No.48 September 2006 |
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Abstract
Although we generally do not think of athletes as being engaged in the
struggle to end human rights abuses, there are numerous examples in
the history of sports of athletes using the playing field for political
purposes. Across the globe, athletes have joined in the struggle to
end such atrocities as racism, sexism, homophobia, ethnic cleansing,
war, ableism, environmental destruction and labor abuses. Although most
athletes steer clear of political issues and try to remain objective
or indifferent, those who do venture into the realm of political discourse
make an interesting case study. In an effort to better understand why
some athletes feel compelled to mesh the role of athlete with the role
of social activist, I have been collecting interviews and gathering
media accounts of athletes who engage in social and political activism
while in their role as athlete. What follows is a brief discussion of
some preliminary findings.
Activist Athletes and Human Rights: Some Preliminary Research Notes
One of the most enduring images in sports within the past one hundred
years is that of United States sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos
on the medal dias for the 200 meter sprint at the 1968 Olympic games
in Mexico City, Mexico. Gold-medal winner Smith and bronze-medal winner
Carlos stood barefoot on the podium with their fists raised in the infamous
Black Power salute. As later recounted by Smith, their gesture was a
well-planned symbolic statement: “My raised right hand stood for
the power in Black America. Carlos’s raised left hand stood for
the unity of Black America. Together they formed an arch of unity and
power. The black scarf around my neck stood for Black pride. The black
socks with no shoes stood for Black poverty in racist America. The totality
of our efforts was the regaining of Black dignity” (Edwards, 1969).
Smith and Carlos were involved with the Olympic Project for Human Rights
(OPHR). OPHR was formed by sociologist Harry Edwards to encourage Black
athletes to boycott the 1968 Olympic Games in protest of the injustices
that Blacks experienced in the United States. When the boycott fell
through, athletes decided upon their own personal protests of which
Smith and Carlos’ is by far the most well known.
Although the symbolic, non-violent protest of Smith and Carlos is one
of the most famous examples of athletic activism, it is by no means
the only one. Sports history is filled with examples of athletes using
the playing field as a medium to publicize violations in human rights.
Issues such as racism, sexism, homophobia, ethnic cleansing, war, ableism,
environmental destruction and labor abuses have been touted by athletes
across the globe in an effort to have such abuses eradicated. While
most athletes do not engage in social and political activism, it is
interesting to consider why some athletes do feel compelled to mesh
the role of athlete with the role of social activist. In an effort to
address this issue, I have been collecting interviews and gathering
media accounts of athletes who engage in social and political activism
while in their role as athlete. This article will offer some preliminary
findings of my research.
Sport sociologist Stanley Eitzen (1999) suggests that individuals who
engage in sport are no more likely to develop positive social values
such as good citizenship than their non-athletic peers. However, some
athletes have been able to “walk in the shoes of others”
and recognize that they are not, nor should they be, unaffected by the
suffering of strangers. For Kevin McMahon, a two-time U.S. Olympian
and national champion in the hammer throw, this attitude of connectedness
with others became particularly salient when he realized he was benefiting
directly from the unjust working conditions of Third World laborers.
For McMahon, the issue was the sweatshop labor that produced the clothes
he used to wear so proudly. One day while driving home from practice
he was listening to a radio program and the host was doing a show about
human rights violations in the Central American sweatshops that manufacture
NBA jerseys. In an interview, he shared how he was particularly bothered
by the report when he realized these “people are doing honest
work and they’re being exploited.” He then began to think
about his own involvement in this situation: “And then it really
hit home that, wait a minute, I might not be an NBA basketball player,
but I do have a form in my life when I walk out with logos all over
me and it made me really look at that for the very first time.”
The more he thought about it, the more powerful the issue became, and
in his interview he continued:
It was a real difficult time for my conscience because I previously
had no qualms wearing Reebok or Adidas or whatever. I’m an athlete,
so it was cool that that’s what you were wearing. And it was free.
Why wouldn’t you wear it? But it nearly sickened me to think that
for those however many years I was advertising for these people. That
I was promoting their stuff. That I, in my ignorance, had possibly caused
harm to these people that are just being exploited. And I think there
was that sense of guilt and that sense of responsibility. If you just
look at the countries that they’ve [the sportswear companies]
hopped from one to the other, it’s a who’s who of countries
that really desperately need jobs, desperately need money and they take
advantage of that. And it’s great that they give them jobs but
they could treat them more like human beings.
In sociological terms, McMahon was being reflexive–he was recognizing
the inherent biases in his own actions and, subsequently, how these
actions were detrimental to the lives of others. Major League Baseball’s
Carlos Delgado provides a similar example. In 2004, Delgado was an All
Star baseball player for the Toronto Blue Jays when he protested the
United States invasion of Iraq by not standing for the playing of “God
Bless America” during the seventh inning of every baseball game.
Delgado’s decision to be one of the only professional athletes
in a major North American sport to protest the war in Iraq is “rooted
in his native Puerto Rico, where for six decades the US Navy tested
myriad weapons by bombing the small island of Vieques off the country’s
eastern coast” (Pollak, 2004, p. 12). After one of these bombs
killed a civilian in 1999, Delgado got involved in the protest movement
to stop the United States Navy bombings on Vieques (which was finally
ended in May 2003). For Delgado, the decision to become an activist
not only grew out of his social relationships but also his cultural
milieu. Like Kevin McMahon, Carlos Delgado does not see his role as
an athlete as being mutually exclusive from his role as activist. In
fact, both athletes used their connection to sport to bolster and justify
their argument for becoming an activist and fighting against what they
perceive to be abuses in human rights.
One of the most famous protests against human rights abuses occurred
when Muhammad Ali refused induction into the United States Army during
the Vietnam War. At the time, Ali was the heavyweight boxing champion
of the world but his deep religious beliefs gave him the conviction
to refuse the draft and protest the human rights abuses occurring in
Southeast Asia. In defending his decision not to be inducted, Ali stated
eloquently:
Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go 10,000 miles from
home and drop bombs and bullets on Brown people in Vietnam while so-called
Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs and denied simple human
rights? No I’m not going 10,000 miles from home to help murder
and burn another poor nation simply to continue the domination of white
slave masters of the darker people the world over. This is the day when
such evils must come to an end. I have been warned that to take such
a stand would cost me millions of dollars. But I have said it once and
I will say it again. The real enemy of my people is here. I will not
disgrace my religion, my people or myself by becoming a tool to enslave
those who are fighting for their own justice, freedom and equality.
If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to 22 million
of my people they wouldn’t have to draft me, I’d join tomorrow.
I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. So I’ll
go to jail, so what? We’ve been in jail for 400 years (quoted
in Marqusee, 1999, pp. 214-5).
That there are indeed athletes who become activists is somewhat fascinating
especially given the culture of sports, particularly in the United States.
The phenomena of the activist athletes, no matter how small their number,
begs the question of how and why they became activists. Why anyone becomes
an activists and attempts to “make history” (Flacks 1988)
is a question that has intrigued sociologists, particularly those who
study social movements and social change (McAdam 1986, 1988; Snow, Zurcher
& Ekland-Olson, 1986). Much of this work employed ideas from network
analysis to explain the process through which an individual assumes
the personal and social identity of an activist. In this framework,
it is not so much the character traits of individuals but rather, the
social interactions in which they find themselves. Emirbayer and Goodwin
(1994) point out that social behavior does not arise from individuals’
norms and attributes nor does it arise from the categories in which
people find themselves (or place themselves); rather, social behavior
arises from their involvement in structured social relations: “One
can never simply appeal to such attributes as class membership or class
consciousness, political party affiliation, age, gender, social status,
religious beliefs, ethnicity, sexual orientation, psychological predispositions,
and so on, in order to explain why people behave the way they do”
(pp. 1414-5). Instead, we need to focus on their patterns of relationships.
The importance of social relationships for cultivating an activist’s
identity is clearly evident in the athletes I have interviewed. When
asked to recount how they developed their activist consciousness, many
of these athletes point to family members, coaches and friends as their
guiding influence. For example, consider the case of Toni Smith, the
young woman from the United States who found herself in a firestorm
of world-wide media attention when she turned her back to the flag before
her Manhattanville College basketball games. For Toni, the structured
social relations that led her to activism can be traced to her family
and her peers:
“Both my grandmothers were very active. On one side she was very
active in forming unions and workers’ rights. My grandmother on
the other side was also kind of fighting for the same things during
that time. And my mother and my parents are very active in the Civil
Rights Movement, Vietnam War protests, also unionizing people and workers’
rights. So I remember going to marches and events when I was younger
although I didn’t fully know the significance. Like I remember
going to a lot of anti apartheid movements and UFT [United Federation
of Teachers] marches and stuff. [In college] I became very, very aware
my first semesters. I also met a few people who were in my classes who
were already very politically active and I went to events with them.
And that combined with my family who has always been political, and
I think they were kind of waiting for me to bust out of my shell or
be political or show some signs of promise”.
Although many activist athletes seem to fit the model put forth by the
network theorists that activism arises out of the interactional context
in which one finds oneself, there is still something distinctive about
their situation. Unlike most other activists whose actions not only
emanate from their social relations but also transpire within the company
of these social relations, the activist athlete is often acting alone.
The group that influenced and inspired their actions is usually (and
literally) sitting on the sidelines. Most activists have the luxury,
if we can call it that, of exerting their agency in the supportive community
of others. For such activists, like the Freedom Riders that McAdam (1988)
studied, social relationships not only cultivated their activist orientation
but such relationships also served as the socially interactive content
and context through which their actions occurred. However, the activist
athlete must be prepared to stand alone and bear the brunt of the attention.
Although activist athletes may have a network of supporters, these supporters
are usually not fellow athletes and are therefore relegated to a backstage
location. When an athlete makes a political statement on the playing
field, she or he is often unaccompanied during the protest and consequently
the reactions to the activism are aimed directly at the athlete. This
“spotlight effect” may be a significant detriment to athletic
activism and is one of the reasons why so few athletes assume the role
of activist.
Conclusion
The athletes I am studying have engaged in social action to address
human rights abuses across the globe. Hopefully, other athletes will
heed their stories and follow their examples. Critics of activist athletes
often argue that athletes should play not pontificate and that the playing
field is no place for political protests. But how are athletes different
than business people, doctors and office workers? And how is the playing
field any different than the board room, the office or the town square?
No single group should be excluded from engaging in thoughtful political
and social discourse nor should any group have a monopoly on such issues.
This point was suggested to me in an interview with Bradley Saul, a
former professional cyclist and founder of Organic Athletes, an organization
dedicated to using sport to foster social change: “As citizens,
we have an obligation to be informed. [And] one does have an obligation
to be aware of injustices and to do something about them in whatever
capacity. And if you’re an athlete well then you can do it through
the tools you have as an athlete.”
Sport in contemporary society has tremendous national and international
consequences. Socially, politically, economically and culturally, it
is hard to identify another social institution (with the exception of
religion) that has such a wide scope of influence. In this context,
athletes should not only be allowed to express themselves, they should
be encouraged to do so. As members of the global community, we should
expect athletes to be informed, concerned and proactive. Moreover, we
should not be so naive to believe that sport and politics do not mix.
Once asked to speak about the intersection of religion and politics,
Mahatma Gandhi said, “Those who say that religion has nothing
to do with politics do not know what religion means” (Gandhi,
1957). I think we can learn from this insight and say the same about
athletics: Those who say that sport has nothing to do with politics
do not know what sport means.
References Eitzen, S. D. (1999). Fair and foul: Beyond the
myths and paradoxes of sport. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
Edwards, H. (1969). The revolt of the black athlete.
New York: Free Press.
Emirbayer, M. & Goodwin, J. (1994). Network analysis,
culture, and the problem of agency. American Journal of Sociology,
99, 1411-1454.
Flacks, R. (1988). Making history: The American
left and the American mind. New York: Columbia University Press.
Gandhi, M. (1957). An autobiography. Boston:
Beacon Press.
Marqusee, M. (1999). Redemption song: Muhammad
Ali and the spirit of the sixties. New York, NY: Verso.
McAdam, D. (1986). Recruitment to high risk activism:
The case of freedom summer. American Journal of Sociology, 92,
64-90.
McAdam, D. (1988). Freedom summer. New York:
Oxford University Press.
Pollak, R. (2004). Patriot at the bat. The Nation,
September 13, 2004.
Snow, D. A., L. A. Zurcher, Jr., & S. Ekland-Olson.
(1980). Social networks and social movements: A microstructural approach
to differential recruitment.” American
Sociological Review, 45,787-801. Contact:
Dr. Peter Kaufman State University of New York at New Paltz New Paltz, New York USA kaufmanp@newpaltz.edu ![]() http://www.icsspe.org/portal/index.php?w=1&z=5 |