The Black Athlete in States of Crisis across Time and Space

Session Submission Type: Paper Session: Traditional Format

Abstract

The study of blackness and sport has historically been framed through a parochial analysis that privileges African American experiences and is often confined to national borders and narratives. While this historiography critically interrogates power structures along the lines of race, gender, and sexuality, it obscures the global, transnational, and diasporic mobilizations and articulations of blackness that are deeply informed by modern sport. Paying attention to blackness through global channels of modern sport illuminates the different constructions of Black identity that resist dominant and nationalistic narratives of blackness.

This panel engages the theme of the 2018 ASA Annual Meeting—“States of Emergence”—by interrogating the historical precedents and contemporary expressions of various crises in sport. Accordingly, the panelists seek to bring more international examples of crises in modern sport that may help explain the current “crisis,” particularly as it relates to race and the policing of athletic black politics. Largely lost in the legacy of the historiography of ‘the revolt of the black athlete’ are the transnational connections forged between black athletes and the ways modern sport became an international space that articulated a blackness free from racist performativities. This panel is centered around 1968, but extends into the contemporary period in an effort to showcase the diasporic and transnational affinities that Black athletes adopted to combat racial and gender discrimination. How can we better understand the relationship between modern sport and nationalism? What are the limitations of studying blackness and sport through a nationalistic lens? How can we understand modern sport as a space of racial domination and play? And what ways do black athletes navigate the systemic racial structures of modern sport? This panel suggests that any answer to these questions must take into account the diasporic and transnational circuits through which black athletes play. Sam White examines the relationship between the black athlete and the Olympic Games in the African-American children's magazine Ebony Jr! (1973-1985) and analyzes the ways in which the magazine pointed to sport as a space to examine the national and international flows of black identity and culture. Maryam Aziz explores how Cold War U.S. imperialism in East Asia allowed Black veterans to incorporate martial arts into Black Power institution building and freedom schooling. Jermaine Scott’s paper focuses on the 1996 European Cup where Surinamese-Dutch footballers complicated hegemonic expressions of Dutch nationalism and threw into crisis liberal narratives of Dutch multiculturalism. Lastly, Bennie Niles illuminates the continuity of black diasporic and athletic mobilizations, particularly around the support for South African runner Caster Semenya during the 2016 Summer Olympics, prompting a state of emergency around the gender binary in sport.

Sub Unit

• American Studies Association Annual Meeting

Chair

• Eric A Hall, Northern Illinois University

Individual Presentations

• The Storm Hasn’t Calmed Down Yet: Black Teamwork, Postcolonialism, and Dutch Multiculturalism - Jermaine Scott, Northwestern University

• Kicking Black: How U.S. Militarism Enabled Black Liberation Martial Arts and Third World Athletic Resistance - Maryam K Aziz, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

• Race, Sport, and Black Childhood: The Black Athlete and the Olympics in Ebony Jr! - Samantha White, Rutgers University-Camden

Comment

• Eric A Hall, Northern Illinois University