As Howard Bryant describes in “The Heritage: Black Athletes, a Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism,” the 1970s saw athletes’ paydays win out over their political stances. Bryant pinpoints the start of this shift to the spectacular success of Simpson’s career as a pitchman, which was later replicated by Jordan. In 1975, Simpson became the first African American spokesman for Hertz rental cars. Simpson’s success helped catalyze a shift in which athletes moved to capitalize on this era of new financial opportunities, causing their political activist peers like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to lose out. Bryant describes athletes like Simpson and Jordan as “greenwashed”: cleansed of anything related to a discussion of racial inequality, in order to sustain their appeal to advertisers and thus their financial success.

Nike played a role in this greenwashing turn in American sports. In 1990, while Jordan was the face of Nike, he shrugged off pressure to support the African American Democratic Senate candidate in North Carolina — his home state — purportedly explaining, “Republicans buy shoes, too.” Jordan’s comments came at the same time that Jesse Jackson was spearheading an African-American boycott of Nike products based on the company’s seemingly inequitable hiring practices. By endorsing Jordan, Nike, like other corporations, appeared to reward apolitical athletes and tout a risk-averse policy when determining which athletes would become the face of their next advertising campaign.