Racial Classification Systems and the Use of Race Logic in Sports
Race Logic in Euro-American History
Racial classification systems and ideas about the meaning of race were developed in the
1700s, as white Europeans who were exploring and colonizing territories around the
globe tried to explain why everyone in the world did not look or act as they did. They
assumed that their appearance and actions were normal and that any variations were
strange, deviant, immoral, irrational, or primitive. In this way, whiteness became the
standard against which all other things were measured and evaluated.
Between the seventeenth and early twentieth centuries, this approach led to beliefs
that people of color around the world were primitive beings driven by brawn rather than
brains, instincts rather than moral codes, and impulse rather than rationality. These
beliefs were used to justify the colonization and subsequent exploitation of these peoples.
White Europeans and North Americans also developed racial theories leading
them to conclude that any expressions of physicality and physical skills among people
with dark skin were signs of intellectual inferiority and arrested development. Such
theories, wrongheaded as they were, fit neatly with an oversimplified Darwinian model of
human evolution, in which mental traits were seen to be superior to physical traits among
humans and other primates. This approach led to the conclusion that white-skinned
people were superior beings who deserved to be in positions of power and control around
the world (this belief is called Social Darwinism). To whites, this race logic made perfect
sense, because they had “facts” to support it.
The belief that white-skinned people were intellectually superior, while people of
color were “animal-like savages” was very convenient to white colonial powers
(Hoberman, 1992). While it led some whites to view blacks as pagans who needed to be
“civilized” and have their souls saved, and hence were the “white man’s burden,” it
enabled other whites both to kill dark-skinned natives without guilt and to subjugate them
as slaves and indentured servants. Because it was so convenient, this race logic
eventually became institutionalized in the form of a complex racial ideology about skin
color, intelligence, character, and physical characteristics and skills.2
This race logic, or ideology, has been revised continually over the years to fit new
circumstances, explain contradictions, and justify new forms of racial discrimination. For
example, just after the Civil War, a surgeon in New Orleans who treated “colored”
soldiers wounded in the war noted that “at present, [my black patients are] too animal to
have moral courage or endurance” (Hoberman, 1992: 44). His conclusions suggested that
maybe “colored people” would eventually evolve into something less animal-like.
Then, when Africans and other people of color engaged in what were clearly
courageous behaviors, most whites used race logic to point out that such behavior among
blacks was a sign of ignorance and desperation, rather than real character. In fact, some
white people went so far as to say that people of color did not feel pain in the same way
whites did and that this permitted dark-skinned people to engage in superhuman feats.
Whites concluded that those feats were meaningless acts driven by animal instincts, not
by civilized human heroism. Of course, when whites did extraordinary physical things,
race logic led many whites to see their actions as indications of fortitude, intelligence,
moral character, and a “civilized” nature.
Whites in the United States and many colonized areas used this race logic to
justify slavery and the physical mistreatment of African slaves. During the early part of
the twentieth century, they used it to explain the success of African American boxers and
other athletes. For example, black males were believed to have unique physical stamina
and skills grounded in an absence of deep human feelings and intellectual awareness. In
fact, many whites even thought the skulls of black people were so thick that they could
not be bruised or broken by a white man’s fist (Hoberman, 1992). Thus, when black
boxers were successful, this race logic was used to explain their success.
A clear example of the race logic used during much of the twentieth century is
found in the media coverage of the highly publicized championship bout between Joe
Louis, the legendary African American heavyweight champion, and Italian champion
Primo Carnera. After Lewis defeated Carnera before sixty thousand people in Yankee
Stadium in 1935, sportswriters in the United States described him as “savage and
animalistic.” A major news service story sent all over the country began this way:
Something sly and sinister and perhaps not quite human came out of the African jungle
last night to strike down and utterly demolish . . . Primo Carnera. (Mead, 1985: 91)
Noted sportswriter Grantland Rice referred to Louis’ quickness as “the speed of the
jungle, the instinctive speed of the wild” (Mead, 1985, p. 91). Before another Louis fight,
New York Times sports editor Paul Gallico wrote a nationwide syndicated column in
which he described Louis in this way:
The magnificent animal. . . . He eats. He sleeps. He fights. . . . Is he all instinct, all
animal? Or have a hundred million years left a fold upon his brain? I see in this colored
man something so cold, so hard, so cruel that I wonder as to his bravery. Courage in the
animal is desperation. Courage in the human is something incalculable and divine.
(Mead, 1985: 92)
Despite hundreds of these stories, Joe Louis remained dedicated to representing
African Americans as an ambassador of goodwill to whites. However, despite his
dedication and gentlemanly behavior, he was still described as “a natural athlete . . . born
to listen to jazz . . . eat a lot of fried chicken, play ball with the gang on the corner and
never do a lick of heavy work he could escape” (from a story in a New York paper, cited
in Mead, 1985: 96). Race logic can be powerful, because it can shape and distort what
people see and how they interpret the world.
Recent history in predominantly white societies indicates that race logic
encourages people to see the world in terms of black and white. Many people learn to use
a form of “racial profiling” as they try to make sense of people, behavior, and social life,
especially when people of color are involved. Race logic elevates skin color and racial
classification to a position of prominence when it comes to perceiving and interpreting
information in the world around us. It makes skin color different from eye color, height,
weight, hair color, shoe size, and other physical traits when it comes to identifying and
understanding human beings.
This racializing of the world sometimes is difficult for white people to
understand, because whiteness has become normalized in predominantly white cultures to
the point that whites often do not think of themselves in racial terms. Few whites mention
“whiteness” in their self-descriptions, although references to skin color are clearly given
a high priority in the identity statements of most blacks in the United States and in many
other predominantly white cultures. When white people look in the mirror, they tend to
see human beings, or maybe men or women. When black people look in the mirror, they
often see black men or black women. Whiteness has become “colorless” to the point that
one of the privileges of being white in society is “never having to think about race, if you
don’t want to”—unless, of course, your sport in society teacher forces you to think about
it. A black person does not have this privilege, unless he or she lives in a setting where
everyone else is black and where nobody is affected by the actions of whites.
Race Logic in Sports Today
The use of race logic today is complex and often subtle, but it revolves around the
assumption of racial differences and the related assumption that differences are ultimately
grounded in biological factors. A more subtle assumption underlying dominant race logic
in societies where whites traditionally have power and influence is that whiteness is the
norm and that any variation from this norm constitutes something out of the ordinary,
something problematic or deviant, and something that requires study and explanation.
Sports provide many examples of this.
“Seeing” sport performances in black-and-white Skiers from Austria and Switzerland,
countries that together are half the geographical size of the state of Colorado, with
populations that together are one-twentieth the size of the U.S. population, have won
many, many more World Cup championships than U.S. skiers. Even though this occurs
year after year, people do not look to race-based genetic ancestry to discover why the
Austrians and Swiss are such good skiers. Everyone already knows why: they live in the
Alps, they learn to ski before they go to preschool, they grow up in a culture in which
skiing is highly valued, they have many opportunities to ski, all their friends ski and talk
about skiing, they see fellow Austrian and Swiss skiers winning races and making money
in highly publicized (in Europe) World Cup competitions, and their cultural heroes are
skiers. Race logic focuses attention on these cultural factors when the athletes are white;
thus, there has been no search for “ski genes” that can be traced to the white ancestors of
Austrian and Swiss skiers.
Dominant race logic has not led to studies looking for race-related genetic
explanations for the success of athletes packaged in white skin, even when the shades of
white and genetic histories vary among so-called Caucasians around the world. There
have been no claims that white Canadians owe their success in hockey to naturally strong
ankle joints, instinctive eye-hand-foot coordination, or an innate tendency not to sweat,
so they can retain body heat in cold weather. When heat after heat in the Olympic speed
skating finals involve white men and women, few people think about explaining
performance success in terms of the race-related genetic ancestry and the racial similarity
of the skaters. The “fact” of white success in these sports is not studied from a racial
starting point; whiteness is not “seen” because race logic has made it the taken-forgranted standard from which everything else is viewed.
However, when athletes with black skin excel or fail at a certain sport, regardless
of where they come from in the world, many people look for genetic explanations
consistent with dominant racial ideology. They seek to explain the successes and failures
of black athletes in terms of natural or instinctive qualities or weaknesses, rather than
experience, strategy, motivation, and intelligence. When the skin color of athletes is some
shade of “dark,” the discussion quickly turns to race-related questions, and people
embark on searches for the physical traits possessed by those people, even when success
clearly involves a combination of physical, psychological, and cognitive skills across
different sports and even when the athletes come in different sizes and shapes and have
racially mixed genetic ancestries. In the process, there is a tendency for many people to
ignore, discount, or understate the influence of social and cultural factors in the lives of
people of color. Of course, this is convenient for whites, because those factors often are
tied to ugly histories of colonialism, oppression, slavery, discrimination, and racism.
When people with dark skin dominate two or three highly visible spectator sports,
the editors at Sports Illustrated define this worthy of a long article “What Happened to
the White Athlete?” (Price, 1997). According to prevailing race logic, when blacks beat
whites it is an issue that must be studied and explained. Again, racial categories serve as
the starting point for asking questions, and the search for racial differences begins; if
differences are found, they are assumed to be the cause of success among dark-skinned
athletes. This is how race logic creeps into science and influences how studies are done
and how data are interpreted. Of course, scientists claim to be seeking truth, but truth
depends on the particular facts they choose to examine, the classification systems they
use to categorize the facts, and the theoretical frameworks they use to interpret the facts.
When race logic influences the identification of facts, the classification of the facts
identified, or the interpretations of the relationships among the facts, science reproduces a
view of the world that emphasizes racial difference rather than shared humanity. When
this happens, some people wonder if scientists ought to be more critically self-reflective
about how and why they do what they do. This is discussed in the box “‘Jumping Genes
in Black Bodies,” below.
Jumping Genes in Black Bodies (box)
When people set off on a quest to find a gene or combination of genes that explains the
success of black athletes, many of us who study sports in society have doubts about why
their search begins and where it will take us. The search for jumping genes is a good
example. There are three major reasons for our doubts about this search: (1) ideas about
the operation and effects of genes are oversimplified among many people in
postindustrial cultures, (2) jumping is much more than a simple physical activity, and (3)
skin color is never a good starting point for research.
Oversimplified Ideas About Genes
Many people in postindustrial societies have great hopes for genetic research. They see
genes as the ultimate building blocks of life, and many believe that knowledge about
genes will enable us to explain and control everything from food supplies to human
behavior. Therefore, when people are violent, they search for “violence genes”; when
people are smart, they look for “intelligence genes”; and, when people jump high, they
search for “jumping genes.” These searches lead many people to expect that, if we can
find the gene, we can control the condition or behavior it causes.
According to Robert Sapolsky (2000), a professor of biology and neurology at
Stanford University, this notion of “the primacy of the genes” leads to deterministic and
reductionist views of human behavior and problems in the real world. His point is that
human biology and behavior cannot be reduced to genetic causes and that, even though
genes are important, they do not work independently of the environment. In fact, research
shows that genes are activated and suppressed by many environmental factors, and the
effects of genes in our bodies are influenced by environment factors as well.
In other words, genes are neither autonomous nor the sole causes of important real
life outcomes associated with our bodies and behaviors. Genes are regulated by
chemicals that exist in cells and by chemicals, such as hormones, that come from other
parts of the body; furthermore, many genes are regulated by many external environmental
factors. Sapolsky notes that, even when a mother rat licks and grooms her infant, these
environmental factors begin a series of biochemical events, which turn on and influence
the effects of genes related to the physical growth of the infant rat. In other words, genes
cannot be disassociated from the environment that turns them on and off, and the effects
of genes cannot be disassociated from the environment in which other factors influence
the expression of those effects. Sapolsky is hopeful about genetic research, but he
explains that, as we learn more about genes, we also will learn more about the
environment and the interaction between the two.
Genes do not exist and operate in environmental vacuums. This is true for genes
related to diseases and genes related to jumping. Just because they are there does not
mean they will be turned on, and, when they are turned on, their effects may vary from
one environment to another. At this point, nobody has discovered jumping genes, and, if
such genes are discovered in the future, we also will learn about the various
environmental factors, in and outside the human body, that turn them on or off and
influence how they affect the body’s potential for being propelled off the ground. This
will be an exciting series of discoveries, but to assume that the existence and operation of
jumping genes is related to the color of a person’s skin is not warranted at this time.
Jumping is Not Simply a Physical Activity
Many people think that jumping is a simple physical behavior to study and explain.
However, jumping is not simply a mechanical, springlike action initiated by a few leg
muscles exploding with power. Instead, it is a total body movement involving the neck,
shoulders, arms, wrists, hands, torso, waist, hips, thighs, knees, calves, ankles, and toes.
Jumping also involves a timed coordination of the upper and lower body, a particular
type of flexibility, a “kinesthetic feel,” and a total body rhythm. It is an act of grace as
much as power, a rhythmic act as much as a sudden muscular burst, an individual
expression as much as an exertion, and it is tied to the notion of the body in harmony
with space as much as simply the overcoming of resistance with the application of
physical force.
In the case of jumping in sports, different athletes jump in different ways.
Gymnasts, volleyball players, figure skaters, skateboarders, basketball players, ski
jumpers, high jumpers, and pole vaulters all jump, but techniques and styles vary greatly
from sport to sport and person to person.
Furthermore, the act of jumping in societies where skin color and ethnic heritage
have important social meanings is even more complex, because race and ethnicity are
types of performance in their own ways (Early, 1998). These performances involve
physical expressions and body movements that are integrally related to the culturalkinesthetic histories of particular groups. As Gerald Early has noted in his provocative
article “Performance and Reality: Race, Sports, and the Modern World,” even playing
sports, becomes something racial and ethnic in those societies.
We also know that the relevance and meaning of jumping vary from one cultural
context to another. Jumping is irrelevant to the performances of world leaders, CEOs of
major corporations, sport team owners, coaches, doctors, and college professors. The
power and influence possessed by these people and the rewards they receive are not
dependent on jumping abilities. This is why the statement that “white men can’t jump” is
irrelevant to most whites (Myers, 2000). Outside of a few sports, jumping ability has
nothing to do with success and the achievement of power and influence in the world
today; white CEOs making a billion dollars a year don’t care that someone says they
can’t jump.
Jumping (along with sprinting and distance running) is important in certain sports
and in certain cultural settings around the world. This is why those who study sport in
society are concerned with understanding the historical, cultural, social, and economic
circumstances that make jumping and running important in some people’s lives and why
some people work so hard to develop their jumping and running abilities. After all, if we
did not know these things, how could we understand why some people are so good at
sports, why patterns of success vary from group to group, and why those patterns of
success change over time in different ways from one culture to another? It is clear that the
search for jumping genes is part of the total science of jumping.
Although there are probably a number of genes related to jumping potential and
ability, they have not been identified in scientific research. It is not wrong to assume they
exist, but it is naïve to assume they operate independent of environmental factors or that
they are tied to skin color or a socially constructed racial classification system. At this
point, nothing is known about the environmental factors, either internal or external to the
human body, that might turn those genes on or off or influence the effects of the genes on
a body and its potential to jump. Furthermore, it is doubtful that anyone will ever identify
genes related to different types and styles of jumping in sports; genes tell us little about
the complex physical and cultural performance of a slam dunk orchestrated by NBA
player Vince Carter!
Skin Color is Not a Good Starting Point for Research on Human Performance
When someone says, “White men can’t jump” or “Blacks are great jumpers,” he or she is
inferring a comparison based on a socially constructed racial classification system. This
inference and the racial categories used in the comparison are related to long histories of
race relations and racism in the United States and many other societies. Although some
people think it is important to study jumping and jumping ability, it is not a good idea to
initiate research based on racial classification systems, which have been developed and
changed in connection with complex social and cultural factors.
Research based on racial comparisons has inherent methodological problems.
Jumping research is a good example. If the jumping abilities of blacks and whites are
compared and average group differences are found, researchers then do additional studies
to determine if blacks have physical traits that enable them to jump higher than whites. If
such traits are found, there is a tendency to assume that they are grounded in race-related
genetic differences and that it is important to trace the genetic ancestry of racial groups,
especially certain people of color, to further document the existence of racial
characteristics and differences.
This overall approach is problematic, because it involves a search for physical
differences that begins with research questions based on a socially constructed racial
classification system and ends with information about whether jumping is related to that
classification system. This tells us little about jumping and human performance
independent of social notions about race. No matter what is found in the research, the
racial classification system used by the researchers becomes central to their
understanding of jumping and their interpretation of jumping behavior. Such research
does more to reproduce various forms of racial separation than it does to lead us to
scientific truths about human performance.
To avoid this outcome, scientists must know about the race logic that permeates
the cultures in which they live and do their research. This will enable them to assess the
validity and usefulness of the facts they choose to study and the truths they discover. If
they don't do this, their research will deepen our sense of racial separateness in the world
instead of deepen our knowledge about the complexity of human behavior and the full
range of human genetic variation. This is a potentially dangerous way to do science.
What do you think?
___________________________________________________
Noted African American author Nate McCall has summarized how many blacks think
about sports and race logic issues with this statement:
I love basketball, but I hate the grotesque contradictions we Americans bring to the game.
. . . [Many blacks and whites] are driven by a crude assumption that’s so firmly
embedded in our psyches we don’t even see it half the time: It’s the deep-rooted belief
that blacks are more gifted as athletes than whites but that God somehow shortchanged
brothers on brains. (1997: 9)
Race logic and a sense of destiny among African American men Is it possible that race
logic influences how African Americans interpret their own physical abilities and
potential as athletes? This is a controversial question. My guess is that many young black
men and women in the United States today grow up believing that the black body is
special and superior when it comes to physical abilities in certain sports. This belief could
inspire some young people to think that playing certain sports and playing them better
than anyone else in the world is part of their biological and cultural destiny. This
inspiration might be especially strong if young blacks felt that their future could involve
low-wage, dead-end jobs on the one hand or big money and respect gained from slamdunks, end zone catches, or Olympic sprint victories on the other hand. Even boxing
might look better than a demeaning, minimum-wage job!
Figure 9.1 outlines a hypothesized sociological explanation of the athletic
achievements of African American male athletes. A look at U.S. history shows that
dominant racial logic has fostered stereotypes that emphasize black male physicality and
black athletic superiority. During that same history, racial segregation and discrimination
have limited life chances for black men in most spheres of life. However, there have been
growing opportunities for black males of all ages to develop skills and achieve immense
status and money in a few sports, and there has been widespread encouragement for them
to take advantage of those opportunities.
When you put these things together, you can certainly understand why many
African American males might grow up thinking that it is their biological and cultural
destiny to become great athletes in certain sports. They would view as heroes others who
had fulfilled that destiny and then use them as models as they dedicate themselves to their
own quest for athletic stardom. Since public school sport programs offer coaching,
equipment, facilities, and opportunities to develop skills in basketball, football, and track,
the pursuit of their perceived destiny is possible, even in the absence of the material
resources needed to play other sports.
This combination of factors has created a powerful force in the lives of millions of
young people. This force has driven more than a few young African American males to
dedicate the very fabric of their being to achieving greatness in certain sports. Is this what
has led to the notable achievements of African Americans in basketball, football, track,
and boxing? Is this the reason African American men have been winning gold medals in
the Olympics for many years? Is this why young African American women are following
in their brothers’ footsteps in certain sports? When a group of people feel destined to
greatness in an activity, when their feelings are grounded in a race logic emphasizing the
naturalness of their achievements, and when their social worlds are structured so that
those feelings make sense in their lives, it shouldn’t be surprising when they achieve
notable things.
Race logic is powerful, especially when it is combined with other factors that lead
it to be used as a framework for self-evaluation and self-motivation. Three centuries ago,
white Europeans felt it was their biological and cultural destiny to explore and colonize
other parts of the world. This sense of destiny was so powerful that it drove them to
control over three-fourths of the globe! This frightening and notable achievement was not
due to the genetic ancestry of white Europeans, although some of them would like to
think it was.
The challenge of escaping race logic
In racially and ethnically diverse settings, where people from different backgrounds
interact frequently and in many contexts, race logic often is defused as people deal with
each other as individuals and discover that they have many similar and different
characteristics and abilities. However, in some U.S. schools where blacks are a distinct
numerical minority, there is a tendency for black male student-athletes to be “tagged” in a
way that subverts their success in claiming other identities. For example, educator
Amanda Godley (1999b) studied student interactions in a California high school and
discovered that, when black male student athletes excelled in academic work and were
placed in honors classes, their identity in the culture of the school and their interactions
with teachers and fellow students, even in the honors classroom, focused on their athlete
status. Other students in honors classes, even the Asian and white students who played on
varsity teams were identified as honors students rather than as athletes. Data on black
women student-athletes in honors classes were inconclusive, but black women honor
students who did not play varsity sports were identified by others and by themselves as
honors students, rather than in any race-related manner.
University of Michigan professor Keith Harrison has found similar identity
dynamics on major university campuses. As two black male student athletes in his study
noted, “Everyone around perceives us being there only for our physical talents,” and
“Everything is white [on campus], only sports [are] for blacks” (1998: 72). This is not a
new phenomenon (Adler and Adler, 1991), but its consequences are still frustrating for
those who want to expand their social identities beyond sports.
More research is needed on this issue, but it seems that, when being a black male
is combined with playing sports, it may become difficult for some men to escape the
subtle race logic that encourages people to bind race and sport together in the identity
politics that exist in certain settings. If this means that high school culture enforces a
student-versus-athlete dichotomy for certain people, and that black males and some black
females who excel at sports face academic marginalization in the cultures of some
schools, race logic subtly constricts how these individuals might connect with fellow
students, teachers, and the institution of the school. We need to know more about when
this does or does not occur, and how it affects everyone involved.
Race logic and sport choices among whites A few years ago, I invited five children to be
on a youth sports panel in my sport in society course; all were ten- to twelve-year-olds,
heavily involved in sports, and white. During the discussion with the college students, a
sixth-grade boy known in his nearly all-white elementary school for his sprinting and
basketball skills was asked if he planned to try out for those sports when he went to
junior high school. Surprisingly, he said no. When asked to explain, he said, “I won’t
have a chance because all the black kids at the junior high will beat me out.” He went on
to point out that this did not upset him, because he was a good soccer player and distance
runner, too. He said he would try out for those sports instead of sprinting and basketball.
He also said he had never played with black or Latino children while in elementary
school.
About the same time this sixth-grader was using his ideas about race to make
important sport participation decisions, a white male high school student with outstanding
skills in football and basketball was asked by a local sportswriter what sport he planned
to play in college. The young man, who was being heavily recruited in both sports by
many top universities, said, “I guess, right now, I’d take football because it’s more unique
to be a 6-6 quarterback . . . than a 6-6 white forward” (Routon, 1991: C1, emphasis
added). This young man was taking into account his whiteness and his ideas about race as
he assessed his chances for success as a college athlete.
Both of these student-athletes had watched sports on television, had listened to
people talk about the abilities of athletes, and in the process had developed their own
ideas about race, physical abilities, and chances for success in various sports. Their
whiteness, a taken-for-granted characteristic in the rest of their lives, had a major
influence on their decisions about their athletic futures. In fact, they voluntarily limited
their options because of their skin color.
Systematic data on this issue are scarce, but some studies indicate that whites in
certain situations do avoid participation in sports where blacks predominate, or, if whites
do participate, they don’t think they have a chance to excel relative to the blacks they
compete with. This may be why the times of white runners in certain sprints and longdistance road races have actually become slower over the years; whites’ genes have not
changed, but whites’ choices and motivation have changed (Bloom, 1998; George, 1994;
Merron, 1999; Weir, 2000).
Again, this is a race logic issue, which needs to be studied; as race logic becomes
wrapped up and disguised by other issues and then expressed in more subtle and indirect
ways, researchers must become more sensitive to a fuller range of dynamics in social life.
Past expressions of race logic were quite easy to document; current forms are more
difficult to identify, although they remain subversive forces in organizations and social
life as a whole (cf., Myers, 2000).
Race Logic, Gender, and Social Class
There are complex interconnections between race logic and gender logic in the social
world of sports. For example, research suggests that the implications of race logic are
different for black men than for black women (Corbett and Johnson, 2000; Daniels, 2000;
Majors, 1998; Messner, 1992; Y. Smith, 2000; A. Solomon, 2000; Winlock, 2000). This
is true partly because the bodies of black men have been socially constructed and viewed
differently than the bodies of black women over the years. Whites in the United States
have grown up fearing the power of black male bodies, being anxious about the sexual
capacities of those bodies, and being fascinated with their movements. Ironically, this has
created circumstances in which black male bodies have come to be valuable
entertainment commodities, first on stage in music and vaudeville theater, later on
athletic fields. Black female bodies, on the other hand, have undergone different social
constructions (Corbett and Johnson, 2000; Winlock, 2000). They’ve been sexualized in
the image of the promiscuous welfare queen, but not feared; they’ve been defined in
terms of domestic labor, but not defined in ways that would make black women uniquely
valuable entertainment commodities on athletic fields.
Richard Majors (1998), founder of the Journal of African American Men, has
suggested that, as black males have struggled to establish their masculinity in terms
recognized in U.S. culture, some have developed a presentation of self described as “cool
pose.” Majors explains that black men in the United States have accepted the dominant
definition of masculinity in American culture. They have bought into the idea that men
should be strong breadwinners and protectors in their families and dominant in their
relationships with women. However, their chances for success in institutional spheres,
such as education, politics, and the economy, where they might establish who they are as
men in the terms that other males have used, have been limited by the prevailing race
logic.
As African American men over the years have faced limited life chances, they
have experienced a combination of frustration, self-doubt, anger, and even emotional
withdrawal from schools, families, and the mainstream economy. Black males in U.S.
culture have coped with these things “by channeling their creative energies into the
construction of unique, expressive, and conspicuous styles of demeanor, speech, gesture,
clothing, hairstyle, walk, stance, and handshake” (Majors, 1998: 17). These expressive
styles are the forms of interpersonal self-presentation that Majors describes as cool pose.
Cool pose is all about achieving a sense of significance and respect through
interpersonal strategies when one cannot achieve significance and success in jobs,
politics, and education. Cool pose is also about being “bad,” about being in control,
tough, and detached. Cool pose says different things to different people. To the white
man, it says, “Although you may have tried to hurt me time and time again, I can take it
(and if I am hurting or weak, I’ll never let you know).” It also says, “See me, touch me,
hear me, but, white man, you can’t copy me” (Majors, 1986: 184–85). In general, cool
pose is one of the ways in which black males who face status threats in the culture have
used physicality in the production of masculinity. This occurs even among first- and
second-graders in inner-city U.S. schools (Hasbrook, 1999; Hasbrook and Harris, 1999).
Majors suggests that cool pose has become part of the public personas of many
black males in the United States and an integral part of the sports in which many athletes
are black men. Is this how “style” got to be such a big part of basketball? Is this why
some black athletes are known for their “talk” as well as physical skills? Do black men
use cool pose to intimidate white opponents? Does cool pose sell tickets and create
spectator interest in college basketball, the NBA, and football? Do people come to see
dunks and other moves inscribed with the personas of the men who perform them? Is
cool pose the result of what happens when black men face a combination of race logic,
gender logic, and the realities of class relations in the American economy? Majors says
yes, and his point is worth considering (cf., Wilson, 1999).
Black women athletes face some of the same challenges faced by black men.
However, Donna Daniels, an African American studies scholar from Duke University,
suggests that aesthetic norms for females in predominantly white cultures have been
racialized, so that black women athletes exist outside the norm. Therefore, they must
carefully “monitor and strategize about how they are seen and understood by a public not
used to their physical presence or intellect, whether on the court, field, or peddling a
product” (2000: 26). If they are not careful, there is a danger that people will interpret
their confidence and intelligence as arrogance and cockiness. This means that they must
tone down their toughness and appear amicable and nonthreatening, lest they be defined
as outsiders.
The marketing people at the WNBA were so sensitive to this issue that, when they
first promoted the new league, they presented ad after ad highlighting black players who
had modeling contracts or newborn babies (Banet-Weiser, 1999; A. Solomon, 2000).
When lip gloss and babies were not used, the ads depicted nicely groomed black women
players in nurturing and supportive roles, especially with children. Even the intense
training and thoughtful strategizing of Venus and Serena Williams often have been lost in
comments about their “natural abilities” and “all those strange beads in their hair.”
Journalists and tennis spectators seem to have a difficult time fitting these women into
their racialized ideas about beauty and femininity in U.S. culture; therefore, they click
onto the website for Anna Kournikova, the blond Russian-born player, to find images
more consistent with dominant aesthetic norms for females, or they just watch figure
skating or gymnastics, where nearly all the images are consistent with those norms.
Sport Participation among Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the
United States
Sports in the United States have long histories of racial and ethnic exclusion (Abney,
1999; Bretón, 2000; Brooks and Althouse, 2000b; Corbett and Johnson, 2000; Eisen and
Wiggins, 1994; Harrison, 1998; Shropshire, 1996; Wiggins, 2000). Men and women in
all ethnic minorities traditionally have been underrepresented at all levels of competition
and management in most competitive sports, even in high schools and community
programs. Prior to the 1950s, the organizations that sponsored sport teams and events
seldom opened their doors fully to blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian
Americans. When members of minority groups played sports, they usually played with
one another in segregated games and events.
Sport Participation and African Americans
Prior to the 1950s, most whites in the United States consistently avoided playing with and
against blacks; blacks were systematically excluded from participation in whitecontrolled sport programs and organizations. Blacks formed their own baseball and
basketball leagues. Occasional games with white teams were held behind closed doors,
but they were not considered official, and they did not affect the records of white teams.
Because black teams sometimes beat even the best white teams and because whites
rationalized the exclusion of blacks from white leagues by the notion that blacks didn’t
have the character or fortitude to compete with whites, these games received no publicity
in the white press.
Since the 1950s, the sport participation of blacks has been concentrated in a
limited range of sports. Even as we begin the twenty-first century, the 35.4 million
African Americans are underrepresented in or absent from most sports at most levels of
competition. This is often overlooked because those who watch boxing, track and field,
college and professional football and basketball, and major league baseball see many
black athletes. However, these make up only 4 of the 44 men’s and women’s sports
played in college, 4 of the dozens of sports played at the international amateur level, and
5 of the many professional sports in the United States. There is a similar pattern in
Canada and in European countries with strong sporting traditions. Many people forget
that there is a virtual absence of black athletes—male or female—in archery, auto racing,
badminton, bowling, canoeing/kayaking,