Thursday, July 9, 2009

The 40 Million Dollar Slave Who Did Not Know His Worth

All the major US news sources have already reported about the murder of NFL star quarterback, Steve McNair by his mistress, Sahel Kazemi. A Dave and Buster’s (come on dude) employee who is of Iranian descent, Kazemi was not old enough to legally drink, but was caught up in a DUI, just days before she shot her lover four times.

The story is the same lover’s quarrels we have heard for years. Married famou$ guy meets broke-down bitty and lies to her about his marital circumstance or she goes with the flow. Promises of divorce are never met then the bitty gets indignant and down-right sassy due to false feelings of entitlement. The break up is ugly, and perhaps deadly.

One of the things that is interesting in the coverage of this event is some of the terms that have been used. For example, the condo that McNair and Kazemi were found was as a “bloody love nest” by NY Times. This conjures up the Buck and Sally stereotypes of wild and feral animal copulation by a typical black male who had no control over his “dumaflitchie”.

Then there is the “crazy” mistress, a typical dismissal of Kazemi as a mentally unstable chick who was a low-bred Sand Nigger without morals or marbles to hold a good side-piece relationship down.

The whole coverage smells like “two niggers who just fucked and loved too hard” so lets cover this and get on with it.

Out of all of it, there is few mentioning of his family life, something that balances the depiction of his affair. Why can white men go out respectably when they do things like uh, rent some prostitutes, spend government money to travel out of the country for international snatch. Or my favorite, in Brazil, when some white men were on trial for sleeping with 12-to-14-year old girls, their defense was that they thought that age was alright in Brazilian culture for females to engage in sex with nasty, old as men such as themselves.

Anyway, the tragedy of all of this is the final records of a legacy that McNair leaves behind. At the end of an impressive career his story is marred by this unforgettable stain thus throwing him into a pile of historical rubbish. His actions are warranting him history-less in the eyes of those who made so much money off of his genius.

Now McNair’s wife, Mechelle, is totally distraught over the loss, as Steve leaves behind four boys that have to be told why their daddy is dead.

Wow, what a tragedy to go out like that---over a lover’s spat or secretive affair. But it goes to show you, brothers have not learned from Al Green. Nowadays the grits are not effective, but a bullet seems to be proficient.

On a serious note, McNair’s end and the consistent list of black athletes who are being found at the end of a gun, a conviction, a down-low scandal, a nasty brawl, or an OJ case, solidly proves that majority of them can be categorized as “40 Million Dollar Slaves.”

A book and term used by William C. Rhodes, he argues that the black male athlete of today has garnered a plethora of wealth (comparatively speaking) without any social and even personal progress; and a large amount of prosperity without personal or collective freedom for the communities that reared him. This raises the question of why are black athletes reared to be physical power-horses and not intellectual, social, economic, or spiritual powerhouses? They are trained to be brutes to make money for an establishment that values them as long as they are bringing in multi-million dollar fan support. Then, after they are worn and tired, they are left for the dogs.

Have you ever seen a recruiting day for the NFL? Guys are weighed, their body fat and muscle are closely observed, and they are asked to do physical feats such as lift weight s in their underwear, and sprint. Does this sound familiar to you? To me it does, it is called an auction block, and McNair was an old beat up slave.

McNair was a brother who was cultivated in the heart of Mississippi, the cornerstone of where many brothers have fallen due to the insidiousness of social injustice; however, it was his weaknesses for a young, damn-near underage waitress (come on) and undisciplined character off the football field that got him seriously caught up. Damn, we are still operating like breeders on the plantation.

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ayankha said...

what exactly is “dumaflitchie”? I can reasonably guess what it is in context, but I've never heard of it. I even googled it and someone said they heard it in a Tim McGraw song? What is it and where did it come from?

I too feel for his wife and children. That is such a horrible situation to be in as a mother.

I do think that the little coverage I've seen have done a decent job in covering is on-field accomplishments. It's just to bad that it has taken this tragedy to highlight them this way compared to how they were highlighted when he retired last year.