view,\noutright emancipation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tension between democratic ideals and the immense\nprofitability and looming expansion of slavery led to the Civil War. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cConvince me that one man may rightfully make another man his\nslave, and I will no longer subscribe to the Declaration of Independence,\u201d abolitionist\neditor William Lloyd Garrison said in a speech in Boston in 1854.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 in large part\nto weaken the confederacy; the proclamation declared slaves free in\nsecessionist states, though their freedom had to wait for their escape or the\nvictory of Union forces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The end of the Civil War, the passage of the 15th<\/sup>\nAmendment, and the start of Reconstruction led to the slaughter of thousands of\nblacks to prevent them from voting and holding office by the Ku Klux Klan and\nthe White League. \u201cKlan violence was unquestionably the worst outbreak of\ndomestic terrorism in American history,\u201d wrote Ron Chernow. (Grant<\/em>,\n2018)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the decades that followed, blacks were \u201cexcluded from industry\nfor a long period except in parts of the deep South and confined largely to\nagriculture.\u201d (C. Vann Woodward, The New York Review of Books<\/em>, Aug. 12, 1971)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blacks were not competing directly with whites for jobs, thus not\nan economic threat, but they were held in contempt by many people in the South as\nwell as the North thanks to tradition, \u201cscience,\u201d politics, and legal\nsegregation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the view of W.E.B. Du Bois, the great black intellectual and\nfounder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, poor\nwhites accepted their place in the post-Civil War capitalist system partly\nbecause they received non-financial recompense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reviewing a biographical volume about Du Bois, my father wrote: \u201c\u2026\nin explaining poor white support for the Jim Crow system, he called attention\nto the way in which white workers, although poorly paid, were \u2018compensated in\npart by a sort of public and psychological wage. They were given public\ndeference and titles of courtesy because they are white.\u2019\u201d (The New York\nReview of Books<\/em>, Feb. 8, 2001)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The famous idea, which was outlined in Dubois\u2019 1935 book Black Reconstruction in America<\/em> 1860-1880<\/em>  rings true to me. In his Marx-influenced\nconstruct, white laborers withstood their economic exploitation with help from\nthe mental lifeline of white supremacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(White laborers) were given public\ndeference and were\nadmitted freely with all classes of white people to public functions, public\nparks, and the best schools. The police were drawn from their ranks, and the\ncourts, dependent on their votes, treated them with such leniency as to\nencourage lawlessness. Their vote selected public officials, and while this had\nsmall effect upon the economic situation, it had great effect upon their\npersonal treatment and the deference shown them. White schoolhouses were the\nbest in the community, and conspicuously placed, and they cost anywhere from\ntwice to ten times as much per capita as the colored schools. The newspapers\nspecialized on news that flattered the poor whites and almost utterly ignored\nthe Negro except in crime and ridicule. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Du Bois had become a socialist but split from the Marxist left because\nof its under-emphasis of racism. Mainline Communists and socialists believed\nthat racism was a byproduct of the class struggle and that racial animus would\ndisappear when capitalism was destroyed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As blacks, faced with the resurgence of the Klan and lynching,\nmoved North in search of safety and job opportunities, they became an economic\nthreat to whites, who discriminated against them in all facets of life, from\ntrade unions and employment to housing and schools. Economic discrimination\nreinforced a longstanding cultural prejudice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father cited Du Bois\u2019 1940 autobiography, Dusk of Dawn<\/em>,\nin which Du Bois wrote the split between white and black workers: \u201cdepended not\nsimply on economic exploitation but on a racial folklore grounded on centuries\nof instinct, habit and thought and implemented by the conditioned reflex of\nvisible color.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question of whether racism is fueled more by cultural or\neconomic factors is very much alive. Is racism thriving because, as it did\nunder slavery, it serves the economic interests of the ruling class? Or are\ncultural prejudices more important? Or\nis it some combination of both?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly, racism played a pronounced role in Donald Trump\u2019s victory\nin 2016 and in his ongoing though falling political appeal.  Did he build his campaign on the bedrock of\nhistorical, cultural racism? Or do minorities and immigrants make convenient\nscapegoats in a time of inequality and economic hardship, as they did for Adolf\nHitler in Nazi Germany? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to the glass ceiling in professional sports, racism\nin the justice system, and social inequality, is the answer moral suasion,\ndebate, and legislative action? Or does real change require taking to the\nstreets? Can we get to where we want to go through incremental change or does\nit require a \u201drevolution,\u201d however you define the word?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe \u2013 like Lincoln \u2013 we are big enough to change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Normally, I write about financial matters. This item, which originally appeared as a guest blog on Bill Carey’s blog, The Dystopia Report, is something completely different. By Tom Fredrickson When former National Football League great Dont\u00e9 Stallworth quoted my dad in a New York Times op-ed piece, it was cool in a buzzy, Facebook sort… Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredricksonfinancial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredricksonfinancial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredricksonfinancial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredricksonfinancial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredricksonfinancial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/fredricksonfinancial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":355,"href":"https:\/\/fredricksonfinancial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352\/revisions\/355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fredricksonfinancial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredricksonfinancial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fredricksonfinancial.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}