Adidas’ planned release of its “JS Roundhouse Mids” shoes has been put on hold, but the rightful outrage continues.
The sight of “slave shoes”—sneakers with shackles and chains—prompted widespread indignation and outrage. “The attempt to commercialize and make popular more than 200 years of human degradation, where Blacks were considered three-fifths human by our Constitution is offensive, appalling and insensitive. Removing the chains from our ankles and placing them on our shoes is no progress,” writes Jesse Jackson. “For Adidas to promote the athleticism and contributions of a variety of African-American sports legends … and then allow such a degrading symbol of African-American history to pass through its corporate channels and move toward actual production and advertisement, is insensitive and corporately irresponsible.”
The shoes are yet another reminder of the efforts to sanitize and erase slavery from public consciousness. Whether in the efforts to whitewash history through denying or minimizing the history of slavery, or turning slavery into sources of profit and pleasure, the shoes speak to an effort to reimagine slavery within White America. Whereas the history of slavery is one of violence, bloodshed, and survival in the face of brutality, these shoes disrespect the memories and atrocities at the heart of this country. In turning its symbols – shackles and chains – into something of trendy desire and pleasure, these shoes and its designers not only spit on this history but seek to cash in on the pain and suffering of many people.
The marketing of the shoes also disturbingly capitalize on incidences of shoe violence and media sensationalism. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, “On Adidas’ Facebook page, the company calls the shoe ‘so hot you [will need to] lock your kicks to your ankles.’” Like those pundits, politicians, and media who sold fear by citing kids being murdered for their shoes, Adidas sees an opportunity in exaggerated stories of death. By telling its consumers that “yes others will desperately want your shoes but not to worry, they are on lockdown,” the company is selling consumers a footwear version of LoJack. As with the politicians and media pundits before them, Adidas is continuing a tradition of peddling and proofing off of racial fears and stereotypes.
As the history of shoe production has been one of exploitation, abuse and “slave-like” conditions, there is sickening irony in these shoes. Do the shackles and chains attached to the shoes mirror those that have been found on children’s feet? Does it symbolically reflect the sweatshop conditions endured by those who produce shoes and apparel throughout the globe?
Do you know where the ingredients come from? Do you know the work conditions that produce these ingredients. Check out the projects from students in my class. They set out to examine the commodity origin stories of several popular items, breaking down and documenting the origins/conditions of a myriad of products. Check out their excellent and thoughtful work
Could Dr. King Watch Big Time College Sports? Race Beyond Shame
by David Leonard and C. Richard King | NewBlackMan
In “Shame of College Sports,” legendary American historian Taylor Branch turns his college sports in this month’s The Atlantic. Focusing on the profits generated through college sports, the lack of power available to student-athletes, and the absurdity to claims of amateurism and student-athletes, Branch exposes the exploitation and hypocrisy that is as much part of the NCAA experience as March Madness and Bowl Games. Almost hoping to disarm critics who often scoff at ‘slavery analogies,’ Brand avoids that comparison instead embracing one that centers on colonialism.
Slavery analogies should be used carefully. College athletes are not slaves. Yet to survey the scene—corporations and universities enriching themselves on the backs of uncompensated young men, whose status as “student-athletes” deprives them of the right to due process guaranteed by the Constitution—is to catch an unmistakable whiff of the plantation. Perhaps a more apt metaphor is colonialism: college sports, as overseen by the NCAA, is a system imposed by well-meaning paternalists and rationalized with hoary sentiments about caring for the well-being of the colonized. But it is, nonetheless, unjust. The NCAA, in its zealous defense of bogus principles, sometimes destroys the dreams of innocent young athletes.
Providing readers with an amazing history, including the origins of the term student-athlete (as part of a systematic effort to avoid paying workers’ compensation claims for injured football players) and illustrating the methods used by NCAA and its partner schools to maintain the illusion of amateur sports all while raking in the dough, Branch surprisingly avoids the issue of race. The colonial analogy notwithstanding, there is virtually no discussion of the racial implications in this system, the larger history of the NCAA in relationship to race, and the ways in which white racial frames help to justify an acceptance of such a system.
Branch seems to point to the racial implications here in a section entitled, ““The Plantation Mentality,” where he quotes Sonny Vaccaro:
“Ninety percent of the NCAA revenue is produced by 1 percent of the athletes,” Sonny Vaccaro says. “Go to the skill positions”—the stars. “Ninety percent African Americans.” The NCAA made its money off those kids, and so did he. They were not all bad people, the NCAA officials, but they were blind, Vaccaro believes. “Their organization is a fraud.”
The reference to the “Plantation mentality” and the explicit acknowledgement that the bulk of profits are generated within sports that in recent years have been dominated by African American athletes generates surprisingly little discussion of the radicalized political economy of college athletics today. Over a decade ago, D. Stanley Eitzen observed
These rules reek with injustice. Athletes can make money for others, but not for themselves. Their coaches have agents, as many students engaged in other extracurricular activities, but the athletes cannot. Athletes are forbidden to engage in advertising, but their coaches are permitted to endorse products for generous compensation. Corporate advertisements are displayed in the arenas where they play, but with no payoff to the athletes. The shoes and equipment worn by the athletes bear very visible corporate logos, for which the schools are compensated handsomely. The athletes make public appearances for their schools and their photographs are used to publicize the athletic department and sell tickets, but they cannot benefit. The schools sell memorabilia and paraphernalia that incorporate the athletes’ likenesses, yet only the schools pocket the royalties. The athletes cannot receive gifts, but coaches and other athletic department personnel receive the free use of automobiles, country club memberships, housing subsidies, etc.
To our minds, then, Branch clearly misses an opportunity to reflect on the ways in which the system is built around generating profits through the labor of young African American men. Those profits – the billions of dollars earned through television contracts, merchandizing, video game deals, concessions, booster donations, ticket sales – find there way into the hands of overwhelming white constituency, coaches and athletic directors, in support of a largely white establishment.
In the midst of the NFL lockout, Adrian Peterson joined a chorus of players who were both critical of the league’s owners and commissioner Roger Goodell, describing professional football as akin to “modern-day slavery”:
People kind of laugh at that, but there are people working at regular jobs who get treated the same way, too. With all the money … the owners are trying to get a different percentage, and bring in more money. I understand that; these are business-minded people. Of course this is what they are going to want to do. I understand that; it’s how they got to where they are now. But as players, we have to stand our ground and say, ‘Hey — without us, there’s no football.’ There are so many different perspectives from different players, and obviously we’re not all on the same page — I don’t know. I don’t really see this going to where we’ll be without football for a long time; there’s too much money lost for the owners. Eventually, I feel that we’ll get something done.
Although not the first person to use the slavery analogy, with William C. Rhoden, Larry Johnson, and Warren Sapp all offering this rhetorical comparison, his comments elicited widespread commendation and criticism. Dave Zirin notes that he was denounced as “ungrateful,” “out of touch,” “an idiot” and, in the darker recesses of the blogosphere, far worse.” Like much of sports media, the controversy quickly reached a zenith with columnists and fans ultimately focusing on other issues, spectacles, and controversies, although never forgetting his insertion of race into the world of sports.
Recently, however, an ESPN columnist brought a spotlight back onto his comments, celebrating Peterson’s determination to right his rhetorical wrongs. In “Adrian Peterson continues righting a wrong” Kevin Seifert cites not only Peterson’s efforts to apologize for his “unfortunate analogy,” but his decision to get involved with anti-slavery efforts as part of a larger effort to make amends. “If some good came of Adrian Peterson’s unfortunate use of analogies this offseason, it’s this: It forced one of the NFL’s highest-profile players into a bond with two of the world’s most prominent advocates for ending human trafficking.”
Citing his involvement with Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s DNA Foundation, a group committed to “rais[ing] awareness about child sex slavery, chang[ing] the cultural stereotypes that facilitate this horrific problem, and rehabilitat[ing] innocent victims,” Seifert argues that Peterson missed-used analogy reflected a lack of knowledge about human trafficking. “As a professional and respectful public figure,” Peterson would never knowingly make such a silly and harmful comparison had he known about the realities of human trafficking and child sex slavery. At least that seems to be the argument emanating from this piece. “I’ve always believed that Peterson wasn’t making any sort of political statement,” writes Seifert, whose column about Peterson’s comments brought up the real-life circumstances of modern-day slavery. “There was no reason to think he harbored some previously unexpressed level of insensitivity. Like many of us, he probably just didn’t know that in 2010, 12.3 million people world-wide were in forced or bonded labor. To that end, Peterson jumped at the chance to work with Moore and Kutcher.”
Seifert’s celebration of Peterson’s PSA is questionable given his efforts to cite this as evidence of his efforts to do penance along the path to redemption. At one level, it is unclear if the PSA was in actuality a response to the controversy surrounding the comments (the interview took place in March and the PSA filming taking place shortly thereafter in April). At another level, and more importantly, Peterson had nothing to apologize for, and therefore his involvement with an organization committed to thwarting modern-day slave sex trafficking has nothing to do with his past comments about the NFL.
The relative silence of the media regarding his PSA, especially in comparison to the ubiquitous level of criticism that he experienced for deploying “the S-word” (Zirin), demonstrates that irrespective of his actions it will be difficult for him to secure redemption in the eyes of mainstream America. Richard King and I wrote about the precarious path to redemption experienced by many black athletes in wake of controversies in “Lack of Black Opps: Kobe Bryant and the Difficult Path of Redemption” (Journal of Sport and Social Issues). There we argue,
The media and public fascinations with Kobe Bryant, Tiger Woods, and other Black athletes accused of personal and/or criminal transgressions should remind us of what a prominent place race, redemption, and respectability play in sport today. Sport media not only rely on the White racial frame but also play a leading role in its reproduction. In this frame, Blackness has overdetermined the actions of African American athletes from O. J. Simpson, Mick Tyson, and Barry Bonds to Ron Artest, Shani Davis, and more recently Marion Jones, Michael Vick, Santonio Holmes and Tiger Woods, creating a context in which interpretations and outcomes for Black and White athletes vary greatly. . . . Yet what is clear is in spite of the celebration of the comeback stories of Tiger Woods, Kobe Bryant, or even Michael Vick, their Blackness, and the broader significations associated with their Black bodies contains and limits their public rehabilitation. Just as their Blackness continues to confine the meaning of their bodies inside and outside of the sports world, their past “mistakes” and “misfortunes” (as Black men) cannot be outrun, out maneuvered, and even controlled.
In other words, while recognizing the unfairness in demanding redemption from Peterson for comments about exploitation and abuse through a deployed slavery analogy, he faces a difficult challenge given the ways in which race and the associated tropes of the “ungrateful,” and “militant” black athlete governs over Peterson in wake of these comments. Yet, the specific nature of the PSA itself lends itself toward some sort of redemption.
Peterson appears in a PSA as part of DNA’s “Real Men” campaign, which includes spots from Bradley Cooper (“Real men know to make a meal”), Sean Penn (“Real Men know how to use an Iron”) and Jamie Foxx (“Real Men know how to use the remote.”) In his PSA, Peterson is sitting in a living room befitting of a member of the aristocracy (or at least the American upper-class). Confirming his class status and respectability, Peterson simultaneously represents an authentic manhood, able to start a fire by merely rubbing his hands together. Unlike other men, Peterson embodies a true and enviable manhood, evident in his physical prowess and his economic prowess. In this regard, his blackness is muted by a desired class- and gender-based identity.
Peterson’s represented identity is an important backdrop for both his purported redemption resulting from his participation in this campaign and the PSA itself. The narrative argument offered within the campaign is that “real men don’t buy girls,” and that “real men” don’t participate in “child sex slavery.” Peterson, as a man who can start a fire with his bare hands, and who is economically successful (not to mention someone who make defenders look silly) is already a real man within a hegemonic frame; his stance against sex slavery is but another signifier of a real masculinity, all of which is constructed as important attracting women. The PSA ends with a young woman asking, “Are you a real man,” followed by a clear reminder: “I prefer a real man.” At this level, the PSA is disturbing in that it tells viewers to oppose childhood sex slavery because that is what real men do and because women of age find such a stance attractive.
In a world where 12 million people are enslaved and where 2 million children are bought into the global sex trade, it is rather simplistic (and comforting) to reduce this injustice to a faulty masculinity. Given that sex trafficking, according to the United Nations, involves “127 countries of origin, 98 transit countries and 137 destination countries” it is rather dubious to reduce the problem to a single construction of bad masculinity.
Catherine MacKinnon makes this clear in her analysis of global sex trafficking:
If women were human, would we be a cash crop shipped from Thailand in containers into New York’s brothels? Would we be sexual and reproductive slaves? Would we be bred, worked without pay our whole lives, burned when our dowry money wasn’t enough or when men tired of us, starved as widows when our husbands died (if we survived his funeral pyre)?
She notes further the links between sexual violence, heterosexism, and dominant notions of masculinity
Male dominance is sexual. Meaning: men in particular, if not men alone, sexualize hierarchy… Recent feminist work… on rape, battery, sexual harassment, sexual abuse of children, prostitution, and pornography supports [this]. These practices, taken together, express and actualize the distinctive power of men over women in society; their effective permissibility confirms and extends it.”(In Dunlap)
The links between sex trafficking and patriarchy and misogyny, along with racism, xenophobia, and global geo-politics is further illustrated by comments offered during a NGO forum, which among other things dispels arguments about “bad apples,” individual pathologies, and “real/unreal” men:
Trafficking in persons is a form of racism that is recognized as a contemporary form of slavery and is aggravated by the increase in racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. The demand side in trafficking is created by a globalized market, and a patriarchal notion of sexuality. Trafficking happens within and across borders, largely in conjunction with prostitution (In Agathangelous and Ling).
In other words, “real manhood,” as codified legally, as defined culturally, and as constructed ideologically not only sanctions sexual violence but also promotes its very existence. Child sex trafficking reflects the logic of hegemonic masculinity. While comforting to imagine the problem of child sex trafficking as an aberrant and abhorrent masculinity, this injustice has nothing to do with real or a desirable manhood. It is about power, hierarchies, and the systemic dehumanization of women, particularly women of color.
The problem of slavery is real and reflects the systemic and historic manifestations of sexism (along with racism and colonization). To imagine this as a problem of a faulty masculinity does not work to eradicate the problem. While I certainly applaud the efforts of DNA, and celebrated Peterson’s involvement with a campaign committed to raising awareness about the painful realities of human trafficking, the narrative leads us back to the same place.
Taking a stand against child sex trafficking and other forms of sexual violence reflects a willingness to embrace a feminist ethos, not one of “a real man.” The struggle against sexual violence, whether it be rape or sex trafficking, should not be about redeeming and celebrating REAL men, Adrian Peterson, Justin Timberlake (who shaves with a chain saw), or anyone else, but challenging the injustices that result from hegemonic patriarchy. How about we make a PSA about real resistance and real transformation rather than real men!
