The Melissa Harris Perry Show: Activism in the Olympics w/ John Carlos

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1968 Olympic Bronze Medalist in Track & Field, John Carlos; 1964 Olympic Gold Medalist in Swimming, Donna de Varona; Jemele Hill; Dave Zirin

Brittney Griner, Women Athletes and the Erotic Gaze

Brittney Griner, Women Athletes and the Erotic Gaze

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan (in Exile)

With the 40^th anniversary of the Title IX, and the recent announcement that for the first time in history American female athletes will outnumber their male teammates at the Olympics, it would be easy to claim victory in the fight against sexism within the world of sports.  Dave Zirin, in a recent column about Title IX and Serena Williams, reflected on the importance of this legislation:

There is arguably no piece of progressive legislation that’s touched more people’s lives than Title IX, which allowed young women equal opportunity in education and sports. According to the Women’s Sports Foundation, one in thirty-five high school girls played sports forty years ago; one in three do today. Before Title IX, fewer than 16,000 women participated in college sports; today that number exceeds 200,000. All stereotypes about women being too “emotional” to handle sports were answered when the gyms were unlocked, and they arrived in droves. It is a reform that has improved the quality of life for tens of millions of women around the country.

While certainly a landmark piece of legislation that literally and symbolically transformed sporting landscapes throughout the United States (more so in the suburbs), Zirin also elucidates the persistence of sexism within sports culture, evident in inequity in pay, coaching disparities, differential treatment from the press, and the intransigent power of stereotypes.  Recognizing an incomplete transformation and the need for persistent agitation as to fully realize justice and equality, Zirin depicts sports as a place where dreams remained deferred.

The reasons for Zirin’s muted or skeptical celebration have been on full display this evening with the treatment of Brittney Griner by “sports fans” on Twitter.  Illustrating the ways that race, gender, and sexuality constrain and contain, the ways that racism, sexism, and homophobia exists as prism/prison of sporting consumption, and the ways that new media operates as a technology of surveillance and demonization, the treatment of Griner highlights the dreams yet fulfilled in Title IX.  What should have been a celebration of her greatness and that of other female athletes is yet another moment of rampant sexism, homophobia and racism.  Here are but a few of the tweets that echoed within the twitter world during the ESPYS:

·        And the best male athlete goes to... Britney Griner

·        Brittney Griner should have won best male athlete...

·        If Brittney Griner's straight then I'm an Angels fan.

·        Watchin the #espys......ummmmm Brittney Griner sounds like a man......wow!!

·     The Heat win "BestTeam" category really? They should sign Britney Griner then they'd really be a scary team

·        Brittney Griner is a man

·        The ESPYs made me cry tonight. Not because of Eric LeGrand or Pat Summit. But because of Brittney Griner. That woman frightens me endlessly.

·        Brittney griner screaming like a dude lol

·        Brittney Griner has to be a dude

·        Brittney Griner is a Dude her voice deeper than mine

·        Brittney griner looks and sounds like a dude #BestMaleAthlete

·       I would rather have Brittney Griner win best male athlete than Lebron. Because she's WAY more of a man than he will ever be

·        Brittney griner... Do your balls grow hair? #nodoubt

·        Cup check in britney griner please

·   I wonder if Brittney griner is packing more downstairs than the #bieledong @BeingBielema

·       No one on this planet can tell me that Brittney Griner is not a homosexual male. I won't believe it. #ESPYS

·        Brittney Griner's voice scares me

·    Brittney Griner...you just won best FEMALE college athlete, at least go to the ESPY'S dressed like a GIRL! Smh.

·        Are we sure that Brittney Griner is really a girl??

·     If Brittney Griner wins female athlete of the year at the Espys tonight I'm gonna throw a fit. She's not even a female

Clearly, the 2012 ESPYS were another moment to mock and ridicule and to otherwise dehumanize Brittney Griner. Demonizing her as “unattractive,” questioning her worthiness or the appropriateness of her receiving an award for “best female athlete,” and imaging her as a scary and disgusting Other, the Tweets are yet another reminder of how sports culture remains a space hostile to women, especially those who don’t fulfill male sexual fantasies.  In an effort to fully contextualize these tweets, I thought I would repost piece I wrote for Slam earlier in the year.

Not Entertained?

Averaging 22.7 points/game – Check

60% from field and over 80% from line – Check

Almost 10 rebounds each night – Check

155 blocks after 30 games in season – Check

Team undefeated and ranked #1 – Check

Outscoring opponents by 30+ points/game - Check

With numbers like this, and the level of dominance seen throughout their career, you would think that this player would be the talk of the town, with magazine covers, lengthy biographic pieces on ESPN and a theme of celebration.  Yet, these numbers and success hasn’t translated into Britsanity, all of which reflects the power of race, gender, and sexuality within sport culture.  Unable to transform the narrative, in spite of her amazing (revolutionizing) play, Brittney Griner remains an afterthought within the basketball world.  Unable to embody the traditional feminine aesthetic and beauty, yet fulfilling the stereotypes usually afforded to black male ballers, there is little use for Griner within the national imagination.  Her greatness is relatively invisible (outside of hardcore sports fans) because she simultaneously fits and repels our expectations for female athletes. 

When Brittney Griner emerged on the national scene three years ago (and even before while still in high school), the media focus wasn’t solely on her game, but instead positioned her as a player who was challenging the expectations of female athletes.  Unlike the vast majority of celebrated female athletes, she was, according to the narrative, a less feminine “androgynous female” who challenged the “rigidity of sex roles.”   Often comparing her to males, the media narrative consistently imagined her as a “freak” and as an aberration, contributing to a story of shock, amazement and wonderment whether Griner was indeed a woman.  According to Lyndsey D'Arcangelo, “The world of women’s basketball has never seen a player like this before. Griner has the athletic skills and build of any budding male college basketball star, which has brought her ‘gender; into question.”

In “Brittney Griner, Basketball Star, Helps Redefine Beauty,” Guy Trebay highlights the ways in which the dominant narrative of Griner imagine her as not baller, as not student-athlete, but as signifier of gender and sexuality. 

Feminine beauty ideals have shifted with amazing velocity over the last several decades, in no realm more starkly than sports. Muscular athleticism of a sort that once raised eyebrows is now commonplace. Partly this can be credited to the presence on the sports scene of Amazonian wonders like the Williams sisters, statuesque goddesses like Maria Sharapova, Misty May Treanor and Kerri Walsh, sinewy running machines like Paula Radcliffe or thick-thighed soccer dynamos like Mia Hamm.

While celebrating her for offering an alternative feminine and aesthetic, the media narrative of course represented her in ways limited to female athletes – she was confined by the stereotype of women athletes.  Focusing on her body, and how she meshes with today’s beauty stands, all while defining her “as a tomboy” the public inscription of Grinner did little to challenge the image of female athletes.  In purportedly breaking down the feminine box that female athletes are confined to within sports cultures, Griner provided an opportunity, yet as we see the opportunity is still defined through feminine ideals and sexual appeal to men. 

The limited national attention afforded to Griner irrespective of her dominance and her team’s success reflects the profound ways that her emergence has not ushered in a new moment for women’s sports.  Unable to appeal to male viewers, to fulfill the expectations of femininity and sexuality, Griner has remained on outside the already infrequent media narrative of women’s sports.  Even though there are multiple networks dedicated to sport, even though there are magazines, countless websites, and a host of other forms of social networking dedicated to sports, there are few places for female athletes, much less black female athletes.  Studies have demonstrated that less than 10% (3-8%) of all sports coverage within national and local highlight packages focuses on women’s sports.

Substantive coverage and national attention so often comes through sex and sex appeal, where female athletes who are successful at sport (less important) and eliciting pleasure from male viewers garner the vast majority of sport.  Matthew Syed (2008) argues that, “There has always been a soft-porn dimension to women’s tennis, but with the progression of Maria Sharapova, Ana Ivanovic, Jelena Jankovic and Daniela Hantuchova to the semi-finals of the Australian Open, this has been into the realms of adolescent (and non-adolescent) male fantasy.” 

Attempting to elevate women’s sports by telling readers that it is OK to view female athletes as sexual objects, he laments how western culture has not “reached a place where heterosexual men can acknowledge the occasionally erotic dimension of watching women’s sport without being dismissed as deviant.”  This sort of logic contributes to the relative invisibility of Griner on the national landscape.

The lack of national attention illustrates that because Griner has not fulfilled this erotic dimension she has found limited use within the national imagination.  One has to look no farther than YouTube comments to see the interconnection between the perceived masculinity of Griner, the lack of desire for her as sexual object, and her erasure from the sporting landscape.  Unable to fill the role prescribed to female athletes within American sports culture, she is either dismissed as a “male” or a “freak” or used to normalize the Anna Kournakova, Allison Stokke and Candace Parkers’ of the world, who fulfill male expectations. 

Reflecting the values of patriarchal society, female athletes who can appear on ESPN and Girls Gone Wild, who can win sport’s title and wet t-shirt contests, receive accolades and celebration.  Notwithstanding the initial efforts to elevate Griner to the status of “game changer,” as someone who would redefine gendered expectations of sports, her outsider status highlights the difficulty of this process.    

Griner inability to crossover to secure mass appeal isn’t purely about gender and sexuality, about dominant expectations of female athletes, but also the ways that her blackness restricts and confines her.  Described as tough, masculine, and as physical, much of which comes from a 2010 incident where she hit an opponent, Griner has faced the burden of race, gender, and sexuality.  The history of “white newspapers” is one where the media has “trivialized African-American women’s participation in sport, either by failing to cover the accomplishments of the athletes or by framing the athletes as masculine” (Cookey, Wachs, Messner and Dworkin 2010, p. 142).   The efforts to describe, contain, and represent Griner through both racial and gendered language is illustrative of a larger history of black female athletes.  Those who are able to fulfill the dominant white imagination regarding female athletes (to mimic a white aesthetic; to fulfill white sexual fantasies, such as Candace Parker) enters into the public sphere as sexual objects, yet those athletes like Griner, who don’t embody the sexualized aesthetics of white male pleasure, find themselves on the outside looking in at the few opportunities afforded to female athletes. It is no wonder that she hasn’t taken the nation by storm because clear her game is all that.   

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis.  Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness was just published by SUNY Press in May of 2012.

The NFL or The Hunger Games? Some Thoughts on the Death of Junior Seau

The NFL or The Hunger Games? Some Thoughts on the Death of Junior Seau

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

Last weekend I saw The Hunger Games.  When I walked into the theater, I could not have told you one thing about the film, and if not for the uber publicity, I likely would have thought it was a show on the Food Network.  While there is much to say about the film, I was left thinking about how it merely recycled the common Hollywood Gladiator trope.  Mirroring films like The Running Man and The Gladiator, The Hunger Games highlights the ways that elite members of society make sport and find pleasure out of the pain and suffering of others.  That is, they find arousal and visceral excitement in watching people battle until death.  Within such a narrative trope is always a class (and at times racial) dimension where those with power and wealth (the tenets of civilization?) enjoy the spectacle of those literally and symbolically beneath them fighting until death.  The cinematic representation of the panopticon, whether within the past or in futuristic terms, allows for commentary about the lack of civility, morals, and respect for humanity amongst the elite outside of our present reality.   As these morality tales take place in the past (and or future), they exists a commentary about our present condition, statements about how far we have evolved and/or the danger of the future. 

Yet, what about The Hunger Games in our midst?  What about the NFL, a billionaire enterprise that profits off the brutality, physical degradation, and pain of other people?  What about a sport that celebrates the spectacle of violence? Unlike The Hunger Games or Gladiator, films that depict a world where people bear witness to death, hungrily waiting the next kill, football and hockey fans sit on the edge of their seat waiting for the knock out hit, the fight, and bone crushing collision.  The game doesn’t end with death but death results from the game. Out of sight, out of mind, yet our hunger for games that kill are no different.

Junior Seau committed suicide today; he shot himself in chest.  While his death certificate will surely say “self inflicted gun shot wound,” it might as well say death by football.  He, like so many former NFL players, have fallen victim to football-induced death.  The links between suicides and concussions, between obesity and heart disease, and between drug abuse and post-NFL physical pain, are quite clear.  The NFL Games are killing men before our eyes; yes, death is not taking place on-the-field with fans screaming from the rafters or the comfort of their couches, but make no mistake about, death is knocking on every player’s door.  “Suicide, drugs, alcohol, obesity—are ailments the National Football League is getting to know all too well,” writes Dave Zirin.  To him, Seau is yet another reminder of the brutality of the NFL and the callousness to this epidemic.  He continues:

These are issues NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the various team owners are loathe to discuss, but with Seau, they won’t have a choice. In Seau, a larger than life Hall of Fame player, we have someone with friends throughout the ranks of the league and especially in the media. It will be incredibly difficult to keep this under wraps. People will want answers. Over the summer, former Chicago Bears safety Dave Duerson took his own life with a gunshot to the chest so his brain could be studied for the effects of concussive injuries. Junior Seau now joins him, a gunshot to the chest. There is a discussion that the NFL is going to have to have with a team of doctors, players and the public. Right now, this is not a league safe for human involvement. I have no idea how to make it safer. But I do know that the status quo is absolutely unacceptable.

Lester Spence also pushes us to think about suicide as a potential consequence of NFL/NHL careers. 

The first thing we should do is think about Wade Belak, Rick Rypien, and Derek Boogaard. They were three NHL enforcers (people who made their hockey careers through their fists rather than through their sticks), who committed suicide over the past year. Each of them had a history of concussions. Boogaard made the courageous decision to offer up his brain to science. The results suggest his suicide may have been the result of brain damage.

It is only after thinking about Belak, Rypien, and Boogaard, that we have the medical context to understand Seau. Not so much to understand why he committed suicide–if there were a simple relationship between concussions and suicides the suicide rate of former NFL/NHL players would be far higher than it is. BUT to understand how his suicide may be at least a partial function of his NFL career. 

 

It is hard not to think about the consequences of sporting violence.  It is hard to deny the implications here when NFL players commit suicide at a rate six times the national average; it is hard not to think about a rotten system when 65 percent of NFL players retire with permanent and debilitating injuries.  It is hard not to think of the NFL and NHL as a modern-day gladiator ring where our out-of-sight childhood heroes are dying because of the game, because of sport, because we cheered and celebrated brutality and violence.  It is hard not to think of the NFL as nothing more than the real-life hunger games, our version of death as sport, when we look at reports following suicide of Dave Duerson:

This intent, strongly implied by text messages Duerson sent to family members soon before his death, has injected a new degree of fear in the minds of many football players and their families, according to interviews with them Sunday. To this point, the roughly 20 N.F.L.veterans found to have chronic traumatic encephalopathy — several of whom committed suicide — died unaware of the disease clawing at their brains, how the protein deposits and damaged neurons contributed to their condition.

How much data do we need; how much proof; how many suicides, how many twenty-something football stars need to die with chronic traumatic encephalopathy before we see a problem; how many ex-players need to die, only to find out that football had left their brain “consistent with that of an 85-year-old man” until we demand change?  How many more deaths before we realize that the hunger games aren’t in the future but it is are our current national pastime.  How many families need to lose a father and brother, son and husband, before we stand-up and walk away because death should never be sport.  That seems to be the message of The Hunger Games; one can only hope we can catch up to the future. 

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis.  Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness was just published.

NCAA March Madness: Not All Fun and Games

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Dave Zirin (The Nation), Jemele Hill (ESPN) and Keith Boykin weigh in on the politics and business of March Madness on the Melissa Harris Perry Show (MSNBC).

Pride and Prejudice: Jeremy Lin and the Persistence of Racial Stereotypes

Pride and Prejudice: Jeremy Lin and the Persistence of Racial Stereotypes

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

The recent success and national visibility afforded to Jeremy Lin has both inspired Asian Americans and has been driven by the adoration and pride he elicits from some within the community.  Whether on twitter, Facebook, or in the stadiums, it is clear that Lin is not simply a national phenomena but a treasure for the Asian American community. 

According to Jamilah King, “regardless of how the rest of the season goes for Lin, and the Knicks, his moment in the spotlight is an important time to reflect on how the country views its Asian American athletes.”  Whereas past Asian athletes, whether it be Yao Ming or Ichiro captured the global Asian Diaspora’s imagination, Lin is the most widely recognized Asian American athlete on the American team sport scene.  Timothy Dalrymple highlights the appeal of Lin to Asian American males:

He particularly has a following amongst Asian-Americans.  And some Asian-American young men, long stereotyped as timid and unathletic, nerdy or effeminate or socially immature — have fought back tears (which may not help with the stereotype, but is understandable under the circumstances) as they watched Jeremy Lin score 25 points, 7 assists and 5 rebounds for the New York Knicks.

In “Asian Americans energized in seeing Knicks' Jeremy Lin play,” J. Michael Falgoust elucidates his cultural power within the Asian American community in quoting the thoughts of several different people:

"I don't care about the outcome. I just want to see him in action. He's as good of an Asian American athlete as there is” — Rose Nguyen

"I'm so proud. I don't care if he is Chinese or Korean. I had to see him … my boyfriend has been talking about him so much" — Christine Lee

"I'm really excited. He breaks so many stereotypes. And my friends are just as excited. If you go to my Facebook feed, it's all Jeremy Lin. I like that he plays smart. But then he's from Harvard. So that is expected. He is also humble. He reminds me a lot of Derrick Rose, who's always crediting teammates” — Andrew Pipathsouk

Andrew Leonard similarly argues that Lin’s popularity amongst Asian Americans is emblematic of the power of social media and also the pride that athletic success garners for Asian Americans, otherwise seen as “nerds” not “jocks.”  While problematically invoking the language of “genetics” that erases Lin’s tremendous athleticism/speed, Leonard concludes that Lin inspires Asian American kids who yearn for a masculine role model given persistent invisibility and anti-Asian racism within the public square. “He’s a triumph of will over genetic endowment, a fact that makes him inspiring to an entire generation of Californian kids restless with their model minority shackles,” he notes.

On Monday, the social media world was also getting worked up about Michigan Republican Senate hopeful Pete Hoekstra’s racist Super Bowl ad,featuring a Chinese woman (labeled “yellowgirl” in the HTML code for the Web version) gloating over all the jobs her country was taking from the U.S. Once thrown into the 24/7 crazy cultural mashup perpetual motion machine, it didn’t take long before anger about that ad ran head on into Jeremy Lin pride. I have seen tweets urging Jeremy Lin to run for the Republican nomination for the Michigan senate seat, tweets warning that the only American jobs in danger from Asians are those belonging to New York Knick starting point guards, and even a tweet riffing off Kobe Bryant’s self-identification as “black mamba” — Jeremy Lin is suddenly  the “yellow mamba.”

Lin has trended #1 on twitter on three successive game days, was top-10 searched items on Sina Weibo and is all the talk of the sports world.  For the moment, it is Jeremy Lin’s world and we are all just living in it.

                                         

The pride and possibility reflects the broader erasure and invisibility of Asian Americans within popular culture (minus this year’s Top Chef).  “Asians are nearly invisible on television/movies/music, so any time I see an Asian on TV or in the movies, I feel like I’ve just spotted a unicorn, even though usually, I see them being portrayed as kung-fu masters/socially awkward mathematical geniuses/broken-English-speaking-fresh-off-the-boat owner of Chinese restaurant/nail salon/dry cleaners,” writes one blogger. “Anyway, this phenomenon is 10x worse in sports.  While there has been some notable progress with Asians in professional baseball, Asians are all but non-existent in the big three sports in the US (football, basketball, baseball).”   

Lin breaks down, or at least penetrates, the walls that have excluded Asian Americans from popular culture.  The pride, adoration and celebration reflect this history of exclusion, a history of erasure, and invisibility.  The efforts to link Lin to Nike’s “Witness” campaign is illustrative in that we are all witness, maybe for the first, time in history, of an Asian American sports hero, someone who challenges and defies expectations and stereotypes.

Amid the invisibility is a history of feminization of Asian American males.  When present within media and popular culture, Asian American men have been represented as asexual, weak, physically challenged, and otherwise unmasculine.  Sanctioning exclusion and denied citizenship, the white supremacist imagination has consistently depicted Asian male bodies as effeminate.  The entry of Lin into the dominant imagination reflects a challenge to this historic practice given the power of sports as a space of masculine prowess.  

Whether shock or celebration, Lin’s cultural power rests in his juxtaposition to the stereotyped Asian American male.  According to Timothy Dalrymple, “their astonishment at the sight of Jeremy Lin outperforming the other players, their consistent references to how exhausted he must be, and how “magical” a night he’s having (rather than a natural result of talent and hard work) suggests that they’ve bought into the stereotype of the physically inferior Asian-American male.”

Lin’s recent ascendance is not simply about success or dominance within the sports world, a place defined by masculine prowess.  It reflects the cultural and gendered meaning of basketball.  Lin is excelling in a world defined by black manhood, an identity the white racial frames construct through physicality, strength, speed and swagger.  Unlike other players who burst onto the American scene (Yao Ming, Yi Jianlian, Wang ZhiZhi), Lin is a guard, who has found success because of his athleticism and skills as opposed to his presumed freakish stature.  “The best part is how viscerally pleasurable it is to watch Lin play: His game is flashy, almost showoffy, and requires him to have guts, guile and flair in equal measure,” writes Will Leich. “The drama of it is, it's obvious, what's most fun for him. It is all you could possibly want as a feel-good story. “

In other words, Lin’s appeal comes from his ability to ball like a street player to face off and dominate against black players at “their own game.”  The celebration of Lin as a challenge to the denied masculinity afforded to Asian American males reflects the ways in which black masculinity is defined in and through basketball culture.  While surely offering fans the often-denied sporting masculinity within the Asian body, the power of Jeremy Lin rests with his ability to mimic a basketball style, swagger and skill associated with black ballers. 

Pride emanates from the sense of masculinity afforded by Lin, a fact that emanates from stereotypical constructions of black masculinity.  “Through no fault of his own, Lin stands at a bombed-out intersection of expected narratives, bodies, perceived genes, the Church, the vocabulary of destinations and YouTube,” wrote Jay Caspian Kang, who’s Asian American, about Lin’s electrifying play at Harvard. “What Jeremy Lin represents is a re-conception of our bodies, a visible measure of how the emasculated Asian-American body might measure up to the mythic legion of Big Black superman” (cited by King in Colorlines)

Fulfilling a fantasy for a “white American fantasy of an athletic prowess that can trump African-American hegemony in the league” (Farred, p. 56) and the appeal of a masculinity defined by its association with blackness, the celebrations, parties, and various public adoration are wrapped in these ideas of race, gender, and nation.   Writing about Yao Ming, Grant Farred, in Phantom Calls: Race and the Globalization of the NBA, reminds us about these issues:

The body of the athlete, which has a long history of standing as the body of the nation, is simultaneously reduced and magnified in the Yao event, in its micro-articulation (Asian-American), it is asked to refute the myth of the feminized ethnic by challenging – and redressing the historic wrongs endured – those ‘American’ bodies that have been dismissed the physicality of the Asian male.  As representative of the Chinese nation, Yao is expected to remain a national subject even as his basketball heritage seems difficult to unlearn and continues to disadvantage him in the NBA. . . . In his representation of the ‘Chinese people,’ Yao will not become an NBA – which is to say ‘African American’ – player.  He will not trash talk, he will not develop an ‘offensive personality,’ in more senses than one, and to his detriment, he, will not become more ‘physical’ (62)”

Lin is confined by this trap, so his wagging tongue (that was blue during one game), his trash talk, his swagger, his reverse layups, his flashy speed, and now his dunk, all confirms that Lin isn’t just a basketball player but a baller.  The celebration is thus, wrapped up in the dominant configurations of blackness, and how hegemonic visions of black masculinity confer a certain amount power to Lin.  According to Dave Zirin, Lin’s power rests with his transgressive play: “Asian-Americans, in our stereotypical lens, are supposed to be studious and reserved. We would expect nothing less than that the first Asian-American player would be robotic and fundamentally sound; their face an unsmiling mask.”  While Lin is not the first Asian-American to play professional basketball in the U.S. (Rex Walters, Wataru Misaka, and Raymond Townsend – h/t Scott Kurashige), Zirin’s analysis points to the larger ways that race operates in this context. 

Lin’s appeal comes because he defies people’s expectations about Asian Americans because he is excelling and playing in a way that people expect from and authentically associate with black players. Zirin goes further to argue, “Instead, we have Jeremy Lin threading no-look passes, throwing down dunks and, in the most respected mark of toughness, taking contact and finishing baskets.” With this analysis we see how race not only defines Lin, but the NBA as a cultural space.  His power rests with his ability to “become” black within the national imagination as baller, yet remain outside the prison/prism of the black-white binary.  Or as Oliver Wang notes, the fanfare illustrates how “hegemonic masculinity is constructed whereupon whiteness hides behind a cloak of black desire.” 

Lin is therefore not breaking down stereotypes (maybe denting them), but in many ways re-inscribing them.  Celebrated as “intelligent” and as “a hustler,” his success has been attributed his intelligence, his basketball IQ, and even his religious faith.  His athleticism and the hours spent on the court are erased from the discussion.  Moreover, in positioning him as the aberration, as someone worthy of celebration, the dominant media frame reinforces the longstanding stereotypes of Asians as unathletic nerds.Likewise, the juxtaposition of his identity, body, and basketball skills to the NBA’s black bodies simultaneously reinforces the dominant inscriptions of both blackness and Asianness.   While J-Lin brings something new to the table – an Asian American basketball role model;  Knicks’ victories – we must not forget the many things that remain in place.  

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums. His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. He is the author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop(SUNY Press). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.

Book Review | The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World

Daring Then, Daring Now: The John Carlos Story

Book Review by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

Having studied the 1968 Olympic protest, having conducted an interview with Harry Edwards on the revolt of the black athlete, and being someone dedicated to understanding the interface between sports, race and struggles for justice, I was of course excited about the publication of John Carlos’ autobiography, The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment that Changed the World.  Written with Dave Zirin, the book provides an inspiring discussion of the 1968 Olympics without reducing the amazing life of John Carlos to the 1968 Olympics.  More than 1968 or the protests in Mexico City, it chronicles a life of resistance, of refusing to accept the injustices that encompass the African American experience.

John Carlos challenged American racism from an early age.  Readers learn of a young man who “went around Harlem handing out food and clothes like Robin Hood and his merry men in Technicolor” (p. 21).  Recognizing the level of poverty and injustice in Harlem, and refusing to stand idly by, a young Carlos would break into freight trains to steal food with the purpose of giving it to those who had been swallowed up by the system.

The experience of stealing groceries and good and giving the people something for nothing was positive.  Just doing this kind of so-called work opened up my mind and got me to notice what was going on around me.  I couldn’t turn my back when I saw evidence of discrimination in the community.  I captured it in my mind every time I saw anyone in my neighborhood mistreated by the police (p. 27).

These experiences, like his having to give up on the dream of becoming an Olympic swimmer as a result of societal racism, not only politicized Carlos, but also instilled in him a passion and commitment to help others reach their dreams.  It taught about the power and necessity of imagining and fighting for “freedom dreams.”

The John Carlos Story chronicles the ways he has lived a life guided by the philosophy articulated by Fredrick Douglas that “power concedes nothing without demand.”  From his organizing a strike at his high school against “the nasty slop they called ‘food’” (p. 33) to his insistence that the manager at the housing protects where he lived address the problem of caterpillars in the courtyard, John Carlos demanded accountability and justice long before 1968. 

His book illustrates the level of courage he has shown throughout his life.  When the manager refused to address the caterpillar problem, which prevented his mother from joining others in the courtyard because of allergic reactions, Carlos once again lived by the creed: power concedes nothing without demand.  John Carlos has lived a life of demanding justice and in the face of refusal demanding yet again.  He describes his response in this case as follows: 

Then I took the cap off the can and doused the first tree in front of me with gasoline.  Then I reached for a box of long, thick wooden matches.  After that first tree was soaked, I struck one of the stick matches against my zipper and threw it at the tree and watched.  It was a sought: the fire just as that tree like it was a newspaper and turned it into a fireball of fried caterpillars  (p. 41).

The compelling life that Carlos and Zirin document extends beyond his youth further reveals a life dedicated to justice.  His refusal to accept the racism and the mistreatment experienced while living in Texas encapsulates how America’s racism and systematic efforts to deny both the humanity and citizenship of African Americans compelled Carlos’ activism as a young man and ultimately as an Olympian.

The protest at the 1968 Olympics should not be a surprise given the racial violence experienced by Carlos and his brothers and sisters throughout United States (and the world at large).  His involvement was in many ways an organic outgrowth of his life:

I remember the moment when I was locked in on the medial stand protest and I knew in my gut that it wasn’t just about 1968.  It wasn’t just about Vietnam, Dr. King’s assassination, the murders of the Mexican students, or the media tag about some Age of Aquarius ‘Revolts of the Black Athlete.’  It was about everything that led up to 1968.  It was about the stories my father told me about fighting in the First World War.  It was about the terrible things he was asked to do for a freedom he was denied when he returned home.

              

It was about him being told where he could live, where his kids could go to school, and how low the ceiling would be on his very life.  I thought about how long ago the First World War seemed to me.  It felt, on the other hand, like a time and place beyond my understanding.  But on the other, I thought about how similar things were in 1968 compared to those long ago days.  I thought about a world where I was encouraged to run but not to speak (p. 111)

The power and beauty of the book rests with its efforts to contextualize or explain who John Carlos is rather than simply chronicle what he did in 1968.  John Carlos is not an athlete who protested at the 1968 Olympics, but a man, an activist, a freedom fighter who challenged racism and equality throughout his life.  The Olympics was one stop in his journey to “Let America be America again.”

Yet the power of the book extends beyond telling his life’s story but with its efforts to challenge the ways that the 1968 Olympic protest is used in contemporary media discourse.  So often used to demonize contemporary athletes or to reflect on the purported conflicts that plagued Carlos and the other participants, The John Carlos Story pushes back against the continued exploitation of this history to advance contemporary arguments.  It challenges the sensationalism that has become commonplace within our historic memory.  For example, while much of the historiography juxtaposes Smith and Carlos with George Foreman, who at the Mexico City games carried an American flag in the ring, The John Carlos Story takes a different tone, focusing instead on the shared experiences (and Foreman helping him during a time of need), elucidating the ways in which their constructed identities as good and bad black athletes are used to control, silence, and stifle protest.

The power of the book is made clear in the afterword, where Dave Zirin brilliantly celebrates John Carlos in relationship to the courage and fighting spirit of today’s athletes:

As a new generation of athletes and activists raise its fist, they can rest in the confidence that it’s been done before, John Carlos dared and continues to dare to more than just a brand.  He has dared to live by a set of principles of great personal and professional costs.  It’s a standard we should all aspire toward . . . if we dare(p. 184)

Carlos continues to dare and inspire athletes and activists alike, traversing the country with Dave Zirin, often joining the Occupy movements in various cities.  This is fitting since the struggle for justice and equality didn’t begin or end in 1968 for John Carlos.  The fight continues.

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David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He is the author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop(SUNY Press). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.