Lost Tribe Wandering the Conveyor Belt?

Some reflections on reading William Rhoden's 40 Million Dollar Slaves, a past-in-present perspective of the black athlete in America...  The book weaves together stories and collected evidence from under-explored sports history, news coverage, years of interviews Rhoden conducted, as well as his own auto-ethnographic reflections on life experiences growing up as an athlete-turned sports reporter & journalist.  Through these diverse narratives, Rhoden seeks to illustrate and problematize the ways that race and difference are unevenly structured in the United States, starting with the days of physical bondage and into today's increasingly global, corporatized world of inter-collegiate and professional sports.  

The institutional arrangements and accumulated wealth realized in sports through slavery, Jim Crow segregation, integration, and the recurring appropriation of black cultural aesthetics, are continually negotiated across asymmetrical power dynamics.  Elite athleticism in the U.S. thus traverses complex racialised, gendered, and hetero-masculine discourses, borders that form the foundation, process, products of the "big business" of sports in America.  We might think of the past as reverberating in the scaffolding of white-male-European-privileged social structures we still face today, structures that produce disparate circumstances, reactions, and effects, depending on one's location in these intertwined histories of difference.  

Rhoden maintains that race was the defining feature of his and many black athletes in his time sport, staying, “No amount of education, no amount of wealth, could remove the stigma of race.  The paradox and dilemma of virulent racism is that our exclusion became the basis of our unity.  The next two hundred years of our existence were defined by reacting to racism” (p. 15).  However, "today's racial realities are more complex--less black and white, if you will--than they've ever been before," a  historical moment that Rhoden sees as tragic because, he argues, elite college and pro athletes represent a "lost tribe wandering" amidst the fast capitalism of big-time sports.  This original proposed title, "Lost Tribe Wandering," represents the author's deep sadness, bordering on despair, of the black athletic "community."  The actual title, linking multi-million dollar sports stars to slavery, sought to grab headlines (which it did), sell more copies (which it did), and also crystallize the structured relations of an industrial complex that uses mostly black male bodies and identities/aesthetic towards the profit and power motivations of mostly white male ownership and governance.

The fact that some players, both black and white, are lavishly (disgusting) rewarded with wealth and privilege serves to distract  players, fans, and the public from "the reality of exploitation and contemporary colonization.  Black players have become a significant presence in major team sports, but the sports establishment has tenaciously resisted that presence percolating in equal numbers throughout the industry in positions of authority and control" (p. xi).  We might characterize Rhoden's central thesis on sports today (as they have in the past) as a social institution that promotes the individualistic pursuits of wealth and status among athletes, while simultaneously bracketing athletes from the means of production.  Commonly, elite athletes pass through and are handled by way of the "Conveyor Belt, a process by which athletic gold is mined and distributed largely to the benefit of white institutions and individuals in the billion-dollar sports industry" (170)

Rhoden suggests that the vast majority of today's superstar athletes are culturally constrained to publicly embody of a kind of false consciousness, so as to survive, financially thrive, and perform everyday in the sports-media industrial complex.  That droves of athletes have selected the course of least resistance in these dynamics is not really unanticipated, given the rugged individualism conceptually bound in the myth of the American Dream, and given the prevailing logic in America to make money money!   In the context of (a) systematic, shrewd business functions and strategy built over generations of sports ownership & control, (b) longstanding common logic of integration among black athletes in college and pro sports to toe the line (what Rhoden describes as "the Jackie Robinson model of how an integration-worthy African-American behaved; taking abuse, turning the other cheek, tying oneself in knots, holding one's tongue, never showing anger..." (101), and (c) a razor sharp focus among athletes on individually pursuing the money and courting corporate sponsorship over using sport as a vehicle for collective action and social change, cumulatively, Rhoden hopes to sound the alarm and call out to all athletes.  He warns of the missed social opportunities realized in the highly problematic sporting apparatus that aims to churn out young entitled talented gladiators, "who are so inclined become accustomed to being shepherded through the system without ever having to look out for themselves," "accustomed to hearing 'yes' all the time and having adults fawn over them" (p.177).  What are the explicit and hidden costs of building institutions and conducting cultural practices that demand focus, discipline, and cut-throat competitiveness on the court, while off the court, "young athletes are not given any restraint" (ibid).  Rhoden worries about the consequences of the Conveyor Belt, which effectively constructs players who willing and ready to sign up to become "isolated and alienated from their native networks and increasingly cloistered into new networks as they become corporatized entities... excised from their communities as they fulfill their professional responsibilities and disconnected from the networks of people, in many cases predominately African-American, who once comprised their 'community.'"  

These stars are sheltered in many ways from the outside, and provided immense privileges of the modern world, provided they maintain the graces of the owners and gate-keepers of the system.   Rhoden's analysis would have us believe that today's glittering athletes are miseducated and wholly unprepared to navigate these power bearing waters, unaware of the legacies of social protest and resistance that Muhammad Ali so typified, lacking in visionary leaders to counter social injustices or to organize some alternate business structure, as Rube Foster attempted.  Rhoden is nostalgic and perhaps unable to see the seeds of dissent within players like LeBron James, groomed on the Belt and trained in the art of not causing discomfort or distress for the land-owning and fan-consuming dominant culture. 

However, former NBA player and author Etan Thomas thinks that "this couldn't be further from the truth.  Painting the entire, illustrious roster of current black athletes with this broad brush of ridicule, one that leaves no room for exceptions, is just wrong... To say 'the contemporary tribe,' as he calls us, with access to unprecedented wealth is lost," is completely inaccurate."  Thomas cites LeBron and the Heat and other NBA players publicly responding to the Trayvon Martin shooting as example of the growing social consciousness among athletes to pressing matters of racial justice.

The elevated status and pop cultural caché of these stars means their efforts find immediate voice and salience in tradition and social media.  LeBron's limited visible protest around the Trayvon Martin and the Black Lives Matter Movement defintiely calls into question Rhoden's label of a lost tribe wandering.  Are the tables turning?  Are we seeing a genuine movement away supposed political neutrality (epitomized by the Michael Jordan's politics of capital accumulation and brand management), as players embrace their privilege and status as a means to achieve progessive social change?  I certainly hope we see continued emergence of athlete activism.  But I'm not convinced we are there yet.  What do you say?

Some resources on Title IX

Women in Intercollegiate Sport: A Longitudinal National StudyDrs. Vivian Acosta and Linda Carpenter have been tracking and analyzing gender equity trends in college sports since 1977.  You can download their most recent report, a 37 year update (1977-2014) and other materials at

http://acostacarpenter.org

Are We There Yet? Thirty-seven years later, Title IX hasn't fixed it all.
By Acosta & Carpenter.  Available here

An overview of Title IX background and current issues

https://www.presidentschallenge.org/informed/digest/docs/201209digest.pdf

The Equity in Athletics Data Analysis Cutting Tool 

Updated by the Office of Postsecondary Education of the U.S. Department of Education. this online tool provides customized reports relating to equity in athletics at colleges and universities. 
See how your school is doing by the numbers.  Get figures on athletic participation, budgets, scholarships and coaches. 

http://ope.ed.gov/athletics/ 

Do you have Title IX concerns or a potential complaint? You can call the National Women’s Law Center Title IX Hotline at (855) 437- 4263, or the Women’s Sports Foundation InfoLine at (800) 227-3988

Structure, Culture & Agency: Title IX and women's participation in sports

Image copied from, http://onlyagame.wbur.org/

In 1972 Title IX, a comprehensive federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in any federally funded education program or activity, was passed into law.  The statute reads:  

“No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance.”

Most often we hear about Title IX in reference to sports, but this is just one of 10 target areas addressed by the law, including: access to Higher Education, Education for Pregnant and Parenting Students, Employment, and Sexual Harassment.  Since the law was passed, the number of female athletes has increased nearly six-fold, NPR reports.  Recent data from the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) indicates that between 2004 and 2010, there was approximately 14% increase in the proportion of female athletes in Division I, a 21% increase of women in Division II, and 14% increase in Division III (see NCAA Gender Equity Report 2004-2010) .  However, at the same time, the number of female coaches has dropped dramatically.  Four decades ago, approximately 90% of all college women’s sports teams (there were less teams then) were coached by women.   Currently about 40% of college women's teams are coached by women, and in some sports, such as hockey (~12%), the figures are much lower.

Read the following news story asking, "Why has number of women college coaches plummeted since Title IX?"  Found at: http://www.indystar.com/story/sports/college/2015/02/23/number-women-college-coaches-plummeted-since-title-ix/23889831/

Listen to two segments on Title IX and the recent firing of wildly successful women's hockey coach Shannon Miller on NPR's 'Only A Game':
http://onlyagame.wbur.org/2015/02/21/shannon-miller-title-ix-minnesota-duluth

http://onlyagame.wbur.org/2015/02/21/female-college-coaches-title-ix

Using the lens of structuration theory (see C. Cooky reading), consider the role of social structure, culture, and/or agency to help explain this simultaneous growth in female athletes and precipitous drop in female coaches in the NCAA.  What if any alternate perspectives (e.g. than the ones offered by university administrators or by Shannon Miller or voices in the NPR story) might we consider to make sense out of Miller being fired from the University of Minnesota Duluth after building the hockey program and winning five national D-I championships in 15 years?  How should we look at this controversy?  What's being discussed?  What do you think is not being discussed in the media?

Structuration: Structure, Culture, & Agency in Sports

In sociology, the metaphor of structure (e.g. Bourdieu; Giddens; Hays) is often used to make sense out of people's choices, actions, and social interactions.  The basic notion is that people think and behave in relation to taken-for-granted or "common sense" ways of being that are intricately shaped by society.   Social structure might be thought of as akin to the human skeletal structure.  Professor Lisa Patel (2013) explains, "across individuals, the skeleton includes mostly the same components that govern the systemic biological processes such as breathing and eating.  From one person to the next, however, these processes can vary greatly, often due to the individual's unique characteristics but also to external factors" (p.1).  These many, multi-directional external factors include but are not limited to environmental pollutants; zip code; family socio-economics; access to food, shelter, health care; etc.

The interplay between structure and agency, or what Giddens refers to as "the duality of structure," means that you & I as individuals, and the groups we "belong" to, are both shaped by societal factors and continually reshaping this societal structure through the negotiation and realization of our particularly positioned agency within a social moment in history.  This structuring structure allows/impels individuals to exercise choices (of varying degrees of freedom) and to take actions that have disparate consequences.  

In these fast-moving social dynamics, culture plays a critical mediating role in influencing individual actors' and institutions' trajectories through societal structure.  Culture can be thought of as the taken for granted ways of seeing that makes up “a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, feeling, believing, valuing, and acting that can be used to identify oneself as a
member of a socially meaningful group or social network” (Gee, 1999, p.131).  Therefore, within a complex social organization such as an after-school program, a AAU basketball program, a college team, the NCAA, the NBA, the commonsense knowledge of that place ripple through what is construed as normal, natural, irrational, strange, controversial, problematic, as well as what is not thought about at all (Foucault, 1977; Gramsci, 1971).  

Culture is most visible in people and group's linguistic decisions.  It is productive, in that it continuously works to construct inter-subjective realities (See Heath & Street 2007 for ethnographic perspective on language and culture, not sports specific).  Insiders of a group tacitly understand how to “be” within their community because that group’s explicit and unspoken assumptions and generalizations about the way the world works--or how one thinks it "should work."  In this way, culture structures our social interactions by serving as a kind of ideological shorthand.   It continually creates schemas that shapes people’s social expectations, how folks behave and interact, and how phenomena are interpreted (whether in slow, reasoned thinking or "twitch" thinking... For an economic perspective on slow and fast thinking in "racial bias, even when we have good intentions," see Mullainathan in NY Times, but I'm digressing..).  Culture creates cohesions and continuities in the ways social groups operate in society, and makes an individual intuitively know she is a member of a group..  This intricate process has reproducing effects, whereby societal structures we encounter are assumed is be "true" in certain constrained ways that adhere to what we expect to hear.  So, we often uncritically look to confirm what we already know, socially constructing realities that make sense with some historically-situated worldview (Berger & Luckmann, 1966).

What does this have to do with the study of sports in society?  How can attention to structuration processes inform our understanding of the intersectionality of gender, race, and economics within increasingly corporatized and profit-oriented college and pro sports?  What can we learn from a research stance that burrows into the local particulars of sports, while attending to broad societal trends and transformations in our fractured or fragmented global capitalism (Katz, 2004)
Katz (2004) posits that contemporary societies are complexly conditioned by “fragmented global capitalism.”  If we accept the proposition that how people socially reproduce themselves and their material practices are constantly being shaped by their access to the wealth, privilege, and products of globalization, then we can assume that those “in” power in the dominant culture(s) have capacity to structure opportunities to ever expand their own interests.  At the same time, structured exclusions from the accumulation of capital create frictions or ruptures in the socio-economic conditions facing those on the “outside” of these power arrangements.  This generates uneven material social practices and social consequences that impacts all of us (though decidedly differently, depending how much power and privilege you/I've got)...  (de)constructing and (re)constructing these relationships is in part my aim and our task in this course.  Let's dig in.

Citations
 Berger, P., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the
Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor Books.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). The logic of practice. Polity Press.
Gee, J. P. (1999). An introduction to discourse analysis: Theory and method. London:
Routledge.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks. New York: International Publishers.
Hays (1994). Structure and agency and the sticky problem of culture. Sociological Theory, 12 (1): 57-72.
Katz, C. (2004). Growing up global: Economic restructuring and children’s everyday
lives. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Patel, L (2013). Youth Held at the Border. Teachers College Press.

The Collision of Sports and Politics

In our national sporting discourse, there is a taken-for-granted assumption that sports and politics do not mix.  As a result, athletes are typically expected to bracket their political views and opinions from the public eye (unless, that is, they are conveying patriotic or team crafted/branded messages for the media).  However, the reality is that sports are political in that they involve intricate, often asymmetrical, relations of power.    Check out Moyers & Company episode, "The Collision of Sports and Politics," in which Dave Zirin talk with Bill Moyers about how politics are interwoven through sports, and why we should care.  The full episode is available at:

 

http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-the-collision-of-sports-and-politics/

 

Or  http://youtu.be/Rvf27hYX9qc

 

Why do you think there exists strong social expectations to separate sports from politics (or certain kinds of politics)?   What might this reveal about the dominant culture in America?  Do you contend with any of Zirin's assertions?  How can we use the context of sports to better understand how power is structured in society?  Does the recent involvement of professional and collegiate athletes in Black Lives Matter and other social movements compel us to rethink Zirin's claims in this 2013 show?  What struck you or sticks with you about the collision of sports and politics?  How does this relate to the course themes and readings?

On reading Rhoden's 40 Million Dollar Slaves

I trust you have dug yourselves out from this week's installment of back-breaking schedule-rupturing snow... When we have had class we've been discussing Wlliam C. Rhoden's provocative and controversial book, which examines the history of structured racism in U.S. professional and collegiate sports.  Through compelling stories, historical analysis, and personal narrative, Rhoden illuminates the ongoing struggles for social and material power among black athletes in a society that simultaneously reveres and reviles them in both past and present history.  The book examines racialized social structures that create dissimilar, though interlocking institutional givens and opportunities availed to white people like myself and black people, whether mega rich or chronically poor.

So, how are sports structured differently (socially and materially) for black and white athletes in the United States?  How does an examination of our nation’s past help us to understand what is happening in the sporting world today?

Consider, for instance, what light can Rhoden’s book shed on public controversy surrounding Donald Sterling?  Does Rhoden’s analysis suggest that Sterling’s blatant racism (L.A. Clippers) is an aberration in American society or connected to deep-seated patterns of structured racial exclusions?  The book highlights and argues that despite earning million dollar salaries and corporate endorsements, modern black athletes continue to be tied (not physically, but metaphorically chained) to a system that is exploits and fears them.  If Sterling’s overt racist attitudes were a well-known secret in the NBA (prior to being caught on tape), why did other NBA owners and the league not seem to have an issue with Sterling until his remarks went viral?  How did head coach Doc Rivers justify/rationalize to himself working for Sterling?  If Sterling’s housing discrimination practices and slumlord tactics were documented over the year, how did this not land him in the hot seat among sports commentators and fans? How on earth could he have been in line to receive an NAACP award for philanthropy?  

One short response is that it is much easier to identify blatant racist remarks than it is to locate subtle racist beliefs or more systematic racial exclusions.  When such obvious bigotry is outed, people can point and say, Sterling is a racist.  The NBA can ban him from the league for life.  And everyone can feel better about themselves for NOT behaving or talking like Sterling.  As Bomani Jones argued on ESPN radio, "This is the only opportunity that a lot of people have where they feel comfortable within their souls, within their psyches to stand against racism... Cause it's so easy to do it on this right here when it's so scandalous" (Listen to Jones break down how most the media have focused on the over racism while overlooking systemic racism hiding in plain sight in Sterling's actions).  Addressing racism has reached critical condition, yet recent research points trends that many white people may in fact deny that structural racism exists and believe  so-called "reverse racism" is actually a bigger problem than, well, actual racism. 

If, as a society, we hope to fundamentally diverge from the wrongs of our racialized histories, we must work harder to notice and oppose everyday, hidden forms of racism, not just the blatant acts of bigotry.  Rhoden's book offers grounded analysis to perceive the legacies of racism in contemporary sports.  It's full of compelling stories from the past, stories about struggle, triumph, oppression, and resistance among black athletes.  But Rhoden also offers a cautionary tale, to reconsider how race & class are lived through sports (the book's almost complete lack of discussion on women in sports until Ch. 8 should be troubling to you). He envisions an alternate path forward that includes athletes of color as power-brokers and decision-makers in a field that relies heavily on the celebration & selling of black athletes for public spectacle, but mostly fails to include black men or women with the institutional power structures of sports.

So, what issues and questions are coming up for you in reading the book?  What is most striking? Offensive? Troubling?  What lessons should we distill from it?  I want to hear from you.

Also, check out Rice University book discussion with Bomani Jones addressing Rhoden's book and issues of race, labor, and exploitation in the sports world, at both college and pro levels.

Professor Stan Thangaraj, sociocultural anthropologist: Inside the Researcher's Studio

In his recent blog post, ‘Boys Being Boys': Can We Think Otherwise?, Dr. Stan Thangaraj examines sexism, sexual violence, and masculinity in linking amateur sports with the Super Bowl.  Read it at: http://cpowellschoolblog.org/2015/02/02/boys-being-boys-can-we-think-otherwise/

On Wed. Feb 11, 9:30, Dr. Thangaraj visited our class via Skype, to talk about his research spanning the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity in South Asian America in particular and in immigrant America in general.  He's author of the forthcoming book, "Desi Hoop Dreams: Pickup Basketball and the Making of Asian American Masculinity."  His work looks closely at the relationships between citizenship, gender, race, and sexuality as critical to understanding diasporic nationalism.  In class, we discussed:

-"We're 80% more Patriotic: Atlanta's Muslim Community and the Performances of Cultural Citizenship," In Routledge Publication's Handbook on Race, Class, and Gender.  Near-final version is posted on TRUNK. Or you can access the chapter free through Google books, starts on p. 220. 

-"Playing through Difference: The Black-White Racial Logic and Interrogating South Asian American Identity." Journal of Ethnic and Racial Studies 35(6) [see TRUNK]

You can download unedited audio recording of our conversation with Dr. Thangaraj, in which he shares his aims for conducting social research, and how he got involved in the ethnography of sports.  I ask him a couple questions related to his research agenda, his particular methods of socio-cultural inquiry, and the role that social theory plays his research..  Then, we opened it up to students' questions.  Thank you so much for your valuable time and attention!