By Perry Green, AFRO Sports Editor, pgreen@afro.com
The NCAA has been under fire lately as several high profile figure and celebrities have criticized the association for making billions in revenue off of college athletes, while restricting the actual players from profiting from their talents. Even NBA megastar LeBron James spoke out bashing the NCAA, calling it flat out “corrupt.”
Kylia Carter, mother of Duke freshman star Wendell Carter, is the latest to speak out against the NCAA, comparing it to slavery.
Kylia Carter, mother of Duke freshman star Wendell Carter (pictured), is the latest to speak out against the NCAA, comparing it to slavery. (Courtesy photo)
“When you remove all the bling and the bells and the sneakers and all that…you’ve paid for a child to come to your school to do what you wanted them to do for you, for free, and you made a lot of money when he did that, and you’ve got all these rules in place that say he cannot share in any of that. The only other time when labor does not get paid but yet someone else gets profits and the labor is black and the profit is white, is in slavery,” Carter said during a panel discussion at an Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics forum Monday in Washington, D.C., according to ESPN.
Carter, who once was an NCAA student athlete herself as a member of Ole Miss’ women’s basketball team during the 1980s, was very emotional when she began to talk, coming to tears as she detailed how her mother and grandmother both picked cotton during her childhood years growing up in Mississippi. Carter went on to explain how she felt the NCAA can’t be trusted.
“Should the NCAA be removed? Yes, because I don’t trust it,” Carter said, per ESPN’s report. “You’re not to be trusted because your intentions are clear. Let’s call this group in the middle, let’s call it something else. Let’s put some real reform in there and call it something different and get rid of the current status quo because it’s based on indentured servitude.”
The forum was mainly attended by “White high-ranking university and NCAA officials,” according to ESPN, causing Carter to hold back on her opinion of the NCAA. But she told reporters later in the hallway after the meeting that it felt like the NCAA intentionally built its league to turn student athletes into modern day slaves.
“This would be even harder to say in the crowd, but I can say it here,” Carter told ESPN. “It feels intentional. It feels like it was built this way intentionally. I can’t move that from my thoughts.”
