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Chapter 1

Fight of the Century

In the dawn of the twentieth century, and as Jim Crow beget the social and political mores that bound ideas of race, class, and gender, black athletes emerged from a black populace subjected to the ravaging conditions of racial discrimination and segregation. The first generation of blacks American born as free men and women were coming of age at a time when prominent black thought-leaders, Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois, publicly contested their own ideologies and philosophies, policies for negro advancement, as well as strategic pathways to actualize racial equality and full citizenship for blacks. At the same time, the prevalence of lynching as a form of political and social dominance threatened the lives and communities of all black persons (Equal Justice Initiative, 2017). To be black in this era meant to be all too familiar with the racial terror of lynching. To be black in the shadows of this era was to be constantly reminded of your life’s entangled reality with the threat of the most horrid sight of strange fruits or the frightening scene of the ashes of flesh drifting in the wind through your community. To be black during this time meant, also, to be absorbed by the unimaginable rise and rousing affairs of a new negro who challenged the sociocultural constraints of white supremacy (Gates, 1988) with his gloved fists at center ring and his ostentatious lifestyle taunting twentieth-century imaginations. To live in the dawn of the twentieth century, as man or woman of any race, meant to know of the provocative life and stimulus of dynamic debate, widely known as the boxer, Arthur John “Jack” Johnson (Ward, 2004).

The Book of Johnson

The title of the world’s heavyweight champion was reserved for white men only. That was, until 1908. The wall of white reluctance to entertain the notion that a black challenger be fit to oppose a white boxer for the symbolic title of ultimate manhood and physical superiority came down as Jack Johnson and Tommy Burns stood upon the same boxing canvas December 26, 1908. For the first time, the world’s champion would be black. On the heels of Johnson’s overwhelming victory over Burns, the search for a “Great White Hope” ensued (Roberts, 1985; Ward, 2004). The phenomenon of a search for a white hope was characterized by a rampant quest for any white challenger to unseat Johnson from his title as champion. At the core of this quest was a national plea to return the champion status back to the white race. White optimisms were hopeful that the dethroning of Johnson would also restore the natural order of race relations aligned with racist theology and biological rationalizations used to defend the ideas and racial projects of white supremacy. The racially motivated search and auditioning of white boxers would lead to a face-off with Jim Jefferies, a retired heavyweight champion. Jefferies had retired undefeated six years earlier, in 1904, but seemed by many to be the greatest hope to dethrone Papa Jack (Roberts, 1985).

The Johnson verse Jefferies fight in 1910 took place under a summer’s sun on the 4th-of-July in Reno, Nevada. The fight was publicized as the “fight of the century” (Burns et al., 2005; Gates, 1988). Implications of this unprecedented fight reached far beyond individual aspirations of each fighter to be crowned the undisputed champion. So much more was at stake. The symbolic burden of an entire race resting on the shoulders of the respective fighter was likely visible to every witness within eyeshot of center ring. For whites, Jefferies was, at once, a physical and figurative representation of white hopes to safeguard white superiority. He mirrored their deepest fears of losing a seemingly tangible stronghold on the sovereignty of racial superiority. He was also the physical manifestation of their fears that the unrestrained retributions of blacks would be enthused by a black victor. Johnson, however, was a representation of the black optimism to expose the distortions of white superiority. Some feared the repercussions that might be taken out on black communities if Johnson were to lose. But, most fears among black Americans were quelled by the reverberating hope among many blacks that his victory cast a stone of debilitating magnitude into the sociopolitical dogmas and customs that guard and preserve racial prejudice. Johnson was the flesh of heroic folklore deeming him most capable of conquering white hopes along with racial prejudice in the dawn of the twentieth century.

Imageries presented by caricaturist before and after the Johnson-Jefferies fight spoke volumes about white imaginations of race, arguably even more so, than the writings of sport editors, journalists, and even well-acclaimed writers such as Jack London (Burns et al., 2005). Illustrations of Johnson were aligned with the racialized beliefs that black persons were closer to primitive beings, rather than human. Political cartoons of Johnson not only conveyed, but cemented, racial ideologies that positioned blacks, particularly black men, as uncontrollable and unpredictable dark-skinned savages as the greatest threat to the comforts of whiteness and the denigration of white Americans’ well-being. Moreover, the primitive, ape-like savage portrayals of Johnson were further aggrandized by a varying combination of sambo mask features distinguishable by exaggerated lips, buck teeth, and bulging eyes (Wiggins, 1988). No matter the outcome, these images littering newspaper prints served as edifying forces for anti-black racism. These images spoke beyond common analyses of the fight to teach society how one should think and treat black persons. The primary goal was not simply to illustrate Jack Johnson, rather the targeted, unapologetic message was to reinforce black inferiority juxtaposed to white superiority.

By the fights’ end in the fifteenth round, Johnson had firmly retained his title as the world’s heavyweight boxing champion. The onset of black adulation and even white discontent concerning Johnson’s defense of the heavyweight title was soon superseded with a bourgeoning national debate animated by Johnson’s relationship with women, specifically white women. At a time when even the slightest intimation that might arouse white fears of an interracial relationship between a black man and white woman could ignite cries for a lynching (Equal Justice Initiative, 2017), Johnson was quite public about his kinship and intimate relationships with white women. By 1912, Johnson’s relationship with white women was a source of deep disdain, debate, and concern shared across racial lines (Gilmore, 1973).

In early November 1912, the federal government officially charged the champ with violating the Mann Act, which was constituted to halt the transporting of women across state lines for the purposes of prostitution. At the onset of reports across popular media outlets on the charges and circumstances leading to the indictment of Johnson and even throughout court proceedings, the court of public opinion was certain to hand down a guilty verdict if there was any chance to have a vote in the matter. Historians have chronicled numerous accounts of press writings that not only denounced Jack Johnsons’ interpersonal affairs with white women, but also offered insights into how to exercise alternative actions to attend to Jackson-purported misconducts with white women (Gilmore, 1973; Roberts, 2004; Ward, 2010). Thinly veiled threats, coming from Johnson’s home state of Texas, were printed in the Beamont Journal, “The obnoxious stunts being featured by Jack Johnson are not only worthy of but demand, an overgrown dose of Southern Hospitality” (Gilmore, 1973, p. 19).

The onslaught of the emotionally charged public reactions once having learned of Johnson’ affairs was not confined to the south. Many in the north were quite aligned with harsh southern anti-Jack Johnson sentiments and the overwhelming condemnation of his activities with white women. Johnson’s character and purported reflection upon the entire black race was the target of extensive criticism by several leading black press outlets (Ward, 2004). Booker T. Washington said of Johnson in his speech to a crowd gathered at the Detroit YMCA that the champion’s affairs “repudiated by the great majority of the right-thinking people of the Negro race” (Gilmore, 1973). The disapproval and disparaging sentiments of Johnson was shared across a significant cross-section of black Americans (Roberts, 2004). Despite the popularity of the position, not all shared in these persuasions. Public discourse to renounce Johnson was met with strong oppositions to resist critically naïve objections and overtly discriminatory anti-Johnson rhetoric. Many came to his defense by indicating the influence of racism had distorted the judicial proceeding and motivations that sought out a furtive persecution of Johnson (Gilmore, 1973). Nevertheless, as a consequence to his indictment, the verdict of an all-white jury and that of the populist court of public opinion, Jack Johnson was sentenced to and incarcerated for 366 days. By 1913, rise of Jack Johnson’s larger-than-life image that had seemed to over and over again transcend the overt racism of the era was just as vulnerable to American whiteness as any other.

Jack Johnson’s life story is a vital volume within the gospel text of the black freedom struggle. His life’s sermon tells of the way by which he navigated the perplexities of societal values and practices, racialized policy, interpersonal relationships, institutional segregation and discrimination, a public’s embrace and public alienation, all manifested by the hopes and fears of his blackness. Despite the bounds of race that limited not only how to imagine, but how to live out one’s blackness, Jack Johnson was committed to living his life aware of, yet uninspired by the rules of white supremacy. Du Bois is likely to have best captured the enormity of his legacy as he spoke of Johnson, “The reason Jack Johnson was so beset by his own country, a country ironically which had only recently reaffirmed that all men were created equal, was because of his unforgivable blackness” (Burns et al., 2005; Ward, 2004). Thus, Jack Johnson is memorialized in the historical memory of the American dream as an amplifying figure igniting nation’s consternation with race. Within the racial ethos of the present, he is furthermore celebrated today for courageously living his life unapologetically within the crosshairs of social curiosities, criticisms, and a promising hope. Notwithstanding his profession and popularity, Johnson was no more and no less black than any other black person of his era. But the way in which he lived out his blackness was counter to the grain of social and political mores. An early past-century society engulfed by racism deemed Johnson’s affairs to be unforgivable to ever be returned to a sight of favor in a book penned in the ink of anti-black racism. Fortunate for such a society undergoing an arduous sociocultural and sociopolitical struggle to make sense of race and racism in the present era, Jack Johnson focused on telling the story of race and racism through a book entitled by the one-word inscription on his tombstone: The book of Johnson.

Rising Shame of Jim

I chose to open this chapter with Jack Johnson not simply because he is a historical figure in sports history, but he also reveals a part of the history of the American experiment and its intimate relationship with race. His legacy has been largely overlooked in the history books of most American schools today. I would not be shocked to learn that many may be unfamiliar with his athletic feats or his daily affairs that challenged the sociocultural and sociopolitical beliefs and habits of American society attracting blustery clouds of public controversy. Despite this common gap in America’s historical memory as a collective, I would wager that it does not come as a surprise too many to hear of the racism that he endured. Until the mid-twentieth century, American society was engulfed by a particular racial milieu that strangled nearly every facet and institution of American life. The institution of sport was certainly not immune to such racism. Thus, the life and legacy of Jack Johnson offers a window to observe how racial ideology was fashioned and enacted at the intersections of society and sport throughout the early-to-mid-twentieth century. Johnson’s legacy speaks volumes about his perseverance and audacity, his unforgiving grit and courage, his principled defiance, and how we traversed the racial climate of his era. But more so, the reality of the legacy of Johnson is that none of his personal characteristics and strivings, nor the controversies throughout his lifetime can be fully comprehended without a robust understanding of the influence of Jim Crow racism.

Jim Crow was both the midwife and usher of much of Johnson’s boxing journey in sport as well as his life endeavors. This historic form of racism or what has otherwise been referred to as “old fashioned racism” by social scientist was the prevailing ideology grounded by racial domination and exploitation across American society until its waning in the late 1960s (Kinder & Sears, 1981; Sears, 1988). The ideological precepts of Jim Crow racism distinctly targeting African Americans were predicated on (1) an unconcealed bigotry corroborating strict racial segregation and dominance by state-authorized or informal social and political practices across all domains of life and (2) a belief rooted in biology or theological teachings purporting a legitimate categorical inferiority of all non-White people. The dogma of Jim Crow racism was manifest in inhumane behaviors such as lynching, racial assaults, as well as institutional constraints as seen in segregated schools, sport, transportation, and voting prohibition efforts. From a sociopolitical perspective, scholars argue that Jim Crow racism reflected the predominate cultural beliefs (i.e., the pseudo-scientific and theological principles) of the day, but also the economic and political desires uniquely shaped in the historical time period. The economic and political needs were strongly influenced by a southern agrarian climate and its central actors (Bobo, Kluegel, & Smith, 1996).

The economic infrastructure of Jim Crow required a widespread and systemic exploitation of black agricultural labor. Additionally, the political climate of Jim Crow advocated for racial segregation and discrimination to support the racially exploitive economy, in order to legitimize and actualize cultural beliefs of white supremacy, as well as protect perceived properties of whiteness (e.g. white family assemblies, women, communities, shared cultural values). The dominant racially motivated cultural belief that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites was paradoxically buttressed by the successes of several elite black athletes during this time. Biological race theories furnished by Jim Crow ideology gave way to the belief that black athletic successes were evolutionary derivatives of blacks exhibiting a closer ancestral relationship to beasts, more so than human. Thus, narratives of black athletic successes were often used to reinforce ideas of white intellectual superiority.

Racial theories used to frame and rationalize athletic performances of African American athletes, while maintaining ideas of white supremacy (i.e., white intellectual superiority) were introduced in the latter nineteenth century and carried over to the twentieth century (Wiggins, 1989, 2007). Members of scientific communities, from around the world, took great interest in elite African American athletes such as cyclist, Major Marshal Taylor to test the racial stereotypes paraded as scientific evidence of the period. Jack Johnson, was once again, a target of the biology debates focused on racial difference concerning his physiological build and psychological dispositions. Due to racial segregation and its impact on sport, the volume of this debate was less audible in the latter part of the first couple decades of the twentieth century. That was, until the world-class talent of Jesse Owens and several other elite black track athletes at the 1932 Olympic Games sparked a resurgence of public and scholarly fascinations with black athleticism, including prominent social scientists of the decade.¹ Proclamations made in support of black athletic superiority attracted many critiques to dismantle the oversimplified race-based logic neglecting any accounts for more complex understandings of the phenomena. Despite a history of strong critiques of biological racism peddled as scientific research to justify the successes of black athletes, the debate over black athletic superiority represents a persisting relic of Jim Crow racist ideology lingering among mainstream beliefs today.

Erosion of Jim Crow

How American society has comprehended racism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to the present day has been all but stagnant. While unenlightened narratives of black athlete superiority as consequence of biology experienced periodic resurgences across the decades and often in harmony with major athletic events such as the Olympic Games, American attitudes concerning race, specifically Jim Crow ideology, underwent a progressive mid-century shift. A myriad of explanations has been proposed to rationalize the trending decline of Jim Crow racism. Such linkages in the shifting of American twentieth mid-century racial attitudes have been hypothesized by intergroup contact, white guilt, and the evolution of white ambivalence toward race and racial inequities (Alport, 1954, Bobo et al., 1996, Stouffer, 1949; Myrdal, 1944). A historical account of sequential events alongside social scientific and psycho-analysis of American attitudes and behaviors offers a robust illustration of why and how the departure from Jim Crow racism transpired. To take stock in the historical events, both socio-politically and socio-culturally, and understanding how they collectively played a role in igniting, as well as facilitating a more progressive shift of the nation’s racial conscious departing from and eroding Jim Crow racism is critical to gaining greater perspective of American comprehensions of racism.

By the early 1940s, America was deeply engrossed rapid escalations of WWII. Despite the blitz of racial harmony propaganda efforts on the home front for the sake of America’s presence in the war, of which significantly leveraged the status and imagery of the champion boxer, Joe Louis, committing himself to military service, Jim Crow was well established at home and abroad (see Burns, Burns, & McMahon, 2016). Black Americans, by volunteering or through the military’s draft, accounted for more than a million enlisted soldiers over the course of WWII. Consequently, American military operations were executed in parallel to its undertaking as a social relations laboratory, most particularly on the frontlines of race (Cripps & Culbert, 1979). In 1942, the Pittsburg Courier, holding rank as the mostly widely read black newspaper at the time, published a letter to the editor from James G. Thompson that bid a galvanizing effort around American patriotism across races while also fighting against racial discrimination on American soil. The letter outlined a vision for the Double V Campaign calling specifically for a victory at home and abroad for black Americans. Simultaneously, the “Great Migration” of black Americans from southern states to the north and west was well underway and gaining considerable momentum (Tolnay, 2003). Several factors such as economic deprivation, political subjugation, racial violence, and undesirable educational opportunities across the south have long been identified as a melding of catalysts for one of the greatest demographic transferences in U.S. history. The need for black American labor was growing in the industrial north since WWI. But the hopeful prospects of northern urban life did little to deliver absolute refuge from black suffrage in southern states. Accompanying the migrant convoy to urban settings across the north was the persistence of racism and the delineations of housing and community living set by racial segregation and concentrated poverty. The combination of condensed economic strains and an escalating migrant population whose housing options and general mobility were systematically inhibited by northern Jim Crow racism formulated a disparaging experience uniquely impacting black Americans (Tolnay).

WWII, to a certain degree, initiated a watershed moment in history where the polity of American society experienced shifting racial attitudes and thus an incremental, yet arguably a progressive, complex shift in its racial consciousness. And the tone and tenor of the discourse regarding racial progress continued its shift by the mid-1940s with the ambitious efforts of the Double V campaign as well as evidence by baseball’s greatest experiment—the desegregation of America’s most hallowed sport. On the basis of racial justice, WWII revealed significant contradictions between American rhetoric and the maltreatment of black Americans serving in the war and those living in the states. However, racial justice reform efforts of the Double V campaign began to wane in 1945. Although the campaign germinated national attention and racial justice dialog, the symbolism of shifting the focus from a duality of issues of the Double V campaign to a predominate concern for military victory abroad mirrored the material climate of a nation’s reluctance to renounce institutional endorsements of Jim Crow. The continual reluctance to dismantle Jim Crow as WWII neared its end and as black soldiers returned home to racial discrimination and racial violence contributed to a deepening cynicism toward racial injustices targeting black communities.

Paul Robeson ascended as a symbol of resistance inspired by the growing contempt. In his earlier years, he had earned top debate and oratory honors, collected fifteen varsity letters in four sports, and was elected Phi Beta Kappa as well as class valedictorian while attending Rutgers. He is revered as an early black athlete pioneer in the sport of American football. After his collegiate years, he went on to amass a stellar professional career as a singer and actor by the late 1940s. But his heightened popularity, was further bolstered and complicated by the regularity of his public speeches and activities as a civil rights activist. Along with his support of Pan-Africanism, participation in anti-Nazi demonstrations and multiple humanitarian efforts, Robeson steadily grew disenchanted and infuriated by the contradictory dilemmas of WWII facing black Americans and black soldiers, alike. Backed by his global status and platform granted before the Partisans of Peace at the World Peace Congress in Paris in 1949, the Associated Press reported that Robeson said in a speech:

It is unthinkable that American Negroes would go to war on behalf of those who have oppressed us for generation against a country [the Soviet Union] which in one generation has raised our people to the full human dignity of mankind.

(Foner, pp. 17–18)

Robeson later made similar comments concerning the contradictions and societal quandaries that black Americans faced by serving in the war and returning home to continued discrimination. These comments did not represent a harmonious sentiment about military service across the black community nor that of the Soviet Union. Nonetheless, Robeson’s comments did reflect the feelings of a significant cross-section of the black Americans troubled by the pervasiveness of Jim Crow that made continued discrimination permissible and tolerable despite edicts of racial equality and freedom heralded throughout WWII. And to the point that Robeson was making, President Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” of human rights deemed worthy of universal protection seemed nothing more than an obscure fantasy unintended for black Americans living in a nation suffering beneath Jim Crow.

As the Double V campaign faded, racial justice and civil rights efforts were not wholly quelled. Rather, the war inspired and facilitated the reinforcement of deliberate capacity building to take shape within black communities demonstrated by the advancements of the National Urban League, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, as well as the Congress of Racial Equality. Hence, an uplifting byproduct of the demographic migrations, racial justice discourse, political resource gains, and community organizing was that black Americans were developing the ground work for newfound infrastructure and strategic faculties to spur a movement that would undo Jim Crow. The renovated positionality of black churches, influenced by racial and economic sociopolitical shifts of their surrounding communities emerged as cornerstone institutions to the sustainability of a nascent grassroots civil rights movement.

Institutions of American sport, specifically the National Football League and Major League Baseball played a significant role in complimenting the aforementioned anteceding factors gradually altering public opinion on race and a fluid American political climate. In March of 1946, the Los Angeles Rams signed Kenny Washington to a contract in the National Football League (Ross, 1999). Just two months later, the Rams would also acquire Woody Strode. The signings of the first black players, Washington and Strode reflected an indication of the slow, yet progressive shift in the racial climate happening in this era. But American football, at the time, was only a fledgling version of the sporting enterprise and cultural influence on society that exist today. When it came to sports, it was baseball that sat atop the throne of influence over America. The signing of Jackie Robinson by the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1946 has been chronicled in great length, as has his debut in the major leagues in 1947. The significance of Robinson’s appearance on the baseball diamond extends far beyond the narrative of desegregation of major league baseball. In its broadest sense, and at a time when the American society was undergoing multilayered processes of post-war recovering, the attentions of the country remained captivated by imaginations of race and the encumbering presence of Jim Crow. But most importantly, the country was captivated by the microcosmic world of sport to explore new possibilities of progressive race relations.

As the country entered the decade of the 1950s, the ferocity of Jim Crow took on an increasingly appalling stigma in correlation to the shifting polity among a burgeoning population of white Americans. By the onset of the decade, the NAACP mounted a tactical legal strategy challenging state-mandated racial segregation leading to the decision of Brown v Board, 1954. The Supreme Court’s unanimous landmark decision in the Brown case overturned provisions set by 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson. State-mandated segregation on the basis of race was institutionalized by Plessy v. Ferguson, which legalized segregated public facilities, including schools as long as they were deemed equal (Ficker, 1999). However, the realities of Plessy were that the schooling of black Americans and most other segregated facilities were not only separate from whites, but exceptionally unequal. The Brown decision offered legal standing to alter public schooling policy, opening school doors, as well as sporting arenas to blacks.

The optimisms of the civil rights movement were witnessed in the gradual racial integration of black athletes across professional and collegiate sports occurring throughout the 1950s. This particular decade brought about an incremental degree of integration across collegiate institutions as the talent pools of black athletes were increasingly recruited to white teams (Lumpkin, 2013). Despite the federal decision of the Brown case, the curtain of segregation would not completely fall in intercollegiate sport for years to come into the following decade (Wiggins, 2007). Counter to commonly distorted or oversimplified historical narratives about sport desegregation, racial integration in white organized sport was not attained simply because of altruistic views of valiant individuals. On the contrary, sport scholars have noted that economic interests and the pursuits to achieve athletic success eclipsed motivations of noble white altruism to accomplish racial equity (Davis, 1995; Wiggins, 2007).

Similar to the Double V campaign, black sport columnists were instrumental in elevating a national consciousness of the possibilities of desegregating major league baseball. Sport beat writers, such as Sam Lacy, played a critical role in marshaling the debut of black players into major league baseball. Following Jackie out of Negro league baseball to the Brooklyn Dodgers in the late 1940s was the catcher Roy Campanella and pitcher Don Newcombe. Athletes of this caliber, like today, garnered many fans, both young and old. Some of which they would get to meet in person overtime, and many more that they would never know. But one of the many young fans of who saw Newcombe above all others as his hero was a young boy named Emmett Till (Tyson, 2017). Sadly, Newcombe along with rest of the nation would soon know of young Emmett in the most unimaginable way. Nearly a year after the Brown decision, Emmett Till, only fourteen years old, was brutally killed while visiting family relatives in Mississippi. His beaten and mutilated body was cast into a river and eventually recovered from the muddy waters days after being kidnapped. The disturbing images of young Till’s open casket were widely circulated across the nation and cast an appalling and lurid face on the brutality of current racial conventions and individuals’ racial prejudice (Harold & DeLuca, 2005). Images of the grotesque condition of Till’s corpse served as a political catalyst for the twentieth century civil rights movement as they removed the possibility of indifference about racial injustice across mainstream publications and white communities.

In response to the not-guilty verdict delivered to the accused killers of the fourteen-year-old Till, there was a call for mass demonstrations by prominent civil rights headship. Of these esteemed spearheads calling for such demonstrations was A. Philip Randolf, whom had organized and was leading the first predominately black American labor union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. In a telegram sent to Randolph, Paul Robeson expressed his disagreement of the acquittal verdict of Till’s murder trial and his commitment to the cause of racial justice and civil rights. On September 24, 1955, Robeson wrote:

Extend wholehearted support your initiative in calling mass meeting protesting lynching of Emmett Till. Outrageous acquittal of lynchers is grim warning that our people must unite as never before in the militant resistance to terror and oppression. In this hour of crisis I stand as always with my people and offer all that I have, my heart, my strength, my devotion to our common cause. (Library of Congress, 2014)

The telegram sent by Robeson illuminates his state of critical consciousness, not simply focused on the unfolding devastation of Till’s death and subsequent trial, but equally a broader perspective interconnecting the crisis of Till to threatening systems of terror and oppression toward black Americans.

As America juggled the aftermath of WWII and the onset of the Cold War against the backdrop of race relations in the mid-twentieth century, historian Jennifer Lansbury reveals how the world-class tennis talent, Althea Gibson, intersected with U.S. restoration efforts regarding an enhanced race relations image profile under attack from communist antagonists. She notes a comment made by Gibson after her experience of accepting a 1955 State Department invitation to join three other tennis players on a tour of Southeast Asian countries. In recognition of the racial climate and wider inferences to be made of her participation, Gibson spoke:

I’ve never been exactly sure why I was selected to make the tour in the first place . . . I know it happened soon after the killing of Emmett Till in Georgia and world opinion of the racial situation in the United States was at a low ebb. So I suppose that was the main reason why I, a colored girl, was invited to help represent our country in Southeast Asia. I certainly wasn't picked because I was a champion; at the time I was champion of nothing and unlikely to be.

(Lansbury, 2001)

The international public relations efforts to utilize Gibson on an international tour highlight a tradition of how black athletes were utilized to purge the stigma of racial disharmony. This practice of commandeering the successes and imagery of black athletes to politically leverage matters of race evokes a profound comprehension of how the triumphs and imaginings by Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Althea Gibson, Jackie Robinson, and others were used to at once to hijack and mask the realities of race relations in the United States. The shift in comprehensions of race reflected a sense of concern about how racism stigmatized American society and its status within a more global society. The stigma of Jim Crow racism reflected a realization of declining view from its crest point for which it once directed the economic and political functionality of American society. By the mid-twentieth century, there was a broadening recognition that Jim Crow racism posed more of a threat, rather than the once harboring effect to American progress, particularly for white Americans.

Comprehensions of Race and Racism

Racial inequities cemented by Jim Crow were manufactured by systems and structural arrangements obliged by the social norms and mores of the day. The extent of Jim Crow governance, de facto and de jure, served to justify racial segregation and the systemic dispossession of black humanity. Moreover, racial attitudes bound by the ethos of past racism served in the dual capacities as both the creator and harvest of black Americans’ marginalization and oppression. But the decline of a structural need for Jim Crow alongside political and ideological supports yielded to pivotal legislation and innovative tactics of resistance. As a result, these modes of resistance produced pinnacle triumphs that well defined the civil rights movement.

The civil rights movement exposed the unjustifiability of institutional racism negatively affecting black communities, yet also the whole of American society. Likewise, the strategic efforts of the movement inevitably drew those from behind their willful ignorance to bear witness to the sanctioned violence of Jim Crow racism. Consequently, the defining feats of the civil rights movement included general support to condemn forms of old-fashioned racism characterized by state-mandated segregation, blatant racist ideology, and intentional domination and marginalization on the basis of race. Hallmark legal victories in the civil rights era were most notably the passing of the Brown v. Board decision of 1954, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Despite the gains and principally acclaimed accomplishments of the civil rights movement, however, the nation remained beholden to manipulations of race and racism. In the aftermath of the erosions of Jim Crow racism, racial inequities persisted as deeply entrenched realities ever part of the continuing experiment that is, America.

The civil rights movement and its legal victories marked a progressive turn in America’s history regarding race relations. Still, the feats of this era certainly did not produce a panacea for racial inequalities. Productions of reframed ideas of racism, racially motivated political agendas, and intricate racial projects soon germinated on the heels of the mid-twentieth century. Significant plights experienced across American communities such as the inadequate distribution and access to quality education as well as the swelling impacts of poverty and crime were targets of reform efforts, yet also posed as platforms to manipulate the social, political, cultural, and racial consciousness of America. Almost suddenly, post-civil rights movement racial ideologies echoed a collection of conscious and unconscious efforts to reposition Du Bois’s definitive color-line to more and more sociocultural and sociopolitical spaces of ambiguity. But that which was near indefensible was the perpetuity of racial inequities and inequalities sustained through the mid-century transitions to the latter part of the twentieth century. The veracity of these racial gaps, at nearly all measurable turns of society, despite the moral and legal victories of the civil rights movement were not only a constant reality but a reminder of a struggle acutely repressive to non-white communities. While evidence of the existence of racial gaps—spanning matters of education, income and wealth, healthcare, crime, housing, and more—was and remains largely irrefutable, rationalizations offered to justify the creation and perpetuation of such gaps was subject to widespread debate. Even today, many of us remain baffled and frustrated by the durability of racial gaps persisting over the decades from one generation to another.

Out of the waning years of the civil rights struggle in the late 1960s and early seventies emerged a more progressive institutionalist perspective of the operative nature of racism. This perspective pointedly challenged a pervasive discourse that commonly situated responsibilities for the evils of racism within the limits of overt individual acts and the systems of domination staged by white southerners, particularly poor whites. At its core, the institutionalist perspective argued that racism reached far beyond the southern states to affect all of white Americans and societal institutions. Rooted by the institutionalist perspective and arguably captured at the radical boundaries of the paradigm, racism was understood as a consequence of the colonialization of non-white persons. The concept of colonization, from this perspective, views that institutionalized racism functions as a sustained, systemic force of domination fueled by a formula of prejudice plus power. At the core of this perspective, blacks are consigned to the ranks of a categorically inferior group deprived of power, while whites possess both power and prejudice to enact their racial dominance.

Building upon the foundational propositions of an institutional perspective, Blauner (1969) posited ideas of an internal colonial framework. Internal colonialism concedes that racism is systemic and institutionalized. Moreover, Blauner’s refinement of racism as expansively systemic further outlined that racism was “located in the actual existence of domination and hierarchy” whereby the centrality of economic capitalism is most vital in that it establishes an occupational relationship affixing roles that determine social status (Blauner, 1969, p. 10). Critical to elaborating on the institutionalist perspective, the internal colonial framework reveals how the element of objective rationality serves white interests atop economic labor markets. The utility of the internal colonial framework undoubtedly advanced the limitations of prevalent views which had couched racism within the bounds of a psychological phenomenon commonly supposed as irrational prejudice.

Notwithstanding insightful gains of the institutionalist perspective and internal colonial model, their residual limitations left plenty to be considered of contemporary race relations (Bonilla-Silva, 1997). Michael Omi and Howard Winant advanced a theory of racial ideology marking a significant conceptual shift toward a discernably radical, nuanced view of race and racism. Their theory aimed to illuminate the concrete processes of racial formations occurring in American society as a reciprocal influence of race (Omi & Winant, 2014). This body of work, representing yet another link of the scholarly toils to deepen and broaden understandings of race relations, ingeniously and daringly fuels imaginations of racial matters by stretching the very boundaries of conceivable comprehensions of racial ideology. As such, the theory of racial formation contemplates the duality of roles for which race occupies—a courier for subordination and oppression of social groups while also a cutout for resistance to forms of marginalization and domination.

Race is fundamentally situated in the theory of racial formation as a malleable and ambiguous complex of social meanings transformed by political struggle and constantly subjected to a contestation of how such meanings should matter across a multitude of contexts. Hence, race is understood as ideological by way of a socially constructed concept, but also in possession of a materially corporeal dimension consequential to ones’ life experiences and social structures. The notion of racial formation is built upon an emphasis of racial projects transpiring to shape how human identities, individual and collective, and social structures are racially signified. In turn, that which becomes racially signified shape the ways in which racial meanings get entrenched within social structures. In all, Omi and Winant posit racial formation is a socio-historically situated process whereby race functions to shape and signify identities, institutions, structural relationships, and experiences through continuous racial projects that reciprocate contested meanings of race.

Although conscientious of the political, intellectual contributions of critical racial theories evolved out of late 1960s through the mid-1980s, the premises and propositions of such racial frames and racialization perspectives reflect what some critics have described as casual, common sense treatments by which predominate public narratives and a number of social science, race scholars have come to embrace and judiciously maneuver to make sense of race and racism (Bonilla-Silva, 1997, 2017). An extensive body of scholarly literature and research has examined the principal challenge to repudiate conventional conceptual mappings of racism centered on idealist understandings of racial phenomena. The idealist label is intended to target the climate of predominate perspectives, even today, narrowly presuming racism as the derivation of social action. Mainstream views of the operative character and circularity of racism from idealist perspectives is argued to begin with defining racism as a set of beliefs or attitudes with the potential to lead individuals to develop and exert prejudice for which initiates material, discriminatory actions against non-white, racially subsidiary groups. An alternate theory to the regime of mainstream racial theoretical perspectives is a racialized social systems approach to racism.

Evidenced by a robust recognition of the substantial groundwork laid by the formative and mainstream critical perspectives on racism in America, Bonilla-Silva contends that the study of racism should be taken from a vantage point offering deep understandings of historically specific racism operating and reproduced within racialized social systems.

1. Racial phenomena are normalized artifacts of society’s racial structure where by racism is embedded in the structural organization and structural operations of a society;

2. Racism exercises a dimension of psychology, but it is acutely organized around a materially consequential reality;

3. The nature of racism changes over time as a byproduct of racial contestation in a racialized social system;

4. Racism possess a character of judicious rationality where by racial actors demonstrate various forms of support and resistance of racial order to the benefit of their self-interests;

5. The framework of racialization allows analyses of all racial actors to explain overt, covert and normative racial behaviors;

6. Racism and racial phenomena reproductions, although socio-historically contextualized, are historically distinct of a complex contemporary foundation, not simply in reference to a remnant of the past (Bonilla-Silva, 2001, pp. 25–36).

These pillars of a racialized social systems theory are not intended to exhaustively explain racial phenomena across American society. But, rather, analyses drawn from this theoretical framework are intended to rouse deep, nuanced considerations of how race shapes contemporarily founded social systems structurally normalized by racism.

Looking back on the intellectual heritage of critical thought regarding race and racism is a necessary step toward conceiving remedies of racism in the present and of its transformation in the future. While not an exhaustive review, this review of racial theory illuminates a sequence of thought that has led to a framework of racialized social systems theory. This theory, in concert with several conceptual lenses that I will discuss momentarily, purposefully sets the stage of this book to pursue a critical discussion of the dynamic nature of the racialized social systems that envelope black athletes in the present. The various ways in which we have comprehended race and racism have greatly influenced the ways of thinking about how racial phenomena have situated and shaped the realities of black athletes. In parallel of the intellectual journey of critical race theories emerging from the post-civil rights movement era, sport scholars with particular interests in black athletes have utilized certain racial frameworks to develop understandings of the plights, conditions, and realities experienced by this subset population.

The Exemplar

Our fascinations and imaginations of race relations, as a society, is indivisibly entwined with the historic materialization and continuous recreations of the black athlete. As far back as the nineteenth century and a part of each generation of society since, the black athlete has played a principal role is the ways in which we have comprehended racial phenomena and the continuum of laborious efforts toward racial progress. The strivings of black athletes of the twentieth century provided a focal point for the amalgamation of hope, critical analysis of the conditions that constrained a generation’s possibilities, and a consciousness to disrupt and transform ideologies, policies, and practices that sustained inequity. So, without question, America throughout the twentieth century to the present, in all its ideological posturing, institutional arrangements, policies and practices, has and continues to be often animated by an intimate, yet dynamic relationship with the black athlete.

Sport is widely viewed as the exemplar societal institution, even figuratively approaching a sacred space in the American consciousness, as a model for racial harmony. This perception, nearly cemented into mainstream beliefs, is fueled by vast acceptances of sport as an enduring institution of society championing racial integration and furthering variable degrees of racial progress for which we experience today in contrast to an era pre-Civil Rights Act and certainly a time prior to the historic Brown vs. Board decision. As the nation journeyed into a post-civil rights era, the late 1960s ushered in a tactical shift in social activism and analyses of race relations. The growth of critical racial frames astutely interrogating the acclaimed accomplishments of the civil rights movement transpired in parallel and mutually unexclusive to grassroots social activism that contested a predominate narrative purporting sport culture as an emblematic institution of racial harmony. In concert with outpours of grassroots social activism happening all across society from lunch counters to the church pulpit, protests of racial inequities emerged front and center of the public eye on the podium of sport culture, both literally and figuratively. In this context, the most iconic image of a stance of resistance seen in sport was the silent, gloved fist protest atop the medals podium in Mexico City by Tommie Smith and John Carlos. This period of social activism by black athletes has been coined as the unprecedented “revolt of the black athlete” by sports sociologist Harry Edwards (Edwards, 1969).

The 1968 Mexico City protest by Smith and Carlos, as profound and meaningfully jolting as a moment for social justice could possibly be, was but only one of several efforts to contest the pervasiveness of the racial ideology, racial oppression, and gross inequality entrenched in an American post-civil rights era. The year of 1968 marked the “year of awakening,” as described by sports historian David Wiggins, which encompassed a gamut of events that collectively challenged the social, cultural, and political norms and mores of society. From Muhammad Ali’s widely publicized political battles with the U.S. government and the governing bodies of boxing—to the crowd of boos drowning the Detroit Tiger’s baseball stadium after a blue’s rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner performed by José Feliciano, a blind Puerto Rican guitarist—to challenging the long-standing free agency clause in major league baseball—to the dozens of university campus protests by black athletes, the arena of sport was rife with determinations of social activism (Wiggins, 1988).

The fertility of social activism leveraging the social and political platforms of sport culture in this early period of post-civil rights was matched with mounting critiques that extended scholarly attentions to develop intimate understandings of racial phenomena and injustices. The body of critical scholarship, such as the seminal work of Harry Edwards, aimed to confront and critique fervent narratives asserting that sport occurs in a vacuum untouched by the cultural forces of society or void of an ability to meaningfully influence the interwoven and surrounding cultural climate of society (e.g. Edwards, 1969). Since this time, a growing body of sport scholars, from across disciplines of sociology, education, cultural studies, history, management, and psychology, have advanced nuanced understandings of the relationships between sport culture, the breadth and depth of racial phenomena and the consequences of black participation in sport. The extent of research and literature on black athlete involvement in sport has fiercely debunked the social myth, albeit deeply embedded belief within society, that sport is an unequivocal level playing field for all and unscathed by the fluidity of the past and present political climate. Despite the litany of evidence to demystify the superficially superordinate positive characteristics of sport concerning race relations, these imaginations of sport continue to prevail in the perversions of a mainstream social imaginary.

Anguishes Far Subtler, Yet Far More Complicated

The racial typography of American sport culture in the twenty-first century, particularly evident among higher revenue-producing sport industries, undoubtedly reflects a cumulative legacy and the consequential gains of the prior mid-century civil rights movement. Today, it’s seemingly normal and likely approaching a sense of expectation to see professional and intercollegiate sports teams outfitted with black athletes. Even among individual sports steeped in a long history of racial disparity, we’ve become quite accustomed to seeing a presence, although intermittently in most cases, of black athletes. Progress is certainly progress. But to peel back the layers and look beneath the romanticizing narrative of sport as a champion of race relations reveals a more complete understanding not only of the strides of access and opportunity, but also of the complicated truths that energize a certain social imaginary while masking the lived realities and anguishes of the most vulnerable among us.

The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport (TIDES) details a comprehensive annual assessment of the racial and gender compositions across leading professional and amateur American sporting organizations. In a recent report on collegiate sport for the year 2017–2018, TIDES noted the participation of black male athletes compromised 22.6 percent, while black women accounted for 12.4 percent of Division 1 intercollegiate athletics (Lapchick, 2019). However, if we are to peel back another layer of these numbers, we are able to see a highly concentrated presence of black athletes in the high-profile sports of football at 49.2 percent and men’s basketball at 53.6 percent during the 2017–2018 season (Lapchick). In addition, black female athletes accounted for over 43 percent of basketball and nearly a quarter of track and field, respectively during the 2017–2018 season (Lapchick). In contrast to such concentrated participations of black athletes in high-profile, Division 1 intercollegiate athletics, the U.S. black community consists of only 13 percent of the American population (U.S. Census data). Just a glance at these statistics and those similar or to pull up a chair at a sports bar during football season or to simply turn the channel to the March Madness basketball tournament in hope of seeing the latest rendition of the suspenseful David vs. Goliath matchup, one can easily perceive how sport has functioned as a means of social progress and fits neatly into the ideals of the American dream. However, the moral challenge in the present day concerning the intersections of sport and society is to acknowledge how sports culture has functioned as a social norming, ideological project that redefines values and abilities that preserve and yield to social inequity.

The institution of sport, in the eyes of most, is unequivocal evidence that American society no longer lives beneath the dark shadows of slavery and the perils of old-fashioned Jim Crow racism. The seemingly cascade of black athletes, today, into intercollegiate athletics and professional sport industries across the nation is often hoisted as the litmus test of progress in the arena of race relations. This widely optimistic romanticism of the institution of sport in the mainstream of American consciousness is not echoed with the same tone and tenor by many scholars that study the institution of sport. A vast body of research and literature in such academic spaces, in contrast to mainstream comprehensions, illuminates the intellectual toils of their acute curiosities to understand how the veneer of progress in sport shades deeply rooted and persistent equities beholden to perceptions of race and practices of inequity. Building upon this body of scholarship, my argument here and the premise further explored throughout the following chapters is that modern institutions of sport, particularly intercollegiate athletics in this case, is not only influenced by but also a means through which a distinct agenda of neoliberal ideology normalizes the anguishes of the vulnerable while preserving the enduring truths of race that sustains racial disparity.

Society’s colorful reinventions of its social imagery regarding race and racism, from one generation to the next, have created a fertile environment for which the present phenomenon of new racism thrives. The fertility of new racism possesses a nature far subtler and more complicated. It is increasingly difficult to immediately pinpoint the apparent presence of culpability of racial injustice in relation to its predecessor, Jim Crow. Social scientists have termed a number of conceptual and theoretical frames evoking central characteristics that undergird new racism including that of aversive racism (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2005), ambivalent racism (McConahay, 1986), symbolic racism (Kinder & Sears, 1981; Sears & Henry, 2003), laissez-faire racism (Bobo, Kluegel, & Smith, 1997), and color-blind racism (Bonilla-Silva, 2017). These frames, in their attempts to make sense of new racism, sketch the operative nature whereby racial phenomena functions in and about the bounds of extant policy, discursive maneuvering, favored values, and privileged ideals. Collectively, such conduits of new racism are organized by the neoliberal agenda piloting modern society. Several tenets guide and are underscored by scholarship exploring the sociocultural institution of sport and how the bearings of racism shape the climate, conditions, and experiences of modern black athletes.

1. Racism is deeply woven into the fabric of the American society. As a result, the inescapable effects of racism on the nation’s past matter toward present constructions of climate, conditions, and capacities of sport as a prominent social institution.

2. The currency of race and racism used to coercively manipulate the effusive labor of black athletes echoes the same currency once used to exploit black labor across rural plantations.

3. Black persons in sport, most particularly athletes, are systematically dehumanized and rendered in a historic fashion as a disposable commodity.

Framing the impacts of race and racism in these ways draws heavily upon the comprehensions of old-fashioned racism plaguing past generations of American society. Comprehensions of the experiences of modern black athletes grounded by the aforementioned tenets have evoked emotionally incensing, metaphoric depictions of modern sport. The palpable metaphor that seems to repeatedly be within reasonable scope used to illustrate the reincarnation of old racism in the present day is that of sport functioning as the new-age plantationnot. To this same accord, emotionally stimulating and thought-provoking analogies that interrogate how black athletes are situated in modern sport draw attention to the askew structural determinants between athletes and other key stakeholders such as their coaches and administrative leadership as well as an athletics industrial complex capitalizing on their participation (Smith, 2007).

Imagery of the structural institutions of slave plantations and the exploitation of black labor akin to the oppression of enslaved Africans is widely drawn upon when critiquing the state of black athletes in the twenty-first century. Recently, during the 2017 NFL football season, Michael Wilbon, co-host of ESPN’s Pardon-the-Interruption sports show, unapologetically drew upon this metaphor to describe the relationship between Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones, and the players of the organization immediately following Jones’ disapproval and firm stance that players who would not stand for the national anthem before football games would not be allowed to play for the Cowboys (Tornoe, 2017). Wilbon’s response was expeditiously honest, and yet predictable of a conventionally critical view of the structural relationship and power dynamics embedded in the sport at the professional and intercollegiate levels.

And the word that comes to my mind―and I do not care who doesn’t like me using it―is plantation. The players are here to serve me [Jones], and they will do what I [Jones] want. No matter how much I [Jones] pay them, they are not equal to me. That’s what this says to me and mine.

The sentiments and claims, such as those of Wilbon, of the state of black participation in sport associated to slavery and black exploitation are emblematic of the overt, old-fashioned racism that we, in general, vehemently condemn. As jolting as these imageries of black exploitation might be too naïve social imaginations upholding sport as a champion for racial progress, they articulate a counter-narrative to typical beliefs and perceptions of progress. This illustration justly heightens the problems that undergird black sport participation in the modern era. However, to frame such problems by this imagery may also produce a limiting effect. The plantation metaphor and claims of modern-day slavery in sport quite possibly constrains an ability to fully address racial injustices and improve the state of challenges germane to black sport participation. This frame bounds an enlightenment of new racism as little more than a symptom or remnant of the old. I submit that too consider the political, moral and socially conscious strides achieved in eras past, albeit significantly impactful or minor, the complexities of addressing how and why racism persists today must be seen and addressed in manners distinctly different than previous eras.

The resolve of racism today is contextually defined by the present moment of the twenty-first century. For the past several decades, the prevailing responses to arguably irrefutable patterns of inequity and discrimination have commonly been to address the impacts of personal bias, bare the systemic and structural formations of racialized institutions and simultaneously rationalize injustice as an outcome of natural order absolving persons of any explicit contribution. If we are to wholly concede that racial inequity pervasive in sport and society is merely a manifestation of unconscious biases, natural structuring of institutions, and inadvertent happenstance, we risk neglecting a deepening understanding of how to address the racism and racial injustice of today as consequences of conscious practices and ideological rationalizations. We risk being absorbed by metaphoric depictions of how we are positioned as a remnant of old-fashioned racism. We risk being trapped in crude conceptions of racial inequity and racial disparity that inhibit more sophisticated understandings of the utility as well as the consequence of race and racism today. A commitment to describe the here-and-now through lens of old-fashioned racism limits certain capacities to stoutly interrogate how modern ideological projects produce conscious assemblies and adherences to policies, practices, and a penetrable discourse that fosters racial inequalities and inequities. The problem with ascribing to the lens of the plantation reincarnated is that it codifies the plight of black athletes in such a way it appears utterly tenuous to change without a progression to the devices of radical warfare, or at the least, an abrupt systemic overhaul of multiple institutions all of which intermingled. This figurative and rhetorical depiction, in my opinion, seems although consciously and fervently thought-provoking, is but an unviable apparatus of change for most to make hay of within a society thoroughly engulfed in a state of neoliberal thought and action. Not to say that it does not present a valid interpretation of structural racism that persist today, yet it concurrently offers a stifling take on one’s capacity to see their respective onus and a pathway to actively engage as an agent of change in both structure and ideology. Most significantly, if we are to solely frame racism simply as a relic or even restoration of eras past, we are then vulnerable to curbing a hope for a better world by narrowly focusing on how we’re situated while decreasingly mindful of one’s self-agency to authorize change. One’s convictions to remedy the present and achieve a world better than that which we live could very well be arrested by inabilities to see deeper and broader connections between how and why we make decisions. It is evermore imperative to see how the daily lives of people and the web of decisions and practices that animate our lives are purposefully manipulated by a hegemonic ideology.

The Proliferation of Neoliberalism

Just south of that which is the past half century, the ideological paradigm of neoliberalism has served as the most durable, hegemonic force to manage the structural crisis of capitalism and pervasiveness of social inequity across the majority of the globe (Giroux & Giroux, 2006; Harvey, 2005; Jones & Ward, 2002). The ideology of neoliberalism morphed from marginal prescriptions stemming from neoliberal think tanks into a manufactured common sense (Giroux & Giroux, 2006; Lipman, 2011). As a state strategy, the common sense of neoliberalism was subtly cemented at the core of imaginations to make sense of and define how the world should effectively function. In its broadest sense, the neoliberal agenda embodies an assembly of economic and social policies and practices, political alignments, and a repertoire of discourse employed at an individual level as well as laced throughout the multi-levels of institutions (Plehwe, Walpen, & Neunhoffer, 2006; Saad-Filho, 2011; Saad-Filho & Johnson, 2005). The neoliberal agenda works to produce and legitimize a fundamentalist economic rationality that defines and redefines market-driven values and identities for the purposes of efficiency and capital accrual. The replacement of democratic idealism with the doctrine of free-market fundamentalism is the most dynamic driving force of economic, politics, and sociocultural conditions beneath the reign of neoliberalism.

In an effort to stimulate and revitalize the U.S. economy suffering under the Great Depression, the U.S. government introduced a cadre of social welfare policies and programs such as Social Security Act of 1935, unemployment insurance and federal agricultural subsidies. Collectively, the policies and programs endorsed by the Roosevelt administration are known as the New Deal. While the policies and programs of the New Deal offered the prospects of tenable employment, senses of economic revitalization, and security for all, the impacts were most certainly not distributed equally across stratifications of class and race (Frey, 1979; Jackson, 1985; Sugrue, 2014; Wilson, 2012). The New Deal era eventually conjoined with sustained government interventions to support broader employment, economic growth, and post-war rebuilding efforts during and after WWII (Lipman, 2013). While this period was littered with political conflicts, the prolonging of government intervention policies and programs is notably characterized as the age of Keynesianism (Harvey, 2005). The social welfare state through the aged of Keynesianism insinuated an economic persona of stable corporate production and social gains acquired by a working middle class and union employees (Palley, 2005). Still, the illusions of gains of the Keynesian welfare state was not the reality for the majority of Americans, particularly people of color, the poor—both employed and unemployed, and women. As a result, the resistance movements of the 1960s and 1970s were further galvanized by the social contradictions, deepening fissures, and failures of the Keynesianism welfare state (Lipman, 2011).

Neoliberal reform principles, prescribed by a marginal minority of elites, outlined a new managerialism strategy and economic rationality to address the structural and social crisis of the Keynesian welfare state (Palley, 2005). The neoliberal reform movement, thus, posited a paradigm shift to underscore market-driven values and efficiency as necessary to aims of economic growth and removing discrimination. Educational policy scholar, Pauline Lipman, describes neoliberalism as “an ideological project to reconstruct values, social relations and social identities—to produce a new social imaginary (Lipman, 2013, p. 10).” While it is true that neoliberalism is an assembly of ideas, policies, and practices, several central beliefs are fundamental of the neoliberal project: (1) the marketplace is inherently impartial, efficient, and most effective; (2) the role of government is to enable unrestricted corporate and industry growth while distributive social welfare is receded; and (3) the individual acts rationally, with an entrepreneurial spirit, to purse their own interests (Harvey, 2005; Lipman, 2013; Turner, 2008). These beliefs outline a framework of unassailable values of neoliberal theory that are commonly conceptually coded as assets of freedom, individual rights, and choice. The neoliberal state believes the marketplace, above all things, is the truest guardian of these assets for all individuals and institutions.

Neoliberal Creeds

A hallmark belief of disciples of neoliberalism is that a market allowed to operate without interference or state intervention possesses the inherent efficiency to meaningfully advance progress—economic, cultural, and social. Simply put, government is largely perceived as the adversary to freedom. The benefits of progress achieved in a free market are believed to eventually spread to all. Not only do believers of neoliberalism pour their faith in the self-regulatory competencies of a free market, they too, believe all things should be left to the fate of its respective marketplace. Thus, neoliberal theory promotes marketization as a process to define and reconstruct matters and relations—social and cultural—as their own marketplace and a part of a grand, comprehensive “marketized” society. Through this process, all things, matters, and relations are made economic and rightfully committed to free-market values.

Neoliberalism, as a driving force of ideology, delivers all things to auction in their respective markets. Essentially, everything under the sun has a market value. All is “either for sale or is plundered for profit (Giroux & Giroux, 2006, p. 22)”. Under the neoliberal state, the market rationality of governance is confined to a managerial strategy of deregulation, privatization, and systems of efficiency to ultimately promote economic growth and the accrual of fiscal capital. The neoliberal agenda unapologetically works to divest in social welfare policies and programs as public goods. The hegemony of neoliberalism reimagines investments of time and effort as well as resources are best allocated toward the transformation of public goods to private goods for purposes of sustaining a competitive labor market. Through the lens of neoliberalism, investments in policies and programs targeting the public good risk severely altering market efficiencies and thus market yields.

Belief in the indispensability of free markets to advance economies and social equity is accompanied by a conviction that individuals’ rights and choice are best safeguarded by the marketplace. This belief is further pronounced by champions of neoliberal ideology to discredit and discount the role of the state—albeit government, institutional administration, figures of authority—as capable guardians of such public interests (Giroux & Giroux, 2006; Harvey, 2005). To this end, the market is believed to be at its strongest when individuals and institutions are free to pursue their own interests. Most external influences upon a market are equated with being an enemy of individuals’ rights and a figurative eraser of choice. The continuous efforts to preserve the rights of individuals and intuitions theoretically permits uninhibited movement within and about markets as well as the right to create new marketplaces that inspire the competition of effort and service quality to fortify market vitality and economic increase. Consequently, the tenor of privatizing public goods and social matters for the purposes of competition and the pursuit of self-interests grows increasing louder as the protection of individual rights allow for the liberties of market expansion.

The ideology of neoliberalism cannot merely be pruned so far back only to see it as process of crafting or reimagining how we are to think about the climate and conditions of our economics and politics. An entanglement with neoliberalism is not just the consequential alterations of how we think, yet also a transformation of who we are. In the process of changing how we consider policies and practices to align with free-market values and an economic rationality, it too transforms our soul (Harvey, 2005). The point of neoliberalism is shared among the ways in which we alter our thinking, generate policies and practices, and enable a revolution of self. Individualism, as a virtue of the neoliberal project, is stimulated and operationalized through reconstructed investments in the cultivation of human capital. All persons and institutions are composed as rational actors who make judicious decisions that serve their interests. Neoliberal ideology endeavors to unambiguously construct individual and institutions as consumers of the market (Giroux, 2005). As goods and services are privatized, people are constructed as entrepreneurial actors able to consume that which is necessary to retain the life and overall persona of self that they desire. To achieve these ends, the free market thrives on consumer choice so that decisions are determined through the economic rationality of a cost versus benefit analysis. Possessing a particular lifestyle, personal brand or image, or to acquire various forms of capital that can fill one’s bank account, strengthen a resume, or even elevate one’s status of influence is possible through a series of choices that seek to leverage the accrual of capital. The individual and intuition is a perpetual economic, entrepreneurial consumer whose interests are achieved by a continuous series of coherent decisions (Giroux, 2005).

The hegemonic force of neoliberalist ideology is rife with contradictions similar to the overly optimistic claims of the Keynesian welfare state (Jones & Ward, 2002; Palley, 2005). Neoliberalism, has proved historically, to be far more of a convenient truth and managerial strong-arm over its declaration to deliver universal prosperity. The ideological hegemony has facilitated a widening of economic and sociocultural divides since its inception (Plehwe, Walpen, & Neunhoffer, 2006). While state-intervention is generally condemned by neoliberalist as an act of distortion to negatively infringe upon market values and its effectiveness and efficiencies, government intervention has been common and necessary to purge existing social welfare programs and policies (Brenner & Theodore, 2002; Harvey, 2003; Jomo & Baudot, 2007). The powers of the state, by way of the contradictions of neoliberalism, have historically been extended as a strategy to promote capitalist accumulation to manage social and economic crisis as well as to manage communities neoliberally defined as being in-crisis (Jones & Ward, 2002; Lentin & Titley, 2011; Lipman, 2013; Slater, 2015). State-interventions such as intensified resources allocated for policing communities, implementations of rigid penal codes (e.g. mandatory minimums), educational reform policies have been aligned with the political and economic neoliberal agendas. Many argue these reform movements and policy alignments couched by tropes better known as No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top (Alemán et al., 2011; Hursh, 2007a).

A charismatic trait of the neoliberal project lies within its conjecture of post-ideological politics. The ensemble of ideas, politics, and discourse that constitute the defining values, policies and practices of neoliberalism serve dual purposes. In one regard, this assemblage attempts to outline how to achieve the end goals of economic prosperity and sociocultural equity. In another regard, the same congregation of ideas, politics and discourse impart that evolutions of ideological contestation end at neoliberalism (Apple, 2001a, 2004a; Munck, 2005). In other words, neoliberalism attempts to have us all believe that it is irrational and illogical to think beyond the logic and rationality of neoliberalism, it self. A popularized phrase in the neoliberalist discourse is “There is no alternative” or TINA (Apple, 2004a; Munck, 2005). While seemingly sounding like oversimplifying the nuances of neoliberal ideology, the echo of TINA became the preeminent mantra for political and economic change from the Keynesian welfare state to fundamentalist fights for free-market freedoms and individual rights.

The aims of neoliberalism are not intended to eradicate inequality (Saunders, 2007). But rather, the conviction of the agenda is to encourage that free markets are, in fact, dependent on some degree of perpetual inequality (Apple, 2001a, 2001b). The capability of a market to show degrees of inequality facilitates an inscription of how ones’ status within a marketplace is not predicated on an unjust market, yet is fundamentally a consequence—positive or negative—of individuals’ determination, innate abilities, and their commitment to grind. Accordingly, markets that reveal an inequitable distribution of benefits to its stakeholders is not, based on neoliberal theory, a sign of injustice, but rather indicative of an effective market. Such a market is seen as duly rewarding those that contribute adequate effort and hard work. Simultaneously, the same market communicates, to all, that one’s shortcomings of effort and unrefined commitments to access particular market benefits is a just consequence and fairly defines individuals as undeserving. Here, the process of defining and redefining individuals and institutions as deserving and underserving based on ideas of effort, innate abilities, and commitment to develop into quality market contributors is used to rationalize policies and practices that support free markets values, privatization and divestment in public goods, and an investment in ventures of human capital development.

The Fight of the Century

W. E. B. Du Bois, in 1903, prophetically recognized and asserted that the color-line would prove to be the perpetual problem of the twentieth century. At the end that very decade for which Du Bois gave his philosophical diagnosis of the Souls of Black Folk and a prognosis of twentieth-century race relations, the heavy weight champion of the world, a young black athlete from Galveston, Texas, would step into a boxing ring to face his most durable opponent. While Johnson, stood atop the canvas of the boxing ring, starring into the eyes of the nation’s great white hope, Jim Jefferies, it was no secret that he also stood toe-to-toe with the gloved fists of a hegemonic ideology, also named Jim. The dynamics of whiteness would serve as the referee to call the fight between Johnson’s secondary opponent. Although not visible in the flesh, the spirit of its presence certainly presided overall in that moment.

The Johnson versus Jefferies fight was billed the fight of the century (Roberts, 2004). And although Jack Johnson stood victorious after the fifteenth round beneath the squelching sun, his victory was yet another paradoxical substantiation of the problem of the color-line. Nearly two decades into the twenty-first century, we continued to be saddled by this very color-line of race. There is zero indication, at best, that race will not remain a problem for generations to come. Similar to Jack Johnson, black athletes today are standing toe-to-toe in a fight of the twenty-first century. Only today, the opponent paired against black athletes is not Jim Crow, but rather the fierce hegemony of neoliberalism.

There is much research and literature concerning neoliberalism at the intersections of institutional structuring, policies and practices of education (Apple, 2013; Giroux, 2003; Olssen & Peters, 2005; Harvey, 2005; Hursh & Martina, 2003; Ross & Gibson, 2007). While the permeations of neoliberalism into systems and processes of education have stimulated a breadth of critical thought and understandings, there remains a dearth of robust knowledge as to how these phenomena pertain to black intercollegiate athletes’ experiences and education. My aim is to build upon this body of work to further explore how the hegemonic forces of neoliberalism have been normalized within the architectural design and engineering of higher education to affect the experiences and development of black athletes. The agenda of neoliberalism, as I have previously outlined, is an ideological managerial strategy intended to safeguard free-market values and impart an economic rationality that warrants the privatization of any and all public goods for the purposes of capital accrual. The neoliberal agenda turns education, once considered a public good, into a private good of the market for which one must make certain investments based on personal cost-or-benefit analyses. As all public goods become private goods of the marketplace under this agenda, all individuals and institutions are made rational economic consumers and investors into the labor market.

Black athletes participating in intercollegiate athletes of the twenty-first century present a uniquely intricate case for which to make sense of the intertwining of race, the culture and industries of sport, education and society. It is certainly no easy feat to fully understand the plight of the black athlete without consideration of the overlapping and interwoven contexts and conditions for which they have been and are being constructed. All the while, these contexts and conditions contain an element of permanence, yet still are fluid. The search for deeper understandings of the plight of the black athlete of the twenty-first century requires a heightened caution toward analyses that solely rely on invoking a metaphoric imagery meant to explain how people are situated by a relic of the past. One of the greatest challenges to critically see and make sense of the experiences and construction of black athletes in the twenty-first century is to not only look to ‘explain how people are situated, but also how and why people make decisions to treat and respond to one another (Perry, pg. 19).’

My endeavor to study neoliberalism and education germane to the plight of black athletes draws from a tradition of critical inquiry that seeks to interrogate the manufacturing and standardization of the figured worlds for which we live. Such climates and conditions of peoples’ lives are often normalized to the extent that any doubt of them is almost immediately labeled foreign and unfounded. Examining the experiences of black athletes constructed within and about institutions of higher education offers an ideal platform to narrowly interrogate the hegemony of ideology, the brokering of both power and opposition as the productions of a sociocultural matrix between environment and actors are covertly normalized by post-ideological politics and rationalities. More importantly, I seek to better understand the neoliberalization of education that significantly impacts black athletes not simply because it is transpiring in institutions of higher education, but precisely for the fact that the neoliberal project is perpetually dynamic and not readily realized as happening.

In the next chapter I will introduce the student athletes and athletics administrators from each of the sites where I conducted my study. Each student athlete is introduced through a personal vignette. My aim for introducing each student athlete in this manner is to present a rich illustration of who they are contextualized by their background of lived experiences before entering college, how each has sought to construct and reinscribe their own complex sense of self, and their efforts to pursue a personally meaningful education while a student athlete. A biographical sketch of each of the four athletics administrators is presented to give some context of their personal backgrounds, their beliefs about education as well as their viewpoints and perceived roles in the education of black intercollege student athletes.

NOTE

1. A resurgence of debate over the athletic superiority of black athletes occurred in the 1930s as a result of key performances by black athletes at 1932 Olympic Games. The discussion was further fueled by Jesse Owen’s record breaking performances at the Big Ten Champions in 1935 (Wiggins, 1989). Several early twentieth century scientists, including Eleanor Metheny and Laynard Holloman, researched physical differences between the race of athletes, specifically white and black, to make conclusion of any possible effects and or advantages that a race in athletic performance. William Montague Cobb, a famous black physical anthropologist from Howard University, also conducted research on the physical constitution of black people and black athletes. Cobbs research, some of which published in The Journal of Health and Physical Education, argued there to be no particular advantaged gain by an athlete based on their race that could suggest any particular race be superior to the other (Wiggins, 1989).