Abstract
Ben Carrington has an extended and robust track record as researcher, author and public intellectual in ‘race’ studies. Thus it was with keen interest that I read this book, to learn how he has further engaged with and developed this vital and socially important area of study. Sport Studies, as an area of scholarly study, has too often been overlooked and disregarded by sociologists. This is perplexing given the level of public consumption on the part of spectators, supporters and media watchers in the world at large. Perhaps critical study of sport serves to spoil the weekend interests. The ideology, practice and organization of contemporary sport provides fertile material for critical studies of gender, political ideology, globalization, social class, nationalisms, ethnic studies and race. Carrington’s book strongly reminds us that sport, perhaps more than other social institutions, serves to reproduce race, racial signification and racial discourse.
The cornerstone of Carrington’s case is twofold: that sport is mostly held to be apolitical, and the ‘black athlete’ has been constructed and maintained as a bounded category – a white masculinist racial frame. This frequently frames black citizens as both ‘typically black’ and yet ‘typically exceptional’ rather than ‘ordinarily human’.
The book is organized around an Introduction, Conclusion and four main chapters. According to Carrington, the so-named ‘black athlete’ was created via a boxing contest in Sydney, Australia in 1908. Pitted against the white Canadian Tommy Burns, Jack Johnson was positioned as an inevitable colonial endpoint that, Carrington suggests, was the aggregation of folklore and fable intertwined with pre-existing racial science.
This historic event, according to Carrington, served as the foundation of the role of sport in the maintenance of racial differences. In the remainder of the Introduction, Carrington analyses the contributions and shortcomings of many of the best-known theorists. For example, he reminds us that, as a Master’s student, Anthony Giddens studied socio-historical formations of sport yet Giddens’ wide-ranging work since then omits sport. Carrington acknowledges the significant contributions of several theorists but claims that his motivation to write Race, Sport and Politics was primarily because he found that the most influential radical works did not deal with sport.
In the first main chapter, ‘Sporting Resistance: Thinking Race and Sport Diasporically’, Carrington analyses the work of hegemony theorists Richard Gruneau and John Hargreaves, and then leads into the limits and criticisms – including by R.W. Connell – regarding the problematic neglect of colonialism as a conceptual issue. In developing the notion of diaspora, Carrington draws primarily upon the transatlantic migrations. Carrington’s background as a student and academic in Britain and the USA perhaps explains the heavy focus on the material derived from North America and Britain.
In the next chapter, ‘Sporting Redemption: Violence, Desire and the Politics of Freedom’, Carrington describes how black scholars and leaders took issue with Jack Johnson and his unlikely and unfulfilled potential to become a figurehead. Carrington discusses the evolution of racial science, the influence of which was very far-reaching and lasting. For example, the conviction and ‘common sense’ linked to racial science and sport performance is widespread – and still infiltrates sport science instruction in Australian universities.
In the chapter ‘Sporting Negritude: Commodity Blackness and the Liberation of Failure’, Carrington provocatively takes on the constitution of black bodies as commodities, spectacle and corporate servitude within the capitalist framework managed by a white masculinist alliance. Carrington’s analysis of the Mike Tyson/Frank Bruno heavyweight boxing contest at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1989 is appropriate as a prime example of the contrasting diasporic masculinities and mediated binary when Frank (the good black) meets Mike (the bad black). The analysis is detailed and thorough but, as in earlier sections, the examples, illustrations and posters are drawn from North America (mostly USA) and Britain.
In the final chapter ‘Sporting Multiculturalism: Nationalism, Belonging and Identity’, Carrington analyses the circumstances surrounding multiculturalism in contemporary Britain and the place of sport against the backdrop of the marketing of sporting multiculturalism, the Englishness of the Olympic bid, and the prospects for cultural diversity and sport.
This book is an invaluable resource for sociologists interested in taking sport seriously, especially those interested in the politics of ‘race’. The book is intense and challenging throughout but is a pleasure to read and not only comprehensively deals with the crucial issues, but most definitely extends our understanding. Carrington deserves considerable credit for decisively leading a reasonably well-researched area of ‘race’ and sport to new theoretical and intellectual frameworks. Race, Sport and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora fills a void and is at the leading edge of ‘race’, sport, politics and theory.