Understanding ‘Race’ and Sport

Abstract

This chapter has two main, related aims. The first is to show why the resurgence of ideas about biological determinism contribute to perpetuating an invisible and powerful position of white privilege in sport. The second is to show how certain traditions, practices and ideas, existing in such sports as football, cricket and rugby, can disadvantage minority ethnic groups, and thereby maintain existing relations of power. These ideas and processes are based on commonsense understandings of ‘races’ as real categories.

Sociology can’t explain it. My heart says ‘no’, but my head says ‘yes’. I have to believe that we blacks have something that gives us an edge. I want to hear from the scientists.

Arthur Ashe

My eyesight was just a gift of my race … The message from my eye to the brain, and from thence to the muscles, is flashed with a rapidity that has no equal amongst Englishmen.

K. S. Ranjitsinhji