NFL Labor Hardly Slavery
Follow
By DERON SNYDER
The average NFL fan can’t identify too closely with NFL players — and certainly not NFL owners. But most fans know what it means to work and receive a paycheck, regardless of how little they get in comparison. That’s what makes Adrian Peterson’s comments so disturbing and disgusting, reinforcing the stereotypes of dumb jocks and pampered athletes.
Peterson, the Minnesota Vikings’ All-Pro running back, told Yahoo! that playing in the league is like “modern-day slavery. People kind of laugh at that, but there are people working at regular jobs who get treated the same way, too,” he said.
If Peterson was trying to make a case based on New York Times columnist William Rhoden’s provocative book, Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete, it was an epic failure. Rhoden used about 300 pages to lay out a nuanced case for invoking the word “slave,” which is still a stretch.
