Black Sportsmen (Routledge Revivals)

E. Cashmore

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781135087234
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Black Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1982, Black Sportsmen examines the effect that race has had on sportspeople. The book is based on interviews with a wide range of sportspeople from Olympic athletes to schoolchildren and novices. Written at a time when many black youths were turning to, and succeeding in sports such as athletics, boxing, football, karate and table tennis, this book focuses on the various ways in which black sports competitors reacted to their blackness.

Chapter One

INTRODUCTION to sources

---

If I hadn’t made it, I wouldn’t have put it down to my colour. I would just have said: ‘Well, I wasn’t good enough.’ But I did make it and the colour did make a difference in a way I didn’t expect.

Maurice Hope, boxer

---

Trying twice as hard

There was rain in the air outside; inside, the air was suffused with a mixture of cigar fumes and evaporating sweat — the fumes from the audience, the sweat from the boxers whose endeavours were the principal attraction of the evening. In the lobby, Maurice Hope and I talked casually, neither of us knowing that the idea behind this book was evolving from our conversation.

He had, some months before, wrested the World Boxing Council title from the Italian Rocky Mattioli and was reaping some of the ancillary benefits for his achievements: he was guest of honour at the boxing show. Yet, despite being Britain’s only world championship claimant at that time, he was relatively unknown outside boxing circles and had boxed most of his important contests outside the UK, winning the European title in 1976 in Rome, then drawing in his first world title attempt in Berlin in 1977, before finally taking the title in San Remo.

He did not crave recognition, but was understandably regretful about his lack of it. In his words, he had ‘sacrificed a lot’ to get to the top and, now that he was there, it was an anticlimax. Yet he was unmoved and found the situation in keeping with his whole career which was strewn with obstacles. In his analysis, such obstacles were vital to his development in boxing. My interest was aroused when he reasoned that it was his blackness which constituted the major drawback in his life at one level, but at another, proved an indispensable asset to his eventual success. ‘It does something to you when you get in the ring,’ he explained. ‘Knowing you’re black makes you try even harder.’

Slightly perplexed, but fascinated, I invited him to elaborate and he outlined how, since arriving in London in 1961 at the age of 9, he had been rocked by the awareness that his colour could place him in a position of possible — or probable — disadvantage. Before leaving his native Antigua, he had no recognition of this. But his experiences of street life in Hackney and his boxing ventures in Bethnal Green taught him that blackness presented him with a unique set of problems. By the time he was approaching school-leaving age, he had formed, from his angle of vision, two alternatives: ‘To buckle under, or be determined and ambitious.’ He opted for the latter route and took up the gauntlet he saw set before him by steeling himself for a career as a boxer, a career in which he distinguished himself as a man of immense resolve and purposefulness.

Hope and I continued our conversation a few weeks later, this time at his terraced house in Stoke Newington. He fleshed out the bones of the skeleton he had constructed, making it clear that, in a very massive and consequential way, his perception of blackness had affected his whole career. But not necessarily in a negative way: he had used his blackness to become a better boxer. How he used it opened up a new realm for investigation.

It could have been Hope’s unknowing repudiation of the popular notion of black people which fired my imagination. Conventional wisdom dictates that the experiences at school, in the transition to work, at work itself and in society generally, tend to imbue the black youth with a jaundiced view of the world; recoiling from the ‘pressures’, he retreats to a street-corner gang existence, detaching himself from society and cultivating a posture of indifference or even hostility towards the rest of society. The pressure is seen as too burdensome for the black kid, who ‘buckles under’ it and withdraws into his enclave complaining about ‘Babylon’ and its inequalities but without doing anything about them.

What Hope had to bear was exactly the same kind of pressure as other blacks of his generation. Sons and daughters of Caribbean and, to a lesser extent, African migrants of the post-war period, did have to face racialism and there is evidence to support this (for instance, Daniel, 1968; Patterson, 1969). Hope perceived this as acutely as anyone else; he had experienced being called a black bastard, being physically abused, being spat at, being excluded. He was black and it was conveyed to him in a most unambiguous way that this would mean pressure for him, but it was the way in which he responded that challenged conventional images of black kids. Being black was a potential impediment he transformed into a stimulus. It hardened him and hardness proved an extremely valuable asset in the ring.

Was Hope unique? Well, with my interest intensifying, I went to see a number of other black sportsmen who had achieved a measure of success to compare their perceptions and experiences. A vague but discernible pattern emerged. Boxers, footballers and athletes who eventually broke through at the highest level, in championships in football league, in international meetings, made it not so much in spite of their blackness but because of it. People like Garth Crooks, Mike MacFarlane and Garry Thompson traced back how they could have made their blackness the basis for defeatism, admitting that ‘there’s no way a black guy can make it in this society.’ But they did not: in their eyes, blackness was a resource to be used; and use it they did — to strengthen their resolve, redouble their efforts and forge a will to succeed.

Black sportsmen presented me with vivid examples running counter to the stereotypical black youth and, as such, they lent themselves perfectly to my general purposes, for I am hopefully in the process of shattering some of the popular images of blacks. How I long to see the black kid depicted as something other than the tam-donning, dope-smoking, unemployed gang member, structuring his life around reggae music, blues parties, and thieving, and phrasing his life’s ambitions in terms of one day to the next with little or no positive orientation to the world and an outlook flavoured by prejudice and ignorance. In the past, I have been guilty of reinforcing this icon; now I am committed either to destroying it or affecting major reconstructions. Black sportsmen I saw as contributors to my task and they were ready allies.

With my impressions stored up from the initial set of interviews, I came to see an intriguing challenge. Visits to sports grounds in London and Birmingham had made me realize just how many second generation black kids were following the likes of Hope and Cunningham and channelling their efforts into sport. The kids at places like Haringey and Repton were not, in the sporting vernacular, ‘messers’: these were young but serious sportsmen seeking to emulate the ‘stars’ and acquiring the requisite mental and physical equipment to do so. Taxing work, determination, application, steadfastness, resilience: these were some of the qualities needed to make the grade as a sportsmen even at the more modest levels. If they believed they had ‘natural ability’, they well knew that it had to be refined and fastened by a bridle of discipline.

These kids were obviously pursuing success and they were sinking inordinate amounts of energy, week in, week out, into their efforts. They were highly motivated, prepared to learn, willing to comply with demands, eager to listen; perhaps they didn’t want to follow rules, but they did. Yet could these be the same kids who were, with law-like consistency, achieving little of significance at school, who were showing no aptitude or promise of improvement, who seemed undermotivated, feckless, lacking in both ambition and determination? The abundance of energy, commitment and enthusiasm many black kids manifested in sport contrasted strikingly with the languor they took to their formal education. The end-product of their orientation to education was year after year of miserable results. Blacks consistently performed badly compared to whites and Asians: they ‘underachieved’ (see The Runnymede Trust and the Radical Statistics Race Group, 1980, chapter five).

All sorts of reasons were advanced, including language barriers, teachers’ racism, biased curricula, deprived homes, inadequate material conditions and, most pejorative of all, lack of intellectual equipment. None of these struck me as particularly penetrating answers to a thorny problem. But, by exploring the aspirations and motivations of groups of blacks who were highly charged and who brought extraordinary energy to their chosen tasks, I thought I might find some clues as to the kinds of things which move black kids: what makes them tick. It soon became obvious to me that no study of black sportsmen could proceed without a very careful consideration of why blacks fail in other areas, the most important one being school.

There are, of course, those only too ready to malign my whole project and offer instead a much shorter and simpler account. In answer to the problem I set myself (reports of which were carried in the provincial press in 1980), a certain Mr A. Hatton of Birmingham wrote: ‘If you visit some of the pubs, clubs and places of enquiry, you will get the solution to your enquiry … just speak to the majority of working people, blacks do not have the intellect or inclination for academics’ (personal communication, 12 June 1980).

Whilst accepting that ‘inclination’ was absent I could not agree that blacks lacked the intellect to do well at school and my work was, in a way, intended to lay bare as false such assumptions. So, it came as something of a disappointment when a Ms Mel Chevannes, who ran a black supplementary school in the West Midlands, wrote to the Wolverhampton Express and Star to protest at my testing ‘hypotheses that black people are “happy-go-lucky or very physical in their outlook” ’ and that my aims were to ‘damage even further the life chances of black children’ (25 June 1980). The suggestions, ridiculous as they were, pointed to the sensitivity of the area I had moved into. By looking at black sportsmen I had invited the accusation that I was unwittingly accepting the traditional stereotype of the black man physically endowed with the properties to excel in sports, but incapable of performing well in academic pursuits. If anything, this whole book is intended as a pulverization of the stereotype.

I replied to Ms Chevannes through the same newspaper thus: ‘Generally, black kids do not demonstrate interest in school work and do not sink much enthusiasm into their efforts. They do, however, demonstrate a vigorous approach to sporting pursuits.’ A reasonably well-supported statement, I thought, though the late Maurice Ludmer found it ‘astonishing’ and wrote in Searchlight:

The reason why sport is such an attraction is not hard to understand. It is an area of activity where it is possible to compete on an equal basis, with less of the difficulties of overcoming the discrimination found in commerce and industry in terms of employment (July 1980).

Whilst agreeing in part but disagreeing substantially with the assumptions of Ludmer, I felt — and still feel — that the attraction of sport for black kids is a little more complex and that any full understanding cannot assume that sport constitutes an area freed of racialism, or that black youths are attracted to it simply because they see it as such. Contrary to such a view, black kids believe that, for them, being successful is more difficult than it would be for the white person of comparable proficiency. Many believe it is tough for a black person to make it and that leaves them two choices. The most available is to drop out, resign. The other is to take stock of the overall situation; if it’s doubly difficult for a black person, then a redoubling of effort and determination and perseverance is necessary. If it’s twice as hard, you try twice as hard.

Although Hope was the first sportsman to convey this view, it was replicated time and time again by black footballers, athletes and boxers. Hope’s manager, Terry Lawless, himself white, told me of how he first became aware of this. During the 1950s, he talked to the handlers of a black American opponent of Randolph Turpin. He asked one of them: ‘How come there are so many great black boxers in the States now?’ The answer was: ‘Well, it’s so tough for black guys to make breakthroughs that they try like mad to be better. And when they do eventually make it, they’re really, really good.’

In a way, black sportsmen in Britain are responding to what they perceive as a challenge. The reasons for their getting involved in the first place are multiplex, involving many related processes, which I will endeavour to uncover. But a sense of challenge permeates the whole experience. This book is about that experience.

Wrong reasons, right results

Discussing successful black sportsmen, Horace Lashley of the Commission for Racial Equality wrote: ‘it is unlikely that their success can be divorced from the British schooling they have received.’ He goes on: ‘PE is regarded as a subject of low priority and status within the curriculum. It is not surprising, therefore, that the black community resents this focus on the “success” that black youngsters enjoy at PE’ (1980, p. 5).

Most components of education are highly valuea and thought of as necessary to the overall development of the child. Physical education is an exception in this regard. As Lashley points out, we have not recognized ‘prowess on the sports field as genuine educational success.’ This derives from the dualistic conception of mind and body and the associated belief in the mind as superior and the body inferior. Howard Danford and Max Shirley call education ‘a vitally important process involving the mind and emphasizing intellectual development, while recreation is a relatively insignificant operation centering around the body, amusement, fun and frivolity’ (1970, p. 26).

This split which ensures that the main emphasis in educational achievement rests on cognitive or intellectual pursuits contrasts with the situation in the Soviet Union where the central unity of the human being pervades all levels of education. Physical education is highly valued and forms part of a fully integrated educational programme based on a unitary conception of man.

The work of Norman Shneidman has been of some value in highlighting the way in which sport in Soviet society is ‘directed towards the all-round development of the human individual’ (1979, p. 7). It is regarded as a matter of national importance and, as such, it is emphasized in much the same way as other elements of education. As Shneidman makes it clear: ‘While different components of the educational process aim at the development of different qualities and values, it is impossible to draw a clear distinction between them and to separate physical education from other segments of communist upbringing’ (1979, p. 6). Without wishing to champion the Soviet system and the way in which it ‘manufactures’ its sportsmen, I believe the general philosophy underlying the integration of sports with other components of education is much more realistic than the irritating duality with which we labour in the Western world where educators are prone to see justification for particular studies in terms of their practical value.

I agree with Eldon Snyder and Elmer Spreitzer that: ‘Like all of education, physical education should provide opportunities for students to try their hand at a variety of activities as sources of possible self-realization. To be able to recognize opportunities for self-actualization is a basic skill that can be carried through life’ (1978, p. 170). Such characteristics as initiative, purposefulness, persistence and self-control are developed through sport and, while I am not sold on the idea of sport as a builder of ‘character’, I do believe that these capacities serve important functions in self-actualization, that tendency of all human beings to develop their full potentialities.

I will argue later that kids involved in sport are able to broaden their intellectual scope, partly because they can bring the characteristics chiselled out of sport to bear in other aspects of life, and partly because, through improving health, the kids increase their capability for intellectual work and reinforce their resistance to mental stress.

I think there are many benefits to be gleaned from sustained involvement with sport and would emphasize strongly its creative dimensions. The reasons behind thousands upon thousands of black kids immersing themselves in sport may stem from basic inequalities which I find unacceptable, and, indeed, immoral, but I cannot affirm that sport is some device for the perpetuation of these inequalities any more than I can agree with some critics, such as Paul Hoch, that sport is a mere instrument of capitalist domination designed to slough off energies or divert them into meaningless channels (1972). Black kids may be in sport for all the wrong reasons, but that does not render the results wrong.

My biases are already clear: I see sport as a supremely creative enterprise in which the competitor exerts a mastery and control over himself and his environment. Blending discipline with spontaneity, rigidity with flexibility, the sportsman develops and refines skills, forming objectives, sometimes meeting them, often falling short, but always extracting meaning and gratification. My conception of sport elevates it to the realms of art, where the producer finds room to express himself and the consumer studies and appreciates; both seek satisfaction. This view might be too romantic for some who prefer to see sport as a destructive force, leaving black kids, their hopes shattered, with no qualifications, few prospects and little career orientation. What follows will be an attempt to examine sport in both of these differing lights.

The attempt is structured in terms of an historical overview of blacks’ attachments to sport, starting the analysis in the eighteenth century and seeking to document the social sources behind the enduring link. The chapter sets the tenor for the whole work in so far as it tries to examine the social conditions under which blacks became...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword by Garth Crooks
• Acknowledgments
• 1 INTRODUCTION to sources
• 2 ENTER THE BLACK SPORTSMAN in history
• 3 THAT BLACK MAGIC of nature
• 4 THE PROSPECT OF BLACKNESS for kids
• 5 ALL OR NOTHING from families
• 6 EXPECTED TO FAIL by teachers
• 7 MAKING IT in and out of sport
• 8 CHANGING PRIORITIES from work
• 9 MOMENTS OF REVELATION about identities
• 10 TWICE AS HARD for blacks
• 11 THE BLACK SPORTING LIFE without future
• 12 CONCLUSION
• Bibliography
• Index