White athletes, coaches, media, and fans must become accomplices in the struggle for racial justice.
“Sports produces and embodies the wages of whiteness.”
In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week’s featured author is David J. Leonard. Leonard is Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. His book is Playing While White: Privilege and Power on and off the Field.
Roberto Sirvent: How can your book help BAR readers understand the current political and social climate?
David Leonard: While not knowing it at the time, I started writing this book in 2012. At the time, I was writing a number of public pieces for various blogs and publication outlets. Over this year, and into future years, I wrote about several extrajudicial killings of African Americans; I also wrote a lot about mass shootings. Each, in different ways were talking about racial profiling: whereas African Americans were profiled as threatening and dangerous by the police and the criminal justice system and the media, white mass shooters were seen as innocent and redeemable by these same institutions; whereas black victims of police shootings were put on trial for their own deaths (or as dream hampton describes it: the “criminalization of black corpses”), white youth who had committed the most heinous acts of violence were presented with sympathy and humanity. Whose life mattered was on full display each and every day, on our social media timelines, and within the separate and unequal lived experiences.
“White mass shooters were seen as innocent and redeemable.”
At the same time, I was also writing a lot about sports. After a year or so, writing about Johnny Manziel, Marshall Henderson, Tim Tebow, and much more, I realized that here I was also writing racial profiling. The profiling of white athletes, of whiteness, of me, as leader, intelligent, innocence, redeemable, desirable, and so much more. I began to see connections; I began to ask questions about the links between the narratives of sports and those surrounding white mass shooters; between the world of sports and the discourses surrounding the opioid crisis; between a sport world that empowers white athletes to be political as desired and a world that celebrates primarily white teens from Florida for rightly protesting gun violence all while silencing and demeaning black youth for their own activism. White athletes, no matter what is being said are empowered to speak up, while black athletes are told to “shut up, dribble and be thankful.”
Sports, as Harry Edwards would often remind me, recapitulates society; it is not a bubble or an escape but a reflection of the political, social, cultural, gendered, and racial landscape. Playing While White looks at sports and the ways that race shapes the games, how we talk about it, and their significance in understanding our current moment. While cliché, it is indeed bigger than the game.
What do you hope activists and community organizers will take away from reading your book?
Sports are important in the struggle for racial justice. For the longest time, through graduate school, I dismissed sports as central to critical conversations about racism, activism, and the fights for racial justice inside and outside of education. I know I am not alone. Even as someone who studied inequality in sports, who knew the history of the revolt of the black athlete, for the longest time I saw sports as detached from the “real world” and the material struggles central to ethnic studies, organizing, and activism.
Recent events, from WNBA players donning shirts in protest of extrajudicial killings to the Miami Heat hoodie protest, from Colin Kaepernick to countless unknown black athletes who have raised a fist or taken a knee for black lives, should have convinced us that the playing field and the arena are central to the fight of injustice. In this context, it is my hope that scholars, activists, and organizers continue to engage with not only athletes at every level, but that we take sports seriously as a space that produces anti-Black racism. In a society where sports are so important it is essential to look at and combat the lessons of sports that perpetuate, normalize and give legitimacy to racial injustice.
“It is my hope that we take sports seriously as a space that produces anti-Black racism.”
More specifically, the book is a challenge to white accomplices (HT Mariame Kaba), scholars, and sports fans to reflect on how we need to critically challenge sports culture for its enactment of anti-Black racism and systemically produced white privilege. It is a call for us to look at sports in a new way but also to use this framework to look in the mirror. Whether I am on the field or in the classroom, walking to the store or living in any number of places, I am playing while white. To dismantle the structures of white supremacy requires reflecting on and challenging the ways that we are empowered to play while white all while converting the wages of whiteness into tools of anti-racist work
We know readers will learn a lot from your book, but what do you hope readers will un-learn? In other words, is there a particular ideology you’re hoping to dismantle?
Often sports are imagined as post-racial, as evidence of racial program. At the same time (and very much related), sports are also seen as places of merit; where one’s ability and work ethic lead to rewards. That the only thing that matters is that if you can make buckets or score touchdowns. Playing While White enters into this space making clear that sports are also a space for the production, enactment, and cashing in on white privilege, the spoils and benefits of anti-Black racism. Sporting fields are spaces where whites are profiled as leaders, as victims, and as the desirable norm. It is no wonder that we are very comfortable seeing sports as fun, a distraction, and entertainment. Privilege at its finest.
“Sports are also a space for the production, enactment, and cashing in on white privilege.”
The ease to which media narratives or coaches describe white athletes as intelligent, or afforded white athletes with a pass, 2nd chances, and redemption in the aftermath of indiscretion isn’t just important because it helps us understand sports, but it is a window into entrenched white supremacy. The profiling of whiteness as innocent and as victims within sports mirrors these practices in society as a whole; the propensity to describe white athletes as leaders and intelligent doesn’t simply impact play-by-play or the NFL draft but embodies a larger history and ideology that infects every aspect of society. In other words, I hope that through the book we will unlearn the idea that sports are a post-racial playground defined by meritocracy. And in doing so we will see how the fight for racial justice must take place on the athletic field, in the press box, in the GM’s office, in the media, and among fans as we are all learning the logics of antiBlack racism from the game.
Who are the intellectual heroes that inspire your work?
Dr. Harry Edwards has been a mentor for more than twenty years. He taught me to see the importance of sports as both a source (and reflection) of inequality and as a tool in the fight for racial justice. More than these lessons, he modeled for me a type of scholar activism that inspires/grounds how I approach my teaching, writing, research, and collective work. He demonstrates that academic work must engage broader public discourses; he taught me that our work must push aside the academic demands of being detached to produce community-relevant scholarship. Playing While White attempts to engage, build upon and reflect ongoing conversations about white privilege and anti-Black racism within and beyond the arena. While Dr. Edwards is a mentor and intellectual hero, he’s not alone. People like Howard Bryant, Dave Zirin, Jessica Luther, Jemele Hill, William C. Rhoden, and Bomani Jones, are some of the foremost sports public intellectuals of today; scholars like Amira Rose Davis, Theresa Runstedtler, Louis Moore, CL Cole, C. Richard King push my thinking and inspire me in so many ways. Their collective work, that bridges between academia and sports media paves way for critical conversations about race, racism, and sporting culture. There are, of course, more people inside and outside of sports, inside and outside of academia, inside and outside of activist and media circles whose shoulders I stand with this project.
Playing While White owes a lot to W.E.B. DuBois in that his work on whiteness makes clear how white supremacy produces white privilege; he highlights how within a culture of anti-Black racism, whites are able to capitalize in so many ways. This work hopes to build on the radical interventions of his work, reflecting on how sports produces and embodies the wages of whiteness.
In what way does your book help us imagine new worlds?
At a certain level, I don’t think the book helps us imagine a new world. It documents a sports world rife with persistent racism; where whiteness produces advantageous scripts, privileges, and opportunities. In seeing sports as sites where anti-Black racism is taught, where whiteness is defined, we begin to see a principal teacher within America’s racial classroom.
Yet, as we begin to see the lessons, and their harm, we can refuse them. And so many are already refusing the messages and lessons that profile black athletes and white athletes, like their non-participating peers, in disparate ways.
Sports have always been a space for what Robin D.G. Kelley describes as the articulation of “freedom dreams.” The Revolt of the Black Athlete 2.0 is the latest example of Black athletes demanding a new world inside and outside of sports. Kaepernick kneeling; the Williams sisters demanding equity inside and outside of tennis; countless Black athletes speaking their truths and refusing to “shut up and dribble” – each helps us imagine an alternative to our current conditions. Each demand change so that black lives do matter. This is where the work is taking place.
“We must work so that the freedom dreams emanating from countless movements become a reality.”
Playing While White highlights the power and importance of this resistance, all while showing how anti-Black racism not only leads to erasure and the punishment for those who challenge the racist status quo but to the empowerment of white athletes to dream or not to dream; to speak and dribble or simply remain silent; and to seize the platforms as accomplice of racial justice or simply stick to sports. White athletes, coaches, media, and fans must become instruments – accomplices – in the struggle for racial justice. We must work so that the freedom dreams emanating from countless movements become a reality.We must turn playing while white into a space of action in the name of racial justice. We must cash in and refuse the wages of whiteness whether in challenging the narratives of whiteness within sports or in kneeling for racial justice.
Roberto Sirventis Professor of Political and Social Ethics at Hope International University in Fullerton, CA. He also serves as the Outreach and Mentoring Coordinator for the Political Theology Network. He’s currently writing a book with fellow BAR contributor Danny Haiphong called American Exceptionalism andAmerican Innocence: The Fake News of Wall Street, White Supremacy, and the U.S. War Machine.
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