Ever since the earliest times of slavery days, Black people in America have worked on a variety of jobs, in a variety of places and for a variety of non-Black people.
Slave masters, overseers and other characters chose the Blacks who worked in the big house and chose those Blacks that would work in the fields, so to speak.
Today, there is a debate about the National Football League’s choice to hire rapper/business man Jay Z as a consultant on entertainment and “social justice”.
Some people are happy about the agreed relationship and other people are pretty upset.
Personally, I wish Jay Z and the league well. At the same time, I know how the business beast works and what the future holds for the masses of Black people.
Every rapper can’t get a million dollar agreement with the NFL. Every Black businessman or woman, regardless of how talented or professional they are, will not be considered as a participant in football pay transactions or contracts.
I doubt if Killer Mike, KRS One, Nas or a member of Dead Presidents will get multi-million dollar football deals.
You see, perhaps the NFL chose Jay Z to be the social justice face of professional football.
If a professional sports league, a city or state government, a college or university, a corporation or some other entity seeks to hire or partner with a Black individual or Black business, you better believe they know, or think they know, who they are contracting or hiring.
A lot of the backlash and push back Jay Z got after his deal became public centered around his reported comments that “kneeling days are over”, which implies that the NFL is now OK, not racist and worthy to be honored and praised in regard to equal justice, social justice and unfair, atrocious and paltry Super Bowl entertainment acts.
Jay Z was hired by the NFL because Jay Z will do and say what the NFL, a group of real billionaires, tells him to do and say. When the day comes when Jay Z won’t be obedient and buck dance to the NFL speech or song, the agreement with the NFL will be over. The agreement won’t last for life.
You see, there are people of all races that will sell their souls to any bidder with the desired price or benefit.
The benefit might be a one-percent ownership in a NFL team, it could be a hand me down top hat or the opportunity, like Fiddler had in “Roots” to sleep on a wood floor rather than going to bed on a dirt floor in the slave quarters.
If the NFL runs it’s league like Calvin Candy ran Candy Land, who does Jay Z resemble, Stephen or D’Jango?
One more thing, you may assume that Jay gets a lot of opportunities because he is a “billionaire”, OK, but there are a lot of billionaires. There are asset billionaires and there are billionaires that can put their hands on a billion dollars in cash.
You can purchase an automobile that costs a million dollars but after you drive the car off of the car lot the vehicle is not worth a million dollars any more.
Assets and cash money are two very different things.
You have to understand many Black people are called but the chosen are few. Don’t blame the money in the deal. The money doesn’t know where it came from or who the money goes to or why?
When huge business groups like professional sports leagues select Black contractors and vendors, they usually select one or maybe two.
If most of us want to be chosen like Jay Z, we have to choose ourselves because they are penny ante choices and there are people who have more money that are chosen.
Wish Jay Z well. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
It’s no secret, when NFL owners sit around the fireplace with other nationalists and supremacists they probably call Jay Z, Colin Kaepernick, you and me by the same name that begins with “N”.
And if you don’t know, Jay and Colin both got paid. Jay did a deal and Colin settled a grievance for “rice and peas” compared to the billions that the NFL makes yearly.
There are a plethora of chosen Blacks in our history, Mobuto was chosen over Lumumba, Oprah was chosen or other TV hosts and Barack was chosen over Jesse and other Blacks that ran for US President, for instance.
We all are good at something. God gave each of us a gift that we must use. Chosen or not chosen, we must never give up on our own goals and beliefs.
Lucius is a contributing columnist to NNPA newspapers around the nation, and the author of “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing,” available on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere.