{"id":223,"date":"2024-06-01T13:52:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-01T18:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.radyfhs.umanitoba.ca\/anti-racism\/?p=223"},"modified":"2024-06-06T13:52:22","modified_gmt":"2024-06-06T18:52:22","slug":"june-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.radyfhs.umanitoba.ca\/anti-racism\/june-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"June 2024: Bodies in motion, bodies at play: What\u2019s race got to do with it?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cEveryone I see playing basketball is black. Everyone playing basketball must be black. If I am not black, I can\u2019t play basketball; if you are black, you must be a basketball player\u201d <\/p>Patricia J. Williams, 1997, p. 51. (Seeing a Color Blind Future. New York, NY: Noonday Press).<\/em><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Marcia<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I love to watch the Olympics, and I\u2019m looking forward to the Summer Games this year. As I watch events this year, I\u2019ll be holding questions from the blog Dr. Douglas has written below. Sport- like in some arenas of medicine- has some deeply engrained biologic assumptions about race. I wonder how these seep into my consciousness when I think about who is on the podium at what events, what this means about my assumptions about muscle mass and how this might infiltrate my thinking then when I\u2019m in clinical spaces. This year, and with the very helpful critical reflections below, I\u2019ll be challenging myself to see where I still carry assumptions about \u201cnatural ability\u201d and push myself to see the hard work, persistence, and discipline of the athletes.\u00a0 I\u2019ll ask myself the challenging questions about how income and opportunity gaps that do occur by race are impacting who we see represented in what events, in the results, and in the media coverage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Delia<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Continuing the conversation about sport matters, this month\u2019s blog takes up the question of race, sex, gender, and embodiment\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The WNBA (Coming to Toronto in 2026!), NBA, PWHL, NHL, soccer, tennis, pickleball, track and field\u2026 oh yeah, and golf \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although sport is a key part of North American culture, we tend to underestimate its cultural and political significance: it is a place where different histories, traditions, and myths meet and intersect, creating cultural meanings and identities which travel across different mediums, national borders and commercial markets. It is a place where major cultural and political debates about identity, community and politics are staged and performed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sport is a visual and a visible field. It is a place where social dramas play out between different groups \u2013 historically and in the present.  Recall Jesse Owen\u2019s victories at the Berlin Olympics, Althea Gibson breaking the colour bar at Wimbledon, Jackie Robinson\u2019s trailblazing in MLB, Taffy Abel and Willie O\u2019Ree\u2019s groundbreaking presence in the NHL, Evonne Goolagong\u2019s victory at the French Open, Cathy Freeman\u2019s run to gold at the Sydney Olympic Games, and South Carolina vs Iowa in the NCAA women\u2019s basketball final (I gotta give Coach Staley and co their flowers).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because sport (and physical activity) are bodily practices, they enable the continued observation and discussion of sex, gender identity and expression, and racial difference in analyses of performance. In this context, the preponderance of certain groups in particular physical activities, coupled with their absence in others, has been readily interpreted as evidence of the natural<\/em> differences in the ability and potential of different social groups. These patterns of participation are significant precisely because their visibility\/visual logic conveys power and privilege; over time what we see<\/em> becomes what we recognize and believe. potent cultural narratives about different groups are produced and normalized. In turn, because we have been socialized to be unaware of the ways in which power and privilege work in these settings, customary patterns of perception regarding sex, gender, racial, and sexual differences are perpetuated.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sport studies scholars CL Cole and Susan Birrell explore how sport is a difference and power producing system\u201d (1990, p. 18): it \u201cworks to differentiate winners from losers, the men from the boys, and the men from the women\u201d (p. 18). I would add that sport also works to differentiate different racialized, engendered (gender identity and expression) and embodied groups. Simply put sport constructs and normalizes a binary logic of separation \u2013 this either\/or framing does not allow for nuance, diversity, or complexity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Think of it like this – putting a basketball in a hoop and explosive speed are actions that are seen, rather than interpreted. This is one of the key elements of the power of sport; namely, it is an area of life that seems to exist in the realm of the natural<\/em> and is therefore not seen as requiring interpretation (Willis, 1982).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, things are not so simple. We are socialized to be unaware of how the \u201cseeing\u201d of race and other social differences are in fact an interpretation rather than an objective account of what is \u2018there.\u2019 For example, the hypervisibility of some groups and the exclusion of others tends to bolster prevailing beliefs about racial difference that rely on biology to explain performance and participation rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, the fact that the times for the men\u2019s 100 metres, the distance thrown for the shot put, etc. are different from those for women have been used as a way of reinforcing prevailing gender ideologies about a clear binary, one that confirms the so-called superiority of \u201cmen\u201d over \u201cwomen\u201d (Willis, 1982). In the same way the success of Black athletes in basketball and sprint events, reinforces longstanding beliefs about the presumed natural<\/em> athleticism of Black athletes. FYI – in the 1970s and 80s the sprint events were dominated by athletes from central and eastern Europe; in the 1960s 20% of the NBA consisted of Black players, currently over 70%, and the NHL is 97% white). Correspondingly, this presumed athletic superiority is believed to indicate bodily prowess over powers of the mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But ask yourself this: why isn\u2019t the visibility and success of white Europeans in winter sports not read as evidence of innate athletic superiority and the absence of intellectual ability, but instead as confirmation of discipline and mental application? This typical \u201creading\u201d of difference in athletic performance between different groups illustrates how the meaning and import of athletic performance and sporting events hold a cultural and political significance that extends well beyond the fields of play.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sport is a complex and contradictory space, for it is a place where the presence and success of 1 or 2 Black, Indigenous, or racialized minority athletes is seen as evidence of equality \u2013 or of the absence of racism \u2013 rather than exceptions to systemic racial exclusion and racial tension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sport is a crucial locus of social justice struggles. It not only teaches us to \u201csee\u201d difference, sport teaches us to regard some differences as more important than others, amplifies them, and then uses them to support beliefs about sex, race, and gender inferiority and superiority \u2013 beliefs which uphold social inequality (Willis, 1982).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We will be going on summer hiatus: the blog will return in September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Resources<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Birrell, S., & Cole, CL. (1990).Double fault: Renee Richards, and the construction and naturalization of difference, Sociology of Sport Journal, <\/em>7(1), 1-21.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Douglas, D. D. (2018). Disqualified! Serena Williams and Brittney Griner: Black female athletes and the politics of the im\/possible. In K. Farquharson, K. Pillay, P. Essed, and E. White (Eds.), Relating worlds, of racism: Dehumanization, belonging and the normativity of whiteness<\/em> (pp. 329-355). London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hartmann, D. (2002). Sport as Contested Terrain. In D. T. Goldberg & J. Solomos (Eds.), A companion to race and ethnic studies<\/em> (pp. 405-415). Malden, MA: Blackwell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

King, C.R. (2007). Staging the Winter<\/s> white Olympics: Or, why sport matters to white power. Journal of Sport & Social Issues<\/em>, 31(1), 89-94.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Willis, P. (1982). Women in sport in ideology. <\/em>In J. Hargreaves (Ed.), Sport, culture and<\/em> ideology (<\/em>pp. 117-135). London, UK: Routledge & Kegan Paul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cEveryone I see playing basketball is black. Everyone playing basketball must be black. If I am not black, I can\u2019t play basketball; if you are black, you must be a basketball player\u201d Patricia J. Williams, 1997, p. 51. (Seeing a Color Blind Future. New York, NY: Noonday Press). Marcia I love to watch the Olympics, … Continue reading “June 2024: Bodies in motion, bodies at play: What\u2019s race got to do with it?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[21,22,41,40,39,34,37,38,30,1],"tags":[19,8,12,10,7],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.radyfhs.umanitoba.ca\/anti-racism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.radyfhs.umanitoba.ca\/anti-racism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.radyfhs.umanitoba.ca\/anti-racism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.radyfhs.umanitoba.ca\/anti-racism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.radyfhs.umanitoba.ca\/anti-racism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.radyfhs.umanitoba.ca\/anti-racism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225,"href":"https:\/\/news.radyfhs.umanitoba.ca\/anti-racism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223\/revisions\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.radyfhs.umanitoba.ca\/anti-racism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.radyfhs.umanitoba.ca\/anti-racism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.radyfhs.umanitoba.ca\/anti-racism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}