The first thing to understand is that in the USA, 60% of all Black men in college will drop out.😢

The primary reason for dropping out is not grades. It is financial hardship. This is true for students of all races. Not all poor students are Black, but in the US, most Black college students are poor.

You can ask a US college student 2 questions:
1) Are you rich?
2) Is your family rich?

If the answers are "No" and "No," there is a very good chance that this student will not graduate college.

The "inciting incident" that triggers the student to drop out, is usually an unexpected expense of less than $4000. This could be car trouble, medical bill, childcare, or some other emergency.

CS professors at any school with lots of Black students will confirm: The Black students that graduate with Computer science degrees are not necessarily the best CS students at the University. They are the best of the 40% that survived the economic hardship trap.

It is a harsh and unforgiving filter.

Removing economic hardship as a factor in dropping out, would almost double the US Black college graduation rate. But how to do that? Hold that thought and let's talk about sports economics.

The NBA makes revenue through ticket sales, sponsorship deals (Official pizza of the NBA!), Apparel licensing (Official NBA Jersey!), And selling TV broadcast rights. Of this revenue, the league must pay ~50% to players.

If you add up LeBron's and every other NBA player's pay, it's ~50% of $10 billion USD.

The NFL pays ~50% of its $18B revenue to players.

The NHL pays ~50% of its $2.5B revenue to players.

Now for my European friends, take the revenue of the English Premiere League. Add that to the revenue of the Bundesliga, and add that to the revenue of La Liga. US college sports generate more revenue than those European soccer leagues... combined.🤯

Somewhere between $18B and $20B depending on who's doing the math.

Almost all of this revenue is generated from football and basketball TV deals

One TV deal, for one sport (football), for one sub league, of only ~12 schools, is over a $1B a year of college sports revenue:

https://theathletic.com/3520740/2022/08/18/big-ten-college-football-tv-rights/

But players don't see any of that $9B. In the US, it is illegal to pay these mostly Black, mostly poor, college players. 🙃

The players get "athletic scholarships" instead. The sum total of which, comes to less than 2% of league revenues.

The "student athletes" (read: employees), don't even get workers compensation if they're injured.

But it gets worse.

Not only does the NCAA prohibit schools from paying players, the students are forbidden from paying themselves!

If your kid is in college, and they're hungry, I can buy them a $5 taco and bag of chips. Unless they are a college athlete. In which case me even buying them a $5 lunch is a violation, and they could lose their scholarship.🤡

The students are kept in artificial poverty, because they're easier to control, and dependent on the "gift" of an athletic scholarship.

But athletes like LeBron and Steph don't just make money by being paid by the NBA. They also get sponsorship deals, and can have other jobs (sports analyst, run sports camps, etc).

The Name, Image, and Likeness bill, says that colleges in California cannot restrict kids from having sponsorship opportunities. You don't have to pay the athletes. But you can't stop the athletes from paying themselves. 👍🏿

We did California first, for the same reason that environmentalists target California emissions standards first. California is big enough that car manufacturers can't ignore the state (e.g. Camry not available in California). And they're not going to make two different models of every car for the USA (e.g. California Camry vs normal Camry). So every car sold in the US, ends up meeting the stricter California standard. 👍🏿

And some states' standards are just copied off of California's homework.🤷🏿‍♂️

But again, what do rich athletes have to do with millions of Black college graduates? Millions of people don't play sports?

In the US, there is a "graduation halo" around Black athletes. 🤯

But it makes sense:

If your cousin plays for the Warriors, they are not letting you drop out of MIT just because you can't afford an unexpected $4000.

If your uncle plays for the Raiders, they're not letting you miss a semester sitting falsely accused in jail, because you can't afford bail.

How would the US change if we could transfer ~$9B a year to some of its poorest, most vulnerable people? We're already seeing the positive results of the NIL bills, as predicted.

We're also seeing direct increased graduation rates of athletes. A poor student whose family needs $20K, can stay in college and earn that money. Before NIL, that kid would have had to leave college early to enter the draft to earn anything. They wouldn't have graduated, and they would have earned millions less.

There's a common meme that Black athletes are bad with money, because they play in the NFL, and are broke 3 years after they leave the league.

I just showed you that Damar Hamlin's *lifetime earnings* from the NFL are ~$1.6MM. Let's call it $500K after tax, agent, and manager. And he is a provider for his extended family. He probably covered expenses for extended family of about $200K.

He has 10 years of living a $30K a year lifestyle.

Not debating if he should've "helped his family less."

People are trying to figure out a way to give Black folk reparations for money and wages stolen during slavery. A worthy cause. But I'm also trying to stop money and wages from still being stolen today! In 2023!

Black folk in the US don't need "charity" or "handouts." We need folks to stop stealing labor without compensation.

College sports is one multi-billion dollar a year chunk. Civil asset forfeiture is another multi-billion dollar a year chunk (but that's another thread).

Now that you know how important wealthy family is to graduating from college in the USA, you should understand why so many of the friends you graduated with from Ivy League schools, and MITs, and CalTech's, and Pomonas, were Nigerian. 🙋🏿‍♂️

It's not just that African parents focus on education. It's that it's *much* harder to graduate college without a family that can provide rainy day safety net coverage. Not just harder for Black kids. Harder for anyone. This system hurts white kids too.

@phaedral Similar, but not completely.

I don't believe "It's not race, it's class!" Because data shows that for most things it's both, with race being the bigger component.

I do believe in solving general problems instead of race specific ones. Because by doing so, groups that are disproportionately impacted by harm, will get corresponding disproportionate benefit.

Example: What if cops didn't shoot *anyone* next year? Everyone would benefit! But Black folk would benefit disproportionately.