Week 9 - Race Ideology and Sports

Question 1

Ethnicity and Race definition

Answer 1

Ethnicity: “A form of identification
based on an ideology of a common history and common social and cultural
practices, such as language, religion, and history.

Race: “Socially constructed distinctions
between groups of people based on
physical or genetic characteristics,
such as skin colour, hair type, and
facial features.

Question 2

Racial ideology

Answer 2

“A web of ideas and beliefs that people use to give meaning to specific physical traits such as skin colour and to evaluate people in terms of
how they are classified by race”

Question 3

Racism definition

Answer 3

“attitudes, actions, and policies based on the belief that people in one racial category are inherently superior to people in one or more other categories”

Question 4

A brief history of racism

Answer 4

Most cultures have had notions of racial hierarchies, though these ideas became particularly common during the period of European expansion (beginning in about 1450)

Racial classification systems were developed as Europeans explored and colonized the globe and found that there were physical differences between people. These systems were used to justify things like slavery

Scientific racism:
Mid-1800s – 1930s (approximately): scientists claimed that they had “scientifically” concluded that Europeans were superior intellectually, physically, and culturally

Question 5

Myth of race

Answer 5

-All species, including humans, contain some variation among
their members

■ Isolation and genetic differences of plant and animal species
– In human history, no group was ever isolated long enough or completely enough to develop sufficient differences to warrant classification as a different “race”

■ Human Genome Project: humans are 99.9% identical at the
genetic level

Question 6

Concept of Race

Answer 6

-Racial categories are social
creations based on meanings
given to selected physical traits

■ Race is not a valid biological
concept

■ Racial classifications are
socially constructed

Question 7

Race as a social construction

Answer 7

Perceived physical differences given
meaning by their social context

■ Italians, Greeks—even
Irish—immigrants?

Question 8

Racial classification systems

Answer 8

“Race” is a primitive but
powerful classification system

■ Based on a two-category
classification system premised
on the “one-drop rule”

– The “one-drop rule” was
developed by to insure the
“purity” of the “white race”
and property control by
white men

Question 9

Race is a doubled edged sword

Answer 9

Can put minority groups on map/bring more attention

Can also be subjected to discrimination

Question 10

Sports and Racialized Athletes

Answer 10

Few other institutions showcase the achievements of visible
minorities so publicly and extensively

• Sports offer a platform for racial representation and a vehicle
  for activism
• Sports also enable cross-racial interaction and cooperation

Question 11

Sports and Radicalized athletes pt 2

Answer 11

Racial minorities’ experiences within physical culture spaces “have been structured by and reflective of a given era’s racial hierarchies” (Pitter et al., 119).

Sports are also sites for the development and proliferation (spread) of racial ideologies

Sports are producers and products of racial
ideologies (it is a ________ relationship)

Question 12

“Scientific” racism and sport

Answer 12

• early 1900’s: Strong societal associations between race, masculinity, and sporting excellence
• Search for abnormal natural traits: How black athletes may have an extra heel bone.
• They proposed that physical superiority was at the expense of intelligence in African American individuals

Question 13

Sports and biological essentialism

Answer 13

Black athleticism is both devalued and
exaggerated.

Black athletes’ success in the early 20th century attributed to unfair “natural” advantages
– Threat to (perceived) white racial superiority

■ Just how threatening?
– Jack Johnson (boxer) - early 1900s U.S.A.
– First Black American to hold the
World Heavyweight Championship title
– “the great white hope” = _______
– What happened to films of his winning matches?

Question 14

Black girls run

Answer 14

As of 2016, only 8% of recreational distance runners were Black. (United States statistics)

Themes arising from Black Girls Run! Research (Smith-Tran 2021):

■ Desire to run with others who look like them (“reference group”)

■ Foster social connection and community

■ Challenge statistics and dominant narratives about Black women