Sport, Racism And Ethnicity

First Published in 1991. Over the past decade there has been a notable growth of interest in the study of sport in the contexts of race and ethnicity. A number of developments have contributed to stimulate this interest, but three sets of considerations appear to have been of decisive importance. First, black sportsmen and sportswomen have experienced remarkable successes in international sport. Second, such a disproportionately high level of athletic participation by various ethnic minority cultures has often been used by liberal-minded sports enthusiasts to presume that sport enjoys a certain degree of democratisation and equality. Third, that in certain areas of the world sport itself has been central to struggles of popular resistance against dominant groups. The papers in this volume not only consider the racisms experienced by various ethnic minority sportsmen and sportswomen in Britain, but also the way in which various racisms have been articulated in South Africa, the Caribbean, Canada and the United States. The following are indicative of the key issues addressed by this text: the extent to which cricket has stimulated the role of nationalist and racial self-consciousness in the Caribbean; the extent to which young black Afro-Caribbean sports-people are agents of racialised social control in Britain; the contribution of sport to popular struggles in South Africa; the experience of young children of South Asian origin of sport in Britain; and the extent to which Native American women are accommodated in sport in Canada. This book sets out to challenge many of the voluntarist racist cherished beliefs surrounding sport.