Race, Football, Trauma: Arguments for and Against the Preservation of American Football

• In Event: Science, Technology and Sport - II: Sporting Bodies and Technologies

Abstract

In the growing awareness of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) and the effects of repeated subconcussive impacts on the brain, there is a small but growing movement to ban American Football. Many levels of the sport are targeted, but primarily youth tackle football. Recent rule changes have eliminated tackling in favor of ‘flag’ football, largely non-contact. But critics with an attachment to tackle football disparage such changes as making football “not football.” Others worry that without football, minority, primarily African American, youth in the U.S. will not have access to educational opportunities and career opportunities that are a ‘way out’ or ‘way up’ from chronic structural and racialized inequalities. This paper will review of media and public discourse on football and its attendant risks, attending to various stakeholders around American Football. It will contribute to conversations on race and/as technology, gender and masculinity, the public understanding of science, risk tolerance and risk contexts, occupational health and safety, and continuing the study of agnotology (ignorance studies) in science and technology studies (STS).

Author

• Jennifer Croissant, University Of Arizona