Racial and Ethnical Issues in Sport

Racial and Ethnical Issues in Sport

Through sport, people have crossed racial and ethnic borders and shown time and again that bigotry can lose. However, borders, particularly racial borders, endure and racisms border guards seem ever vigilant. Those of us who look at the Michael Jordans and Peles and optimistically argue that things have gotten better in recent years and will get even better in the future havent been paying that much attention to human history. Far too many of us have not noticed or chosen not to notice what literary critic Elaine Kim has referred to racisms traveling eye,which shadows our movements across the borderlands. Sport has long been identified as an assimilating tool in multiethnic and multiracial societies such as the United States. From another perspective, sport appears as an opportunity for individuals to make themselves over. By taking up a sport supported by the dominant culture, an ethnic minority group member is extended the freedom to fit in. Among those who criticize sports as a means of assimilation model are a number of thoughtful intellectuals who have articulated intriguing views on ethnicity, race, and culture.

They reject assimilation as a useful analytical tool while redefining multiculturalism in such a way that it allows us to better see cultural convergence and separation among distinct social groups as well as the dynamic relationship between power and culture. Gloria Anzaldua, for example, writes that in North America different racial and ethnic groups have constructed a borderland. For Anzaldua, a borderland is terrain on which two or more cultures edge each other,where people of different races occupy the same territory. To situate sporting institutions and practices as constituting a borderland through which people of various racial and ethnic groups travel makes us consider seriously the contradictory character of sports relationship to society and power. On the one hand, sport has offered individuals from marginalized and exploited groups opportunities to develop and reinforce meaningful ethnic communities, to forge a bridge across cultural boundaries, to acquire a sense of liberation and even mastery.

This is not to mention that commercialized sport has expanded the income and social status of a handful of athletes from historically oppressed and exploited racial and ethnic groups. On the other hand, sport has encouraged and buttressed racial and ethnic boundaries while supporting interrelated gender, class, and other socially constructed hierarchies. Border Crossings Sport can help develop an ethnic identity among people. For example, the largely agricultural people migrating to the United States from Japan during the late 1800s and early 1900s were like others possessing agrarian backgrounds in that they defined themselves politically in localistic terms. They identified themselves by way of their connections with family, kin, village, and region, and their identity with a place called Japan was not so close. In the United States, Japanese immigrants tried as well as they could to transplant their localistic social networks, while many seemingly displayed relatively little interest in seeming either Japanese or American.

In the process, they seemingly crossed boundaries between family and locality to link with other Japanese emigrants. In other words, they signaled the emergence of Japanese American communities in West Coast cities. Communities, for many us, seem to cross regional and national borders. If political scientist Benedict Anderson is correct, then nations are imagined communities and nationalism is the effort to build and maintain a sense of community among people who have little chance of seeing each other face to face. Sport has played an often underestimated role in engendering imagined communities among colonized people of color. Historian and political activist C. L. R. James has chronicled the relationship between colonialism, race, and sport in his classic Beyond a Boundary; it is a book about cricket, but as James reminds us: What do they know of cricket who only cricket know? His Beyond a Boundary forcefully breaks down the stereotype of cricket as strictly an elitist, white Englishmans sport. Indeed, the English colonizers brought their love of cricket to the West Indies. They sought to use cricket as a way to Anglicize as much as they thought possible the less plebeian black West Indians. However, even if cricket was intended as a helpmate for British hegemony,black West Indians found in cricket multiple possibilities, some of which could well have troubled the colonizers. James and many of his fellow black cricketers honored the ethos of fair play underlying cricket even if the source of this ethos was created by the English colonizers. However, by playing well against whites and doing so within the framework developed by English Victorians, black West Indian cricketers nurtured a sense of pride in themselves and in their own way helped construct a bridge among people of color throughout the British Empire. From the playground and sandlot to the professional arena, sport can aid the formation of racial and ethnic identities and communities across other social distinctions. The famous stars and teams often reflected and reinforced racial and ethnic pride, but so might the local athlete and the neighborhood team.

Ethnic community leaders, moreover, often considered sport important in resolving social problems and conflicts disrupting their communities. government interned over 100,000 West Coast Japanese Americans in concentration camps. Sports such as baseball, softball, and basketball helped maintain a sense of community among Japanese Americans during an immensely stressful period in their lives. Sport could also bring solace and joy to people such as the Filipino migrant workers, overworked and underpaid while laboring in Alaska during the early 1930s. However, in numerous Chinese American and Japanese American communities women eagerly played basketball and softball, as well as other sports. Historically and today, the international movement of people of African, Asian, Latin American, Middle Eastern, Pacific Islander, and European ancestry has often meant the transplantation of sporting traditions along with the transplantation of communal ties. In 19th century United States, European immigrants and their children played old worldsports, as well as baseball, basketball, and American football. Irish games were played in cities such as Worcester,Massachusetts, where a large Irish working class population resided.

The Scottish Caledonia games attracted enthusiastic participation. German immigrants and their children organized and joined turnverein societies in American communities from St. Louis to El Paso to San Francisco. Asian immigrants to the United States also transplanted sporting traditions. For example, sumo wrestling tournaments were held by Japanese plantation workers in Hawaii before the turn of the century. Star athletes seemingly reinforced community ties among members of racial and ethnic groups. Jackie Robinsons impact on African Americans is difficult to gauge. However, historian Jules Tygiel argues that the racial integration of mid 20th century Euroamericanorganized professional baseball by Robinson encouraged the subsequent development of the American civil rights movement. Robinson and black heavyweight champion Joe Louis became visible symbols of many African American aspirations during the first half of the 20th century. In her Making a New Deal, historian Liz Cohen claims that Joe Louiss popularity bridged the racial and cultural distinctions within Chicagos working class in the 1930s. In rooting for the great heavyweight, a Polish and African American worker could create a common ground between them that might otherwise have been lacking a common ground from which a relatively effective labor movement was launched in the 1930s. In the United States, renowned athletes like boxer John L. Sullivan, baseball players Joe DiMaggio and Hank Greenberg, and football player Jim Thorpe became ethnic symbols for Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Jewish Americans, and Native Americans, respectively. Similarly, the leading West Indian cricket players connected in a meaningful way to the experi ences of black Caribbeans. This was so not just because they were highly accomplished ballplayers, but because they remained tied personally to the communities they were perceived as representing. Of course, nowadays we are used to the notion that the superstars of sport transcend social boundaries. We are also becoming used to the notion that many of our sport idols might possess a different racial and ethnic identity than our own, while they get paid an enormous amount of money for playing games and advertising athletic shoes or breakfast cereals. Few can argue that sport has allowed some black athletes such as basketball star Michael Jordan and soccer star Pele to seemingly traverse racial barriers and become enormously admired and enormously wealthy. In the past and in the present, other athletes associated with marginalized and exploited racial and ethnic groups have crossed cultural boundaries to become universally respected and frequently well paid. However rich and famous many of these athletes became, it is important to remember that some of the more moving stories in sport history revolve around the efforts of highly gifted amateur and professional athletes to endure and even contest racial and ethnic discrimination. The German Jewish athletes who were denied places on Hitlers Olympic team come to mind. Of course, Jackie Robinsons experience is well known. Less known is the courage of another baseball standout, Henry Aaron,who faced down unspeakable racism as he chased and moved ahead of Babe Ruths homerun record.

That all sorts of people also cheered Aaron on is a reminder that star athletes can provide something of a common ground for people of different racial and ethnic groups. But even for lesser known athletes, sport can cross otherwise powerful racial and ethnic barriers. Athletic teams organized in the Hawaiian Islands have historically been more multiethnic and multiracial than in other regions in the American empire. mainland in using sport to enhance democratic and egalitarian experiences and nurturing highly skilled athletes of Hawaiian Islander and Asian ancestry. Sport, therefore, has allowed significant numbers of people of diverse racial and ethnic groups to move beyond ethnocentric assumptions developed about them. In many cases, it has even helped connect them as an imagined community, prepared to battle racism, nativism, and colonialism. It has given opportunities for some of them to make money and achieve honors. In other words, sport has its border guards, discouraging movement for some while allowing movement for others. It has made some borders more porous,while strengthening other racial and ethnic boundaries.

Sport and the Border Guard If we just go back 400 or 500 years, we can see how sport can reinforce cultural barriers between people. By the 1700s, the Europeans characterized many of Americas indigenous people as lazy. These Europeans defined hunting and fishing as sport and performing agricultural labor as work. Since many Native American groups depended at least in part upon hunting and fishing, they did quite a lot of it,much to the dismay of Europeans and then Euroamericans. The perception that Native Americans spent so much of their time engaging in sport and not in useful labor strengthened Europeans and Euroamericans in their beliefs that Native Americans were culturally and, perhaps, innately inferior. A somewhat similar kind of cultural barrier was erected in California during the mid 19th century. Before the United States obtained California as a consequence of the Mexican War, horse racing and other displays of equestrian skills ranked among the Californians favorite pastimes.

These equestrian events possessed a utilitarian value since so much of the regions economy was based upon cattle ranching and the horse riding skills of the people who worked on these ranches. Nevertheless, those from the United States who came to California during and after the Gold Rush generally frowned upon these Mexican pastimes. This was especially true among those Americans known as Sabbatarians. These pious Protestants professed a belief in hard work from Monday through Saturday but allowed that Sunday was, according to their interpretation of Gods will, a day of rest; a day of rest from work but also from play. Sunday, however, was a favored day for Mexican Catholics to engage in horse racing, as well as put on bullfights and other activities that repulsed good Protestant Americans. In the early 1850s, the Anglo controlled town government of San Jose banned horse racing. At about the same time, the California state legislature distressed the states Mexican population by passing a Sunday law that declared as illegal on Sunday many of Mexican Californians favorite sporting activities. In California and throughout the 19th century United States, the sporting practices of immigrants and children of immigrants often provoked nativistic responses. Immigrants were often seen as too inclined to patronize such disreputable activities as prize fights and too little inclined toward hard work and sobriety. Of course, class issues intertwined with the development of industrial capitalism weighed heavily here; especially when it came to Sunday sporting and recreational practices. Its industrial capitalists often viewed Sunday laws favorably, because they would encourage a rested and sober workforce ready for 50 to 60 hours of labor from Monday through Saturday. Into the 20th century, people identified with other racial and ethnic groups have been stereotyped as more interested in play than in work. Often such stereotyping becomes clearly racist, because it connects a persons interest with some kind of innate predisposition.

In the United Kingdom, Jennifer Hargreaves writes:Whereas the successes of white women in sports are assumed to be the result of dedicated training and self sacrifice or drug taking, particularly in the case of Eastern Europeans, the visibility of elite black sportswomen is assumed to be because they are genetically predisposed to be superior athletes. Of course, the view that people of African ancestry harbored innate talents for at least certain sports, especially sports requiring considerable running and jumping, has scarcely been unique to the United Kingdom.

The issue of whether blacks are naturally gifted athletically has long provoked controversy and has long helped construct a racial ideology in the United States, the UK, and elsewhere. Ironically, among the early supporters of athletic competition in Europe and North America there was little doubt that whites were more naturally gifted athletes than nonwhites. Indeed, for many, athletic competition buttressed Social Darwinism; races did exist and some races were more fit than others. Athletic competition, according to these racial ideologues, demanded brains, discipline, and pluck, as well as coordination and strength. Nonwhites might claim the latter two characteristics,but when it came to intelligence, discipline, and courage, they were lacking. Therefore, sport helped draw the color line in the United States and it helped justify European imperialism. If East or West Indians learned cricket, then those natives would take one step closer to Western Civilization, while, hopefully, gaining new respect for their colonizers.

Occasionally during the late 19th century and early 20th century, blacks such as Paul Robeson might play for college football teams and some African American boxers were prominent. Black heavyweight champions such as Jack Johnson and Muhammad Ali expressed an unapologetic awareness that they challenged white supremacy. Johnson, in particular, aroused white resentment and quests for white hopes to unseat him from his heavyweight throne during the 1900s and 1910s. However, for decades a racial ideology has proclaimed all people of color as lacking the characteristics of true sporting champions. Recreational sport has offered too many instances of racial and ethnic hierarchies as well. Swimming pools and other recreational facilities were declared off limits to Americans of color for decades. Private golf clubs and athletic clubs not only have restricted mem bership to white Americans, but they have banned Jews and others normally identified as white.

Even if unintentional, such discrimination persists, as Jennifer Hargreaves asserts is the case in the United Kingdom. Race, gender, and class factors combine, Hargreaves maintains, to limit the participation of British women of Asian ancestry in recreational sports. At the same time,many recreational activities remain too costly to be accessible to working class Asian women. In recent decades, the relationship between racial ideology and sport has been altered. The success of athletes of color in many competitive sports has, of course, weakened the argument that people of European ancestry are athletically superior. Instead, too many of those involved in sports in one form or another now argue that people of African ancestry possess some natural abilities that make them particularly adept in sports that require a great deal of running and jumping, such as basketball. On the other hand, it has also been claimed that people of African ancestry have a natural tendency to fail at competitive water sports. The fact that numerous athletes of color have achieved fame and fortune should not divert us from looking at the downside of all this.

As sociologist Harry Edwards points out, the stereotype of blacks as naturally inclined toward athletics has more than likely dissuaded African Americans from seeking careers more realistic than those of professional athletes and more beneficial, in the long run, to themselves, their families, and communities. Even those very few athletes of color who do become well known remain subject to discrimination. Disproportionately their employers and coaches are white. If team players, they disproportionately play positions that supposedly require more athleticism and less intelligence. And very often they will hear how naturally gifted they are from pundits and fans and how intelligent and hardworking their white teammates are. Admittedly, the last decade or so has seen less in the way of overt racial and ethnic hostility in the sporting world. Yet such hostility or indifference to such hostility persists. Football hooliganism emerging in the United Kingdom during the 1970s has expressed a white racial chauvinism frightening in its openness. But even more frightening is the silence expressed by many clubs and players in response to crowd abuse of players of color. Racial and ethnic conventions seem rooted in the historical development of sport; especially commercialized sport. Indeed, commercialized sports have long marketed race and ethnicity as a sound business practice. The close ties between commercialized sport and manufacturers of athletic shoes combined with the knowledge that such highly expensive shoes have found a market among African American ghetto youth has been and remains troubling. Consequently, there are two sure places to see an African American male on television; during a telecast of a sporting event or in an advertisement showing him jumping, running, or being physically intimidating.