Well … actually … NO, it’s not
It didn’t take long for the rhetoric swirling around the current NFL/NFLPA tiff to remind me of how fast and how tired I became of the rhetoric that accompanied their 1987 tiff. It also emphasized that some players would be better off to let their actions on the field do their talking, rather than engaging their mouth. Back then, it was Tony Dorsett in the parking lot at Cowboys Stadium … this time it’s Adrian Peterson in a Yahoo Sports interview.
Doug Farrar writes, “Speaking just minutes after the owners locked out the players, Peterson compared the players’ place in the game to ‘modern-day slavery,’ a statement that, while ill-advised, was made in the context of how the players feel they’re being treated in these talks.”
Farrar quotes Peterson as saying “It’s modern-day slavery, you know? People kind of laugh at that, but there are people working at regular jobs who get treated the same way, too.”
What? … “kind of” laugh at that? Why not try “TOTALLY” laugh at that … and for good reason, too. There are plenty of us here, in Midland (and I’m sure the same is true in YOUR community, as well) that have experiences abroad – through Christian mission, business development, etc. – to see what modern-day slavery is REALLY like, and to find ways to combat it with our time and effort, our love and our funds. Our community has also provided a new home for people fleeing the acts of modern-day slavers working through sweat-shops, brothels, and impressment into ‘armies’ and labor battalions. Sadly, we have also seen modern-day slavery right here, at home, where sex trafficking is creating a new and growing slave trade, 150 years after we fought a terrible and bloody war for emancipation and union.
So, NFL players/owners/pundits please, spare us the rhetoric about modern-day slavery, save it for the closed negotiations, behind closed doors, sparing the rest of us the public outrage … and you the public ridicule.
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Well … actually … NO, it’s not was a great article. You told it like it is, however brothels are legal in Nevada. http://www.Sherisranch.com has an online brothel website. Check it out.
Bob, thanks for stopping in, and for the input. You’re absolutely right about legal brothels in Nevada. Unfortunately, there’s a much larger field of that ‘oldest profession’ out there, across the country, where the practices of ‘modern-day slavery’ are at work.
There are several reasons why Adrian Peterson compared the NFL to the slave trade… perhaps the easiest to understand is the analogy between the NFL (or professional sports in general) and the plantation system, in which a wealthy white owner monopolizes the labor of disposable black workers.
Many professional football players come from disadvantaged backgrounds and are literally not given a choice to play football or not–if they have the natural gifts to excel in sports, there is overwhelming social pressure for them to take advantage of those gifts and try to lift their families out of poverty.
But NFL players are paid the least of any professional athlete–rookies are only guaranteed $200,000 a year. The average length of an NFL career is three and a half seasons. Although the average life expectancy in the USA is around 78 years, an NFL player’s life expectancy is 55; for linemen, it’s 52. There have also been recent controversies surrounding pervasive brain injuries in the NFL and the league’s attempt to cover them up.
In other words, there are lots of reasons for NFL players to think of themselves as disposable laborers who are destroying their bodies to make white men wealthy. I’m not trying to be argumentative; I’m just trying to point out why Mr. Peterson said what he said. Sure, they get paid a lot compared to you and me, but the owners are taking the lion’s share.