{"id":21862,"date":"2020-08-30T00:47:53","date_gmt":"2020-08-30T00:47:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=21862"},"modified":"2020-08-31T04:33:17","modified_gmt":"2020-08-31T04:33:17","slug":"lets-call-athletes-workers-and-lets-call-these-nba-protests-what-they-were-strikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/lets-call-athletes-workers-and-lets-call-these-nba-protests-what-they-were-strikes\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s call athletes ‘workers,’ and let’s call these NBA protests what they were \u2013 strikes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Abraham I. Khan<\/a>, Pennsylvania State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The Milwaukee Bucks\u2019 startling refusal to take to the court for their NBA playoff game on Aug. 26 was the most consequential political development in sports over the last 50 years.<\/p>\n

In recent years, the prevailing media narrative is that athletes have routinely used their platforms<\/a> to \u201craise awareness<\/a>\u201d or \u201cbring attention<\/a>\u201d to a social issue.<\/p>\n

Awareness, though, has its limits. Rarely does it lead to the kind of structural changes<\/a> the shooting by police of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin seems to demand.<\/p>\n

In this case, the players met the moment, marking a fundamental shift in the direction of activism generated by Black athletes. The mass player walkouts that followed the Bucks\u2019 initial protest were no exercise in awareness, though some commentators framed it as that way<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Instead, these athletes were, in effect, going on strike \u2013 and showing the world just how much economic leverage they could wield.<\/p>\n

Pressure builds<\/h2>\n

When I began studying Black protest speech in sports around 10 years ago<\/a>, athlete activism appeared to be in decline<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods had become marketing demigods, bringing sports into the rarefied circuits of global capitalism<\/a>. By signing increasingly lucrative endorsement deals with risk-averse corporate partners, Black athletes, critics argued<\/a>, were trading their conscience for the promise of wealth.<\/p>\n

The narrative, however, began to change around 2012, when the Miami Heat posed in hoodies<\/a> for a widely circulated photograph meant to protest the murder of Trayvon Martin in Florida.<\/p>\n

Two years later, athlete activism accelerated when the Los Angeles Clippers demonstrated against<\/a> their team owner, Donald Sterling, for making racist comments. NBA stars wore T-shirts that said \u201cI Can\u2019t Breathe<\/a>\u201d to protest the killing of Eric Garner\u2019s by police in New York. And five St. Louis Rams players raised their hands<\/a> in \u201cdon\u2019t shoot\u201d poses to bring attention to the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Vice Sports declared 2014 \u201cthe year of the activist athlete<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, in 2016, Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the anthem to protest police brutality, ultimately becoming the avatar for the activist athlete. By the time the NFL\u2019s biggest stars shot a #BlackLivesMatter video<\/a> in the summer of 2020 to protest the murder of George Floyd, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was admitting<\/a> that \u201cwe should have listened earlier,\u201d despite having overseen Kaepernick\u2019s effective banishment three years earlier.<\/p>\n

Yet professional athletes\u2019 reliance on Twitter, Instagram and T-shirts often falls short. Yes, they have an enormous platform for political speech<\/a> and can often use social media to bypass traditional outlets. But thanks to their relationship with sponsors, advertisers and TV networks, professional sports leagues have an even bigger one.<\/p>\n

This gives sports executives like Goodell the power to lead from behind, making the athletes\u2019 message their own.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most cynical use of this technique came in 2017, after Donald Trump said that NFL players who kneel during the national anthem ought to be fired<\/a>. When the Dallas Cowboys expressed their desire to kneel in solidarity, they were joined arm-in-arm<\/a> by team owner Jerry Jones, a vocal Trump supporter<\/a>, who agreed to participate \u2013 provided that it did not occur during the anthem<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The corporate dance<\/h2>\n

Of course, it is possible for activist athletes to compete with leagues for attention and influence. But this often requires a perilous relationship with corporate power<\/a>, such as when Nike announced its brand partnership with Kaepernick.<\/p>\n

\u201cBelieve in something, even if it means sacrificing everything,\u201d read Kaepernick\u2019s Nike ad<\/a>. This slogan \u2013 which could just as easily have been catchphrase for the military or the police \u2013 reveals the anesthetizing effects corporate messaging can have on politics. Sure, athletes might appear in ads that mention social justice. But they\u2019re ultimately there to sell products, and often deliver more value to the corporation<\/a> than they get in return.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Michael Jordan watches a model showcase apparel from Jordan\u2019s clothing line at New York City\u2019s NikeTown in 1997.<\/span>
\nAP Photo\/Kathy Willens<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Corporate messaging, moreover, depends not on moral imperatives, but on prevailing public sentiment and shareholder interest. The marketplace provides no guarantee that a company changing its Twitter avatar to say \u201cBlack Lives Matter\u201d will always be more profitable<\/a> than staying silent or doing the opposite.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, it is impossible, by definition, for corporations to send anti-corporate messages. For these reasons, athlete activism\u2019s relationship to corporate power is inherently fragile.<\/p>\n

[Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.<\/em> Sign up for our weekly newsletter<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

From talk to action<\/h2>\n

This week\u2019s work stoppage in professional sports is the most significant moment of athlete activism in a half century not because it \u201craised awareness\u201d or \u201cstarted a conversation,\u201d but because it exercised labor\u2019s most elemental form of political power: the strike.<\/p>\n

By walking out, professional athletes leveraged their power to exploit, as sociologist Harry Edwards wrote in 1969, \u201cthe white man\u2019s economic and almost religious involvement in athletics<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

After a summer of racist police violence and nationwide protest, the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin forced athletes to confront persuasion\u2019s futility and embrace their capacity for leverage. T-shirts and television commercials do not yield phone calls with attorneys general and lieutenant governors, but strikes do<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The same point was made most forcefully in 2015, when football players at the University of Missouri got their university president fired<\/a> within 36 hours of announcing a strike for racial justice.<\/p>\n

As major media organizations framed the walk-off as a \u201cboycott<\/a>\u201d and leagues announced that games had been \u201cpostponed<\/a>,\u201d these descriptors hid the threat striking athletes pose to sport\u2019s economic health and racial order. In a vivid demonstration of worker agency, Black athletes refused to entertain audiences and make money for the wealthy owners of their teams.<\/p>\n

This, they were saying, was not a conflict to be resolved through \u201clistening.\u201d It would require direct economic pressure.<\/p>\n

It is tempting to view the walkout\u2019s spread through baseball<\/a>, football<\/a>, soccer<\/a>, and even tennis<\/a> as an expansion of the activist athlete\u2019s platform. But maybe we should view it as the emergence of interdependent workers\u2019 collectives. After suspending the season in March, the NBA decided in July<\/a> to resume play in Orlando at a Disney complex where all participants would undergo regular virus testing and live together under quarantine.<\/p>\n

The \u201cbubble\u201d in Orlando was designed to protect the league\u2019s assets from COVID-19. But what if, instead, the players\u2019 forced proximity to each other ended up cultivating a radical consciousness and facilitating a spirit of worker resistance?<\/p>\n

Where the athlete strike goes next is not entirely clear. The NBA has announced that games will resume, and the NFL and NFL Players Association issued a joint statement<\/a> indicating their intention to \u201cuse our collective platform to call out racism and injustice whenever and wherever it occurs.\u201d<\/p>\n

The statement is a reminder that when corporate power seeks common cause with labor, the result is almost always \u201cdifficult conversations about these issues.\u201d Corporations love conversations. They reduce politics to speech and forestall the pace of meaningful social change.<\/p>\n

However, sports organizations tend to move more quickly when their workers refuse to play<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In a polarized political environment under a president keen to stoke racial division<\/a>, I see attempts at moral persuasion as teardrops in a poisoned well. What began with the Milwaukee Bucks in Orlando signals a new form of athlete activism not because the platform is growing or the arguments are becoming more convincing, but because it eschews the trappings of symbolic spectacle.<\/p>\n

The players are leveraging labor power to accomplish real political work.\"The<\/p>\n

Abraham I. Khan<\/a>, Assistant Professor of African American Studies and Communication Arts & Sciences, Pennsylvania State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Abraham I. Khan, Pennsylvania State University The Milwaukee Bucks\u2019 startling refusal to take to the court for their NBA playoff game on Aug. 26 was the most consequential political development in sports over the last 50 years. In recent years, the prevailing media narrative is that athletes have routinely used their platforms to \u201craise awareness\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":21863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[207,2763,3235,5455,356,5819,2592,4095,2858,203],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21862"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21862"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21865,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21862\/revisions\/21865"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}