”...we’re gonna settle this racial shit right now…we’re playing these white folks for our freedom” (Dave Chappelle, in “Block Party,” 2006).
Sport has historically been a site where racial dramas have been played out between different social groups; it has provided a space where subordinate groups could oppose (and at times undermine) the social order. Thus the outcome of athletic competitions have long been imbued with a cultural and political significance that extended beyond the playing fields. Moreover, at a time when claims about the declining significance of race and racism have become part of contemporary racial discourses, the visibility and success of a handful of racially diverse people in sports which were previously white dominated is often regarded as evidence of racial progress, since it is assumed that their presence signals the absence of racial discrimination and racialized hostility.
This first paper examines a number of sport settings and sport figures to illustrate the sophisticated ways in which white racial power is conceived and reproduced in sporting practices and media representations at this historical juncture. I argue that manifestations of racism in one setting are linked to other settings; there is a pattern to the ways in which racial subalterns are marginalized and socially excluded in sport and in society. I suggest that sport operates as a key form of racetalk; sport is a key discursive terrain where racial meanings and inter-group relations are continuously produced and mobilized in ways which further the maintenance of white racial power and inequality. In sum, I aim to advance our understanding of “post race living in a raced world” (Ali, 2003, p. 18), by examining the ways in which racial discourses are made manifest in contemporary sport.
As critical race theorists remind us, too often the dominant norm of whiteness remains invisible and rarely explicitly interrogated in “mainstream” accounts and discussions. Yet whiteness is omnipresent and seeks to maintain the racial status quo by downplaying factors that continue to disproportionately advantage whites. The second paper seeks to explore and critique the power of whiteness as recently articulated within media accounts of the National Basketball Association. Specifically the paper interrogates the promotion of White European and North American stars as the latest rendition of “great white hopes,” and also explores how white, middle class norms of behavior structure discussions about the new dress code for that was recently imposed by the NBA administration on NBA players. The paper concludes with a discussion of the significance of these representations within selected North American contexts, especially those currently challenging Eurocentric hegemony from the position of a racially and ethnically diverse social order.
The phrase "racial signification of sport" is borrowed from B.Carington’s Sport, masculinity, and black cultural resistance, 1998, p.280 (Journal of Sport & Social Issues, 22, 275-298).
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