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© Copyright ISSA and SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA, New Delhi)
www.sagepublications.com
[1012–6902 (200303) 38:1;5–22; 031725]
RACE AND PENALIZED SPORTS BEHAVIORS
Herbert D. Simons
University of California, Berkeley, USA
Abstract There are a number of verbal and non-verbal behaviors exhibited by football and basketball players, such as trash talking, taunting, celebrating, dancing, etc. that are penalized and heavily
criticized by the athletic officials, coaches, the media and fans. The amount of attention these
behaviors receive seems out of proportion to their importance, since they provide little if any competitive advantage and seem to be only peripherally related to the actual competition. It is argued that
the undue attention these behaviors receive is racially motivated in that African Americans are to an
overwhelming degree responsible for the sanctioned behaviors. These behaviors are a reflection of
urban African American cultural norms, which conflict with white mainstream norms. The sanctions
represent white male mainstream society’s response to the threat to white masculinity represented
by black athletic superiority and by African American athletes’ assertion of the right to define the
meaning of their own behavior. In this contested terrain African Americans are resisting white male
hegemony and asserting their manhood and cultural identity.
Key words • Culture • hegemony • penalties • race • sports
A white man wants to win first and look good second. A black man wants to look good first
and win second. (Conversation between Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes in the film
White Men Can’t Jump)
There are a number of verbal and non-verbal behaviors exhibited by male
American football and basketball players that are penalized, as well as almost
universally criticized. These include taunting and trash talking (verbally insulting
one’s opponent), excessive and prolonged celebrating, spiking (slamming the
football on the ground after a score), dancing, dunking, deviations from standard
uniforms, taking off one’s helmet on the field, and inciting an opponent or spectators (National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), 1999b, 2000; National
Football League (NFL), 1997). These behaviors at one time or another have been
penalized in collegiate and professional sports, criticized by coaches and the
public, as well as receiving a great deal of negative attention in the sports media.
These behaviors violate the sportsmanship code. This paper will first argue that
the sportsmanship code is problematic. The penalties are applied in an inconsistent manner, are peripheral to the competition and are punished more harshly.
In addition, the sportsmanship code is difficult to apply and interpret. Second, the
amount of attention these sanctioned behaviors receive is out of proportion to
their importance to the competition. This undue attention reflects more than a
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concern for sportsmanship. These behaviors are a reflection of urban African
American male cultural norms, which conflict with white male mainstream
norms. The penalties are an example of institutionalized racism and white mainstream males’ assertion of their right to interpret and control African American
behavior. They represent white male mainstream society’s response to the threat
to white masculinity represented by black athletic superiority and by African
American athletes’ assertion of the right to define the meaning of their own
behavior. In this contested terrain African Americans are resisting white male
hegemony and asserting their manhood and cultural identity.
The major justification for censuring these behaviors is that they violate the
sportsmanship code. Sportsmanship has had various definitions over the years
(Abe, 1988). It currently includes the values of fair play, civility, honesty, respect
for one’s opponents and the game, humility, and not calling attention to oneself.
Most of the penalized transgressions violate the sportsmanship code. They call
attention to oneself, show a lack of humility and disrespect for opponents. Trash
talking and taunting is seen as uncivil and is believed to provoke physical violence.
Additional justifications for penalizing these behaviors include safety for
dunking (before basketball rims that were flexible enough to prevent the backboard from shattering when athletes pulled on them) and delaying the flow of the
game by celebrating after a touchdown. Although it is hard to see how 10
seconds of celebrating after a touchdown does much to disrupt the flow of a game
compared to the numerous and much longer delays due to TV timeouts.
Criticisms of Sportsmanship Justification
Double Standard
One criticism of the sportsmanship justification is that it is applied inconsistently
using a double standard. The same or similar behaviors are punished in one sport
but not in others and superficially dissimilar, but deeply analogous behaviors by
athletes of different races receive different interpretations and different sanctions.
Thus celebrating a score in football by running around the perimeter of the field
and waving to the crowd is penalized, while in soccer wildly celebratory behavior after a goal is scored is perfectly acceptable, as is celebration after a victory
in the Olympics. Fighting which violates civility is tolerated in hockey but not in
football, basketball and other sports.
An example of this double standard is the penalizing during the 1999 football season, of San Francisco 49er wide receiver Terrell Owen with a one-week
suspension and a $24,000 fine for twice placing the football on the logo of the
opposing team in the middle of the field after scoring a touchdown. He was criticized for this behavior because, among other things, it incited the crowd and disrespected his opponent. Contrast this behavior and punishment to that of Bobby
Knight, the coach of the Indiana University basketball team. Knight engaged in
numerous unsportsmanlike behaviors over a 29-year period, including choking a
player, disrespecting his superiors, baiting referees, using foul language in public,
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fighting, and throwing chairs before he was finally fined $30,000. He was later
fired for continuing this uncivil behavior after being told to stop. The double
standard in the toleration of Owen’s and Knight’s behavior is striking.
Another pervasive example of the double standard is the penalizing of trash
talking by players as insulting and demeaning of an opponent, while the verbal
abuse and insults commonly employed by coaches which demean their athletes is
excused as a motivational technique.
Peripheral to the Competition But Punished More Harshly than Other
Violations
One of the enduring appeals of sports is the egalitarian notion of the level playing field. Participants compete under the same conditions and rules. The winner
is determined by strength and skill alone and not by extraneous factors such as
class, race, politics, wealth, etc. (Marqusee, 1995). One of the functions of rules
in sports is to ensure a level playing field by not allowing one team to gain an
unfair competitive advantage over the other that could affect the outcome of the
contest. In football, offside, holding, interference, use of hands, tripping, etc. and
personal fouls, such as travelling, holding, pushing, charging, screening, etc., in
basketball, violate the level playing field criterion because they can provide an
unfair competitive advantage for the offending player’s team. Penalties are
designed to compensate for the unfair competitive advantage and restore the level
playing field. However, in the case of the behaviors under discussion it is hard to
see how engaging in them provides much if any competitive advantage, since
most of them have to do with behavior that takes place outside the real-time
competition itself. They have little if any influence on the outcome of the contest.
In football, celebrating, taking off one’s helmet, taunting, and inciting the crowd
take place after the play is over. In basketball some of the behaviors such as
inciting the crowd, trash talking and taunting, using vulgar or obscene language,
baiting, or ridiculing an opponent, hanging on the rim, and disrespectfully
addressing an official most often do not take place during play. One of the functions of some behaviors such as trash talking is to intimidate or ‘psych out an
opponent’ which may provide some small competitive advantage. However,
attempting to ‘psych out’ an opponent is an acceptable part of the game, except
for trash talking and taunting when it is visible to the officials and spectators.
Although, the overall effect of these ‘offenses’ on the outcome of the competition
is minor compared to the other competitive advantage offenses, they are more
harshly punished. The penalties in fact contradict the level playing field justification for penalizing rule violations. Most penalties attempt to compensate for the
competitive advantage gained by the offending team and restore the level playing
field. On the contrary, since the behaviors under discussion do not produce a
competitive advantage in the first place, penalizing them places their team at a
competitive disadvantage. Thus, the penalties for the behaviors under discussion
actually produce a non-level playing field. In professional football and basketball, the offender is also subject to fines and suspensions, which adds to the
competitive disadvantage.
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Difficult to Interpret and Apply
Another problem is that some of the unsportsmanlike conduct rules are less
specific than the competitive advantage rules, which describe precisely and in
more detail the prohibited behaviors (e.g. offside and holding in football, fouling
in basketball). For example, any number of behaviors could potentially violate
the rules of ‘inciting an opponent or spectators’ or ‘delayed, excessive, or prolonged act by which a player attempts to focus attention on himself’ (NCAA,
1999b). Thus, it is much more difficult to decide which behaviors are acceptable
and which are prohibited. This problem is so serious that the NCAA found it
necessary to distribute a video to football teams in 1996 and 1999 devoted to distinguishing acceptable and unacceptable behaviors (NCAA, 1996, 1999a). The
vagueness of the unsportsmanlike conduct rules requires the redefining of the
prohibited behaviors almost every year. As new behaviors appear, new rules have
to be made which appear to have little rhyme or reason. For example in 2000–1,
the NFL rules committee decided that individual dances after a touchdown are
acceptable but group dances are not. The lack of specificity gives officials more
discretion in calling violations, which allows for their culture-bound interpretations of behavior to influence their decisions.
Sportsmanship Ideal Problematic
The concept of sportsmanship itself is problematic in contemporary American
society. Both the notion of amateurism and its associated idea of sportsmanship
have functioned historically as a way for the dominant upper class groups to
control lower class participation in sports. Modern sport in England was the
exclusive property of the upper classes (Guttmann, 1978). The games of the
lower classes were too primitive and uncivilized to be engaged in by the upper
classes. The requirement of amateurism in which trades people were barred from
sports participation was designed to keep the lower classes from participating in
sports. As Guttmann (1978: 13) puts it, ‘The amateur rule was an instrument of
class warfare’. When lower classes did participate, the sportsmanship rules were
designed to ‘civilize’ their participation. The price of participation for lower class
athletes was conformity to rules of upper class gentlemen. These rules historically governed participation in the Olympic Games. But while this amateur ideal
and the associated sportsmanship rules have essentially disappeared in the
Olympics, they are alive and well in American universities where lower class
minority athletes participate heavily in football, basketball and track. The price of
participation, however, is conformity to a set of sportsmanship rules designed for
the British upper classes. Sage (1998) argues that the amateurism ideology is a
form of economic exploitation of university football and basketball athletes. They
earn millions for their institution while their economic and social rights are
severely restricted. So the sportsmanship rules are used by mainstream white
males who run the collegiate sports governing bodies to control the sports participation and behavior of lower classes. (See Allison (2001) for a different interpretation of the history of amateurism and a vigorous philosophical, economic,
social, and political defense of it.)
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Few if any would disagree that fair play and honesty are worthy values in
sports. However some of the other sportsmanship values — humility, respect for
one’s opponents, and not calling attention to oneself — are more problematic
because they are so culturally relative: they conflict with the cultural patterns of
many athletes participating in basketball and football for whom appearing to be
humble, showing respect for one’s opponents, and not calling attention to oneself
is less valued than in mainstream white male society. Therefore, assumptions
about the universality of the definitions of sportsmanlike behavior are questionable. In a multicultural society like the US, groups differ in their histories and
cultural values. And claims that the values of sportsmanship as defined by the
rule-makers are important in society beyond the domain of sports are hypocritical since good sportsmanship is not particularly valued in many other important
areas of society, such as business, politics, media, entertainment. It would be hard
to argue that the values of humility and respect motivate much behavior in these
areas of society. The US is a celebrity society where greed and the end justifying
the means rule in the same public arena that sports exist.
The Undue Attention Test
The degree of attention given to these behaviors is far out of proportion to their
importance to the contest. The punishment and degree of criticism does not seem
to fit the crime. In her book The Language War, Robin Tolmach Lakoff has
proposed an Undue Attention Test which she applies to political and social events
such as the O.J. Simpson saga, the Ebonics controversy, the Clarence
Thomas–Anita Hill affair, and political correctness controversy, which get more
and longer lasting media attention than their significance seems to merit (Lakoff,
2000). According to Lakoff they are really about something else: unresolved
issues confronting society involving race, class, and gender, about power and
control — who has the ‘ability and the right to make meaning for everyone’,
who can determine how language is to be understood or interpreted and what
behavior means (Lakoff, 2000: 19). The ability to make meaning has traditionally
been unilaterally assumed to be the prerogative of middle and upper middle class
white males. According to Lakoff issues that get undue attention are those in
which the interpretation of the dominant group and their right to control the
meaning is being challenged by a subordinate group. Thus, the Ebonics (African
American Vernacular English) controversy is about African Americans claiming
the right to have their vernacular dialect recognized as a legitimate means of
school communication. The proposed legitimation of Ebonics is seen as a threat
to the dominant society’s misguided and uninformed belief that standard English
is the only acceptable form of spoken language.
The penalization of the sports behaviors under discussion passes the undue
attention test, since the amount of attention they receive is disproportionate to
their importance to the game itself. The unspoken basis for contestation is race,
fear of erosion of white athletic dominance and the loss of power to control and
interpret behavior. The behaviors present a challenge by a subordinate group
(African American males) to the understanding of the verbal and non-verbal
behavior that the dominant group has defined as good sportsmanship.
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Race and Culture
While it is only occasionally publicly commented upon, the penalized behaviors
are exhibited mostly by African Americans. From Muhammad Ali’s boasting,
through Kareem Abdul Jabbar’s dunking, Billie ‘Whiteshoes’ Johnson’s end
zones dances, the Ickey shuffle dance to the almost mandatory individual and
group dances after a touchdown, taunting, trash talking and the slam dunk in all
its variations, these behaviors are African American male athlete phenomena.
When occasionally white athletes exhibit similar behaviors usually they are emulating their African American teammates. The major reason why the penalized
behaviors are produced almost exclusively by African Americans is that they are
an expression of African American male urban culture.
Because of their long history of social and economic exclusion from white
society, African Americans in the US have developed a set of distinctive linguistic and behavioral cultural patterns that differ from white middle class society
(Andrews and Majors, 1999; Kochman, 1981; Labov, 1972). One of the most
prominent expressions of African American culture is language. It is called by
several different names — Black Dialect, Black English, African American
Vernacular English, and most recently Ebonics. It has been shown to be a dialect
of English which is rule-governed like all forms of natural languages (Labov,
1972). It is a different but not inferior form of English. As pointed out in a recent
resolution of the Linguistic Society America (LSA) ‘Characterizations of Ebonics
as “slang”, “mutant”, “lazy”, “defective”, “ungrammatical” or “broken English”,
are incorrect and demeaning’ (LSA, 2000). Unfortunately, many people hold
these scientifically invalid views. Consequently Ebonics is socially stigmatized
and not considered acceptable in the schools and other public arenas. This social
stigmatization in part contributed to the controversy surrounding the Oakland
California School Board’s Ebonics resolution (Lakoff, 2000).
African Americans have assimilated many aspects of white mainstream culture, so they can be considered bi-cultural (Boykin, 1986; Valentine, 1971). In
addition, African Americans vary in the degree to which they are identified with
and exhibit African American language and behavioral cultural patterns, a variation that is determined largely by social class and urban ghetto experiences. The
use of Ebonics by African Americans has been shown to be correlated with lower
social class (Labov, 1972; Shuy et al., 1967). While a set of cultural attitudes,
beliefs, and behaviors is sufficiently common among urban lower class male
African Americans to form a cultural pattern, it is not claimed here that all
African Americans exhibit these cultural patterns. (See Appiah, 1996, for a fuller
discussion of race, culture, and identity of African Americans.) These cultural
patterns may be non-existent in many African American middle class men and
women. Claims about African American cultural patterns as discussed in this
paper should be understood as mainly limited to African American inner-city
males. White male mainstream society refers in this paper to the predominantly
white economically and politically dominant groups that perpetuate through
control of institutions such as schools, media, and sports an ideology that supports and maintains their hegemony.
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African American Cultural Patterns and Sports Behavior
While, as noted, there been much scientific analysis of African American
Vernacular English, less attention has been paid to African American male cultural patterns such as non-verbal behavior, attitudes, and beliefs which differ
from white mainstream society (Andrews and Majors, 1999). Boykin (1986),
Kochman (1981), and Majors and Billson (1992) have identified several aspects
of urban African American cultural patterns which may explain the penalized
behaviors under discussion. They are expressiveness, performance orientation,
audience involvement, individuality, and verbal aggressiveness. Kochman (1981:
130) describes African American culture, which he calls style, as ‘more selfconscious, more expressive, more expansive, more colorful, more intense, more
assertive, more aggressive, and more focused on the individual than is the style
of the larger society of which African Americans are a part’. He also argues that
African American public behavior is more of a performance for an audience than
white middle class behavior and that ‘the individuality of the performer, the
unique quality of his style is vital’ (p. 134). Boykin (1986) talks about expressive
individualism as one of nine dimensions of African American culture (also
including spirituality, harmony, movement, verve, affect, communalism, oral
tradition, and social time perspective). Majors describes ‘cool pose’ exhibited by
African American males which involves ‘the construction of unique, expressive,
and conspicuous styles of demeanor, speech, gesture, clothing, hair styles, walk,
stance and handshake’ (Majors, 1991: 111).
These expressive features of African American culture are a means of asserting manhood, increasing self-esteem and gaining respect, coping mechanisms
made necessary because African Americans have historically been denied the
opportunity to achieve respect and self-esteem through the traditional means of
education and jobs (Anderson, 1999; Majors and Billson, 1992; Majors et al.,
1994). Because sports have traditionally been a masculine domain in which men
assert their masculinity, dominated groups have used sports to assert their manhood. Thus for African American males sports have been a major vehicle for
asserting manhood and gaining the respect and self-esteem that flows from it
(Messner, 1992). However, Kelley (1997) sees these cultural patterns as more of
a reflection of an African American aesthetic style rather than a coping mechanism. (See George, 1992, for a history of African American basketball players
that discusses the differences between African American and white basketball
styles.)
Each of the sanctioned behaviors is an expression of African American male
culture, reflecting expressiveness, performance orientation, and individuality.
White mainstream males interpret these behaviors based on their own culturally
based expectations, as challenges to white definitions of sportsmanship. Hence,
they often misinterpret these behaviors.
Whites fail to recognize the strong performance motivation that African
Americans bring to sports as expressed in the epigraph to this paper from White
Men Can’t Jump. Whites see winning as the almost exclusive purpose of a sports
competition, as embodied in the famous quote from NFL football coach Vince
Lombardi ‘Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.’ Whites see African
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American expressiveness as distracting from that purpose. As Kochman puts it:
The difference in the way African Americans and whites approach basketball, football, and
other competitive sports accounts for these confrontations [over showboating]. Whites view
competitive sports exclusively in terms of winning and losing. African Americans view
competitive sports in terms of dominating the field, being the best and performing in a show.
To whites, showboating within a game is directed only against one’s opponent rather than, as
African Americans intend it, toward the crowd in the stands. (Kochman, 1981: 148)
Andrews (1996) makes the same point in describing the need to punctuate
winning with ‘celebratory expression’.
The non-verbal behaviors in sports of celebrating, dancing, high stepping,
spiking, dunking, taking off one’s helmet, are reflections of the expressiveness
and performance aspect of African American culture. These behaviors are a performance for teammates and spectators and are not necessarily directed at their
opponents. They are designed to encourage spectators and teammates to validate
one’s performance by responding to it. The desire for audience involvement may
be related to the call and response features of African American churches. The
individual variation in the performances fulfills an African American desire to
express individuality. The white rule-makers misinterpret these behaviors as disrespect towards one’s opponents, a lack of humility, calling attention to oneself,
and inciting the crowd.
Another important aspect of African American culture is dress. Dress is an
important way to assert individuality and gain respect. In basketball changes in
player hairstyles, shorts length, colors of uniforms and shoe styles have been an
almost exclusively African American phenomenon, with mainstream white rulemakers unable to control it except by imposing a norm of neatness. In college,
this norm requires identity of color and form of uniforms, with shirts tucked in
and strict limitations on decorations. In football, uniformity of dress is believed
by whites to indicate the subordination of the individual to the team that is
necessary to insure precision in execution. Thus, there are severe restrictions on
any deviation in uniforms. Bandannas, towels larger than specific dimensions,
different colored shoes, socks not pulled up, and non-approved decorations
are penalized. The dominant white culture sees these dress violations as calling
attention to one self, and violating the white norm of uniformity and neatness.
African Americans see them as expressive assertion of individuality (Andrews,
1997). The practice on some teams of not including players’ names on uniforms
in the service of team solidarity runs counter to African American male cultural
perspective.
Trash Talking and Taunting
Verbal aggressiveness is an important part of African American oral tradition and
expressive behavior. Verbal dueling employing insults takes the form in African
American male adolescent culture of a speech event called ‘playing the dozens’
or ‘sounding’ (Abrahams, 1973; Kochman, 1972; Labov, 1972; Mitchell-Kernan,
1971). In sounding, a part of most inner-city African American adolescents’
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experience, the participants take turns trying to best each other, often by making
derogatory comments about each other’s family members, most often their
mothers. It often takes place in the presence of an audience that encourages and
evaluates the performance by commenting or laughing. It exhibits verbal skill and
is often supposed be humorous and playful and not to be taken seriously as it
usually includes wild exaggerations. (See Kochman, 1983, for a discussion of the
criteria to be used in deciding when verbal dueling is to be taken seriously.) It is
a way of gaining respect among one’s peers. One’s status is in part determined by
how skillful one is at sounding. Gates (1998) argues in presenting a theory of
African American literary criticism that these speech events are part of a long
African oral tradition of signifying (saying one thing and meaning something
else).
Trash talking in sports is an extension of African American verbal aggressiveness. For African American athletes it serves multiple functions. It heightens
competitive motivation and adds enjoyment to the game (de Jonge, 1993;
Eveslage and Delaney, 1998). The imposition of penalties for celebrating, trash
talking, and other expressive behavior in the NFL resulted in the players calling
it the ‘No Fun League’ supporting the claim that the players see these behaviors
as playful and enjoyable. Trash talking is also intended to unnerve an opponent
to gain a competitive edge. When accompanied by gestures it is a performance
designed to get the crowd involved. It is ubiquitous in basketball and football
among African Americans and a few whites, with Larry Bird as the most prominent white basketball player. Finger pointing, making choking motions with
one’s hand, and other gesturing are the non-verbal extensions of trash talking.
Muhammad Ali was the most prominent African American athlete whose boasting and bragging caught the public eye. He was severely criticized by white
sports writers at the time and even for it to this day (Newhouse, 1999; Remnick,
1998).
Whites have a different and extremely negative interpretation of these
behaviors as the epitome of poor sportsmanship and offensive to white male
upper and middle class sensibilities. They show a lack of humility, demean and
embarrass an opponent, call attention to oneself, and ‘incite’ the crowd. But most
importantly verbal aggressiveness plays into white fear of it leading to physical
aggression, which may cause the game to get out of control. The vice president
of operations in the National Basketball Association (NBA) summed it up. ‘It
was getting to the point where trash talking was causing fights because of the
embarrassment players felt. People were reacting physically rather than verbally’
(Phillip, 1995).
The fear that trash talking will lead to violence is out of proportion to the
actual threat. There is no evidence that trash talking is responsible for most fights.
Thorn even admitted that he could not be sure of the connection between trash
talking and fighting. He said that it ‘was only a factor in one out of seven serious
fights all year’ (de Jonge, 1993). Physical play and hard fouls are more likely to
be responsible for fighting than trash talking. In the white sport of hockey, where
there are many more fights, the game rarely gets ‘out of control’. And as Mahiri
points out, ‘When you look at a game such as ice hockey, where there is little if
any trash talk, you have more fights and violence on the ice than in basketball and
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football’ (Phillip, 1995: 22). In baseball, fights are rarely caused by verbal confrontations.
One of the possible reasons whites see a connection between verbal aggressiveness and physical violence is that the boundary between verbal and physical
aggressiveness is different for African Americans and whites (Kochman, 1981).
Kochman argues that there are cultural conventions which mark a clearer boundary between verbal aggressiveness and physical fighting for African Americans
than for whites. And ‘these conventions hold that angry verbal disputes, even
those involving insults and threats, can be maintained, by African Americans at
the verbal level, without violence necessarily resulting’ (1981: 48). For African
Americans aggressive talking is not fighting and threats can often be a substitute
for fighting. He also claims that African Americans have a higher threshold for
managing anger without losing self-control than whites. Furthermore, there is
also a playful aspect of these verbal confrontations that can defuse potentially
violent situations. Whites ‘invariably interpret African American anger and verbal aggressiveness as more provocative and threatening than do African
Americans’ (Kochman, 1981: 44). Duncan (1976) has shown that a staged argument, which leads to a simple physical shove, is seen as more violent when a
black is the actor than when a white is the actor. Whites fear African American
verbal aggressiveness because they mistakenly see it as leading to physical violence in which African Americans are ‘out of control’. The white response to
African American verbal aggressiveness is in part fueled by the media stereotype,
which connects African American athletes to sexualized criminal behavior
(Benedict and Yaeger, 1998; Hoberman, 1997).
Failure to Acknowledge Racial Nature of Penalized Behaviors
It seems clear that the penalized behaviors are reflections of African American
male culture. In addition, while there is occasional recognition of that fact in the
media and among some athletes, there is little recognition in the white sports
community. Why is there a reluctance to recognize and discuss the racial nature
of the penalized behaviors?
First, one’s culture is so fundamental, pervasive, ingrained, invisible and
normal that one is not even aware of its existence. The invisibility of one’s own
culture makes it difficult to recognize behavior that conflicts with one’s own
cultural expectations as an expression of a different cultural pattern. Behaviors
that differ are seen as abnormal and deviant. A well-known example of this phenomenon is the way Ebonics is viewed. Most linguists and educators understand
that it is a coherent and systematic dialect of English, which is different from
standard English but not defective in any way. However, as the response to
Ebonics shows, it is seen by the public and most educated adults (white and
black) as slang, bad English, or no language at all, and as needing to be eliminated.
Therefore, the behaviors on the field or court need to be penalized because
they are abnormal or deviant from the accepted white mainstream norms of
behavior. That reaction is visceral and emotional rather than rational. The penalDownloaded from irs.sagepub.com at PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIV on May 11, 2016
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ized behaviors violate the common-sense white mainstream view of appropriate
behavior. Lakoff calls the common-sense view of things ‘the neutrality of the
status quo’. White mainstream cultural patterns are the de facto status quo. The
normal unquestioned view of the world is the status quo and anything different
from the status quo is seen as deviant and abnormal. There is no need to explain
or justify why these behaviors are abnormal because ‘everyone’ understands why
they are deviant. Thus, there is no need to provide any justification beyond that
the penalized behaviors are unsportsmanlike. In the NCAA video it is stated
several times without justification that these behaviors ‘go beyond the bounds of
good sportsmanship and have nothing to do with America’s #1 team game’ and
‘have no place in the game’ (NCAA, 1999a). Most of the media criticism of the
penalized behaviors assumes that everyone agrees that the behaviors are deviant.
Some might argue that the resistance to the acceptance of these African
American behaviors is that they differ from traditional ways of behaving in sport
and the rule-makers are simply preserving these traditions. While it is true that
there is a great deal of traditionalism in sports, the eagerness to change the rules
to maintain and increase television revenues while still penalizing African
American cultural behavior strongly suggests that the traditional justification
cannot explain the undue attention.
A second reason for not recognizing the racial nature of the penalized
behaviors is white mainstream American society’s aversion to discussing or even
seeing issues in terms of race. There has been and still is resistance to confronting
America’s racist history. Many whites believe that race will become irrelevant
when a ‘color blind society’ is achieved. Dependence upon the idea of a color
blind society makes it difficult to recognize that many African Americans have
cultural differences from white mainstream society. To white mainstream society
African Americans are people with ‘black skin’ (of varying shades) who were
historically subjected to prejudice and discrimination based on their skin color.
When prejudice and discrimination are eliminated, there will be no differences
between African Americans and whites.
However, African Americans, in addition to being a socially constructed
racial group, are also an ethnic group — a group that shares a common culture,
set of beliefs, history, and customs. So, like Jews, Italians, Irish, African Americans have their own customs, beliefs, and history. Members of ethnic minority
groups feel more comfortable and tend to want to be with members of their own
group (Blauner, 1992). Of course, all ethnic groups to varying degrees share in
white mainstream culture. White mainstream society acknowledges and grudgingly accepts ethnic differences because they are expected to gradually disappear
as the ethnic group assimilates. However, when African Americans want to be
with and act like their own ethnic group, whites resent their separateness and even
see it as reverse racism. When African Americans behave according to the
standards of their culture, they make whites feel uncomfortable.
A third reason is a general failure in academic and liberal circles to criticize
these penalties as biased against African Americans, arising out of a reluctance to
discuss African American cultural differences or even admit their existence,
because historically differences between African Americans and whites have
inevitably been transformed into African American intellectual or cultural
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deficiencies. The negative reaction in these circles to recent books on the socalled African American athletic fixation (Hoberman, 1997) and African American athletic superiority (Entine, 2000) is fueled in part by this fear of invidious
comparisons between African Americans and whites. The general reluctance of
the rule-makers and the media to acknowledge that the behaviors in question are
almost exclusively exhibited by African American athletes is due in part to their
fear of being accused of racism.
Finally, another factor which contributes to the avoidance of seeing these
issues as racial is the difference between African American and white definitions
of racism (Blauner, 1992). According to Blauner, whites see racism as individual
prejudice and discrimination. Thus for whites the rules cannot be racist because
they do not involve individual discrimination. The rules apply to everyone on the
same even-handed basis. And since a few whites exhibit the same behavior, the
argument cannot be made that African Americans are singled out for punishment
because they are African American. Much is made of the fact that Larry Bird was
a very skilled trash talker, presumably to show that the criticism of trash talking
is not racist according to the white definition. But Larry Bird’s trash talking was
different from African American trash talking in that he was never penalized or
vilified for it. And spectators were not aware of it because it was not accompanied
by gestures and was not expressive, in keeping with his customary demeanor.
According to Blauner African Americans in addition to prejudice and discrimination have much broader definitions of racism, including institutional
racism, i.e. institutional policy adversely affecting African Americans as a group;
and the racism that results in a minority group being under-represented in
positions of authority or prestige or over-represented in negative areas such as in
prisons or on welfare. By both of these definitions, the penalized behaviors are
racist. They represent institutional racism because the policy adversely affects
African Americans as a group, and racism results because these purportedly ‘neutral’ rules overwhelmingly punish African Americans.
African American Athletic Superiority and White Masculinity
Another underlying racial reason for the undue attention these behaviors have
received is the threat to white masculinity represented by African American
athletic superiority. Sport has historically been associated with ‘manliness’. The
British saw sports as a way to prepare their young men to be victorious in battle
and to run the empire. And in 20th-century America the masculine nature of
sports was associated with physical strength, aggression and force, brought about
in part, as Messner argues, by the need to counter feminization in other areas of
life (Messner, 1992). Sport remained a white male domain until the recent rise of
female participation in and control of their own sports. However, after being
excluded from mainstream sports for many years, African American participation
has become African American athletic superiority. This has posed a threat to
white male dominance and masculinity. Until the last 40 years, the threat was
dealt with by excluding or marginalizing African American participation. The
civil rights movement and other factors have forced the acceptance of African
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American participation. As participation grew so did African American dominance. In football and basketball, the majority of athletes are African American
and they dominate these sports on both the college and professional level. In football African Americans make up 47 percent of Division I college players and 65
percent of NFL. In basketball the dominance is even greater with African
Americans making up 57 percent of college players and 77 percent of professionals (Lapchick, 1998). These figures are much higher than the percentage of
African Americans in the population. In addition, African Americans are more
often the elite participants.
In spite of African American numerical superiority on the playing field,
white males dominate the decision-making apparatus. In college more than 90
percent of athletic directors in Division I are white males; 79.9 percent of the
head coaches in basketball and 92.2 percent in football are white males. In professional football and basketball, 100 percent of the primary owners are white.
And 83 percent of the head coaches in the NBA and 90 percent in the NFL are
white (Lapchick, 1998). While there are some African Americans in administrative and coaching positions in the NCAA and professional sports management,
they tend to share the dominant white male views of sports.
Whites have responded to the threat to white masculinity by redefining
masculinity to be less dependent on athletic ability and more dependent on intellectual ability. African American athletic superiority has been belittled by elevating intelligence and hard work in sports over natural or genetically determined
athletic ability. The framing of the contrast between natural athletic ability and its
presumed genetic origin versus intelligence and hard work has had the unfortunate and perverse and largely unintended consequence of reinforcing a contemporary form of social Darwinism which Coakley calls race logic (Coakley, 1998).
According to race logic, intelligence is more developed than physicality on the
evolutionary scale. Physicality is more primitive and African American physicality is evidence of their intellectual inferiority. Whites who are intellectually
superior deserve to be in control and dominate. Its association in the media and
public mind with sexualized criminal behavior has further belittled African
American athletic superiority and physicality. An example is Keshawn Johnson’s
gesture of drawing his hand across his throat after a touchdown. Johnson claims
it was a celebratory gesture while a Boston radio station talk-show host named it
the O.J., thus associating it with the O.J. Simpson murder trial in which a prominent African American male athlete was accused of murdering his wife and a
friend by slashing their throats (Oakland Tribune, 1999).
The definition of masculinity is also reflected in the phenomenon of stacking
(Coakley, 1998) in which whites are assigned positions which require more
intellectual ability, such as quarterback and offensive linemen in football, while
African Americans occupy the other positions which rely on the natural ability to
react rapidly and automatically, i.e. ‘without thinking’. In basketball where stacking is impossible due to African American dominance at all positions, whites are
described in the media as intelligent and hard-working in order to compensate for
their lack of physical skills. However, African American success is ascribed to
natural (genetically determined) ability. They do not have to work as hard or be
as intelligent as whites because of this natural ability.
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White Hegemony and Control of Meaning
The major underlying reason why the behaviors under discussion have passed the
undue attention test is that they pose a threat to white male control of sports and
their right to define and interpret meaning. In response to this threat, they have
made normal African American behavioral expression abnormal and deviant by
penalizing these behaviors. The behavior has been abnormalized. First, by insisting on several sportsmanship criteria, which conflict with African American
culture, as the basis by which these behaviors are judged. Second, by interpreting
the meaning of African American behaviors according to the white cultural norm.
However, these interpretations conflict with the African American cultural
meaning of these behaviors. Thus, for whites, celebrating in the end zone is disrespecting an opponent by showing lack of humility, disrespecting one’s teammates by calling attention to oneself, and not recognizing the team effort. On the
contrary, to the African American athlete, celebrating is expressing excitement
and showing emotion which will be contagious and motivate his teammates and
get a positive response from the spectators (Andrews, 1997). For African
Americans celebration is directed at the spectators and teammates, not the other
team. There is little if any disrespect intended. Encouraging the spectators to join
in and appreciate the performance becomes a penalized ‘inciting the crowd’. The
use of the word ‘incite’ is interesting because it is often used in the phrase ‘inciting a riot’. The use of this term may reflect a fear of African Americans getting
out of control and rioting.
According to the white male interpretation, trash talking is disrespecting an
opponent and provoking a fight while to the African American athlete it is playful verbal dueling which is not intended to provoke a physical response. Clothing
deviations especially in football disrupt team solidarity and offend a coach’s idea
of uniformity. But to African Americans they are an expression of individuality
and not intended to disrupt team solidarity. Furthermore, it is a dubious assumption that clothing deviations disrupt team solidarity except in the minds of
coaches.
In football and basketball, African Americans make up the majority of athletes at both the professional and college levels. But this does not entitle them to
have their cultural behaviors allowed in the game. Athletes are under the control
of the owners, athletic directors, and coaches who share the dominant cultural
values. So athletes in general as well as African American athletes are not
allowed any say in the game even though they are central to it. The dominant
group gets to define meaning and controls the discourse even when they are in the
minority. And their overreaction to African American behavior patterns is a
response to the threat these behaviors appear to pose.
Another example of the need to control is in the distinction made between
spontaneous celebrations, dances, etc., which are acceptable in the NFL and
planned celebrations, which are forbidden. There is no justification provided for
this apparently arbitrary distinction. But most of those in positions of authority —
coaches, athletic directors, management — and owners are predominantly white
and accustomed to having control. Coaches are used to having absolute control.
They decide on the game plan, who plays, and they promulgate and enforce team
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rules. Thus, a planned celebration as opposed to a spontaneous one is a threat to
the coach’s control and authority since it was devised by the players without the
knowledge of the coach. Spontaneous celebrations by definition cannot be controlled. So they are less of a direct threat to the authority of the coach and are less
threatening.
Ideological Hegemony and Resistance
The behaviors exhibited by African American athletes and white male mainstream society’s response are consistent with hegemonic social theory as applied
to sports (Messner, 1992; Sage, 1998). According to hegemonic theory, the economically and politically dominant groups in society control institutions such as
education and mass media to promote and shape the ideology about current social
relations which serves their interests. By adopting this ideology the mass of
citizens willingly consent to domination by the economically powerful groups.
The dominant group’s ideology comes to be seen as natural and normal and thus
not subject to question.
Sport is an important domain in which hegemonic ideology is played out. As
Messner points out, ‘the structure and values of sport are largely shaped by and
in the interests of, those who hold power’ (1992: 12). In the US it is middle and
upper middle class white males who hold this power. In the 20th century they
used this power to simply exclude women and African Americans from sport
participation (Sage, 1998). As African Americans and women have been allowed
to participate, those in power have used other less blatantly oppressive means to
dominate. They maintain most positions of authority in both men’s and women’s
sports (Lapchick, 1998). As just discussed, they have used ‘stacking’ and its
implicit message that intelligence is more important in sports than natural ability
to downgrade African American athletic performances. As Sage (1998) points
out, through the white male dominated NCAA, they have promoted and enforced
the amateurism ideology in intercollegiate sports. This ideology allows for the
economic exploitation of student athletes in which they are prohibited in several
ways from benefiting economically from the fruits of their athletic labor while
their coaches and institutions profit handsomely. That amateurism ideology and
more specifically the sportsmanship rules are used by those in power, as has
been demonstrated in this paper, to control and shape African American intercollegiate and professional sports participation. The almost universal unquestioned criticism of these behaviors in the media and by most of those associated
with sports demonstrates how completely ingrained and natural is the sportsmanship ideology.
However, the power to control is not absolute.
Dominated groups may partially accept, but also attempt to redefine, negotiate, and even
reject, the ruling group’s values and meanings. . . . Sport must thus be viewed as an institution
through which domination is not only imposed, but also contested . . . (Messner, 1992:
12–13)
Since, as Carrington (1998) notes, ‘sport is one of the few arenas where public
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displays of competition, domination, and control are played out’, sport provides
a public contested terrain in which subordinated groups can resist race, colonial,
and class domination. This resistance can provide a way for subordinated groups
to assert their manhood and cultural identity (Carrington, 1998; Messner, 1992).
African Americans continue to exhibit these and new behaviors even though
they are penalized. In this contested terrain African Americans are resisting white
mainstream male hegemony and asserting their manhood and cultural identity.
The fact that some once penalized behaviors are now legal, especially in professional sports, suggests that this resistance is gradually succeeding. Since the
acceptance of some of these behaviors has not as of yet changed the fundamental
characteristics and power relations in these sports, it remains an open question
whether or not this successful resistance will be emancipatory and lead to
changes in power relations.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Robin Lakoff and Vernon Andrews for their helpful comments on this
paper.
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Herbert D. Simons is Associate Professor in the Education Department at the
University of California, Berkeley. He studies the academic performance of student athletes and the role of race in sports.
Address: Education Department, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720,
USA. Email: [email protected]
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