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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The Title of this Book comes from a remark made by a white spectator during a professional basketball game in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com
ffice:smarttags" /><st1:City><st1
lace>Los Angeles</st1lace></st1:City>. The comment was aimed at Larry Johnson, then a player with the <st1:State><st1lace>New York</st1lace></st1:State><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Knicks.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The previouys season. Johnson had referred to some of his Knicks teammates as “rebel slaves” unleashing as storm of controversy. That night in <st1:City><st1lace>Los Angeles</st1lace></st1:City> , as his team headed toward the bench during a time-out, a heckler yelled out: “Johnson you’re nothing but a $40 million dollar slave.”<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o></o><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o></o><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The community of black athletes. Like the black community at large is wealthier and in some ways more powerful than every before, but in many other ways it resembles that wandering lost tribe, a fragmented remnant unable to organize itself to project the collective power it embodies but is afraid to use.<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Isolated in summer camps and prestigious universities and pampered as budding millionaires that many of them will become, today’s big time college and professional players are far less prepared to deal with the racial realities that exist in <st1:country-region><st1lace>America</st1lace></st1:country-region> than any previous generations of athletes.<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o></o><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">In 1895 Charles Dana the editor of the <st1:State><st1lace>New York</st1lace></st1:State> Sun warned his readers, “We are in the midst of a growing menace. The black man is rapidly forging to the front ranks in athletics especially in the field of fisticuffs. We are in the midst of a black rise against white supremacy.”<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o></o><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o></o><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Despite their fifty-year rise to prominence on the fields of the integrated sports, African American athletes – male and female- still find themselves on the periphery of true power in the<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>industry their talent built. In the public mind the black athlete is still largely feared<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>and despised, in keeping with the history of<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>black Americans, whose success is often seen as an imminent danger. Every African American accomplishment in sports has-for more than two centuries now triggered a knee-jerk backlash from forces within the white majority. The strategies of the white reactionaries have become predictable: to take back, dilute, divide and push back any black achievement, in an effort to restore the same balance of power that has existed in t
ffice:smarttags" /><st1:City><st1lace>Los Angeles</st1lace></st1:City>. The comment was aimed at Larry Johnson, then a player with the <st1:State><st1lace>New York</st1lace></st1:State><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Knicks.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The previouys season. Johnson had referred to some of his Knicks teammates as “rebel slaves” unleashing as storm of controversy. That night in <st1:City><st1lace>Los Angeles</st1lace></st1:City> , as his team headed toward the bench during a time-out, a heckler yelled out: “Johnson you’re nothing but a $40 million dollar slave.”<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comfficeffice" /><o></o><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o></o><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o></o><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">The community of black athletes. Like the black community at large is wealthier and in some ways more powerful than every before, but in many other ways it resembles that wandering lost tribe, a fragmented remnant unable to organize itself to project the collective power it embodies but is afraid to use.<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Isolated in summer camps and prestigious universities and pampered as budding millionaires that many of them will become, today’s big time college and professional players are far less prepared to deal with the racial realities that exist in <st1:country-region><st1lace>America</st1lace></st1:country-region> than any previous generations of athletes.<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o></o><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">In 1895 Charles Dana the editor of the <st1:State><st1lace>New York</st1lace></st1:State> Sun warned his readers, “We are in the midst of a growing menace. The black man is rapidly forging to the front ranks in athletics especially in the field of fisticuffs. We are in the midst of a black rise against white supremacy.”<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o></o><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><o></o><P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">Despite their fifty-year rise to prominence on the fields of the integrated sports, African American athletes – male and female- still find themselves on the periphery of true power in the<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>industry their talent built. In the public mind the black athlete is still largely feared<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>and despised, in keeping with the history of<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>black Americans, whose success is often seen as an imminent danger. Every African American accomplishment in sports has-for more than two centuries now triggered a knee-jerk backlash from forces within the white majority. The strategies of the white reactionaries have become predictable: to take back, dilute, divide and push back any black achievement, in an effort to restore the same balance of power that has existed in t
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