"The Slave Side of Sunday"

[erpowers]

What do DUers think about the new book, "The Slave Side of Sunday", by Anthony Prior. I had heard the book and what it was about mentioned before, but did not really pay attention to what was being said about the book and then forgot about the book. I just read a post by David Zirin at the Nation in which Zirin describes the book.

Some of the things the author says seems to be a little troubling. It seems to be a stretch to compare football where men are getting paid millions a year to slavery where people did not get paid at all. Prior addressed the criticism of his comparison by claiming that he has seen players treated poorly for things as simple as looking at a white woman. Even with that the comparison still seems a bit far fetched to me in that during slavery and a time after black men could killed for looking at a white women. Now days these black players can bed as many white women and they want as long as the white women are willing to go to bed with them. On a final note, today players can threaten to sit out part of the season if they are not happy with their contract. The only thing that will happen to them is that they will be traded. If a slave had tried that during the slavery days they would have lost their life. I think comparing football to slavery is just a far stretch.

[Bill McBlueState]

1. I saw an excerpt

It was on the Nation online, probably the same one you read.

There's definitely a lot of racism in organized football. But there's a huge, huge middle ground between "the NFL has some racist aspects" and "the NFL is like slavery." The latter is a definite exaggeration.