Hunley: Labor dispute doesn't make players 'slaves'

The radio show caller was on the right track.

He phoned LaVar Ar­rington and Chad Dukes’ show on WJFK, and he said the word NFL player Adri­an Peterson used in a recent inter­view shouldn’t be thrown around carelessly.

The star run­ning back for the Minnesota Vi­kings may be fleet of foot, but his tongue needn’t be so quick.

He told a Yahoo! Sports blog that playing big-time pigskin is “modern-day slavery.”

Yep, that’s right: “slavery.”

His logic: Professional athletes are used by team owners.

His thoughts before speaking: Apparently none.

OK. Maybe the football players aren’t getting the share of revenue that they should. They don’t think they are, obviously, or there wouldn’t be the current labor dispute, which has been described as a battle of “millionaires versus billionaires.”

But even if one takes into account that, yes, not ALL of the players are millionaires, the notion that people paid lots and lots of dough to play a GAME are “slaves” is preposterous, ridiculous, laughable and ... lots of other adjectives that mean just plain wrong.

As that radio caller told Dukes, some words aren’t meant to be used willynilly in public. No one should utter the term “holocaust” without thinking, for example.

Say what you want around your boys in private. But say it in an interview that can be read around the world, and prepare for the worst.

Of course, Peterson almost got off the hook — at least a bit — because the interviewer, Doug Farrar, took the comment down from the Shutdown Corner blog for a while.

Farrar claims that he doesn’t think Peterson actually meant to equate NFL players with those who were literally bought and sold in this country.

But why on earth, then, did Peterson use the modifier “modern-day”?

Look, no one’s saying that Peterson is some kind of cretin who should be banned from football and from giving interviews.

But words have meaning.

And, as Ralph Smith told me, whatever point Peterson wanted to make has been lost.

“Slavery’s devastation goes far beyond any perceived notions or implications involving an NFL workforce consisting of about 70 percent minority players working for ownership that is about 100 percent white,” Smith, president of the NAACP’s Prince William County branch, wrote in an e-mail.

“I would hope that those so quick to use racial analogies, particularly slavery-type analogies, would first understand the effects of slavery. For example, the complete disruption slavery had on the notion of family because family members could be sold away from one another at any time; the fact that slavery made men, women and children vulnerable to brutal violence, the likes of which even football players cannot imagine.” Slavery also caused severe emotional and psychological trauma, often resulting in self-hatred and low self-esteem, Smith noted.

“The slavery Mr. Peterson equates with his personal circumstances was about far more than money, free agency (spare me any thoughts that such comes close to slavery) and who is doing the work versus who is reaping the benefits.”

The NFL labor situation may seem like a big deal now. But, as Smith put it, actual slavery was “pure hell.”

There’s no comparison.

Jonathan Hunley is a staff writer at the News & Messenger. Contact him at 703-369-5738, or at jhunley@insidenova.com.