What's in a Name? The 'Plantation' Metaphor and the NBA

What's in aName?    The 'Plantation' Metaphorand the NBA byDavid J. Leonard | NewBlackMan
Severalweeks back, at the conclusion of HBO's RealSports, Bryant Gumbeltook David Stern to task for his arrogance, "ego-centric approach" andeagerness "to be viewed as some kind of modern plantation overseer, treatingNBA men, as if they were his boys."  Highlighting the power imbalances andthe systematic effort to treat the greatest basketball players on earth aslittle more than "thehelp," Gumbel invoked a historic frame to illustrate his argument.
If the NBA lockout is going to be resolved anytime soon, itseems likely to be done in spite of David Stern, not because of him. I say thatbecause the NBA's infamously ego-centric commissioner seems more hell-bentlately on demeaning the players than resolving his league's labor impasse.
How else to explain Stern's rants in recent days? To any andeveryone who would listen, he has alternately knocked union leader BillyHunter, said the players were getting inaccurate information, and startedsounding Chicken Little claims about what games might be lost, if playersdidn't soon see things his way.
Stern's version of what's been going on behind closed doorshas of course been disputed. But his efforts were typical of a commissionerthat has always seemed eager to be viewed as some kind of modern plantationoverseer, treating NBA men, as if they were his boys.
It's part of Stern's M.O. Like his past self-serving edictson dress code or the questioning of officials, his moves were intended to dolittle more than show how he's the one keeping the hired hands in place. Somewill of course cringe at that characterization, but Stern's disdain for theplayers is as palpable and pathetic as his motives are transparent. Yes theNBA's business model is broken. But to fix it, maybe the league's commissionershould concern himself most with a solution, and stop being part of theproblem.
Notsurprisingly, his comments have evoked widespread criticism and scorn: see Example #1, Example#2, Example#3 and Example#4).  Even less surprising,commentators have chastised Gumbel for inserting race into the discussions, asif race isn't central to the lockout, the media coverage, and fanreaction.  As evidence, the response to Gumbel, and the ubiquitousefforts to blame the lockout and the labor situation on the players throughracialized language (see here for example– h/t @resisting_spec),illustrates the ways in which race and hegemonic ideas of blackness operates inthis context. 
Alsorevealing has been the response to Jeffrey Kessler, a lawyer for the NBAplayers Association, who similarly described David Stern's treatment of theplayers.  He told the Washington Post: "To present that in thecontext of 'take it or leave it,' in our view, that is not good faith. Insteadof treating the players like partners, they're treating them like plantationworkers."  While his commentelicited some backlash alongwith an apology, the vitriol and the level of indignation didn't match thereaction to Gumbel. 
Beyondthe power of white privilege in this regard, what has been striking has been thereferences to history by the anti-Gumbel/Kessler crowd; much of the criticismat Gumbel and Kessler has focused on their historic amnesia.  That is, their comments, while beinginaccurate, unfair, and infusing race into otherwise colorblind situation, aredisrespectful towards the history of slavery in America.  References to slavery in this contextbetray the violent history of American slavery.  In "Occupythe NBA: A Plea from an Avid Basketball Fan" Timothy Jones takes Gumbel totask for the historic slight here:
I'm appalled that anyonewould compare this situation to slavery. I have great respect for BryantGumbel, but his quotethat David Stern sees himself as a modern day plantation overseer is not onlydisrespectful to our ancestors, but it also did nothing to help this situation.Stern may not be handling this situation well, he may not have the best interestof the players in mind, he may be a mean person (I really have no clue), but Ido know that brothers making millions of dollars are nothing like slaves on aplantation.
CharlesBarkley agreed, referring to Gumbel's comments as "stupid" and"disrespectful to black people who went through slavery. When (you're talkingabout) guys who make $5 million a year." Likewise, ScottReid questioned the use of such an analogy given history: "The point isthat too many people inappropriately use slavery and enslaved people to make pointsabout things that are nowhere close to comparison. All of these casual slaveryanalogies do nothing but diminish one of the worst crimes against humanity inhuman history. Comparing enslaved Africans, or anyone else for that mattersince slavery still exists for many enslaved people, is not only absurd, it isjust plain disrespectful to the memory of the millions who perished under theworst kind of injustice."
Whileseemingly representing a different set of politics, blogger DavidFriedman also noted the historic disrespect in Gumbel's comments:
Bryant Gumbel's ludicrous,poorly thought-out (and anti-Semitic) rant against Stern: comparing Stern to a"plantation overseer" is offensive, a falsehood that simultaneouslydiminishes the true suffering of Black slaves in the American South while alsoslurring a Commissioner whose league has consistently been at the forefront interms of hiring Black executives and coaches. Gumbel's attack against Sterncomes straight out of the Louis Farrakhan playbook--portraying Jews asexploiters of Blacks--and Gumbel's consistent track record of expressing suchbigoted attitudes would have terminated his career a long time ago if his chosentarget were any group other than Jews (just imagine a White commentatorspeaking similarly about a Black person or anyone saying anything remotelyderogatory regarding homosexuals).
At one level, I find such criticisms to besimplistic.  The references toslavery are not literal comparisons, but rhetorical devices that seek toemphasis power, race, and the control of black bodies within modern sportingcontext.  The rhetoricalcomparison/analogy isn't simply about physical control but ideological and mentalpower differentials.  Moreover, ina society that routinely devalues, ignores, sanitizes, and erasesthe horrors ofAmerican slavery, I think the selective resistance by many raises questions.
Yet, questions and criticisms about aslavery analogy (and it is an analogy) are important because it demonstratesthe power of language.  There is adanger in comparisons as differences or the specificity of history are erased,flattened, and otherwise stripped because of the varied realities at work. 
Yet, the critics of the "40-million dollarslave metaphor" are often as guilty as those deploying (myself included) theseanalogies through their frame of history. In other words, in imagining slavery as a historic institution, as somethingexclusively in the past, these critics perpetuate the false understanding ofslavery in our contemporary moment. The danger and difficulty of this rhetorical comparison is not simplyabout betraying or disrespecting history (how can two so different experiencesbe described through the same word/historic frames), but in perpetuating theidea that slavery exists ONLY in the past.  These critics lament Gumbel, Rhoden, and others by arguingthat the NBA, in the contemporary, has nothing to do with slavery, which existsin the past. 
Slavery exists in our present and in ourpresence.  From Brazil to Ivory Coast, from India to Nepal, from Florida to North Carolina, slavery exists in ourcontemporary world.  It remains aviolent scourge on our society. Understanding both history and the contemporarymanifestations of slavery must inform rather than obscure, complicate ratherthan simplify, and provide depth rather than flatten the rhetorical usage ofslavery metaphors, whether it be with the NBA, sports, or otherwise. PhillipLamar Cunningham, in "TowardAn Appropriate Analogy,"illustrates the complexity here, reflecting on a shared and divergent history,one that points to the dialects of race, power, body, control and economicprofits:
That said, today's NBAplayer's situation is not wholly unlike that of the post-Civil War freedman.Free of literal shackles, the former slave is free to fend for himself now thathe is no longer bound to the plantation. While he was free to go anywhere hechose, he faced the choice of living in a volatile South or a disdainful Norththat merited him no semblance of equality. Some fled North and carved somethingout of nothing; many stayed behind as sharecroppers.
To drive the analogyfurther, one must also consider the position in which league owners findthemselves, which is not unlike that of the former slaveowner. With his hold onthe slave relinquished, the slaveowner still held the same need for labor. Withhis primary source of labor now having a semblance of independence, theplantation owner had to negotiate labor costs. Theoretically, he could lookelsewhere for labor, but of course the former slave was best suited for thework. This is not unlike today's NBA, a league in which its primarily blacktalent is best suited for the job and without whom it is likely to fail or atleast face a great deal of hardship in returning to prominence (as did theNational Hockey League after its 2004 lockout).
Consider the following quoteregarding sharecropping from Alan Conway's controversial The Reconstruction of Georgia (1966):"[S]harecropping was to a degree the least of all evils, a yoke of compromisewhich chafed both parties but strangled neither. The owner was able to retain afair amount of supervision of his land and the Negro cropper took his half loafof independence as better than none at all" (116). Sadly, the same easily couldbe paraphrased and applied to today's NBA lockout.
While NBA players are neither slaves on 19thcentury cotton fields nor those who pick tomatoes, harvest cocoa in the IvoryCoast, or work in the sex, soy and soccer ball industries, the "40 milliondollar slave" is part of that history.  
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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of CriticalCulture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. Hehas written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing inboth popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy ofpopular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, andpopular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis.He is the author of Screens Fade toBlack: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop(SUNY Press). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.