Black and/or White

South Africa, recently and to much ado, declared that its Chinese citizens were black. As can be imagined this policy decision was met with no small amount of ridicule by punditry here, and presumably abroad. I, however, applaud the decision believing that skin color plays only a small role in the actual politics of race; genetics is neither a starting point nor an end point when it comes to the crushing reality of racism (Let the shit storm rain, right?). But I don’t really want to get into a debate about civil rights or racism in the United States as such, and in fact I don’t know if the above stated opinion really applies to that, what I am interested in, in the current forum, is how skin color is used to define athletes.

Especially when it comes to basketball, race is the fulcrum upon which most discussion is leveraged. Players are usually categorized first and foremost by their race- Kevin Love as Mike Miller; Beasley as Derrick Coleman; Adam Morrison as Larry Bird- no matter how absurd or on point the comparison really is. Moreover when you read comments sections on many blogs about certain athletes there is no insignificant amount of verbiage used to defend White athleticism by culling a starting lineup of Europeans as a defense of the race.

The simple reality is that just as the Black and White of the civil rights movement must be understood as uniquely American constructs quite specific to our history of slavery and colonization, the Black and White of sports is an equally contextualized discussion that must be evaluated in very different terms than the ones that we use to discuss presidential candidates and police brutality.

As the first principle it is worthwhile to note that athleticism, and differences in ‘innate’ athletic ability cannot, should not, and aren’t the defining characteristics of race in sports: although I’m sure you could use statistics to point towards certain trends, I feel rather strongly that there are many players on either side of the race lines that do not fit any standard classification. Compare the athletic ability, for instance, of CDR, Paul Pierce, Joe Alexander, Manu Ginobili, Larry Bird, Brent Barry, Chris Paul, Yi and Yao, or to expand, Don Beebe, Donovan McNabb, Christiano Ronaldo and Thierry Henri. If you can come up with any type of ranking that takes into account ability AND race, you get a cookie.

If, then, we can eliminate genetic ability according to the first principle, and genetic race as a reality contextualized by politics (see CHINESE PEOPLE ARE BLACK out of S.A.) then what exactly are we talking about when we talk about race as a defining factor in sports. In the United States certainly we can point to underlying bias that is the direct result of American history, which then allows (forces?) people to create artificial distinctions that classify people based on skin color (question: if Karl Malone and Jason Williams got in a fight, who would Rush Limbaugh support?) rather than culture. In Europe we can point to nationalisms that out-class American conventions of race by many fold, which utterly crushes any type of genetic reality: think Moors in Spain, Sicily as a NYC of the dark ages conquered by Romans, Arabs and Normans in a couple of centuries, the Balkans as, well, the Balkans, or Russians who have Chinese hair and Scandinavian eyes while they hate on anyone south of the Alps.

The point you ask? As an artifact of American culture it is hard, if not impossible, to discuss sports without looking through the lens of race. Yet as a human, an individual that is, the task is far less imposing, and in fact it can be impressively liberating to replace the standard bearer of athletic difference, race, with far more interesting differences such as class, culture, nationalism and personal histories, which certainly can, but don’t necessarily have to, include race.