Playing While White: Privilege and Power on and off the Field

by David J. Leonard

Overview

Playing While White argues that whiteness matters in sports culture, both on and off the field. Offering critical analysis of athletic stars such as Johnny Manziel, Marshall Henderson, Jordan Spieth, Lance Armstrong, Josh Hamilton, as well as the predominantly white cultures of NASCAR and extreme sports, David Leonard identifies how whiteness is central to the commodification of athletes and the sports they play.

Leonard demonstrates that sporting cultures are a key site in the trafficking of racial ideas, narratives, and ideologies. He identifies how white athletes are frequently characterized as intelligent leaders who are presumed innocent of the kinds of transgressions black athletes are often pathologized for. With an analysis of the racial dynamics of sports traditions as varied as football, cycling, hockey, baseball, tennis, snowboarding, and soccer, as well as the reception and media portrayals of specific white athletes, Leonard examines how and why whiteness matters within sports and what that tells us about race in the twenty-first century United States.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295741871
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	07/03/2017
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

David J. Leonard is a professor at Washington State University. He is the author of After Artest: The NBA and the Assault on Blackness and coeditor of Commodified and Criminalized: New Racism and African Americans in Contemporary Sports. Follow him on Twitter at @drdavidjleonard.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 3

Chapter 1 The Scrappy White Leader 16

Chapter 2 He Got Brains; Whiteness and Intelligence on and off the Court 44

Chapter 3 Talking Trash (While White): A Betrayal of Tradition or a Sign of Competitive Leadership? 64

Chapter 4 White Thugs?: Crime and the Culture of Innocence 91

Chapter 5 Getting High: The New Jim Crow and White Athletes 110

Chapter 6 Redemption and Character Building: Making Mistakes While White 133

Chapter 7 (White) Women and Sports: Selling White Femininity 159

Chapter 8 Driving While White: NASCAR and the Politics of Race 180

Chapter 9 Playing the White Way. From the Cardinals to the Badgers 202

Chapter 10 Sporting Cultures and White Victims 226

Notes 237

References 261

Index 301

What People are Saying About This

Jessica Luther

"Leonard's in-depth investigation at how whiteness operates in sport (and, in turn, our society at large) is smart, cutting, nuanced, and, above all, important. It is a necessary work for this time."

Bomani Jones

"For years, Leonard has demonstrated an understanding of the modern sporting landscape and a touch for applying academic insight to this most secular world. His voice and mind lend both gravity and dexterity on these topics."

Mark Anthony Neal

"Few have talked about race and sports with the passion and critical acuity of David J. Leonard. With Playing While White, he takes the road less paved and turns his attention to Whiteness, exploding the myths of privilege and entitlement that we are all too willing to assign to Black Athletes."

Lori Martin

"Examines the effects of the dominant racial ideology on American sports and highlights the ways that whiteness is privileged above other racial identities. Playing While White will appeal to sports fans interested in ways to explain the racial disparities in American sports."

Michael Eric Dyson

Systemic racism is often explored within the contexts of many of our institutions: government, education, criminal justice. Playing While White thoughtfully engages in a discourse around the privilege that whiteness affords, highlighting the ways that white athletes and whiteness are profiled as innocent, desirable, smart, and exceptional. This is in sharp juxtaposition to the way that Black bodies continue to be policed and profiled, demonized and denigrated both on and off of the field. This poses the following query: do Black lives matter in the world of sports? Leonard's brilliant and thorough analysis of the institutionalized racism that is perpetrated in sport is one that we must all delve deeper into, and grapple with, as a society.

Editorial Reviews

"Incisive and troubling."

Shelf Awareness for Readers - Marilyn Dahl