Athleticism Essay -- Sports, Politics

When I think about the black athlete I experience both pride and discomfort. In America where black people are still politically and economically disenfranchised, it appears that athleticism is the realm where black people excel and dominate. The discomfort comes from the observation that ‘domination’ is only viable when the black male body is harnessed in a way that doesn’t challenge white supremacy in other arenas (Collins, 2005). His body is controlled by contracts of powerful owners, regulated by standardized rules and by-laws from sporting associations and placed in physical spaces where his bodily performance is a spectacle for largely white audiences. There is something historic and normal about the sporting performance that has at once, drawn me in and isolated me. I didn’t quite know why. Ben Carrington’s work Race, Sport and Politics helps me to understand that these boundaries and meanings mark and define ‘the black athlete’ a nd that they can be understood as sites of political struggle. From the onset, I was captivated by his careful and through analysis of various social frameworks in order to utilize sports as a lens to understand the â€Å"intra relationship† between racial discourse, the performance of sport, and the politics in making the ‘black athlete’. In this paper I will explore the various concepts and contentions Carrington discovers as they apply to black males while he tries to formulate a framework to understand the complexity of race and sport and the politics created therein. I will focus on the key concepts essential to creating his theoretical framework specifically, ‘the black athlete’, the ‘white colonial frame’, and the ‘sporting black Atlantic’. The black athlete is a political entity and a global s... ...ind of black humanity. This actor performed feats of brute, physical, endurance, and ‘natural’ prowess which would place him in a category of animalistic sub-humanity. The assumed all body and no mind position of many of the African Diaspora. However within the sanctuary of modern sport, these feats became exceptionally superhuman; a show of raw masculinity and rational dexterity. As a political act, Johnson’s defeat of his white component sent ripples thought the world and attacked the foundation on which the very system that subordinated him was built. Using Carrington’s sense of the sporting black Atlantic. We can fully understand the significance and ramification of this feat. We can come to understand the global implications of this win for black people and see Jackson's â€Å"diasporic politicization† and his rise as an â€Å"anti white supremacist figure (p. 18)†.