WHO DA' IMAN: BLACK MASCULINITIES AND SPORT IN CANADA

Gama1 Abdel-Shehid

A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies in partial filfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctorate in Philosophy

Graduate Programme in Sociology York University North York Ontario

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Gama1 Abdel-Shehid by

a dissertation subrnitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of York University in partial fulfillrnent of the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

O Permission has been granted to the LIBRARY OF YORK UNIVERSITY to tend or sell copies of this dissertation, to the NATIONAL LISRARY OF CANADA to microfilm this dissertation and to lend or sell copies of the film. and to UNIVERSITY MICROFILMS to publish an abstract of this dissertation. The author reserves other publication rights, and neither the dissertation nor extensive extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's written permission. Abstract

Over the last twenty to twenty-five years, there has been a considerable upsurge in black sporting cultures in Canada. Today, it could be argued, black sporting cultures constitute an essential part of the national fabric. Unfortunately, the literature in the areas of both Cultural Studies of Sport and the sociology of sport have not responded to this change. As this thesis comrnents in its introduction, there is still a persistent view that Canadian sporting cultures are defrned by hockey and a hostile manichean relation between Canada (the good) and the United States (the bad) Who Da ' -Man is an investigation into questions of black masculinities and sporting cultures in Canada with a view to both marking these demographic shifts and to highlighting the tensions within them. Specifically, the thesis is geared around the subject of masculinity, and suggests that, while the way in which officia1 or cornmon- sense notions of Canada act to place blackness to the nation's boundaries, there is another element in the process, which is the performance of black masculinities by black athletes themselves, both at the local and national levels. This tension is what the thesis focuses on, in that it is an andysis of the ways that these masculinities are performed in both progressive and reactionary ways. The thesis involves three case studies: which are focused on basketball in Toronto, the quarterback and the phenornena of scrambling in the Canadian Football League, and the way that images and representations of track and field athletes Donovan Bailey and Ben Johnson. Methodologically, this thesis is grounded in bIack Cultural Studies, and it is reliant upon the work of C.L.R. James, Hazel Carby, bel1 hooks, Frantz Fanon, Paul Gilroy and Stuart Hall. In addition, the thesis pays attention to questions of performativity and hybridity, and borrows on the work of Homi Bhabha. Table of Contents

Introduction ...... 1

C hapter 1: Black Masculinities and Spoa in Canada: A fiarnework ...... -13

Chapter 2: Canada. Race. and the question of Hockey's Place...... j0

Chapter 3 : Running Clean: Ben Johnson and the Unmaking of Canada ...... 76

Chapter 4: Who Got Next?: Raptor Morality and Black Public Masculinity in Canada ...... 107

Chapter 5: Scrambling through the Black Atlantic: Black Quarterbacks and Americanada...... 134

Conclusion...... 165

Notes ...... 173

Select Bibliography ...... 182 To Mary (Maher Ghalg Abdel-Shehid

and Adib Ragheb Abdei-Shehid

for teaching me love and

persistence It wouid be impossible for me to think about finishing this work without the generous support of fiiends, farnily, and members of my committee, who were there for me more times than they know. My sincere and hedelt thanks to you dl. First, 1would like to thank those on my Supervisory Cornmittee: Livy Visano, gay Morris, and Warren Crichlow, who, whiie they left me alone for the most part, were there when 1needed them most. What more cm you ask for? I would also like to acknowledge the support and inspiration of Ato Seky-Otu and Car1 James who read parts of this thesis in its early stages. Thanks as well to Priscilla Walton and Pemi Stewart for sewing on the exarnining committee. There are a nurnber of fnends who defïnitely deserve their props. For being temfic at various stages of this process: Lachlan Story, Tracey Henry, Mark Thomas, Eric Mikhalovskiy, Patti Phillips, Rebecca Raby, Tessy Chakkalakkal, Beth Jackson, Shei!a Cavanagh, Zelda Abramson, Marco Fonseca, Maria Casas, and the adorable Loucas, Keith Harrison, Michael Lornax, Mary Louise Adams, Jehad Al-Iweiwi, Christian Oporto, Maria Ordonez, J.J. McMurtry, Meghan Shuebrook, and Krida (hugs), Mokaysh Sarnlal, Mary-JO Nadeau, Kasia Rukszto, Renuka Sooknanan, (my PAC crew fiom back in the day), Andrew Thomton, Dan Yon, Badeya Warwar, Leslie Sanders, Dionne Falconer, Frances Latchford, Jenifer Kawaja, Cynthia Wright, and Dionne Brand. Much love and respect to you dl. To Rinaldo Walcott, thanks for al1 of the stellar advice, support and challenging me throughout. And thanks for keepin' the faith. To my brother, Ihab, and sister-in-law, Swette Benoit, to Rushurnba, and to my adorable nephew, Malek Benoit Abdel-Shehid, also known as "kut kut", many hugs and kisses. To rny queArabians Trish Salah and Dina Georgis, what to say? thanks for al1 the love, advice, intellectual fights, psychoanalysis, good times, and for building a fabulous cultural universe filled with among things, lots of yummy kibbe naya!! Finally, a special thanks to my other brother, Darius Zifonun, and his girlfiend, Miranda Jakisa, and the beautifid Shejla. Love.

vii Introduction:

1. Sporting Cultures in Canada: BCackness, Patchwork 3ild hpericl Onslaught

In the recent book, The Stmgglefor Canadian Sport, Bruce Kidd suggests that sport in Canada, over the last one hundred years, is defined by one central narrative. This is that sport in Canada - interchangeably defined as feminine, amateur, public and indigenous - has been in danger, and in fact has been ravaged by forces hostile to it - dternatively masculinity, corporatization, and Americans. Kidd's argument is summarized in the following (1996: 264):

In short, the 1920s and 1930s witnessed the triumph of capitalist cultural production over the more avocationai and associational forms of cultural activity pursued by the middle and working classes. Purchased identity replaced the loyalties of roots and self-realization. The public spinted attempt to develop a pan-Canadian system of sport with organic links to communities across the country was subordhated to the profits of metropolitan and commercial interests.

This analysis, replete with romanticism and nationalist paranoia is a common way of narrating Canada within a nationalist script. Within this script, the categories

"Canada" and "Canadians" are always under siege fiom evil, extemal interests. in this regard, Kidd's "Iament for a nation" shares a series of assumptions about Canada, and who is Canadian, with conservative nationalists such as George Grant and Margaret

Atwood. '

Among other things, the difficulty with this story is that it tells very little about what Canada is and who lives in it. Manicheisms structure the text, thereby dividing everything into binaries such as public and pnvate, masculine and feminine, corporate and cornmunitarian, etc. This means that nuance and ambivalence are impossible moments within Canadian sports, and perhaps Canadian society in general. Second, in speaking of Canada as a whole, Kidd is uncriticai of the way that Toronto and Montreal are often positioned as "Amerïcan" cities within the context of Western Canadian nationalisms. Third, in displacing al1 of the problems in Canadian sports to elsewhere,

(most often assurned to be originating in the United States), Kidd forecloses a discussion of the way that oppression (be it class, race, gender-based or otherwise) is a made-in-

Canada thing.

This element of the argument is most evident when he discusses hockey, a subject

Kidd has written about in other contexts.' Hockey, in The Stmggle is read as constantly under siege. Kidd writes the story of hockey and suggests that it has not changed over the pst seventy years; the fundamental probtematic being the continued loss of "our national game." As he notes (1996: 230):

Except for the question of public subsidy, the issues are identical to those 70 years ago, when the NHL first expanded to the United States. If they are left to the NHL and the market to decide, the same sorry outcome is likely to result.

Thus, Kidd's work reads tike a kinder, gentler version of Don Cherry. Given that the nationalist message is the most central, other issues within hockey remain ignored.

For instance, the purportedly feminist focus of the book is not strong enough to prompt a discussion of the rampant misogyny and homophobia within hockey cultures in Canada, something cornmented upon recently by Laura Robinson (1998): Moreover, the racism which structures hockey, both amateur and professionai, which systernatically excludes nonwhite and First Nations hockey players, is aiso unmentioned.

In this regard, Kidd structures the nation in the rnost conservative and xenophobic of fashions. While there are many ways that this is evident, thinking about blackness in

Kidd's text is one way to dernonstrate this. Kidcl's treatment of blackness is appalling. He treats it in the sarne way as do other conservative nationalists, which is by rendering it invisible to the nation. In The Sn-uggle, it would appear that black folks did not have a sporting history in this country. Reading Kidd would disallow knowIedge of the fact that some of the earliest hockey leagues in Canada were the black hockey leagues of ~alifax.'

In fact, a readiig of Kidd at his word might mean that you would not know that Jackie

Robinson had corne to Montreal to play baseball before he would eventually return to the

United States as the first black "major League" baseballer. There would also be no way of knowing about Jack Johnson's trips to Hamilton and Montreal and the receptions he received among black cornrnunities in the early twentieth century.' Lastly, there is no way of making sense of black American quarterbacks who came up to Canada to play in the Canadian Football League (beginning with John Henry Jackson in 1964) because of racist presumptions that black footballers lacked the srnarts to play quarterback:

By remaining silent on the question of blackness, Kidd's gesture has another effect, which is to relegate blackness to beyond the nation's borders. This has a doubled resonance when considering black lives in this country and the Iives of people of colour more generaily. If nationaiism is supposed to be about protecting a pure, nation fiom externai threat, and Kidd is silent on the question ofblackness, then the black body,

3 which has been inscnbed throughout Enlightenment/colonialism as the body of the outsider, is read unconsciously as both outside and hostile. In other words, this logic engenders blackness as the nation's worst nightmare. Thus Kidd constmcts blackness outside a pure Canadian space which, although not marked as such, is imagined as white.

Thus, myriad forms of blackness and how they work in conjunction with a series of discourses and migrations fiom beyond Canada, something which is one of the main foci of my thesis, are illegible in Kidd's text. In other words, black desires for elsewhere. something Walcott, Brand and others have pointed to as part and parcel of blackness in

Canada, are untheorized. These desires - be they wihthe frame of black boxers migrating to England (e-g. Lemox Lewis), or black hoop dreamers (e.g. Nom Clarke,

Tammy Sutton-Downs) going to the United States, are automatically read as anti-

Canadian, given that the nationalist lens always positions the United States as evil. Thus, black desires which are outer-national, can thus be read as a problern, as the result of unthankful and cantankerous black folks.

In sum then, Kidd's work offers a version of history which tows the nationalist line and reads blackness as invisible. Moreover, the thematic of invasion in the text also suggests that the place of blackness is that un-Canadian threat that lurks just beyond. In fact, there is nothing to distinguish Kidd's fomulations fkom the kind of Canadian racism/nationalism which caused miIIions of Canadians to metaphorically revoke the citizenship of Ben Johnson in 1988. The question that we are left asking then, is how do we make sense of blackness in Canada beyond this nationalist fiame.

4 2. Rewriting Sporting CuZtwes in Canada

There is another way to thùik about sporthg cultures in Canada other than the chauvinist mode1 that Kidd puts fonvard. htead of the metaphor of invasion, the metaphor that might get at the reality of what makes up Canada is that of patchwork.'

This metaphor applies beyond just black sporting spheres in Canada. It organizes them from the very core. In fact, a brief look at the genealogy of Canada's sporting cultures proves my point. The athletes that put Canada on the "map" are culled from a series of importations and hybrids that cocstitute the sporting populace here in Canada. in fact, the geneaiogy looks like this: "we" bring up sprinters fiom the Caribbean; hockey players from Eastern Europe; boxers from West Afiica, the Caribbean, and Italy; football players and basketball players fiom the United States, baseballers fiom Latin Amerka, cricketers fiom the Caribbean, England and South Asia; lacrosse players fmm First Nations and black communities in Canada. It is a fiction to define a "we", which is pure and that does not have links to and foundations elsewhere, outside of the myth of the white, Canadian, subject, that anchors nationaiist arguments.'

However, this patchwork, and what it means, as evidenced through our reading of

Kidd, is ignored in favour of a manicheism which separates a pure group of Canadians fiom a pure group of Americans without recognizing that in relation to blackness, a whole series of outer-national identifications complicates this binary. These realities have been indiscerdble to Canadian sports sociologists. But this cold shoulder does not mean that the dynamic of sports and its patchwork goes away. Any attempt to think about sports in

5 Canada must begin with an acknowledgment of this fkmework, which in spite of

whatever nationalist fantasies one has, has organized Canadian sporthg cultures in

Canada since their inception. Moreover. as was the case with Ben Johnson, this

patchwork is often "forgotten" and then conveniently remembered when the results are

not in accordance with the nationalist narrative. One of the central issues in what follows

is the way black athletes, so often named as "extemal" to Canada, are perceived by

institutions like the media, and in tum,what kinds of identifications go on by black men

and boys in Canada Moreover, how do corporations such as Nike and the NBA fit into and disrupt the nationaiist script as they attempt to establish and solidifj markets in

Toronto and Vancouver? These tensions are what the rnetaphor of patchwork opens up.

There have been atternpts to think about patchwork and the way that blackness

operates within Canadian sporting cultures. The work of Andrew Thomton, Car1 James,

and my own work is an engagement with a Canadian canon that has largely found it

unnecessary to examine black sporting cultures in this country ancilor found it sufficient

to talk about black sporting realms through tired cliches of a) liberal notions of inclusion or b) crirninality. These engagements, although smail, begin to deploy a reading of

blackness in Canadian sporting cultures which are outside these fkarneworks.

I offer this anecdote as an exarnple to address questions of the lack of scholarship which thinks about race and sport in Canada Recently a fnend who had just read and

been blown away by C.L.R. Jamesf Beyond a Boundary, asked me whether there was a

Canadian equivalent to James' work. 1 responded to her that there almost couldn't be

6 since what motivates James' work is a an anti-colonidist bent as well as a latent fi-ustration with sociology of sports as a possibility i.e. a belief that sports itself is part of it own hemetic sphere that is not continually cross-cut and interpellated by economics, culture, and history. In addition, 1suggested that nobody writing sports sociology in this country was soundly rooted within such a politics. If anything, the Canadian version(s) of

Beyond a Boundary had yet to be written because much of what counts for sociology of sports in Canada pays no attention to Canada's history as an imperialist settler colony. 1 continued to note that it was perhaps the best time to consider such a project, given that some thirty-odd years after the beginning of official Multiculturalism, and after we have been exposed to a steady diet of conscious and unapologetic anti-racist performances by many nonwhite artists in this country, including those of Dionne Brand, Richard Fung,

Roy Miki and Company, it rnay be time now not to have to worry about proving that black sports exist and have the right to be spoken about fiankly. This anecdote offers some context about the state of research on sport in Canada. Moreover, while it is not rny intention to write the Canadian version of Beyond a Boundary, 1 am suggesting that his work serves as an inspiration for an intervention into such research, both politically and methodologically.

To be sure, this post-colonial dissatisfaction with official narratives of what it means to be Canadian is not new, even though it may appear that its articulation in writing is (relatively) recent. in sports, there are no shùrtage of instances where official narratives of nationalism break down, where versions of pure athletes battling enerny

7 forces are senred up as fictions. In addition to people like Jackie Robinson, John Henry

Jackson, and Herb Carnegie, 1 am talking about people (to narne a few) Like Marv Nash,

Desai Williams, Angella Taylor, Charmaine Crooks, Egerton Marcus, Ben Johnson, Leo

Rautins, Nom Clarke, Molly Killingbeck, J.C. Watts, Turner Gill, Leon McQuay, Otis

Grant, Earl Wallace. The list is endless, black and white aîhletes in Canada whose experiences, ambitions, and expressions lie far beyond a Canada-U.S. manicheism and thereby constitute what we might cal1 a black Atlantic sporting culture here in Canada.

nius, this thesis is an attempt to make sense of these expenences, athletes, and desires for those of us, which is every one, who in some way or another were affected by their actions. It is Iocated within a number of different methodological approaches, most notably Cultural Studies. In my fmt chapter on movement, art, and cultural studies in sports, 1 read James as fimly rooted outside of reading sports as a hermetic sphere. What

is compelling about Jamesr work is his reading of sports as a site for the production of identity among many others. His methodology reads athletics as part of a larger social formation. Thus, he is constantly focussed on questions of class, race, and history?

James places emphasis on movement as a way of re-thinking static theories of sports and

identity. James' focus on movement is usefd since it offers a certain restlessness to

Enlightenment/coIonialist notions of the self as discrete, unconnected et cetera-

Ernphasizing movement opens up a whole series of questions for a cultural studies approach to sports, black masculinities and Canada. James' insights on movement and blackness, 1 argue are arnplified in the work of Pau1 Gilroy, Kobena Mercer, and black

8 cultural studies in Canada. Specifically, such questions are those that are pressing in the current context, and impact on questions of blackzxss and masculinity. Unfortunately, the rush to what Gilroy calls "ethnic absoiutisrn" in current black popular culture has its coordinates within some circles of sociology of sports, which reads blackness as fixed, and ofien only intelligible vis-a-vis whiteness. My interest is not in proving that blackness is constantly in flux, although this might appear to be the case. Rather, my running away Çom static theories of blackness mises hma distrust in a certain absolutisms of blackness which are easily Nike-fied and put forward as the only possible bIack identity.

In addition to patchwork, there are two other features to the thesis that are worth introducing. First, is that the thesis presents ways of thinking about black sporting presences fiom somewhere other than the place of celebration, or "firstness" as Rinaldo

Walcott (1997:xiv) calls it. This is important given that the discourse of celebration is an attempt to erase black forms of oppression which attempt to police and survey attempts at freedom by black folks themselves. One of the questions this thesis addresses is the presence of Nike-fied versions of blackness - that is to Say versions of blackness that continually reiQ and homogenize black selves. Thus, this thesis is not silent on black neo-conservative forms of oppression within black sporting cultures in Canada. That of course is not ail. It is a thesis which is also focussed on the positive, enervating and invigorating aspects of black sporting cultures in Canada. This dialectic - the hope that in spite of the many Nike-fications that black popular culture goes through, there can and

9 must be a sense of comrnunity and an affigsense of blackness that prevails - is the tip that 1 stay focussed on thoughout.

De-emphasizing celebration leads me to my second point, which is that blackness, as it is constituted in many places, is not an equal terrain. While theorists of hybndity and diaspora such as Bhabha and Gilroy do suggest this, these tensions are often not as magnified as they could be. In this sense, the work of Agkn Appadurai is suggestive, especially in tems of how globalization is an unequal process. Of equal signifieance is the work of Michael Hanchard, who draws attention to the way that inequalities operate within the black diaspgra While these insights have not been central to sports sociology, their importance to discussions of bIack sporting cultures is indispensable. This redity, which is informed by essentialist notions of who is really black, is largely informed by economics and politics, and has meant that United States forms of blackness are often read as the most real. This has senous consequences for my thesis, given that it infoms a series of black Atlantic migrations, in football, track and field, and basketball.

After this discussion of method, I move on to stage a dialogue between two literatures in Canadian popular culture. The first is recent work on hockey in Canadian society and the second is the recent post-colonial critiques of multi-culturalism and

Canadian racism, specificdly Dionne Brand's Bread Out of Stone and Roy Miki's Broken

Enfries. In part, I use Brand and Miki to illustrate connections between ihe institution of

Canadian Literature, or CanLit and the narrative of hockey in Canada, which has strong parai le:^. These parailels are seen by looking at how hockey is narrated within Canadian

10 popular culture and academic writing on hockey as the sport which defines and symbolizes "us". For one, it undoubtedly has the effect of erasing nonwhite and First

Nations contributions to Canadian sporting cultures. Yet to date, critiques of how producing hockey as whiteness works in Canadian nationalism are few and fat between."

This second chapter, by opening up this conversation, hopes to offer precisely such a critique and try put yet another nail into the coffi of CanLit and the myth of hockey hegemony in this country.

Al1 of the empirical chapters in this thesis, as well as noting the presence of racism in shaping versions of blackness in Canada and to some extent the United States, point to the pemicious nature of static theories of blackness and how these play out in popular culture. In chapter 3,I discuss the way that Ben Johnson serves as the symbol for the nation's worst nightmare, while at the same time noting how Donovan Bailey reproduces racist nationalism to secure his own insecure statu as a Canadian hero. 1 chapter 4,1 look at how the NBA has travelled across the border into Toronto and discuss what kinds of blackness results fiom such movements. in chapter 5,1 discuss the question of black masculinities through the figure of the black quarterback. 1 argue that thinking about black quarterbacks is impossible without paying attention to black quarterbacking presences in Canada. Moreover, I suggest that the different forms of style and rnasculinity they offer counter the Nike-fied presentations of black NFL quarterbacks such as Kordell Stewart. In each chapter, as well as showing how black masclilinities are constituted, 1 show how such versions of blackness cm and do serve the interests of

11 capitalism, neo-colonidisîn, and Canadian nationalism, all of which rely on the destruction of black folks' lives and experiences to reproduce themselves.

In closing the thesis, 1 examine the kinds of limitations that this thesis itself engenders. The conclusion will be focussed on what a theorization of a post-black sporting culture in Canada might look like, as well as a theorization of the limits of thinking about mascdinity as a project for ferninimi. This is the project that is before you. After reading it, you may have reason to reconsider the way you thought through sports, Canada and black masculinities. Cliupter I: BIack Maculinities and Sport in Canada: A frunzework

1. Intmduction:

This chapter is designed to put forward a theoretical and methodological map with which to read black masculinities and sport in Canada as they are presented in the case studies which follow. With this in mind, this chapter begins with an overview of the weaknesses in the curent literatures on blackness and sport, for exarnple in the work of

Harry Edwards and Alan Wiggins, which although usefiil, are somewhat limited. Such an overview may provide the reader with a sense of how this thesis attempts to depart fiom the existing Iiterature. In order to begin such a mapping, there are a few recurring themes 1 will elaborate upon. 1 discuss these themes in relation to the organization of this chapter, which goes as foIlows.

First, 1 Iook at the way in which much conventional approaches to sport are ideological, or mythical. In this section 1 borrow on the work of Roland Barthes and

Marx and Engels to show how rnost approaches to sport reproduce an Enlightenment binary of culture/nature, and place sport in the latter space. Second, 1 suggest that the myth of the state of nature, has a doubling effect in terms of talking about blackness, and especially blackness, given the way that blackness has historicdly been narrated as outside the Enlightenment text. In the third section, 1 suggest that this episteme continues to inform much of the work on blackness and sport, in spite of its strong contributions.

Fo~,I look at the work of C.L.R. James, specifically, Beyond a Boundary, as a text

13 which begins a post-manichean approach to sports and blackness. 1 suggest that among many things, James begins to open the question of movement and black popular cultures, which is ignored in much of the dominant work. Fifi, I explore the relation between black popuiar cultures and the question of movement (whether this rnovement is defrned in terms of physicality, or in terms of movements of people or social movements. This section is an analysis of the relation between blackness and national boundaries, as theorized in the work of Paul Gilroy. In this section 1 also pay attention to the unequal relations within the black diaspora; and 1pay attention to Canada's position as a nation with a '-fami-team blackness. Sixth, 1 suggest that reading blackness in sport must account for the circurnscription of black masculinities within discourses of law and order, both in Canada and elsewhere. Seventh, 1 examine the constitution of nations as narratives that work discursively to include and exciude certain peoples, while naming certain people citizens and others, which are often inscribed as non-citizens, or as out- laws. Finaily, 1 elaborate upon the way that black masculinities are performed and reproduced in dialogue with these phenomena.

3 Dominant Approaches: Myth, Nature and Sports

As a discipline, the sociology of sport is roughly hrty years old. In that period of time, issues of race, specifically blackness, have been an important aspect cf the field.

Beginning with Harry Edwards, and continuing through to the work of contemporary authors like David Wiggins and Gary Sailes, this literature has been helpfiil in providing a way of thinking about blackness and sports. However, this literature is not distant from

14 conventional paradigms within the sociology of sport, which 1 suggest reads sports within an Enlightenment manicheism that divides the world int~two hakes, tk $ysicA side and the mental, or rational side.

One result of this way of thinking is that it confines sports to this physicai realm, thereby allowing it to be seen as a world unto itself. Other reahs, for example politics, are seen as somehow extrinsic to the world of sport. This makes it difficdt to discuss

"social problems" in sports except as external or aberrant. This is seen in the following example. Recently in Ontario, there have been a number of teachers strikes and work-to- decampaigns as a response to a series of attacks made upon the school system by the

Conservative government of Premier Mike Harris. invariably, whenever these strikes or job actions occur, articles appear in newspapers and in the broadcast Stream which present coaches and players as opposing strikes because of the fact that politics should not interfere or c'compt" the world of sports.

This reaction is part of a deeply embedded way of thinking about politics generally, as a sphere unto itself, which is not constituted by what happens in other cultural spheres, be they domestic life, arts and so on. Imputing categories with essential characteristics is a foundational principle of Enlightenment/colonialist knowledge production. The critique of this knowledge production, what is often called ideology, was made quite succinctly by Marx and Engels in The German Ideology. Marx and Engels criticized the Hegeliadidealist conception of history which read historical categories as natural, or as belonging to (1 976: 62) "the redm of pure spirit". That is, the concept, or

15 the category of knowledge, seemed to move throughout the world autonomously, as though not continuously (re)-constnicted and cross-cut by hurnan subjects. After having made this critique, the authors put forward the "materidist conception of history" as the response to Hegelian idedisrn-

This cntique has been furthered by Roland Barthes' in Mythologies. Barthes uses the concept of myth in similar ways to "ideology". He writes (1 973 : 127):

When (myth) becomes form, the meaning leaves its contingency behind; it empties itself, it becomes impoverished, history evaporates, only the letter remains.

Barthes suggests myth is a way of amputating history and allowing a sign to act in

its place. This is helpful in thinking about sports since Barthes' claim is that myth stands

in for history and complexity, and offers a set of ahistoricd cliches instead. In the same way that Marx and Engels argue that the spirit appears as a subject in history, Barthes

suggests that the concept, which works in tandem with the sign to remove history fiom the text, has the same effect. Both Marx and Engels and Barthes offer a way to begin a

cntique of sports and the dominant form in which its narration takes place. Bourgeois

cultural productions, of which big-time sport is one, rely on the establishment of

categories as real in and of themselves, devoid of a series of histories, and politics of

struggle. Reading sports in bourgeois culture as myth, in Barthes' sense is a critical

counter to a common-sense tendency toward dehistoricizing and depoliticizing sports.

In addition to portraying sports as a mythical sphere unto itself, there is another

comrnon and related way of narrating sports. This is the practice of circurnscribing the world of sport Uito a pre-rationai, or pre-modem state of nature. A brief genealoa~of the concept of the state of nature will help outiine the way that this concept works in tandem with sport as an ideological or mythical construct. The notion of an asocial or pre-social

"state of nature" is a foundational principle within Enlightenment/colonialist social and political thought. This state of nature was the place where passions dedand Reason held no sway. Rousseau, for example, lamented the loss of the state of nature in civilisation as that which irnprisons "Man".

Because of the prominence of physicality in representations of the state of nature, sport in popular culture is often presurned to reside somewhere within this state of nature.

Thinking of sports as a state of nature is not benign. It is ofien the mythical support for a whole host of foundational myths of capitalism - equd opportunity, the goodness of the state, racial hierarchy, gender separation, and heterosexuality. For example, consider the following quote, by Nelson Mandela (as quoted in Marquesee, 19954):

Boxing is egalitarian. in the ring, rank, age, colour, and wealth are irrelevant. When you are circling your opponent, probing his strengths and weaknesses, you are not thinking about his colour or social status.

Thus, reading sports as a bourgeois category is reliant on invoking two related concepts:

1) that sport is a state of nature and 2) that it is an apoli'ùcal, egalitarian space only interfered with from an "outside". As well reaffirming bourgeois values, there is a particdar way that blackness is figured in this discourse, which I explain below.

3. BZackness and the Hate of nature

Blackness works within constnictions of the state of nature to sustain fantasies of whiteness. As much as the state of nature is about a presumably equal terrain or level playing field, it dso has a doubled resonance, which is to narrate blackness as more physical and therefore somehow athletically superior. Black bodies are seen as primitive, hypersexualized and licentious; moreover, white bcjdies in the state of nature are not represented as organic. White bodies are assumed to have outgrown the state of nature."

The following example provides additional evidence. Consider the following quote from a white male professional on gender eqÿality (Messner, as quoted in Disch and Kane,

1996: 284):

A woman can do the same job as 1 cm do - maybe even be my boss. But I'11 be damned if she can go out on the football field and take a hit fiom Ronnie Lott.

Ronnie Lott was, according to Disch and Kane, "a black NFL player celebrated for making aggressive tackles." The white deployment of blackness, or specifically black masculinity as the embodiment of masculine aggression can be traced to Edighienrnent notions that read Afnca as the place of unbridled strength, sexuality and aggression.

White colonizers to Afiica who see themselves as having evolved fiom such a state, witness Hegel's Philosophy of History, cmtherefore Iook upon Afnca as an other which exists before andjor outside European civilisation. The confluence of racist ideas about black masculinity, sport and sexudity is captured by Fanon (I 967: 166), who describes the responses to a survey he gave to white French people about their opinions of blackness. He writes:

Negro brought forth biology, penis, strong, athletic, potent, boxer, Joe Louis, Jesse Owens, Senegalese troops, savage, animal, devil, sin. Thus, the state of nature equals Aiinca and presumes a black hyper-rnasc~linity~~,whereby a whole series of primordial fantasies are played out.

Thus, thinking about sport as a state of nature acts to limit and narrow the possibilities of blackness. On the one hand, the construct works to prornote notions of equdity; yet as the quote concerning Ronnie Lott shows, it secretly admits a racist biology which prioritizes strength and power, and says, "we dl know that blacks are the superior athletes." in that sense, the state of nature works to carnivalize and anthropoIogize black masculinity by hscribing it as pre-modern, more "naturally" inclined to sporting cultures, etc.

4. The current literature on Race and Sport:

Sociological approaches to race and sport, or more specifically within bIackness and sport, are partially beholden to those foms of thinking which read sports as a state of nature. In illustrating these claims, I suggest we recall a controversy within the world of sport sociology that erupted in 1997, the yex that John Hoberman published his now infamous book, Darwin's Athletes. In brief, the controversy stemrned fiom the fact that a number of African American sports sociologists and historians responded to Hoberman's book as racist. In fact, Darwin's Athletes caused such an uproar that a nurnber of Afican

American scholars boycotted the November 1997 North American Society for Sociology of Sports (NASSS) conference in Toronto on the grounds that Hoberman was asked to be the keynote speaker. In addition, in the spring of 1998 at New York University, a conference of black scholars was held to discuss Darwin's Athletes.

19 Hoberman's central argument is as follows: sports and its myth of opportunity have fded Afiican Americans. Second, ficanAmericans are dupes for al1 reading sports as the land of opportunity, and moreover. Afncan American intellectuals have not done enough to dissuade black kids fiom aspiring to make it in the world of sports. These conclusions are unworthy of a response. However, Hoberman's work shares certain foundational assurnptions with existing approaches to race and sport. In spite of the fact that many would like to think differently, Hoberman's work shares a way of confïguring race with many in the field. Specifically, Hoberman's work is syrnptomatic of a way of reading sports within a binary construction of race as black and white, which unfortunately typifies the bulk of work on race and sport. Lauren Monmoto (1999) has pointed out that a theory of race that is reducible to discussions of black athletes persists within the literatures of both the sociology and history of sport. Thus, because of the presence of a binary, or manichean, representation of race, to talk about race and sport means taking about the experiences of black athletes within sport. Morimoto goes on to suggest that this way of thuiking race and sports has something to do with the foundational assumptions of Harry Edwards, a man many feel is the "father" of the sociolo~of race and sport.

Morimoto's suggestions are borne out by a reading of Edwards' major work, The

Revolt of the Black Athlete, first published in 1970. Edwards' work is a documentation of the struggles of the Olympic Committee for Human Rights, which was a group of Black athietes and their supporters who were fighting against racism in the United States,

20 imperialism abroad àtid the Vietnam war. A number of notable athletes lent their time and energy to the cause - among whom were Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Tornmie Smith and Jim Brown. WhiIe Edwards' work is vital and rernains informative, one of the rnost pressing political problems is that his configuration of constructing race, and by extension blackness, has not been built upon, resisted and reconfigured.

Edwards' work betrays what some have called a clenched-fist aesthetic, which presents a highly masculinist and hetero-normative understanding of the black male body.

A number of black feminists and black queer theorists, among them Michele Wallace,

Kobena Mercer, and Audre Lorde, argue that these stereotypical aesthetics tell black folks very linle about the lives they lead, and conform to racist notions of the black male body.

In light of the work on black sexuality and black mascuiinity, there has been a steady strearn of critickm of the foundationalist assumptions which grounded the civil rights period in both the United States and Canada, as well as that of the decolonization movernents in Afnca and the Caribbean. Given that much of what passed for black liberation in the 1960s was liberation for men ody, these critics asked the question: liberation for whom? in addition, the work of Comel West and Stuart Hall have pointed out that a series of shifts which have resulted fiom globalization, economic upheavals and so on, have meant that strictly black nationalist politics need to give way to what West

(1992) calls '%henew cultural politics of difference." Ln that sense, there requires a shift in the way we theorize sport and blackness, given that the fantasies and desires for unanimity have now become parodies.'' Thus, what worked for Edwards several years

21 ago must be wholly revamped due to a series of political and economic realities.

However, most theorists of race and sport have not moved beyond Edwards' formulations

- this is evident most succinctly by the fact that the literature "race in sport" remains a discussion of black athletes, without attention to questions of hybridity, sexuaiity, and social ciifference more generally. Moreover, these atldetes continue to be located within a clenched-fist aesthetic. Edwards' conception of race and the rnasculuiist assurnptions it makes have become normative principles in the work of people like Alan Wiggins, Gary

Sailes, and Kenneth Shropshire.

Thus, essentialist readings of race are the epistemological ground on which conservatives Iike Hoberman can continue to reproduce the fiction that race is real and binary, and moreover that black folks are to blame for the existence of racism. While it is both easy and necessary to dismiss Hoberman out of hand, the more dificult work will be the reconfiguring of a theory of bIack masculinity and sport afier the clenched-fist approach. Thus, in contradistinction to scholars who atternpted to debate Hoberman and prove him wrong, both at the Toronto and the New York conferences, a much more useful way to proceed would be to begin to re-theorize race, and as Morimoto suggests, to de-rei@ it. In other words, the continued reification of race, or more specificaily blackness, continues to reproduce racist assumptions which 1 outlined above. De- reifications of race are reliant on bringing questions of history, rnemory, identity and sexuality to bear on the field of race and sport.'"

In addition to the rei@ing elements of the race and sport Iiterature, there is a

22 particdar way that this literature has the effect of sustaining blackness as made-in-the

U.S.A. The way that this discourse works as Amencanist is seen in the following ways.

While there have been some initiatives tryïng to think about race in the South Afncan context,ls sustained discussions of how blackness works outside of the United States, for instances in places like Canada, Cuba, aud Brazil have not yet occmed. This theorkation disallows a discussion of hybridity, diaspora and genealogy - namel y, how blackness as a discourse is made and performed, not to mention forms of blackness that exist beyond these nationa! boundaries. What this does is limit the terrain of discussion and turn the category "black American" into a category with borders that needs to be policed.

In addition to the fiction that is the "black athlete," with built-in definitions of it as herican, the masculinist foundations of the narrative are also problematic. In other words, this fiction means that the "black athlete" is almost aiways gendered as male. This phenornenon should not surprise us, given that some of the most trenchant critiques of nationaiism corne fkom feminists, who are under no illusion about who benefits in constructions of nation? A reading of JeBey Samrnons comprehensive bibliographie essay, entitied "Race" and Sport: A Critical, Historical Examination"" helps to illustrate this claim. As Samrnons' essay attests, much of the existing writing within the field of race and sport is the story of black males in big-time Amencan sports. Recently,

Maureen Smith (1998) has criticized this. Smith is critical of constnicting a narrative of black participation in sports that is reducible to a line of black hall-of-famers - Jesse

23 Owens, Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson for exampie. Smith goes on to argue that prominent black femde athletes like Wilma Rudolph and Althea Gibson receive marginalized treatment within this discourse, and moreover, are asked to have their different experiences fit into this dominant narrative.

However, as much as Smith's concerns are important, her work continues the notion that race equals black and black equals big-time and American. It is thus a canonical reconfiguration of blackness to include women as opposed to re-fashioning the category blackness itself? which would entail a move away fkom canonicity, something that Morimoto's work points to. Smith's legitimate desire to uncover some women's expenences in sport reproduces dominant fictions about blackness in the culture, namely that race equals black, and moreover, that blackness can only be apprehended through big-time sports as a meta-category. The practice of reading blackness as a meta-category, meaning that we can only read blackness as about heras and heroes - be they revolutionaries, athletes, entertainers, is something to be constantiy writing against.

Reading blackness as a meia-human category corresponds or is somehow linked to reading blackness as physicality within the state of nature. The two rnost common ways of reading blackness in the racist imagination is either through a meta-person like

Owens or Louis, or through the use of stereotypes of blackness as it is found in the state of nature. Often, the everyday lives of black folks go missing in this constmct. With reference to masculinity, Kobena Mercer is criticai of a "schism" which divides the representation of black masculinity into a discussion of heroes and invisible men.

24 Specifically, Mercer critiques the way that heroic representations work to occlude everyday experiences of black men (1994: 178):

This schism is played out daily in the popular tabloid press. On the front page, black males become highly visible as a threat to white society, as muggers, rapists, terrorists and guerillas: their bodies become the imago of a savage and unstoppable capacity for destruction and violence. But tuni to the back pages, and the black man's body is heroized and lionized; any hint of antagonism is contained by the paternalistic Uifantilization of [black men] to the status of national mascots and adopted pets-they're OK because they're "our boys."

The tendency toward reading blackness as a meta-category is seen by looking at David

Wiggins' Glory Bound, a history of Afncan Americans in sport. Wiggins' book is largely about black men, many of whom are high profile athletes, in sports who have overcome racism and other obstacles to succeed. This is an dl-too comrnon and constricting practice, whereby a number of heroes such as Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, Muhammad

Ali and Sugar Ray Robinson receive preferential treatment and stand in as the story of blackness and sports.

Wiggins' episterne, read in light of Smith's and Mercer's cornments, as well as my concerns about reading black athletics as a meta-category, speak to the shortcomings of the literature on race and sport. Namely, it speaks to how beholden these beliefs are to a liberal "race relations" narrative. The example of Jackie Robinson's fiftieth anniversary of his entry into Major (read: white) League baseball in 1997 is useful here. The celebration over Robinson's anniversary, and the fact that it was embraced by Bill

Clinton, Majx League baseball, and a whole host of bourgeois elements, suggests that there are serious shortcornings to deploying this narrative of blackness and sports through its meta-human lem. Given that heroes are always intended to be infallible, talking about blackness as heroic in the case of Jackie Robinson is always to talk about how he persevered in spite of hostility and opposition and triumphed over adversity."

Constnicting a hero - someone hrger than life - focuses attention away fiom collective responses to racism, class oppression and reinforces individualist fantasies such as hard work etc, as responses to oppression.

These shortcomings are worth noting if a re-theonzation of blackness and sport is to be put fonvard. -one who has not moved fkom Edwards' position must do so in order for the theory on race and sports to keep up with the changing realities of blackness and specificdly black masculinities, which demand an attention to hybridity and the way that blackness is constituted through multiple sites. Writing blackness the sarne way now as twenty-five years ago suggests that black folks and black life in sports has not changed in that penod, a racist myth for sure.lg As I have suggested, there are several lacunae within this work which make it difficult to apply these theones to a study of blackness, masculinity and sport. As 1 will show in the rest of this chapter, there are a series of issues, which, while ignored in the above theorizations, are addressed in the following positions.

5. Beyond a Boundary: C.L. R. James and Sports afrer nature

It is an interesting and perhaps £iuitfid coincidence that the theme of movement recurs in both thinking about sport and contemporary black cultural criticism. I cite movement as important here because it is a usefd counter to the kinds of rootedness

26 which occur in much of the Iiterature on race and sport, in terms of iixity on discussing blackness, masculinity and so on. In discussing movement, the work of C.L.R.lames is a crucial place to begui. The fact that lames7 work moves past Edightenment/colonialist himes of thought have not gone unnoticed by scholars. For example Sylvia Wynter

(1992:6S) notes that James "disturbed the governing categories of the colonial bourgeois cultural model, the categones of headhody, reason/instinct." James' theory of movement is clearly oriented to dialectics. Thus what James sees as wfd or artistic, in Beyond a

Boundary, is wrapped up with how much it portrays qualities of movement and growth.

As Nielsen (1997: 185: my emphasis) writes:

In the end, it is that sew-movement thar James defines as Ife itself: Cricket was dying in England, he believed, because in the welfare state the dream of the fiee movement of the people had been replaced by the security of the capitalist bureaucracy, and the people who thought they knew cricket best did not know what to do about its decline. in other words, for James, movement is a key hermeneutic within which to understand black life. The success of cricket was measured in the level of newness it displayed; and this newness was wrapped up with transgressing and surpassing old modes of existence.

In Beyond a Boundury, James writes (1 993; 1 13: my emphasis):

Time would pas, old empires would fdl and new ones take their place, the relations of countries and the relations of classes had to change, before 1 discovered that it is not quality of goods and utility which matter, but movement; not where you are or what you have, but where you have corne from, where you are going and the rate at which you are getting there.

Jarnes' emphasis on movernent helps delineate a rnethodology for a cultural

studies of sports and blackness which is not beholden to essentialist and static theories of blackness. In fact, given the inability of conventional sporting representations to speak to myriad forms of black existence across the globe, 1 suggest that a return to dialectics might offer a fiuitfd alternative.

James is useM to develop a theory of black masculinities in sport for the following reasons. First, James formdates a connection between aesthetics and politics that challenges conventional notions. According to James (1994: 196):

Cricket is first and forernost a dramatic spectacle. I; belongs with the theatre, ballet, opera and the dance.

James' continues (1 994: 198):

We may someday be able to answer Tolstoy's exasperated and exasperating question: What is art?-but only when we lem to integrate our vision of (Clyde) Walcott on the back foot through the covers with the outstretched arm of the Olympic Apollo.

As Hazel Carby (1998: 116) has commented:

To (James) the male body on the cricket field was a work of art - not an art that needed to be interpreted or translated by an intellectual, but an aesthetic experience of the body that could be vpedimmediately by the spectators themselves.

There are two beneficial aspects to this formulation. For one, this move essentially pre- figures cultural studies' major epistemological hstas it came out of England in the

1960s and 1970s, which rejected a division between high art and people's art, if you will.

Second, linking sport to art allows for a discussion of sport and blackness which does not revolve around the question of biology.

James' insistence on sport as art is exemplaiy in detailing the political and historical relevance of cncket to the lives and work of many involved in anti-colonial stmggles in the Caribbean. It opens the place for a historical investigation of sport in conjunction with a whole host of other black popular cultural foms, like music, dance, visual arts, etc. Moreover, given James' connecting of aesthetics and politics, naming sport as art introduces a political element to our expenences of cncket as well. James' understanding of politics as an entity of which sport is merely one moment allows for a discussion of sport and politics that is not about negotiating a "divisiont' between sports and politics. Rather, James' work suggests that the relation between sport and poiitics is not disparate. His work expresses no surprise at the fact that politicai struggles are part of cricket in the West indies.

Moreover, James' work is instructive in that it reads a separation between blackness and sport. Too often work on race and sport leaves the question of how black folks corne to sport unanswered. It is often assumed that black folks move to sport unreflexively. James' explication of the loaded relationship between blackness and sport can be seen if we consider how Matthew Bondman is described in the introductory chapter. Bondman, a young ruffian who plays a mean game of cricket, is not glarnorized in the meta-hurnanist way that black athletes often are." Rather, Bondman Is positioned as the embodiment of the poverty and blackness that the young James had been taught to admonish. He notes (1 993: 4):

The contrast between Matthew's pitiable existence as an individual and the attitude people had towards him filled rny mind and has occupied me to this growing day .... My aunts were uncompromising in their judgments of him and yet my grandmother's oft-repeated verdict: "Good for nothhg except to play cricket" did not seem right to me.

In this instance, James points to sport as an ambivalent site for the production of identity, a place and process cross-cut by a series of politicai and economic vectors. James offers a contrapuntal reading of blackness and sport given that he resists a framework which equates blackness with sport. His discussion of Bondman demonstrates the ambivalent nature between blackness and sport. Moreover, he sees the relation as highly mediated by a series of desires and fantasies, and as we see fiom the comments of James' aunts and grandrnothers, highl y policed.

Third, the question of form in James' is important. This is so since the book hints to being sirnply about sports when it is in fact about a whoIe range of other topics. James' book is a cd1 to interdisciplinarity given that it is always about sports and not about sports. In various places, it is about literature, politics, hperialism and so on. Thus,

James implicitly exposes one of the major weaknesses in the sociology of sports tradition, which is its discornfort with interdisciplinarity and its desire to read sports as a world unto itself, as if uninformed and unrelated to other cultural spheres.

Thus, there are several ways in which these Jarnesian insights might allow for a reading of sport and black masculinities in Canada and elsewhere. First, reading black sporting performances as histoncal rather than biological autornatically allows one to ask a series of questions about who plays what sport and why. Second, reading these associations as ambivalent is also one way to resist assumptions about the kinds of sporting decisions that young black men make, an assumption that, as we will see in the chapter on the NBKs arriva1 in Toronto, are ofien forgotten. Third, the connection between sport and art (and thereby politics) helps to once again resist the time-honoured

Enlightenment tradition of denigrating black popular culture as insignificant. What is significant in James is bis consistent resistance to the way that cultural spheres continue to get separated within Enlightenment/colonialisrn. In a sense, he offers a revision of blackness outside normative categories, which Carby (1998: 1 17) descnbes as "his revision of the treatment of the black subject within modemity."

6. BZackness and movement

Ln addition to these important insights fiorn Beyonda Boundav, the foregrounding of blackness and movement is a very popular contemporary theme in black cultural studies and post-colonial studies. Over the past twenty or more years, there has been a growth of work from black and nonwhite scholan who have paid attention to the question of movement across and beyond cultures. Some examples of these thinkers are

Edward Sa'id, Homi Bhabha, Edouard Glissant and Paul Gilroy. In fact, as my reading of

Gilroy shows, James seems to be one of his major influences.

Both in There Ain'i no Black in the Urzion Jack and in The Black Atlantic, Gilroy foregrounds movement as one of the key constituents of New World black identities. in

There Ain? no Black, Gilroy, writing in response to the pathologizing tendencies of race relations sociology. suggests that thinking about black movements - particularly dance and music, might allow us to make more sense of blackness, its histories and identities

3 1 from the inside. Gilroy's comments corne in light of the fact that most race relations is about what is happening to black people instead of thinking about what hdsof practices black foiks are engaging in. He notes (1987: 152):

Racial subordination is not the sole factor shaping the choices and actions of Britain's black settlers and their children.

Moreover, Gilroy flags diaspora as a useful metaphor in thinking about black expressive cultures (1987: 154):

It bean repetition that race, ethnicity, nation and culture are not interchangeable terms. The cultural forms discussed below cannot be neatiy contained within a nation-state. Black Britain defines itself crucially as part of a diaspora.

The Jarnesian resonances in Gilroy are plenty. First, the connection between aesthetics and politics is reminiscent of what Grant Farred (1997: 175) calls the "blurred genre" of

Beyond a Boundary . But moreover, it is Gilroy's reading of movement and politics, as foundational pieces in black expressive cultures, which bears repeating. Gilroy is suggesting that blackness cannot be read solely within the category "nation." In The

Biack Atlantic, Gilroy makes this daim emphatically (1992: 15):

The specificity of the modem political and cultural formation 1 want to cal1 the Black Atlantic cm be defined, on one level, through the desire to transcend both the structures of the nation-state, and the constraints of ethnicity and national particularity .

Reading Gilroy in light of James is suggestive. We must read blackness in conversation with its other fonns beyond national categones. In other words, Gilroy suggests we might read blackness as outer-national.

As others have argued, one of the key ways that blackness is performed in Canada is in dialogue with Arnerican forms of blackness, which as we have seen above, tend to be deployed in essentialist ways. In terms of sports, this is seen in the following example, which emerged at the 1996 Olympics in the debate over who indeed was the world's fastest man. In Atlanta, Canadian Donovan Bailey, and his 4 x 100 tearnrnates Robert

Esmie, Brmy Surin, and Glenroy Gilbert, dominated the sprinting. By doing the unprecedented (defeating the Americans in the mens' 4 x 100 relay), the Canadian relay tearn, ail of whom are black, signaled a post-modern moment in Olyrnpic sports, and the discourse of diaspora. In the United States, Canadian sprinting accornplishments were ignored or downplayed. Despite Donovan Bailey's success in the 100 metres, he was denied the title of World's Fastest Man by the American media, who in turn attempted to crown Arnerican Michael Johnson the fastest man. As Waicott has suggested (1997: 30):

The insistence by Michael Johnson ... that he is the fastest man in the world ... attenuates the limits of diasporic discourses. As Donovan Bailey recently stated, "the claim is fiom Michael Johnson, and he's not even the fastest man in Texas..."

The response by Michael Johnson is symptomatic of the limits of genealogy, or the limits of reading blackness as solely national, in this case American. Walcon suggests that black diaspora discourses which begin with a centre, in this case the United

States, and read other places as diasporic to them, is a colonizing gesnire. It is only because there is an Amencanist attempt to centre blackness in the United States that the debate over who is the world's fastest man is at one and the same time a debate over who is the world's blackest man. The weight of the fictive category "Afican-American," coupled with the way that blackness has corne to equal sports, means that an identification with Bailey could be read as a "white" gesture. With specific reference to the colonizing foms of United States-ian appropriations of blackness, Michael Hanchard

(1997: 33 7) suggests:

It is imperative that progressive political and cultural movements ...reject the idea of America as the United States. For to accept that definition with its self-selected borders and dominions, is to impoverish a political and cultural heritage to which blacks from the Caribbean and Latin Arnerica [I would add Canada] have made important contributions.

This skirmish over boundaries and speed is evidence of the fact that one of the ways that blackness, and race more generally, is deployed is to produce neat and tidy myths of nation. Blackness is assumed to originate in the United States, and it is also assumed to equal sports. A concept of diaspora that (udike the one that Walcott criticizes) has no centre always already suggests a place after nation is much more

çuitful. Thus, Walcott, Gilroy, and Hanchard suggest that blackness is illegible within the fiame of national boundaries. In their own ways, they have suggested thinking about blackness differently, paying attention to its leaky and -anstable qualities as a usehl counter-narrative to conservative positions. An outer-national reading of blackness is one hermeneutic necessary for an ability to discuss blackness in Canada and sport, given that its desires and fantasies are conditioned by Amerka, the Caribbean, and a hast of other places. Moreover, and 1 will gesture to this in the conclusion of this thesis. it might dso be what we need to think about how blackness is differentiated across this country, be it in Montreal, Brampton, or Halifax.

6a. Farming Blackness Considering the suggestions above has signifîcant ramifications for a discussion of blackness and sports in Canada. In addition to the clairn that blackness must be read outside of national boundaries, it is important to read Canadian blackness as a kind of farm league blackness, which involves thinking about Canada's secondary status in tenns of its relation to the United States, purportedly the "home" of blackness. This redit-is what uiforms the movement of a number of cultural practitioners, like young track stars, and hoop drearners to go to train in the United States. Ln addition, it establishes a situation whereby forms of blackness which are "experirnental" or forbidden, can be explored here more readily. Two of the most significant exarnples are the fact that Jackie

Robinson played in Montreal before going to Brooklyn, and the fact that there have been black head coaches and quarterbacks in the Canadian Football League long before they existed in the National Football League. Thus, reading sports and blackness in Canada must pay attention to how this hierarchy works, and to what extent it motivates different fonns of blackness.

In this sense, our understanding of nationalism in sport changes given our incorporation of blackness. While, as seen above, the nationalist paradigm of Kidd suggests that ail things Amencan are evil, black forms lie outside of this manicheism, and moreover, are highly driven by economic and political factors Le. black quarterbacks came to Canada as labourers in search of jobs, and for the same reasons black performers go to the United States looking for work. Moreover, there is an element of commercial nationalism which means that none of the players on the Toronto Blue Jays or Toronto

35 Raptors are fiom Toronto. let aione Canadian. These realities are central to discussions of natioiialism in Canada, since it has significant impact on the kinds of identifications and political choices people rnake.

7. Cttltural Studies and the challenge to discourses of law and order

In addition to providing a framework to reading blackness outside of national boundaries, black Cultural Studies, in the work of Paul Gilroy, Angela McRobbie and their Canadian couriterparts (who will be discussed below) offer ways to cut through one of the dominant representations of black rnasculinity, which is as that of the gangsta or criminal. There Ain't no Black in the Union Jack notes that nationalist discourses in

Bntain deployed a certain version of blackness to reproduce their own projects. Gilroy shows how British nationalist discourse of the post-World War II period relied upon a putatively universal notion of Englishness as a set of attributes defining itself in opposition to blackness, which was understood to be criminal, violent, selfish, and immoral. This is apparent by noticing the historical connection between the introductions of black settlement (understood as "invasion" in Britain) with a concomitant paranoia of

"national decline." Gilroy notes (1 99 1: 46):

The process of national decline is presented as coinciding with the dilution of the once homogeneous and continuous national stock by alien strains. Alien cultures corne to embody a threat which, in turn, invites the conclusion that national decline and weakness have been precipitated by blacks.

Gilroy refers to speeches made by British government officiais who constantly refer to black settlement in Eligland as "invasion", which must be policed. Comrnenting on this, Giiroy (1987: 48) notes that this way of Wngabout race became a way to resolve political and econornic crises in England. He notes:

The solution to it involved making "race" and nation the fiamework for a rhetoric of order through which modem conservatism could voice populist protest against Britain's post-irnperial piight and marshal its historic bloc ...The biack presence is thus constnicted as a problem or threat against which a homogeneous, white, national "we" could be unified.

Gilroy's formulation allows for ways of thinking about nations in their hybrid forrns, as spaces which are not ethnically homogeneous. More to the point, they illustrate how internal national differences are exploited to serve the ends of capitalist and neo-fascist projects. As Houston Baker remarks (1 99 1 : 5):

Drawing on the cultural studies enterprise at large, Gilroy's project constructs a homology in which policed British legaliîy marks the limits of the "nation." Speaking as an intellectual member of a racialized resistance?Gilroy takes apart to the bone: the "new racisrn"; an ineffectual "çociologisrn"; and statist strategies of policing that necessitate the social construction of "black criminality."

Such an attention to interna1 difference and the way that racism works to produce narratives of law and order is a major theoretical accomplishment. In turn, this ailows the state to police black folks (among others, including "welfare moms") to buy into neo- liberal agendas as well as furthering and cultivating a certain "white paranoia"" arnong the nation's citizens.

In Canada, things work in a similar fashion, whereby blackness and criminality are linked. Specifically, witness the way that blackness has historically come to equal crime in the national imaginary. This has a long history, although its recent manifestations are particularty obsessive (see below). Much of the most trenchant critiques in Canadian cultural studies have taken up some of the insights in Gilroy concerning the relation between law and order discourses and blackness in Canada. For example, Marlene Nourbese-Philip (1 994: 50) has argued that constructions of crime are interconnected with the construction of the immigrant:

Crime, it appears, is a foreign invention: it al1 happens out there, over there somewhere, carried out by others. Immigrant others. Not by Canadians.

Canadian preoccupations with law and order have historically rneant preoccupations with whatever the Canadian nation-state has deemed to be the "immigrant" population. One of the ways that racist discourses of law and order in Canada work is by trying to position black bodies outside of Canada, with the signifiers "Jamaican" and "American" standing in for criminal. For example, consider the way that Lawrence Brown, one of the accused killers of Georgina "Vivi" Leimonis was described in the Just Desserts case. As Walcott

( 199 5 : 3 6)suggests:

When Lawrence Brown surrendered to the police, The Toronto Star wrote: "Brown was dressed casually in a purple and white shirt. He wore a purple bandanna." The attention to and description of Brown's clothing suggests that a leak had occurred that "Canadianness" could not deal with or would have to curb as soon as possible - it was blackness leaking fiom South (the US.) to the North (Canada).

By virtue of their clothing, black men are often read as gangstas who disrupt Canadian notions of cleanliness. These examples register something about Canadian representations of black masculinity.

Mercer has drawn attention to the way that black masculinities are ofiert position at the margins of nation, as criminai and other. He suggests that black masculinity (1994: 160) is:

a key site of ideological representation upon which the nation's cnsis cornes to be dramatized, demonized and dealt with.

Thus. a cultural studies approach to black masculinity in Canada helps to think about the way that it works across and outside national boundaries. Also, it allows for a way to think about how blackness itself is read as outside of the nation, with black men being predominantly read as out-laws.

The insistence on performance within cultural studies, on what black folks are up to, also provides some insight into the dud processes of black masculinity in Canada.

This dual process goes like this. One, black folks, and more specifically black men, are read as trouble makers, Iaw breakers etc. and two, by virtue of a series of outer-national desires, are reading themselves and performing a black masculinity which is not purely

"Canadian". As Walcott (1995: 52) has suggested, these young men often make outer- national alliances and identification with folks in Africa, Los AngeIes and so. Thus, race, gender and sexuality set the terrain for a series of inscriptions and counter-inscriptions on what this nation is about.

8. Nation. Narration and Pe~ormance

One of the key ways to make sense of these dualities is to think about nation as narrative. In this regard, the work of Homi Bhabha is salient. Bhabha argues that nations are constructed through metaphoncity. He likens nations to narratives?and in so doing, shows that discourses of the nation are only possible both through the pedagogical instruction to "be a national citizen", but dso by the "performance" of such an identity.

In the production of the nation as narration there is a split between the continuist, accumulative temporality of the pedagogical, and the repetitious, recursive strategy of the performative. It is through this process of splitting that the conceptual ambivalence of modem society becomes the site of writing the nation.

Thus, nationalism is possible largely through the repetition of the rituals of nationdism. This allows for a way to think about the performance of nationalism as a choice, as part of a politics. The pedagogical element of the nation is what you must do to be a good citizen: salute the flag, watch hockey, cheer for the national team, etc. And the pedbrmative is what folks do, which is often against or outside what is prescribed.

Moreover, Bhabha's insights have an aesthetic dimension. He keys in on the way that nationdism is represented textually, specifically through the use of landscapes as a form which is designed to ensure confonnity (1 994: 143; my emphasis):

The recurrent metaphor of landscape as the inscape of national identity emphasizes the quality of light, the question of social visibility, the power of the eye to naturaiize the rhetonc of national affiliation and its forms of collective expression. There is, however, always the distractingpresence of another ternporality that disturbs the contemporaneity of the national present.

The historicd marginalization of nonwhite and First Nations peoples in Canada's official narrative, and the practices of rnany of these people which are counter to the narrative represent "this process of splitting" that Bhabha taiks about. More specificdly, if we loop

Gilroy back through Bhabha, blackness is produced as the nation's other according to its pedagogical elernent. In part it is the racism of Enlightenment/colonidism that helps to establish the possibility that there will be another time of nation, as expressed in the political and economic choices of some of its citizens. When folks resist the pedagogical irnperatives of nation, and black folks refuse to read themselves as criminal, the nation's bordes are revealed, and new cultural possibilities are engendered. This is not to Say that repression and policing are at an end, it is merely to suggest that there are ways of acting which do not necessarily correlate with state sanctioned processes of naming.

Thus, Bhabha suggests that nation's work as narratives, and as such, are not totalizing institutions which prevent agency on the part of its citizens. Bhabha refers to this process as the ambivalence of nation and nationalism (1 990: 1):

It is an ambivalence that emerges from a growing awareness that, despite the certainty with which historians speak of the "origins" of nation as a sign of the "modernity" of society, the cultural temporality of the nation inscribes a much more transitional social reality.

This formulation helps us think about national nanatives and the anxieties which attachment to nation produces. More specifically, it is one that helps us think about how meta-discourses Iike nation work, and why they are so preoccupied with notions of law, order, and cleanliness. We may use Bhabha to think about the way that these narratives use threats in order to assuage anxieties.

5. Representing Canada: The question of Landscapes

EarIier, 1 mentioned a representational element to the crisis of Canadian nationalism which mimors or reflects the political and economic crisis. In terrns of representation, invoking Ben Johnson as loss-of-innocence has two overt effects. The first is, as we have seen, as an exercise in the whiteninglwriting of Canada. The second effect is in response to what could be called post-colonial anxieties in the Great White

North. These two representational strategies betray a desire to fieeze time and invent a nation before Canadian imperialism and before the post-colonial "implosion"; in other words, to create a nostalgia.

in terms of the sporting Iandscape, such nostalgie longings are the means to mourn a senes of "losses" to the nation. As we saw in the previous chapter, hockey is a particular case in point. To hear it being told, the garne of hockey is not what it used to

(be imagined to) be, a national shrine. There have been repeated failures by the Canadian hockey teams, mens' and wornens', to \vin at world and Olympic hockey

Champi~nshi~s."

It is worth noting that Cherry has not always been a national icon. His rise to fame began in 1988, the same year as Johnson's dmg test. For the record, Cherry's farne began as a result of his nationaliy broadcast endorsement of a brawl, instigated by the

Canadian junior mens' hockey team against the Soviet tearn when it was clear that Canada had lost the final game at the 1988 World Championships. The fact that Cherry's popularity is rooted in heterosexism, machisrno and racism is thus an example of the representational way that the national crisis is managed. Moreover, what is crucial about

Cherry's rise to farne is that it occurs in the late 1980s, when irnperialistic versions of

Canada begin to show major cracks.

Such losses are rationalized through the construction of a mythical hegemony of

42 white heroes playing "white"sports such as hockey and curling. in addition to a crisis in hockey, there is a general post-colonial SMin Canadian sports which is probably traceable to ihe early 1980s, and movements and resistance by Canadian populations whose voices were not heard on Saturday Nights with the production of CBC's Hockey

Night in Canada. Since the early 1980s, there has been a decidedly different face to

Canada's sporting fabric. Hockey has been replaced by soccer as the most popular sport arnong young boys and girls across Canada. Also, as we will see in the next chapter, hoop dreams are the dreams of choice arnong many young male and female athletes in urban centres such as Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. Third, the recent World Cricket

Championships in 1996 featured Canadian fans who trace their hentage fiom the

Caribbean and/or South Asia piling into black and indian bars and restaurants in the middle of the night to watch garnes being broadcast live across the world. This sarne phenornenon is repeated every four years with the staging of the World Cup. In Toronto in particular, soccer becomes the occasion for fans to name themselves as other than

Canadian and to name themselves as other than hockey fans."

In addition to these shifis, there has been a steady Stream of major bIack or nonwhite sports stars in Canada. While there have been black or First Nations sporting stars in Canada in the past - 1 am thinking of Harry Jerome, Tom Longboat, as well as black Arnencans who have played in the CFL and in minor league baseball (the most notable being Jackie Robinson), today's configuration is much different owing to a nurnber of high-profile blackhonwhite sports stars. Beginning with what might provisionally be

43 cailed the first wave - e.g. Johnson, Angella Issajenko, Molly Killingbeck, Mark McKoy,

Egerton Marcus, and Lennox Lewis - currentiy natives, nonwhite immigrants or their kids

rank arnong sorne of the most prominent sports figures in Canada - for exarnple Bailey,

Bruny Surin, Titus Channer, Emmanuel Sandhu, Jamaal Magliore, Ted Nolan and Jarome

Iginla.

Such post-colonial shifis underlie a mouming for the remof an imagined past.

The failure to retrieve süch a past into reality has called forth a certain national panic.

This post-colonial panic is a response to the fact that longstanding notions of who and

what "belongs" to Canada is in doubt. While it is clear that innocent white sports heroes

conquering the land and fields of the nation was always somewhat of a myth, its mythic

natus has never been fa more pronounced. Post-colonial shifts mean that the My-white

beer commercials portraying groups of white teenagers playing "Canadian" sports such as

hockey seem to be pure fiction. The persistence of such beer cornrnercials is proof of the

desire of some commentators to offer a mythical or ideological version of Canada which

obscures more messy post-colonial realities.

9. Reconceptualizing masczdinity

After having considered some of the main thernes which help us re-read black

masculinities and sporting cultures, we need to pay a little closer attention to questions of

how masculinity works from the point of view of interiority. Given that Bhabha, Gilroy,

and James offer ways to think about how black folks define themselves in opposition to

and outside of national boundaries, the question of how black boys perform their

44 masculinities must be considered.

In doing so, returning to James is necessary. While James' work opens the way for a discussion of blackness and movement in sports, there are places he cannot go. Narnely, it is in the area of masculinity. In spite of the book's appeal as a "popular aesthetic" in

Wynter's words, James' homosocial fiamework means that his treatment of women is marginal and his discussion of mascuiinity is limited. This is seen if we consider the way that James' aunts are figured in the passage on Matthew Bondrnan 1 quoted above. Given the fact that they disapprove of something James clearly felt to be his own choice, we can read James' aunts and grandrnother as policing his desire and moving him away fkom his

"naturai" homosocial comection to Bondman. Moreover, given that Bondman represents some kind of blackness and a certain i1Iicit pleasure, we could read his aunts then as also helping to prevent James' entry into popdar forms of culture, and more specifically, to a homosocial bond with Bondman. Framing James' aunts and grandmother as prohibiting his pleasures, is in line with negative portrayds of black women as those who often spoil the fun of an unbridled masc~linity.'~While 1 am not doubting the tnith, 1 am questioning why this is one of the only places where black women are described in the text.

WhiIe he atternpts to read the men in the book with subtlety and refinement, his choice of characters and his positioning of wornen ultimately limits his work. Carby suggests that James could construct his world of West Indian cricket as synonymous or allegorical to the wortd of politics because that world was all-male. She goes on to Say

(1998: 126): The cricket pitch was where and how the colonial relations of class and color were fought, a field in which men struggled against men, defending wickets, hurling fast bail, body to body and bowlers to batters, in a confrontation that rendered invisible the politics of gender which shaped the practices and ideologies of the sporting institution.

This limitation is what makes James' work a place to begin rather than an end point when we try to theorize a cultural studies approach to black masculinity and sport. In fact, the rnasculinized world of the cricket pitch that James narrates is in fact somewhat akin to representations of the state of nature as that al1 male place whereby men can reaily be men.

Thus, thinking about James, and thinking beyond boundaries, is crucial to defining the project of a black cultural studies of sports, Le. a way of reading sports without reading sports as a sphere unto itself and reading black athletes within a meta-human fiarne.

Carby's reinscriptions mean that James metaphor of the boundary remains a troubled one.

Jm& adherence to codes of sporting masculinity mean that his Mingof diaspora must be re-worked. What is necessary is to interrogate Merthe category of black masculinity as it is performed, produced and reproduced in sporting cultures.

In Iight of the predilections toward hornosociality that James leans towards, we are then lefi with the task of messing up this homosocial world which James seemed to read as natural and unmediated. In other words, the task is to make complex the ways that black masculinities are performed through sports. In this section, I offer a couple of key organizing themes in thinking about black masculinity. First, one of the ways that black masculinity works in the current context is in relation to power. Images of black masculinity have changed over the past twenty-five years, and they have become hegemonic to an extent. Currently, in terms of sports and black masculinity, the current context can be defined by a certain hegemonic character. This hegemony can be seen in a few realities. They are: the existence of multi-million dollar player salaries and sneaker contracts, and the entrenchment of certain iconic representations of black superstars like

Michael Jordan, Mike Tyson and Ken Gnffey Jr.

Politically. this has rneant that strident images of black male athleticism, once read as subversive as the work of Hany Edwards has shown, are now severely limiting and deeply conservative (hooks, 1994). In fact, blackness and sport has been reduced to a senes of easily digestible images - Tiger Woods, the chain-link fence, the Nike shoe etc.

The excessive cornmodification of blackness has reduced contemporary black masculinity to a series of hollowed-out gestures and commodified performances that have corne to mean "black". Within this thesis, it will be my aim to show how these performances are reproduced and challenged within black popuiar culture, largely in Canada as well as the

United States.

The gendered elements of this cornmodification are important to stress. Narnely, there is now a well-developed literature which is easily divisible into two recognisable streams. The first Stream is the one which reads black men as consistently under siege.

The "endangered species" school acts to continue to focus its attention on racism in the

United States as a system designed to keep the black man down. In fact, this strearn is patriarchal to the core, with its ultimate aim being the restoration of a sound black hetero- nuclear family." Exernplars of this work inciude Earl Hutchinson and Spike Lee, who

47 continually put forward hyper-masculine models of black masculinity.

In addition to the endangered species school, there are a number of black feminists and black activists. who over the last twenty-fxve years have been taking black men to task

for what Philip Bnan Harper (1996:x) calls "the anxious gynophobia underlying this characterization." In addition to the work of Harper, other feminists have paid attention to the way that ngid versions of black masculinity are established to police male homosexuality. In a recent essay on black male sexuality and Frantz Fanon, Mercer

suggests that the disavowal of alterity, the disavowal of same sex love, or its projection as a White Man's disease, is symptomatic of a failure of the politicai and social imagination arnong many black folks. Mercer writes (128):

Homosexuality is a key issue in Black sexual politics ...Edward Said has invoked the many rooms in the house of culture; I would add that the closet is one of the most crowded rooms in the house of black diaspora culture. There must be a riot going on in there! If we are to do the right thing, maybe the gesture is to let them out.

Therefore, the focus in terms of black masculinities has to be both on the way that

state practices act to name us, something Gilroy's early work outlines, and what Bhabha

calls the pedagogical element of nationalism, but also on the choices black men are

making themselves. This applies to more than just the area of sexuality. Black forms of

exclusion often work in more than linear ways. As we will see, the way that Canadian

nationalism works is that black men have a number of choices as to how they wish to

perforrn their identities.

10. Conclusion To recap, what 1 have outlined is the hework for a reading of black masculinities in Canada that might offer a chance to re-think the way that Canada is imagined. The constellations for a re-reading involves a discussion of blackness as more than simply located in the United States. It will dso involve a discussion of how forms of blackness move across borders, from the United States to Canada, fiom the Caribbem to

Canada, and fiom different locations withîn Canada. In addition, this thesis examines what new vocabularies are produced in these movements. Also, we need to pay attention to how masculinities work within these processes. In that vein, 1 hope to raise a series of new questions dong the way which help to address these concems. Specifically, how are black masculinities positioned vis-&-vis many national discourses such as the discourse of official Canadian nationalism, discourses of black nationalisrn in the United States, and discourses of black neo-fundamentalism in the United States? We may also ask: What are the post-national moments in black sporting masculinity? And what do these tell us about conservative and radical shifis in the political landscape of black life in Canada? Finally, in the conclusion of this thesis, my question moves to the limits of blackness in Canada itself. Can we for example speak of a post-black moment in Canadian cultural life? And, how are hybridity and new immigrations fiom Sri Lanka, Eritrea, Hong Kong, etc, impacting upon black popular culture in Canada? Chapier 2: Canada,Race, and the question of Hockey% Place

1. Introduction:

Maybe this wide country just stretches your life to a thùuiess just trying to take it in, trying to calculate in it what you must do ...A always takes long to come to what you have to Say, you have to sweep this stretch of land up around your feet and point to the signs, pleat whole hinones with pins in your mouth and guess at the fdl of words?

After having discussed the way that blackness is commonly perceived within existing literature in sociology of spoa traditions and laying out the necrssity for new positions, the task at hand is to think about blackness in Canada more precisely. In other words: how do we begin to get a sense of how black masculinities and sporting cultures work here? Whereas the previous chapter involved foregrounding blackness and black concems, thinking about blackness in Canada involves a recognition of the silences and distortions that stili exist. in other words, it takes sorne translating in order to be able to comfortably talk black in Canada, something that the above passage by Brand signifies.

Since the bulk of this thesis addresses what we could cal1 "black" sports

(basketball, football, and track and field), it is necessary to get a sense of the place that blackness must enter into. Therefore, conceptually, 1 attempt to address the way that certain silences around blackness are structured and to answer the question: how is it that blackness becomes an "absent presence" in certain sports writing in Canada. With reference to sport, studying whiteness as it is produced in hockey narratives will prove very fi~itfül.~'

Thus, in this chapter 1reference blackness through its negation by trying to think about what happens to blackness, and other foms marked as alterior, in the production of hockey narratives. 1 organize the chapter as follows. First, 1 read the work of Roy Miki and Dionne Brand in relation to recent controversies about the way that race disrupts the

Canadian literature canon (CanLit). 1 suggest that their insights will serve in reading the hockey literature, given that it is stnictured in a similar fashion. Second, 1 offer a brief look at some key Canadian texts on hockey which have been written over the past thirty years. Third, 1 think about the thematic of this narrative, which is largely about representing hockey as dead or dying. In this section, 1 suggest that representing hockey as dying produces a group of "villainsl' who are said to be killing hockey. Fourth, 1 consider

Herb Carnegie's recent book, A Fly in a P ail of Milk to consider how writing hockey th. race subverts the cornrnon narrative on hockey as well as disturbing some cornmon-sense notions of what blackness in Canada signifies. Finally, 1 conclude with some remarks on hockey, blackness and nation which will shed Iight upon the remaining chapters of the

îhesis.

2. Re-mapping hockey thru literature: Brand und Miki

Recently, several theorists have written about the failure of discourses of Canadian nationalism f?om the point of view of blackness and/or subalteni positions. For example,

Dionne Brand has discussed how, for immigrants, adopting a Canadian identity is contingent upon a loss of memory. More to the point, she argues that it involves forgetting one's pre-Canadian identity, be that Portuguese, Rwandan, Somali et cetera. This loss of memory serves as the foundation for Canada's self-presentation as raceless and codict-

51 fiee. Concomitant with this, Brand notes that (1 998 : 138) "Canada presents itself as an alluring historyless place." However, as Brand cautions, these are fictions (1998: 137):

Canada is not (and cannot ever claim to be) a homogeneous culture. It has never been such (not even before recent immigrants, who are accused fiom time to time of messing up the works), it has never been such despite the exhortations of state power formulated largely by the English and the French to make it so.

Brand goes on to note that this forgetting produces a kind of emptiness at the core of

Canadian identity, which she refers to as an "absent presence" (1 998: 139):

This absent presence is at the core of Canadian identity, a whole set of people relegated to a present past. An emptying out of the past, then, both physical and mental, seems to be crucial to the concept.

In the quote which begins the chapter, Brand articulates what it rnight mean to confiont this loss of memory and to speak back to this absent presence. In other words, she notes what it migfit mean to speak fiom the position of the forgotten body, or from the body narned as that of alterity in Canada. The coming to voice of black and nonwhite selves, she notes, is a recognition of these overarching historical forces. 1 will repeat the quotation below:

Maybe this wide country just stretches your life to a thi~essjust trying to take it in, trying to calculate in it what you must do ...A always takes long to corne to what you have to Say, you have to sweep this stretch of land up around your feet and point to the signs, pieat whole histones with pins in your mouth and guess at the fa11 of words."

Thus, speaking and living a different Canada flies in the face of official narratives of what this place/land is like, and who lives here. The kinds of dificulty Brand has with speech, as it is construed through nation, are anathema to ardent Canadian nationalists and (as we will see) to the writing on hockey in this country. In contrast to writers who speak with an ease about what and who are meant by Canada and Canadians, Brand suggests that cacophony, something akin to the notion of patchwork, is what gets at our reality. She notes (1998: 145):

What would we create as a more realistic and life-respecting expression of our collectivity? Maybe nding the College streetcar; maybe it is an admission of our history, an admission of our collectivity; maybe it is many stories and not one dorninating one.

Further to these sentiments, Brand suggests that nation itself may be a fantasy, and that any attempt to produce homogeneity may have its victims. In a poem entitled "Land to Light On," she (1997: 48) writes:

You corne to this, here's the marrow of it, not rnoving, not standing, it's too much to hold up. what I really want to Say is, 1 dont want no fucking country, here or there or al1 the way back, 1 don't like it, none of it, easy as that. I'm giving up on Iand to light on, and why not, 1 can't pedect my own shadow, my violent sorrow, my individual wrists.

Brand's pessimism (realism?) rnaybe too hot to handle for some. Far fiom

inserting herself into a nationalist narrative, Brand marks the wounds that many of us suffer as a result of nation-state practices which seek to homogenize. It is not for nothing that 1 have chosen Brand's work as a counter-narrative to representations of hockey and

Canadian nationdism. It might be suggested as a way to disprove these meditations on hockey that the work of a poet is hardly the right stuff in the domain of social science.

However, there has been enough work in the social sciences which would have been equally appropriate to supporthg my argument." Rather, 1 cite Brand to make a comection between the way racist fantasies of nation work as a kind of Ianguage and what it might mean to speak back to them. 1 want to suggest that the current "crises" over

Canadian literature, Canadian history, and the deaths of hockey are rooted in the same imperiaiist anxiety and white paran~ia.~Specifically, this is borne out if we think about

Canadian Literature (CanLit) and the way it works to cernent fantasies of this nation as white, pristine, good, etc.

As we will see, there is a dominant theme in the discussions of both the health of

Canadian literature, history, and hockey. This theme is the theme of death. In the past five years, there have been a spate of articles and books which lament the varied deaths of

Canadiana. in hockey, there is the recent publication of The Death of Hockey; in history, the recent book by Jack Granatstein entitied: Who Killed Canadian History? In Canadian

Literature, think about the controversy over reading lists in Canadian university classrooms. The recurrence of the theme of death and disappearance in contemporary discussions of CanLit, the crises of nation, and the way that hockey works in pop culture in Canada are not accidental. Reading hockey as a corollary to CanLit is suggestive of how and why these narratives of national belonging are used in popular culture and get continuously re-deployed to reproduce Canada as a white country, which is noble and so on.

Roy Miki ha descnbed how CanLit works as a canonical enterprise. With respect to the imperidist foundations of CanLit, he (1998: 131) writes:

CanLit, like the "Canadian" nation, is a formation that cannot be separated fiom the

54 cultural territorialization of space that accompanies the colonization process ....Such an apparently affirmative nativization (the underbelly of nationalism) displaces, while neutralizhg, the violent appropriation of First Nations land and cuitures. in other words, Miki suggests that assertions of Canadian nationalism are in fact forms of colonization, which involve expropriation and subjugation. His suggestion that CanLit perfoms the same kinds of rnoves makes sense as a way to think about the panic over

Wi-iting Thru Race. Miki goes on to assert that the elision of difference, and the colonization of space, and I wodd add alterior presences, allows the establishment of a unitary entity called Canada to be coded as white and to gamer the attendant priviIeges.

He continues (ibid: 13 1):

The messianic-like dechration of ownership, though, betrays an "ambivalence" (to draw on Horni Bhabha's analysis of "nation" and narration) that seeks to be exorcized by assertions of "identity," assertions of "value," assertions that CanLit does indeed exist,

The perpetual deaths of Canada, in other words, whether in the areas of history, literature, or sports, are a cultural tenitorialization necessary within the logic of Canadian nationdism. Therefore, death becomes necessary to the project. After ail, if Canada is dying, someone must Save it, and that someone must reaIly know what Canada is like, i.e. they must know the traditions. Miki descnbes this process as evidence of the construction of the "language of victirnization." He notes (1998: 132):

It is in this context, moreover, that Canadian nationalists (e.g. prominently by Margaret Atwood in Sunival and Dennis Lee in "Cadence, Country, Silence") adopted the language of victimization to place "Canadian" cultural identity in opposition to its extemal enemies, American and British irnperialisms. In extending our use of literature to think about the narrative of hockey, we must pay attention to the controversy regarding the Writing Thru Race conference in 1994 and the kinds of disruptions it caused. Writing Thm Race was the first conference in Canada that brought together exclusively First Nations and nonwhite wrîters to discuss the question of Canada and Iiterature under the aegis of the Writers' Union of Canada, the national wiiters organization."

This conference, both the excitement it sparked in nonwhite and First Nations communities, and the white backlash that came in response, serves as a metonym for the state of popular culture in Canada. ln the passage cited below, Dionne Brand describes the violence of the backlash by white Canadian authors, politicians and journalists (among hem Richard Gwyn, Robert Fulford, Margaret Atwood, and Michel Dupuis) who protested the staging of the conference. She (1994: 177) writes:

In midi, they are al1 responding to a generai panic running through white Canadian society about the presence and claims of people of colour and the self-destructive outcome of years of racism.

As the backlash attested to, the emergence of new voices in Canada had disturbed fantasies of a previously white monotone Canada, which includes myths such as the "two solitudes" and "multiculturd harmony". This latest post-colonial rupture accords with a series of stnrggles between those trying to narrate Canada as white and those doing otherwise." Miki suggests that this panic was an attempt to re-enforce CanLit as the hegemonic national narrative. This was achieved again using the trope of death in order to produce CanLit as a victim. Thus, the above analyses suggest how central notions of death are to the

(re)making of a hegemonic nationalkt project in Canada. in addition, the equation of whiteness with death, is what Canadian nationalism needs. Such an equation allows for the forgetting of pre-Canadian identities, as Brand suggested, as well as for continually narrating this country as innocent. In fact, these cnticisms are borne out by a reading of some of the major works on hockey which have been wcitten in the past thirty five years, which is where 1 now turn.

3. Representing Hockey:

Given that according to nationdist fantasy, hockey equais nation, the representation of hockey is highly mythical. The major myths that obtain are the following. First, that hockey is seen as the equivalent of Canada, and the Canadian winter more specifically. Following on this, it is assumed that Canadian kids (largely boys) grow up wanting to be great hockey players and nothing else. Second, hockey is often described as timeless, the game with a kind of meta-history in Canadian society. This implies that hockey has always been the sport of choice here in Canada and that there is no historical, political, or economic basis for its hegemony. Nor does this myth recognize that there was a time before hockey in Canada. This de-historicization makes it easier to represent hockey's villains, as we will see. Moreover, it supports the fantasy that Canada is the leader in the world hockey scene. While Canada's excellence is worth noting, the claim of greatness is certainly not unarnbiguous. Which leads to the fourth myth, which is that hockey is in definite need of white knights such as Wayne Gretzky, Paul Henderson and so

57 on, in order to retain andor restore its hegemony. These myths, 1 argue, act in communication, and in a reflexive tension with perhaps the most prominent hockey myth, which represents hockey as dead or dying. which will be the focus of this chapter.

These narrative structures can be seen in several texts such as Home Game, The

Death of Hockey, and Crossing the Line. But before beginning our analysis, a note on the context of hockey writing is important. While hockey writing is quite old, the fact that its rnost fervent period of expression has been over the last thirty-five years is important to consider. While there have been no studies of hockey writing as a genre, we wouid do well to consider its recent emergence from the point of view of the politics of race and nation in Canada. In addition to marking the period of large-scale expansion of the

National Hockey League, the period between 1965 and 2995 is important for other reasons, which become more apparent when we think about race. While it is safe to Say that nations are always in crisis in tems of their project, it is also tme that certain periods are more perilous than others. The last thirty-five years have been filled with a number of aises of Canadian nationalism. Two are most compelling: 1) the FLQ crisis in 1970 and the continued presence of nationalist and national liberation movernents in Quebec. and 2) the recent major influx of immigrants from the Caribbean, the Middle East, and South

Asia. These immigrations have changed the way we think of nation and have thrown ardent nationalists into crisis. In fact, the moment that is repeatedly referenced as the apotheosis of Canada's hockey history, Paul Henderson's garne-winning goal against the

Soviet tearn in the Canada-Russia hockey series in 1972, is perhaps so repeated because

58 that senes occurred when Québécois nationalism was still at a fever pitch and recent immigration was causing a host of racist reactions, which were most typified by the spate of "paki-bashings", racist assaults on South Asian Canadians in the early 1970s throughout

Southern Ontario. These facts serve as a backdrop to thinking about the way that hockey is narrated over this period, if only as helpful contextualizations.

The connection between political change and discourses of hockey has also been made by Gruneau and Whitson, who note that (1993: 7):

At the very moment that Canada is itself in question, and new voices are clamouring to have their identities recognized, many of hockey's deeply rooted meanings, traditions and associated identities need to be reassessed.

Given this, Gruneau and Whitson, stress the indispensable nature of a critique of the rnythologizing of hockey in popular culture. They note that (19936) "hockey deserves a prominent place in Canadian cultural studies." The authors discuss a wide range of what we could cal1 hockey-effects in Canada, fiom the minor leagues, to the professionalization of hockey, io the way it is watched and consumed by fans on Saturday nights. Speaking in favour of a constnictionist view of hockey, they note (1 994: 26):

There is something to be said for the argument that hockey draws on and drarnatizes the Canadian experience with long winters, the cold and large open spaces. The problem arises when Canadians' appreciation for hockey is mistaken for "nature" rather than something that is socially and cultwally produced.

Gruneau and Whitson are correct in resisting a naturalization of hockey and trying to think about how it works through popular culture. The constnictionist view they take opens the way for a reading of hockey as the kind of national narrative I spoke of in the previous section. But in spite of theù stress on social constniction, the particular way in which hockey is a social construction, and who benefits by it, are not explicitly dealt with by the authors. In other words, the social construction of white straight masculinity, within the larger context of AngIo-Canadian nationalism, remains unproblematized. in order to develop an understanding of the social construction of hockey, it seems necessary to account for whom it is beneficid and to whom it is destructive.

By and !arge, many writers represent hockey in the same fashion - as that which unites a disparate and vast nation, helps us negotiate the cold etc. Among these writers are

Ken Dryden, Laura Robinson, Roy MacGregor, John MacFarlane and Bruce Kidd. Most recently, Dryden, now the president and generai manager of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team, has referred to hockey as "Canada's national theatre."" In addition, Dryden and MacGregor begin their book, Horne Game, in the following way (1989: 9; my emphasis):

Hockey is part of life in Canada. Thousands play it, millions follow it, and millions more surely try their best to ignore it altogether. But if they do, their disregard must be purposefiii, done in conscious escape ....in Canada, hockey is one of winter's expectations.

According to Bruce Kidd and John MacFarlane (1 973:4; my emphasis):

hockey captures the essence of the Canadian experience in the New World. in a land so inescapably cold, hockey is the dance of life, an afirmation that despite the deathiy chill of winfer Ive are alive.

in addition to its invigorating quaiities and its ability to allow Canadians to survive the winter, it was thought that hockey represents the absolute and discemible difference between Canadians and "our" neighbours, the Americans. Once again, Kidd and

Hockey players like (Gordie) Howe are everything that actors like Paul Newman, television stars like Johnny Carson, and athletes like Joe Namath, Muhammad Ali, Johnny Bench and Arnold Palmer are for Amencans.

In terms of gender, a mythical Canadian heterosexuai machisrno is fashioned, according to

Dryden and MacGregor (1989), by vimie of fathers and sons playing shinny on the backyard ri& and by moms and dads taking their boys across the country to play in tournaments with other cana di an^.^^ According to the racist, homophobic and misogynist

CBC national broadcaster Don Cherry, hockey is the game which imparts to Canadian boys a sense of who they are. Hockey, in Cherry's eyes, replete with fighting, slashing and destruction, teaches Canadian boys how to beat up on anyone who is different, the "pansy"

European players, as a way to establish "our" identity. Moreover, any moment which disrupts these fantasies of heterosexuality, are met with severe repression. For instance, note that when Graham James was convicted for his offenses, Cherry remarked on the

CBC that he "should be drawn and quartered."j5

Given that these narratives act as endorsements of nation, these conservative positions may corne as no surprise. What is surprising in fact, is the way that some who are cntical of hockey and its oppressive cultures repeat that narrative. For example, in

Laura Robinson's Crossing t,lc Line, consider the book's first gesture to nationalism, in the subtitle - "violence and sexual assault in Canada's national sport." Moreover, Robinson's opening enacts the same iconography as those I cited above. She (1998: I ; my emphasis) begins with:

Canadian winters are long and cold. Ice forms in most of the country and by late October and well into spling, there is a time for al1 Canadians in the darkest of winter when we are sure sp~gwill never arrive. We either [ive winter out or perish, and if there is any communal way to help endure, even celebrate, the season, it is through the game of hockey.

Later in her introduction (1998: 7), she poses the central question of her book:

How cm the game that defmes Canada, that unifies the country in so many ways, that feeds young dreams or merely entertains in the darkest of winter days, also be responsible for the systematic dehumanization of young men and young women?

Further on, Robinson (1998: 7) reveals how deeply invested in hockey she in fact is, by noting that:

This book ..., Iooks at what needs to happen for hockey to achieve the wonderfûl potential it holds for Canadians."

Robinson's &nity with Dryden, Cherry et al, suggests something deeply disturbing about the way that hockey is enacted in representation. Moreover, it suggests that even though problems are said to exist, myths of nation are certainly not one of them.

These sentiments are exemplary of what Bhabha called the pedagogical element of nationdism. To stray fiom this version of Canada is a rupture of this pedagogy. In fact, this key pedagogical moment is what is required to produce something called the

"Canadian people." The use of tirne, more precisely the use of hockey to represent timelessness as an organizing strategy in the above quotes serves as an example of what

Bhabha says about time and nation. He suggests (1994: 145):

the people are the historicd "objects" of a nationalkt pedagogy, giving the discourse an authon& that is based on the pre-given or constituted historical origin in the past.

Given Bhabha's assertions, it is not surprishg that anything which disrupts this narrative is read as a threat. Which brings me to the third element of the hockey narratives, which is its death. The constant equation of hockey with death, or what we could cal1 hockey's death drive, is worth discussing in detail.

For example, as 1 am writing this chapter, the Globe and Mail's sports page, as well as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, are covering the Open Ice conference being held in Toronto to discuss hockey's fiiture in Canada, The Open Ice conference, with

Wayne Gretzky as its honourary chairman, has been convened to assess Canada's place in the hierarchy of world hockey. In the paper, such headlines as "Losing edge on world icc,

Canadians feel" and, also, a column by Globe columnist Stephen Brunt entitled "1s hockey losing hallowed stature?"j6 These articles continue to represent hockey as dying, and positing rernedies for its de&.

In this brief example, we can see how hockey, death and loss are interconnected.

The theme is so pervasive that "The Death of Hockey" is the title of two books on the subject of hockey, the first written in 1973 by Kidd and MacFarlane, and the second was written by Klein and Reif in 1998. Both books examine hockey's disappearance and death at the hands of a series of villains, and in danger of being taken away. In Kidd and

MacFarlane, the enerny are the Arnericans, who have taken the innocent and child-like game of hockey out fiom under "our" feet. The authors argue that the death of hockey is accelerated "by our proximity to the United States and our cheap faith in free enterpri~e."~'

63 Moreover, they suggest (1 973 : 15):

But if hockey is a metaphor for what is right with Canada, it is also a metaphor for what is wrong. Hockey has corne to symbolize our capitulation to economic realities as surely as it does our triumph over the physical ones.

4. Hockey's Villains

The death of hockey, and the way that Canada is imagined in such representations, automatically names a series of villains who are threatening to kill hockey. These villains, it will be shown, are any form of masculinity marked as effeminate, any form of popular culture marked as "foreign", and homosexuals. For example, in Horne Game, much of the work is about detailing the decline of hockey enrolments in minor hockey across the country, and how Canadian kids are moving into "new" pursuits. In response to these

"changes", the authors offer an explanation (1983 : 50):

Many people have chosen to do other things. There are now dozens of other activities to capture the interest of the Saskatoon child and his or her parents, from Suzuki violin lessons to French lessons to gymnastics.

What is interesting in this formulation is how foreignness, and alternative masculinities, are united and positioned against hockey. Violin lessons, French lessons and gymnastics, are not what is typical of a rugged Canadian masculinity, especially as it was constructed in the first part of this chapter. The kind of virility that requires one to brave the elements is at odds with the effete masculinity involved in playing the violin or speaking French, for example."

In addition, gestures of hockey-as-home put forward by Robinson, Kidd and

MacFarlane, and so on rely upon a nostaigic version of Canada which cm be deployed against threats to the version thiit Canada, and by extension, hockey, is a fundamentally good and noble place. For example, Robinson notes (1998: 97):

Hockey, as a sport, as a game played in the nchness of Canadian winters, can be a beautifid and wondefil thing. But what happens in the name of tearn loyalty and in the tradition of "masculinity"has nothing to do with a great game of hockey. It is about men who use boys for their own sport.

Robinson's book only works given the fact that we construct hockey as dying and more irnportantly, if we construct a true hockey masculinity as straight, In Crossing the

Line, it is not the foreigner who is killing hockey, but rather homosexual predators, who are a different kind of foreigner altogether. Earlier, 1 suggested that Robinson had an affinity with Dryden et al despite the feminist impulse of her work. This is borne out if we examine the treatrnent of homosexuality in Crossing the Line. In the book, Robinson manipulates common-sense homophobia to reinforce the nationalist narrative in the text.

She does so by using the stereotype of the gay male as inveterate sexual predator to tell the story of innocent young boys being preyed upon by hem. This is a misleading and dangerous portraya1 for a number of reasons. First, it says nothing about young boys own sexual choices, and continues to read homosexuality as an evil, and not an autonomous desire for boys and girls. Second, Robinson has nothing to Say about homosexuality in hockey other than through the paranoid criminalizing of Graham James. Third, and perhaps most importantly, Robinson says nothing of the homophobia which is constituent of hockey cultures both in men's and women's hockey. One is to assume that the problem is straight boys being preyed upon by their coaches, with no mention of the way that most hockey coaches, players, and league officials spend most of their energy reproducing conventional heterosexual gender codes, and punish those who do not respond to them.

Robinson's vilification of James secures her argument, and it also allows for a book with purported feminist intentions to bond with the machisrno in Kidd and MacFarlane,

Dryden and MacGregor and Cherry. Graham James, and by extension homosexuals, are what is wrong with hockey. One wonders if keeping hockey straight is what may allow us to, in her words, "reclairn our national sport". Her attachent to nation and her belief that nations, especially imperialist ones, are good things, undermines her own critique. This attachent makes her otherwise very important questions unanswerable.

In accordance with my earlier claims about Canadian nationalism being represented as inherently good, this strategy reveais the author7sinvestrnent in whiteness and Canada as the place which cannot possibly produce this violence. Moreover, it suggests the other side of the death drive in hockey, which is the persistent criminalizing of others (in this case gay men) in order to sustain the panic and the anviety around the death of hockey. Far from hockey being the game and institution that produces a brutal white masculinity which reads violence and rape as "normal", hockey becomes the innocent victim of a series of bureaucrats and criminalized homosexuals who "threaten" the game. These strategies are suggestive of a way to rein in the de-territorializing knowledge of the rampant sexism and misogyny throughout al1 levels of hockey culture^.'^

Her representation of white masculinity as an innocent and victimized self mirrors the representation of colonidwhite Canada as an innocent and victimized nation, something Kidd and MacFarlane rely upon,

5. Re-considering hockey thru race: A fly in a Pail of MiIk

Writing through race stages the eruption cultural difference, or "other" scenes within the liberal nation, without cIaiming the privilege of representing that scene. Writing through race haunts the nation with its other that it cannot possess. The nation is possessed. History calls forth its debts. Othenvise?'

Thus, homophobia (in Robinson), xenophobia (Dryden and MacGregor) and anti-

Arnericanism (Kidd and MacFarlane) are the other side of the death of hockey. To write about hockey in the normative sense is to deploy these kinds of exclusions. In other words, these narratives cannot tolerate voices marked as different speaking back to it. In addition to the queer being unable to speak witiiin Robinson's text, and the impossibility of a Suzuki violin-playing goalie for Dryden and MacGregor, the possibility of bIack speech in this narrative is also impossible. In fact, very few of the works reference black and nonwhite folk directly. Robinson's book discusses Herb Carnegie briefly in the conclusion. in addition, she adopts a primitivist position with respect to First Nations people, suggesting that they provide a more gentle society that white folks could learn fiom. But once, again, hockey's others are spoken for. In the following section, 1consider what it might mean to write hockey thni race.

Earlier, 1 suggested that hockey narratives accord with general political and social events in the country and beyond. 1suggested that the panic over the death of hockey might be a response to the failures of Canadian nationalism more generally. Clearly, this is the case. Given Canada's current economic and political crisis, and the hostility levelled at people named as "immigrants"or, more recentiy "migrants,"hockey's death clearly has something do to with race. Namely, the death of hockey is specifically deployed as a response to post-colonial dislocations in Canada.

What mut also be stressed is that the repeated mantra of the death of hockey is that this narrative works to narrow the terrain of debate around sports and culture in this country, with specific impact on black and nonwhite sporting presences in Canada? In the same way that white writers such as Robertson Davies reacted with horror at the staging of Writing Thnr Race, the story in sports, with respect to the rise of bIack superstars in Canada, has prompted more calls about the death of hcckey. Changes to the sporting and political Iandscape, and the fact that the Empire has struck back, witness the success of Lennox Lewis, Bruny Surin, and Donovan Bailey for example, has caused what

Gilroy cdls "a rabid insiderism" which continually laments the loss of hockey.

One way to think through these issues is if we think about a recent work on hockey which heIps to re-map Canada through race: Herb Carnegie's A Fly in A Pail of Milk.

Carnegie, a well-known and highly skilled hockey player in the 1940s and 1950s was prevented from playing in the National Hockey League because of racism. Carnegie was undoubtedly good or better than most of the great white hockey players of his era.

Because he was unable to play in the NHL, he played on a number of "minor" league tems, most of which were in Quebec. While in Quebec, he played on a tearn in

Shawinigan Falls on an dl-black line that also included Manny Mchtyre, from

Fredericton, New Brunswick, and Ossie Carnegie, Herb's brother.

68 Carnegie's book, a popular autobiography, published in 1998, is the frst book length manuscript to deal with racism in hockey. While the book ends on a liberai note, encouraging kids to overcome obstacles, what the book has to Say about racism in

Canadian hockey is important and unflinching. Carnegie's work is different fiom the hockey writing I spoke of earlier in that he doesn't need to reproduce cliches about

Canadiana in order to support his claims. He does accept a Canadian identity, however this is infiequent. On one occasion, he notes (1 998: 1 13):

1 wasn't a coloured kid, 1 was a Canadian kid who dreamed just like other Canadian boys of playing in the NHL .... My dream would not come true, not because of a lack of talent or a willingness to work hard, but because of racism. in spite of this attempt at racelessness, most of the book is unsympathetic to racism in

Canada. While Carnegie's story should hardly surprise, its documentation in terms of the cultural politics of race and nation in Canada is important. This work helps us think about how much the national narrative can and cannot handle. In fact, the hockey narrative 1 outlined earlier, the one about i~ocentyoung boys being preyed upon by homosexuals and greedy Amencans, does not apply in Carnegie's case. In fact, the death of hockey in no way organizes Carnegie's memoir. White racism becomes the death of (NHL) hockey for Carnegie, his brother Ossie and a host of black and First Nations hockey players.

What organizes the rnemoir is a love for hockey in spite of the kinds of discrimination that he faced. To be sure, Carnegie's investrnent in hockey and competition is heavy, but the book opens up the space to talk about hockey differently, and rnoreover, it suggests that questions of blackness and hockey are not recent or extemal issues, but are organic to several black cultures in Canada. Thus, A Fly in a Pail of MiIk is an example of a text that begins to write hockey thru race and opens up our consciousness beyond myth. in addition, it is indispensable to the project of mapping black desires and identifications in sporting cultures here.

In terms of writing hockey thru race, Carnegie's memoir refuses the structure of official hockey narratives, which is to Say that it exposes them as fdsehoods and comrnercials for nation. But in addition to responding to whiteness, we rnust consider what this work does to our own thinking about blackness and sport in Canada. The question in reading Carnegie's book is: how does it enable one to think blackness differently. It is to this that 1 will now tm.

6. The Jackie Robinson of Hockey?

the telling of hockey history through its minoritarian elements expands the cultural field of the garne and the potential for new subject formations that are not limited by the standard account.'"

Recently, the subject of black hockey players has become relatively popular.

Whereas previously, it was almost impossible to find work on the subject, this is not the case any longer. In addition to the Carnegie book, Gary Genosko's recent work has been about unearthing some of the important contributions of black hockey players. In addition, at the annual conference of North Arnerican Association for Sports Historians, the first paper in the association's history on black hockey players was given by Brad Brady. In fact, the National Hockey League @HL) has jumped on the bandwagon and, in recent years, begun a Diversity Task Force, with Willie O'Ree as the chair, in an attempt to "encourage" black and nonwhite hockey players to play hockey.

O'Ree, for those who do not know, was the first black hockey player in the NHL, who began playing with the Boston Bruins in 1958. As Genosko (1 999: 144) notes:

OIRee's career was mostly spent in the rninors playing for Western hockey league tearns in Los Angeles and San Diego. Despite the obscurity that such a career path normally entails, he is widely known as "the Jackie Robinson of hockey."

However, while some, including Genosko, appear to uncritically accept this narrative of black participation in hockey, with its attendant need for a "Jackie Robinson", 1 question what it means to read O'Ree in this way given what 1 have said earlier about Canadian narratives' inability to handle blackness speaking for itself. My concerns also apply to

Herb Carnegie's memoir, and more specifically, to those who wish to read Carnegie in die sarne celebratory light as O'Ree.

There are several difficulhes with calling O'Ree the Jackie Robinson of hockey.

Fim, it is another example of attempts to read blackness, in this case a largely Canadian blackness, through a United States lens. In Canada, while there were Coloured Hockey

Associations as far back as the late 1800s," there were not "Negro Leagues" in the same sense as there were with baseball in the United States." Moreover, the fanfare and hype surrounding Robinson's entry into Major League (read: white) baseball was in no way the same as it was for O'Ree.

Another problem with reading Willie O'Ree through Jackie Robinson and the surrounding mythology are the liberal foundations that such a reading demands. Briefly, the Jackie Robinson narrative goes like this. First, Arnerican racism previously prevented blacks fiom playing bail in white leagues. Yet, through the goodness of liberal Branch

Rickey, Robinson got a shot with the Brooklyn Dodgers. And, in spite of constant racism and harassment, Robinson persevered and became a star. There are a few foundational assumptions here worth underlining. First, it relies on the assurnption that Robinson's being a star in the Major Leagues is somehow more valid than being a star in the Negro

Leagues, which automatically privileges the white leagues. Second, Branch Rickey's role in the events leading up to Robinson's signing with the Dodgers is generaiized, so that the fantasy of liberal whites helping black folks seems to be the only way to fight racism. This has the effect of not letting blackness speak for itself. Third, perseverance and hard work, classically individuaiist bai&,get priontized over anti-racism, and any form of collective response to injustice. For this reason, Jackie Robinson becomes an Arnerican hero in a way that Paul Robeson, for example, could never have been. In fact, Robinson was the star witness testifjing against Robeson at Robeson's appearance before the House

UnArnericm Activities Cornmittee in 1949:'

These foundations are what makes the facile depIoyment of a Jackie Robinson narrative by people like Bill Clinton, Major League Basebail and the NHL both possible and deeply disturbing. It certainly means that one must think twice before applying this narrative to any context, wherever it is. In the context of hockey, what is troubling is how easily such a narrative cm coexist with officia1 forms of talking about hockey. Recall the way that blackness and altenty worked in the death of hockey narratives - they were either villain or absent. In al1 cases, they were outside and tangentid to hockey, in which a

72 white, core was presumed to be reai, timeless and truly Canadian. The question worth considering is: In what way does the deployment of Willie O'Ree as Jackie Robinson get at these problems? The answer, wifortunately is hardly at dl. Blackness is once again spoken for, it becomes an add-on; and because the myth of Jackie Robinson is ail about soothing racist egos, the narrative cm coexist with the death of hockey narrative since it in no way attacks the hockey's white core.

1want to suggest that given the power of the death of hockey narrative, the rnere chronicling of black hockey players and their exploits (which people like Genosko have done), fiom Willie O'Ree to the present, is the hegemonic way to think about black hockey players. However, while 1 am in no way suggesting that this work is unnecessary, it leaves another task waiting to be done, which is the re-writing of hockey outside of the terms of the death of hockey. In that case, there is plenty of work to do. Such a project might involve re-investigating the fight over which kind of hockey becarne the dominant one at the turn of the twentieth century. We know that there was a fight between two styles of play: what were called the Montreal rules and the Halifax des, and that the Montreal des, a much more conservative style of play, which prevented fonvard passing, won out.

We also know that the Halifax Leagues of the time had a number of black players. In what ways was blackness a factor in the victory of Montreal rules? This question, and we may be able to think of others, refuses to read hockey's core as white and opens up a more sustainhg way to think about blackness, hockey and nation-

6. Conclusion: This chapter has outlined how important hockey is to fantasies of Canadian nationdism. More specifically, 1 have shown how to ta& about hockey is to ta& about death, and how this fonn is central to many fonns of nationalist description, such as those that exist in discussions of Canadian literature and history. The death of hockey works to perfonn what Miki calls acts of "cultural territorialization" which in effect relegates blackness to the nation's margins. The inability of the death of hockey narrative to deai with blackness means that there is a tendency to Arnerican-ize blackness as my discussion of WilIie OtRee showed. The appropriations of Canadian blackness into a liberal script onginating in the United States is not new, but it does convey that the task at hand might involve more than unearthing black hockey players.

The complex relation between blackness and hockey underline some of the centrai questions in thinking through blackness, masculinity and nation. As we will see, the hockey narrative maps Canada in ways that are impossible with regards to other sports, largely because of its hegemonic character. It does suggest that we cannot think through blackness in the sarne way when discussing certain sports. The work of Miki and Brand have opened up such a space to re-think nation, and their work should be read in line with that of Waicon, Gilroy and James as the discussion progresses. A subtle, anti-essentialist account of blackness and sports in Canada means that each chapter will require an understanding of the idioms which appear dominant in each sport, as well as an understanding of the way that blackness is configured within such, in order to make some provisionai comments on the relation of black sporting masculinities to nationaiism in

74 Canada. in the next chapter, 1offer an analysis of the way that black rnasculuiities are performed in track and field, with specific reference to two black Canadian sprinters, Ben

Johnson and Donovan Bailey. Chapter 3: Running Clean: Ben Johnson and the Un-Making of Canada

I, Introduction

As an apparatus of symbolic power, (the nation) produces a continual slippage of categories, like sexuality, class affiliation, territorial paranoia, or 'cultural difference' in the act of wrïting the nation. What is displayed in this displacement and repetition of ternis is the nation as the measure of lirninality of cu1turai modernity4'

After having looked at how whiteness structures narratives of Canada in representations of hockey, we move to a different space, that of the track. As we will see, the kinds of narratives used to represent hockey are quite different than those in track and field, with perhaps the greatest difference being in the representations of temporality in the two sports. While hockey is represented as timelessly Canadian, track and field as we wiIl see, is inflected with an itinerant temporality, which is constantly having problems. Ln addition to this difference, the demographic nature of the two sports is worth stressing. In this chapter, we move to the first of three discussions on "black" sports. By this 1 mean sports designated "black'' in popular culture and sports with a high black participation.

The difference between track and field and hockey is great, and it is worth noting, given that the stress of the latter part of the chapter is on how forms of blackness are split and

often used to police or expurgate other ones.

In this chapter, 1suggest that multiculturalism relies on racidized tropes of

cleanhess and uncleanliness which are mapped onto bodies. Specifically, 1 argue that in

sports, the body of Ben Johnson is a place where these practices achieve very poignant

meaning in the national imaginary. 1 suggest that one of the reasons that Johnson's body is so evocative is via a linking of his body to steroid use, crime and uncleanliness.

Moreover, 1 stress that there is a parailel between the way that black bodies are often treated negatively in nation-state practices (such as immigration and citizenship) and politicai economy (such as providing a cheap and flexibie labour supply), and the way that these sarne bodies are treated as dispensable within sports, as Johnson's case points to. Ln other words, I suggest that Canadian nationalist practices of representing and more often exploiting, nonwhite and First Nations peoples, reverberate in the realms of political economy, cultural production, and sports. In addition, I suggest that there is a way of thinking about representations of Ben Johnson as elements of a national tragedy, wherein race plays a role in the construction of such a narrative.

This chapter is organised as follows. 1begin with a two-part section that contextualizes my later arguments. First, I discuss racism, labour and Canadian state practices; and second, the way that racist paranoia works in conjunction with political cnsis. After the contextualization, 1 move to a discussion of the figure of Ben Johnson in the national imaginary. Here 1 dso provide a little context, in terms of a bief sumrnary of what happened in Ben Johnson's career and why it is important to reading the more recent events. Second, 1 discuss the way that nationdism, tragedy and sports writing are intermingled and what this means for discussions of Ben Johnson. Third, 1 discuss how

Johnson's name appears in official discourse of the nation, referencing specifically the recent print media coverage of Ross Rebagliati's Olympic snowboarding victory and the ensuing coverage which resulted fiom his positive dnig test for marijuana use. Fourth, I

77 examine the way that the image of Johnson is used in the construction of Donovan Baiiey as national hero, and a good immigrant. Fiflh, 1 analyze the purported "haunting"of the nation by Ben Johnson, and hope to demonstrate its accomplishment in a discourse of Iaw and order with a brief investigation of the Dubin hquiry. in closing, 1offer some remarks about the place of blackness and masculinity in Canada; and 1offer suggestions as to how one could imagine an anti-racist position in terms of the relation between Ben Johnson and

Canada.

2. Racisrn and State Practices

In thinking about how blackness works in the national imaginary, we must contextualize the role that the state plays in reproducing racist and capitalist agendas.

Without trying to suggest a one-to-one connection between state practices and the nationalist imaginary, the parallels are worth underlining. One way to think about this connection is through the slogan that 1 hear and chant at demonstrations in support of immigrant workers in Canada, which is "Good enough to work, good enough to stay."

This slogan highiights the fact that one of the dominant ways that people of colour corne to

Canada from outside is as a cheap and flexible labour source. In turn, the slogan highlights the roIe of the state in deeming this labour often unnecessary and disposable. Li and Singh Bolaria (1988: 14) suggest that:

The oppression of racial groups is by no means a historical accident, but is rooted in the social and econornic development of Canadian society.

The authors suggest that economic racism is a feature of colonialism in the Americas, and point to the historicai example of plantation slavery as evidence. They go on to state that

(ibid: 27):

Theories that attempt to account for racial domination have to begin with how an apparently irrational concept such as "race" becomes rational in the process of reproducing cheap labour.

This argument is compelling if somewhat Iimited. In what follows 1will accept its major tenets with a few qualifications. The fmt is that this argument does not pay attention to other foms of identity such as sexuality, gender and ethnicity. For example, race and racism also act as a form of sexuai subjugation, as well as acting as the marker which makes certain bodies deemed more sexually available than others?' in addition, this argument pays little attention to black and nonwhite performances in the field of politics and semiotics which alter the basic script of racism, something which Gilroy's work highlights. However, these interventions do not mean that racism's overall fiarnework goes away, but it does suggests that black folks and other victims of racism have a role to play in resisting or perpetuating it.

Sin& Bolaria and Li offer a way to think about how the iconography of blackness, crime, and the nation in Canada are not random, or rnerely rhetoncai. Representations of the Dubin Inquiry, Johnson, and Bailey must be seen in line with other circumscriptions of nonwhite identities as an imperative of the racist/colonialist foundations of the Canadian

State. These circumscriptions are particularly useful in upholding a discursive entity called "Canada" defined in opposition to First Nations, black etc. The inability to forget

Ben cm be contextuaiized if we look at two recent histoncal phenornena which underline the role of the state in reproducing racism.

This latest manifestation of intense anti-immigrant racism emerges out of the Iate

1980s in Canada and corresponds to an economic crisis precipitated by globdization; severe economic dislocation due to the North American Free Trade Agreement; and increased attempts by governments both federai and provincial in Canada to "attack the deficit." This has caused a shift in the political language in Canada to one that is decidedly anti-immigrant, evident in the re-emergence of neo-Nazi hate groups like the Heritage

Front, and the rise of the far-right Reform Party. For example, anti-immigrant racism rnakes up one of the strongest planks of the Reform Party, as welI as that of the Liberal and Progressive Conservative Parties. This is seen through some of the comrnents of the party's one time Immigration cntic, MP Art Hanger, who has "made a national narne for himself' attacking federal immigration policies as being lenient?

Reform Party policy explicitly links immigrants and economic impoverishrnent of the nation. The party's policy on immigration was that the rate of new immigrants should be cut to 150,000 per year as long as the unemployment rate is above 10 per cent?' This logic implies that capitalist economic crises such as unemployrnent can be solved by reducing the number of immigrants. This continues the racist stereotype, contrary to documented evidence (see Noorani and Wright, 1995), that immigrants are a "drain" on the national economy, who come and take "our" jobs, and rip off welfare.

Another example of this paranoia is seen in the "McLeod Report." The report, untten by a Federai Immigration Intelligence Oficer, was apparently commissioned in

80 1993 by then Ontario Liberal Party Leader, and Leader of the Opposition of the Ontario

Legislature, Lyn ~c~eod."The report called Somalis "masters of deceit and corruption" and stated that "Our Western andprirnmily Christian based wqof life has Memeaning or relevance to ihese people ."'' These events support the argument that Singh Bolaria and

Li are making, which is that capitaiist C~S~Sdemand a kind of scapegoating of immigrants or those marked as such. This logic equates immigrants and refugees with crime, evident in calls for strict changes to the I~grationregulations in 1994 by the federal governrnent with the scaling down of the number of immigrants to 200,000 fiom 250,000 per year?

Within this context emerges the criminalisation of black masculinity as a response to national "crisis." The criminaiisation of black masculinity as a response to economic crisis has been demonstrated by Stuart Hall et ai in Poficing the Crisis, as well as more recently in the work of Tricia Rose (1994)~') While Hall et al discuss Britain, and Rose discusses the United States, Canadian racism is not any better. It deploys tropes of black masculine criminality in similar ways. In other words, Canadian preoccupations with law and order have historically rneant preoccupations with whatever the Canadian nation-state has deemed to be the "immigrant" or native population."54

This criminalisation is exemplified in the recent paranoias over deportation of two young black criminals. The first is OWeil Grant, who dong with Gary Francis and

Lawrence Brown (both of whom are also black), were charged with murdering Georgina

"Vivi" Leimonis in the "Just Desserts" robbery. The second is Clinton Gayle, who was recently convicted to two life sentences for murdering Todd Baylis: a Metro Police oEcer.

8 1 There are a few important points worth noting here. The first is that both incidents occurred in 1994, and was followed by extreme paranoia which was whipped up by both the mainstream media, the govemment, and the Metro Police. The fact that both men were of Jarnaican origin and had previous criminal records only heightened the hysteria. There was a rise in calls for a "crackdown" on deportations and a rise in the rhetoric of immigrants as criminals. For example, Sergio Marchi, then federal Immigration Minister, claimed in the aftermath of the Baylis killing (August 1994) that it was time that the govemment increased its enforcement of deportation orders of suspected cri min al^.'^

These incidents provide a sense of the political and economic context of Canada in the late 1980s and 1990s and will inform both this discussion and that of chapter 4. While

1 am not adhering to a reductionist paradigm, these factors provide some explanation for how and why Ben Johnson becornes the nation's ghost. In short, the way that black bodies are largely brought to Canada as itinerant labour means that their right to be Canadian is always in question. Therefore, calls for deportation are often the first response to a whole series of factors, which may or may not involve wrongdoing by black folks. In that sense, the disposable and itinerant reading of black masculinity is indispensable to thinking about

Ben Johnson and his place in the national irnaginary.

3. Cadiforget Ben

Until his positive test for the use of anabolic steroids (stanozolol), a banned performance enhancing substance according to the International Track and Field

Association, in September 1988, Ben Johnson was the most successfùl track athlete in

82 Canadian history, and one of the most successfu1 in the world in recent history. He had established several world records, both for indoor and outdoor cornpetitions, and had estabIished a worldwide persona which was reflected by his sizable endorsement contracts with several companies based in Europe, Japan and North America.

Johnson achieved his dtimate success at the 1988 Suinmer Olyrnpics in Seod,

South Korea. There, in front of over seventy thousand fans and a worldwide television audience in the billions, Johnson ran the one hundred meters in a world record time of

9.79 seconds, beating his cornpetitor and American rival Car1 Lewis by 1311OOths of a second, an unprecedented margin of victory." This victory, Canada's frst Olyrnpic sprinting gold medal since the 1930s: was dealt with euphorically by many in Canada at the time. This euphoria was shattered when two days later it was revealed that Johnson tested positive, in a compulsory urine test after the race, for the substance of a banned anabolic steroid, stana~olol.~'Afterwards, according to the Montreal Gazette, "retribution was swift and severe." This included the retraction of the gold medai and a statement by

Jean Charest, then Canada's Sports Minister, that Johnson would never be able to compete for Canada again. In addition, Johnson' worId record was stricken from the record books.

Third, there was a statement fiom then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney acknowledging that this was "a moment of great sorrow for al1 cana di an^."^'

But perhaps the most lasting and insidious form of "retribution" was regarding

Johnson's "citizenship." Ln what became known as a national infamy, there was a progression in the representation of Ben Johnson fiom one of a "Canadian hero" while winning to one of a "Jamaican" after being disqualified. This process was encapsulated by the editorid cartoon of October 13, 1988 of the Globe and Mail which featured three identical images of Ben Johnson but a different subtitle under each one. The first read:

"Canadian Wins Gold Medal"; the second read "Jamaican-Canadian Accused of Steroid

Use"; and the third read "Jamaican Stripped of Gold ~edal."'~This cartoon referred to the fact that Johnson was never referred to as coming from Jamaica until it was revealed that he tested positive. In coverage afterwards, Johnson becomes progressively less Canadian as his status as a "lawbreaker" is revealed.

In addition to the cartoon, the following passage is revealing. The passage is an anecdote about the announcement of Johnson's positive test and disqualification:

Angella Issajenko, an Olyrnpic (black Canadian) sprinter from Mr. Johnson's home club, Mazda Optimists, told reporters in Seoul, "A white (Canadian) tearn member came up to where the Jamaicans were sittuig and said, "You cmhave Ben back now, he is not Canadian no^."^'

This movement, or the discursive passage of Johnson's body fiom "our own" to

"Jamaican", rnirrors the kind of troubles that black folks often receive in relation to the

Canadian state, whether this is in the form of harassrnent at borders, by the police and so on. This context is centrai to understanding the way that the one hundred rnetre victory of

Donovan Bailey in August 1995 was portrayed. Also, other incidents of dmgs and sport, specifically those of Ross Rebagliati, are also impossible to think about without referencing what happened to Ben Johnson.

2. Tragedy, Sports Writing und Nation While narratives of cleanliness and punty are indispensable to thinking about Ben

Johnson and the place he occupies in the nationai irnaginary, thinking about the role of tragedy within such narratives is also crucial. This can be seen by thinking about what tragedy is, and how it works through the representations of nationdism in sports.

But before considering tragedy specificdly, it is helpful to consider the role of sports writers within such a constellation, given that sports writing is highly uifluential in terms of how we think about sports. While no major study exists on sports writing per se, it is important to make some preliminary claims about how it operates as a genre and what that means for thinking through race, sport and nation. Sports wrïting within the print media is highly hyperbolic. In that the attempt is to make human beings larger than life, the tendency is toward extreme opinions and high drama. Moreover there is a tendency toward putting forward a very manichean view of the world, with clear demarcations between good and evil, rich and poor, and so on. Third, within sports writing, the biggest stones are, in addition to the ones about big gaines, the ones that are most controversial.

The following anecdote best explains this. Irnrnediately after his positive dnig test, Ben

Johnson atternpted to leave Seoul as soon as possible and retum to his home in Toronto, but he had to go through New York's La Guardia Airport. A security oficer who had worked at the airport for over thiay years swore that he had never seen such a massive throng of reporters and onlookers as were there for the arriva1 of Ben Johnson in New

York. As a figure involved in a major controversy, Johnson's appeal was larger than that of such major world figures as Mikhail Gorbachev, Fidel Castro and so on. Mile it is

85 true that this interest was to some extent organic, we cannot overlook the role that sports writers had in hyping such an event.

Given that the kinds of stories that sports writers attempt to represent, as well as those that grip the sporting public, are the ones with the most pathos and drama one of the most common stories is the tragedy. Lewis Gordon (1 996: 302; my emphasis) summarizes the relation between the tragic protagonist and her community as follows:

For the community's demands to emerge, the kind of rightful action that must emerge is the reconstitution of justice. In other words, regardless of the characters' points of view, the world must be restored to a certain order. The tragedy in trngedies is therefore that the "innocence"of the churacters who occupy a wrongfidplace in the drarna is ultimately irrelevant. Thus, the tragic protagonist finds hirnself (sic) guilty by virtue of deed and circumstance, not intent, and finds hirnself (sic) sufTering, ironicalIy, for the sake of justice. The tragic drarna cleanses the community of its own evasions. Justice is tragicaily restored.

Gordon's reflections are helpful in thinking through the way that Ben Johnson was initially received and treated. In fact, his description is almost literally what happened to Johnson.

Clearly, Johnson cornmitted a "transgression", but ultimately, as we know, he was not alone. However, this means that he became the scapegoat in spite of the fact that he did not act done,

What is important here to stress is how the components of tragedy are racialized, i.e. what are the meanings of "justice'' and "guilt" within a rucisr cuIture6' that ultimately makes these categories illegible or highly distorted. For exarnpte, the cornmunity's demand for justice, as well as the desire to turn the hero or hera into a scapegoat, have a doubled resonance in relation to blackness, whereby black folk are always aiready read as guilty, as 1 have show above. In that sense, keeping in mind the raciaiized foundations of tragedy are worth stressing to make sense of the gravity of what happened to Johnson.

This backdrop is important tc keep in mind to think about the way that Johnson's narne appears in nationalist discourses after Seoul. For while the impact of the irnrnediacy of the event has waned, there remauis a persistent desire to raise Johnson's name as a "ghost" that haunts nation, as we will see.

3. Ben Johnson and the boundaries of Canada

In the wake of Ross Rebagliati's recent positive test for marijuana use at the

Nagano Olympics, Canadian Olympic Association (COA) officiais were bombarded with questions about dnig use, role models, and the possible appeal of the decision to strip

Rebagliati of his gold medal. One of the more prominent questions was: "1s this incident comparable to Ben Johnson?" in other words, was Rebagliati's transgression in 1998 linked to Johnson's a decade earlier.6' The answer which came fiom various COA bras and from former Olympians such as Silken Laumann whom the media sought out was an emphatic: "No". Richard (Dick) Pound, the Canadian representative on the International

Olympic Cornmittee, looked incredulously at media types who dared to suggest a comection. Toronto Star columnist Dave Perkins descnbed the Rebagliati incident as follows:

This isn't steroids. This isn't cheating. This wasn't Ben Johnson - although the initial punishent pending appeal, medal stripped and banishment fiom the Olympics - is the ~arne!~

Federal sports oficials rded out a linking of the two events and in fact, lobbied to have Rebagliati's gold medal re-instated. Reaction in the federal parliament was the sarne.

While in 1988, as we saw above, "retribution was swift and severe" for Ben, Rebagliati received different treatment? In fact, he was defended by prominent MPs like Sheila

Copps, who in effect argued that smoking a Little pot was not so bad?

While the double standard meted out to RebagIiati and Johnson is worth noting, there is something else at play which betrays something far more pernicious about

Canadian nationalisrn. In addition to the bizarre way that Liberal cabinet ministers began defending or glarnorizing pot-smoking, another interesting facet of this event came to mind which suggests something crucial about Canadian identity. It points to the role that invoking Ben Johnson, or radier the "affair" of Ben Johnson plays in constnicting a

Canadian identity. In other words, it points to the importance of the constmction of the othzr as necessary to make Canada one. Both the questions asked by reporters and the responses, al1 of which were negative, are an exercise in how to construct a "proper"

Canadian identity. These examples suggest how important invoking negative invocations of Ben Johnson mean to the construction of the interior of Canada. Thus, this strategic use of Ben Johnson may point to the marker or limit of what is "Canada" and "Canadian".

4. Canada and its ghosts

National time becomes concrete and visible in the chronotype of the local, particular, graphic, fiom beginning to end. The narrative structure of this historical surmounting of the "ghostiy" or the "double" is seen in the intensification of narrative synchrony as a graphically visible position in space: "to grasp the most elusive course of pure historical time and fix it through unmediated contemplation."' In the Rebagliati case, invoking Ben Johnson negatively is what makes "us"

Canadian; Johnson's body is the black backdrop through which other athletes often get illurninated. Bhabha suggests that in constructing the nation, the nation constmcts its double, or its ghost. While Bhabha does not emphasize the pun, 1cannot help but think of the historical confluence between bIack foks and ghosts in the Enlightenment/colon.ialist imagination. in the Canadian context, the ghost is often the nonwhite Canadian, whether it be First Nations people or nonwhite Canadians. In Canadian sports and popular discourse, this process, I want to argue, is mapped on to Ben Johnson's body. Much like the racist assadts on immigrants as the cause of al1 social ills, this doubling or ghost-making process shows what has to be kept out of bounds in order to keep Canada "clean".

In the questions surrounding Rebagliati, Johnson's narne is a flashpoint of memory.

It is brought up, then summarily dropped. Al1 cornparisons between Jokqson and

Rebagliati were dismissed out of hand. Dick Pound's response suggests a process of writing the nation that has no room for "ghosts", andlor "chesters". In other words,

Pound's reaction may be evidence of the threat that Johnson's name poses if it is allowed to stick around. The demand to distance one's self fiom Ben Johnson is proof of the perforrnative acts required in the drawing of Canadian boundaries to exclude the

"outsidert' or minorïty.

This example suggests a paradox of Canadian myth-making. He is not forgotten as such, but rather what happens, in addition to his body being marked as exterior, is a forgeffirl remernbering. Johnson is only remembered enough to be forgotten, or displaced

89 to the border or beyondP7 Forgetful remembering cannot be read in isolation to other readings of black rnasculinity, such as that of Grant and Gayle. Locating this process together withïn the current crisis of Canadian nationalism offers dues to disceming how racist nationalism works in the aftermath of post-colonial shifts. In addition, it is indispensable to thinking about representations of Donovan Bailey.

5. Donovan Bailey, Ben Johnson, and ForgetJùZ RernemberiPlg

Since 1995, when he won the World Outdoor T'rack and Field Championships in

Goteborg, Sweden, Bailey has been hounded by press who want to comparehk him to

J~hnson.~'The following quotes corne fiom the August 1995 media coverage of Bailey's

100 metre victory. There are three features to this covemge. First, Bailey is not understood by hirnself, but represented vis-a-vis the "forgetting" of Johnson; second,

Bailey and Johnson are represented as oppositional; third, that this opposition is frarned within a manichean rhetonc of cleanliness, whereby Bailey is represented as "ciean" to

Johnson who is represented as "unclean".

Throughout, Donovan Bailey, the gold medai winner, is unable to stand alone in the representation; he is rhetorically linked to Ben Johnson. The fact that Johnson's career had been over for quite some time at that point (he retired in 1993) is somehow not enough to remove hirn fiom the representations. Moreover, in reading the headlines and the quotations 1 offer below, it is important to keep in mind Bhabha's discussion of the ghost of nationalism. The spectral quality of the representations is shocking.

Major headlines fiom Toronto dailies represented Bailey, and his victory, in

90 relation to Johnson. The Toronto Star headline on the cover of the sports page reads:

"Canada's Bailey outruns world" yet the subtitle of the headline reads: "But fastest human still can 't escape Johnson's ~hadow.".~~The Toronto Sun cover headline reads: "Canada

Can Findly Forger Ben ~ohnson"?~In the fipage of the sports section of the same newspaper, the headline reads: "1-2 punch to Ben's legacy"." An article in the Globe and

Mail is entitled: "Echo fiom part chases new heroes"." Moreover, only in the Toronto

Star sports page is Bailey's name part of the headiine; yet even there, Johnson's name is mentioned in the subtitle.

Second, Bailey and Johnson are represented oppositionally. ln one instance, Bailey

is upheld as a more arnicable athlete than Johnson. The Toronto Sun reports:

Bailey, like the disgraced Johnson, was born in Jamaica. Like Johnson, he is big, strong, and muscular. But in contras&to the suilen Johnson, Bailey is personable.''

The Globe and Mail piece establishes the opposition in a rhetoric of sprinting styles.

His (Bailey's) race at the world championships in Goteborg, Sweden, was in many ways the polar opposite of that other fellow's (Johnson), he of the famous flying start?

The Toronto Star piece does not explicitly position the sprinters as oppositional, but it

does establish throughout that Bailey is tired of the constant comparisons with Johnson.

He writes:

The question about Johnson's legacy delivered to Bailey at the post-race news conference, in Goteborg, Sweden, won? be the ~ast.~'

Randy Starkman's comment in the Toronto Star illustrates the proccss of forgetful remembe~g.In contrast to Rebagliati, and due to a racist irnaginary that links al1 black bodies, Bailey is consistently linked to Johnson. Starkman's quote, in an ironic note of self-fulfilling prophecy, asserts that these questions will never go away. In some respects, it can be read as a waming to Bailey that in fact, the lirnit of the nation, in Ben's name, will be constantly invoked as a racist attempt to denigrate, or expel, him.

Oppositional positioning and the inability to mention Bailey unto himself leads to a third feature of the reporting. This is that the texts rely on a narrative of redemption and a rhetoric of cleanliness. The desire to link blacks to uncleanliness is a longstanding figure of colonial discourse, or representing blackness in colonialism. In reference to this way of thinking, Fanon's (1 967) work was very influential." Fanon (1967: 191 ; my emphasis) writes of this phenornenon:

In Europe the Negro has one function: that of syrnbolizing the lower emotions, the baser inclinations, the dark side of the soul. In the collective unconscious of homo occidentalis, the Negro - or, if one prefes, the color black - symbolires evil, sin, wretchedness, death, war,famine.

Print media usage of this discourse is what helps to establish Ben Johnson as the epitome of evil, and uncleanliness. The effect of such devices renders Bailey's body as not that of a sprinter but rather one fiozen within the category of eraser, or cleansing agent.

His victory is understood as "erasing the sharne" of the "tamished" image of Canadian sprinting and, by extension Canada. This is done through language linking Johnson to the

Seoul Olympics and dmg use. Starkman stresses that Bailey is a clean mer,quoting

Bailey's manager (not Bailey, incidentally): "He has to nin clean and he does run clem," (Bailey Manager Adrian) Keith said. "He's probably facing more (dmg) testing than anyone because of Ben Johnson.""

In the Toronto Sun, Bailey's victory is referred to as:

erasing the bitter aftertaste of Johnson's steroid-tainied run at Seoul in 1988."

The Globe and Mail piece achieves the linking of Johnson with drug use by neologistic

Mention that other fellow (Johnson), he whose name will not appear in this column, and they know instantly as well. It has become like one long word that msup in every language: Canadad~ugcheotben.'~

If Bailey's body is an eraser; by contrast, Johnson's body and legacy are an irnpurity.

Johnson is that which rnust be forgotten, or disavowed; he is referred to as "shame1180,a

"~pectre"~',and a "long, dark shadow"."

In addition, this myth-rnaking process is not merely the preserve of print media reporters. Witness the following definition of Ben Johnson in a recent article by Steven

Jackson (1 998 : 23; my emphasis):

Furthemore, the tarnished legacy of Ben Johnson continues to influence the lives of Canadians, especially those black ahletes who are following in the former sprinter's footsteps..A would appear that, despite al1 the attempts at damage control including the Dubin inquiry, Canada continues to be haunted by the Ben Johnson saga.

In sum, !inking Johnson's body to irnpurity, or ghostliness, is necessary in order to establish the nation's interior, or "Canada", as clean. It is a necessary outcome of writing/whitening the nation.83 As cited above, this practice accords with linking blackness to uncleanliness in the racist imaginary, and moreover, such a myth shows to what extent notions of Canadian nationalism are linked to white supremacy. Moreover, given the oppositional way that Bailey's body is represented, it is illustrative of the colonialist practice of using black bodies to discipline others. In addition, our explanation will be enhanced if we think about the way in which cleanliness is posited through a look at how dmgs, race and crime are intercomected. In the next section, 1 want to provide additional explmation as to why this is the case.

4. Cornmissioning Canada: The Dubin Inquiry, innocence, and race

1still get asked in interviews, "1s there racism in this country?" Unlike the United States, where there is at least an admission of the fact that racism exists and has a history, in this country one is faced with a stupefLNlg inn~cence.~

The above quote fiom Dionne Brand links notions of innocence, racism, and whiteness in Canada. It allows us to think about how a racialized concept of innocence is used in addition to forgetful remembering as a device for nation-making in Canada. In what we could cal1 "exhibit A" to Brand's quote, 1 offer the following quote by Stephen

Brunt of The Globe und Mail on the moming after Baileyts 1995 victory at Goteborg.

But what happened seven years ago (the Johnson disqualification) was like the unbearding ofSanta Claus. Try as hard as you can to make it the way it was, and it 'r st dl impossible to reclaim innocence .''

The reason 1 offer Bruntts quote as "exhibit A" for Brand is that Brunt's deployment of

Canadian innocence as a white thing works the sarne way as denials of racism. Brand's quote shows to what extent a constructed notion of innocence, or innocence as a form of identity, is a hailmark of canadiana? In order to sustain Canadian nationaiism, there must be an innocence about racism in this country, an innocence about its horrors, foundations, and legacies.

Brand notes how Canadian "innocence" is built in contrat to the comparative

"guilt" of the United States. Brunt's quotation is an example of how the projection of guilt works in Canada, except here the guilty party is not the United States but Ben Johnson, in

Brunt's words, or as he will refer to him elsewhere, "that other fellow". Such a move enables "Canada" to equal pure, pnstine etc. By extension then, the non-innocent, or guilty ones, exist outside of "Canada", i.e. outside of the law. This is clearly how Brunt imagines Ben Johnson - as an out-law, i.e. someone who has transgressed and impurified the Canadian body politic. Thus, Brunt's linking of Johnson's body to the fictional end of innocence for Canada rernaps racism on to the bodies of its victims.

Moreover, there is a temporal element as well, which is to daim the period before

1988, before stanazolol, as the Golden Age of Canadian sports, or Track and Field specifically. It allows for an erasure of histones of racism and their replacement by mythologies of black invasions." In addition, there is a gendered element to the construction of innocence which is centrai to the nation-making project. Brunt's highly sexualized rhetoric, and his linking of Johnson to defilement helps to narne Johnson as an example of what Davis (1983) calls "the black rapist". However unlike Davis, Brunt is unaware of the mythical quality of this designation, which was the claim that black rapists were an invention of white racists in the United States as a response to deal with a loss of political and economic po~er.~~This pattern continues if we look briefly at the Dubin

Inquiry into steroid use arnong athletes in Canada, which was convened after Johnson's

95 positive dmg-test in Seoul in 1988. 1suggest we read the Dubin inquiry as an exercise in contemporary re-drawings of nation in Canada to discipline immigrant bodies and to constnict Canada as an innocent crime-free zone,

White Little scholarly work has been written about the Dubin inquiry, John

McA.loonls (1990) work provides a place to begin. McAloonls argument is that the Dubin inquiry, while not being a court of law per se, had the effect of "trying" certain individuals and "passing judgment" upon them in the realm of popular culture. McAloon also claims that such an organization had the effect of making steroid use in Canadian amateur sports a problem of certain incomigible individuals as opposed to the systemic problem that it is.

He notes that the focus on individuals is worth stressing given that it established the innocence of larger sports institutions, such as the federal Sports Ministry and

SportCanada. Such institutions, which should have taken their fair share of the apportioned blarne, emerged as "innocent" given the Dubin Inquiry's character as a (1 990:

59) "Real Life Soap Opera" and its penonalizing of systematic crises. Further, McAloon argues that the Dubin Inquiry was an exercise in the production of melodrama as a device to achieve this. He writes (1990: 43):

the Dubin Inquiry created and offered the public an eagerly consumed melodrama ....Rather than sorne straightforward exercise of unequal power relations by political authorities anxious to protect themselves,... melodramatization as a specific process and effect is here claimed to be the crucial means by which the state went fiee .

McAloon correctly points out that this is not merely a trial about individuals; it is more precisely about an individual. Despite al1 the hype, pomp and circumstance, the Dubin Inquiry was a public way of making Ben Johnson accountable for his "sins". He writes (1990: 53):

the frcune of the judicial trial insisted that there yet be one principal defendant and no rnatter how long he was held off-stage, no matter how many times it was insisted that Johnson was not the sole target, no matter how much more dramatic other stories turned out to be, the public and the media would not let him abandon his central role.

Once again, there is another paradox at work here which involves Johnson, blackness and the Canadian "public".8g Similar to the process of forgetfùi remembering, the paradox here is about who and what the Dubin inquiry is about. In spite its official narration as an inquiry into the use of pefiormance enhancing dnigs, it is not. This spectacle is and is not about Ben Johnson. McAloon's analysis of the Dubin inquiry suggest the importance and obsessive character of many in Canada with Ben Johnson.

While McAIoon's argument is sound, there is one major absence fiom his argument and that is the question of race and how it works in the making of Canada. Without a discussion of race, McAloon's analysis is guilty of the same shortcomings he correctly attributes to the Dubin Inquiry, which is that it prioritizes individuals as opposed to systems and structures in describing the phenornenon at hand. Moreover, the obsession with Ben Johnson, and why he appears as the nation's ghost, has no systematic theory, and it makes us unable to histoncally and politically locate the reasons the Dubin Inquiry took the form that it did.

In contrast, my reading of the Dubin Inquiry suggests that it was a place not only to let the state get off, but it was only possible through the construction of Johnson as a black man who was guilty of failhg to iive up to his role as either a "Canadian role model" and

"law abiding immigrant." My claim that the Dubin Inquiry was more about policing race than about the question of steroid use is dso backed up by its redundancy. The reason 1 cal1 the Dubin Inquiry redundant has to do with the fact that the only proof that was revealed throughout the inquiry was the fact of rampant steroid use among athletes in high-level athletics. However, this is not news. For years, many sporting insiders, athletes and coaches have claimed that at high levels of competition, al1 athletes are on a regimen of performing enhancing dmgs of one kind or another. These performance enhancing drugs are often illegal- While this knowledge has existed mostly among rumours circulated arnong people in the know, there are pienty of instances where hard-core

"evidence" was presented.

One such exarnple noted in the Dubin Inquiry was the testimony by Desai

Williams. Williams, a former Canadian Olympian who ran with Ben Johnson at the

Mazda Optimist Track Club and who trained under the same coach, Charlie Francis, admitted during the inquiry to using steroids. Williams' justification was that steroid use waslis a regular component of world-class Track and ~ield.~'In addition to Williams,

Francis and Johnson, arnong others, testified something to the effect that "everybody" was doing it, and the only way for Canadian athletes to be cornpetitive intemationally was to

"join the club".9'

Mat is interesting and telling about the Lnquiry's role in the production of Canada, and the production of innocence as a form of Canadian identity, is that in spite of

98 testimony fiom people like Williams and others, there remains a persistent belief that world-class athietes can run clean and win, something that was necessary in order to establish the necessity of the Inquiry. In other words, the Dubin Inquiry and its legitimacy rely on a forgetting of the fact that to nui clean and win at world class levels is an impossibility, and moreover, that Canadian athletes are not alone in taking ster~ids.~'

Such a wilfd denial of contemporary realities is seen in the testirnony that Abbie

Hohan gave to the Dubin Inquiry. At the tirne of the Inqujr, Hoatinan was the director of SportCanada, the body overseeing amateur athletics in Canada. Responding to questions about the use of hgsamong world-class athietes, Hoffinan stated (McAloon,

1990: 58) that "@)eople are too quick to condernn athtetes as steroid users when hard work and training might account for size gains and performance improvements." Hoffman's naivete, or should we Say innocence, in the face of the preponderance of steroids in international Track and Field is astonishing."

Hoffman's insistence on innocence has littie meaning outside of the larger politics of race and nation in Canada. In her statements to the inquiry, (McAioon 1990:58) she noted that oficials at SportCanada were "only vaguely aware of rampant rurnours of steroid use among Canadian athletes." Whether her ignorance is feigned or not, her comrnents are crucial here. If the official position is that you can run clean and win, in spite of evidence that this is a fantasy, then the Dubin inquiry can only have one conclusion, which is to punish the "chesters". The "innocence" of Hoffman, Charest and othen establishes the frame of the Inquiry and its ultimate cultural meaning. What this

99 arnounts to is the redundancy of the Dubin Inquiry. More to the point, given that the

Inquiry told us little that we did not know, we are left with no option but to conclude that the Dubin lnquiry was designed for nothing else but the following: to narne Johnson as a

"scapegoat."

Thus, the Dubin Inquiry is an important marker in the history of race and nation in

Canada. Its effect on the national imaginary is to once again narne the "immigrant" (in this case black masculinity) as outside the law. While I am not suggesting that the Dubin

Inquiry instantiates racism, I am saying that the Inquiry, within the current context of racism in Canada, helps to institutionalize a discourse of the cheating immigrant, more specifically the cheating Jamaican, in sporting cultures and beyond. Given the way that

Ben Johnson has become the "ghost" of the paranoid nationalist, the Inquiry marks the institutionai and archival justification for the tropes of spectrality that have corne to define

Ben Johnson: "shame", "spectre", "ghost" et cetera. It acts to re-enforce longstanding beliefs that immigrants haunt and pollute the body politic and it acts to inforrn the work of media and as we will see, other athletes.

Thus, the inquiry institutionalizes another temporality of nation that the figure of

Johnson represents. The threat of diis temporality is what must be kept in mind as we move to the next section, since it is here that 1 discuss Donovan Bailey's role within this particular iconography. In other words, how is Donovan Bailey, represented as he has been, performatively dealing with these representations. For while it is true that the media have a great deal of power in shaping the discome of nation, the fact is that this is not a

1O0 hermetic process. In fact, what Bhabha would cal1 perfmative re-mappings of nation cm corne fkom a number of sources, one is the people on the ground per se. But also, superstars Iike Bailey, given his popularity and given the predominance of sports media within popular culture more genedly, have an impact as well. The folIowing section deals with these issues and tries to suggest what it means to the performance of black masculinities in Canada.

6. Bailey 's performance in making (other) Canadas

Not surprisingly, these actions, and the use of Johnson as negative image against which to write the nation, are not limited to white folks. In this sense whiteness becomes an identity - whicti is to Say it is not reducible to skin colour. Whiteness, as people like

James Baldwin have written, is a set of cultural practices designed to reproduce racist notions of superiority and inferiority. This is seen if we take a Look at Donovan Bailey's subjective actions regarding media positioning of Ben Johnson and Bailey's own status as a hero.

What 1 will show in this section is that BaiIey himself appears to be performing this Canadian racism in order to secure his own identity. Bailey's performance tells us about the ability of Canadian racism to inscribe itself on black and white subjects; and the way that construction of a kind of macho Canadian identity is predicated on beating up on black folks. Bailey's post-Atlanta performance suggests a partial desire to distance himself fiorn Johnson and in turn, the limits of the nation.

Bailey's original attitude when asked repeatedly about Ben was ofien solidarity

101 toward him and a defiant Jamaican pride, (which took some of us back to the black power era) and a sense of identification. For example, witness his comments right after winning the gold medal in the mens' one hundred metres in AtIanta in 1996. hediately after his record-setting run in Atlanta, Bailey spoke live to National Broadcasting Corporation reporters and rerninded everyone that he was a Jarnaican and proud. Further, when asked about how he identifies nationally by The Toronto Srar immediately afier the victory, his position was as follows (as reported in the Toronto Star):

"I'mJamaican, man," said Bailey in a post-race news conference. "I'm Jamaican first. You've got to understand that. That's where 1 was born. That's home. You can't take that away from me. I'm a Jamaican-born Canadian sprinter."

In addition to this exuberance, recall that in the lead-up to the Atlanta Games, in a

Sports ZZZustrnted article by Michael Farber, Bailey openly criticized Canadian racism and defended Ben Johnson, by clairning that Canada was "as blatantly racist as the United

State~."~"

Bailey's post-race performance is a significant moment in Canadian Track and

Field and in the history of post-colonial Canada. His proud display of Jarnaican identity, and his insistence on being "Jamaican first" shows to what extent Bailey was in fact identifying with Ben Johnson in opposition to the racist press, govemment and public who scapegoated Johnson. Moreover, his final sentence, as reported in The Toronto Star, suggest he is signiQin(g) on the racism meted out to Johnson and the illusion of citizenship and heroic status which was bestowed upon Johnson. Recall that in the aflermath of Ben Johnson's positive dmg test in Seoul, his identity moved fiom being "Canadian" to "Jamaican-Canadian" to "Jamaican-bom"?' Bailey's disidentification - a re- claiming of the pejorative term "Jamaican-born" - is a gesture aimed at solidanty between himself and Ben Johnson.96 Moreover it is a way of taking power away fiom state oEcials to name and identie blackness at their whims.

However, in the &ennath of such strident anti-racism, it appears Bailey may have changed his tune. At the Canadian outdoor Track and Field Championships in Vancouver in 1997, Bailey responded to questions about Johnson's possible return to track with a dismissal of his countryman. Bailey told a news conference: "Ben should just get a real job." Such a response differs fiom the previous gestures of solidarity or of the gestures of ambivaience regarding Johnson that Bailey felt were necessary to stake out his name to a media and public who conîinually wished to link him to Johnson. In the post-race news conference at Atlanta, Bailey noted, "1 did it for myself, for my family, for my country - so

1wouldn't Say it was just to revoke the past."" In addition to disparaging Johnson, Bailey has been wont to make the most brash anti-American sentiments regarding his rivals.

After losing the 100 metre World Championship in Athens to Amencan Maurice Greene in the suinmer of 1998, Bailey was far fkom gracious in defeat. According to news reports,

Bailey rolled his eyes at Maurice Greene's repeated gestures to thank God for his victoiy.

And when it was Bailey's tum to speak, he mocked Greene and told reporters that he was thankful to God for being allowed the oppomuiity to answer questions.

What is noteworthy about Bailey's shift is that they betray the traces of a classic

Canadian nationalism - bashing Amencans, and bashing immigrants (or those who "look"

103 [ike them). Far from being different, what is disappointing in Bailey's case is bat what seemed like a possible "multiculniralist" masculin@, where he rejected the tems of official Canadian nationalisrn and tried to do something different, has given way to the smeold cliches. Bailey's quasi-secure status as a Canadian hero has translated into distmcing hirnself fiom Ben, (or just dissing Ben) and a crass and superficial anti-

Americanism (which may be read as anti-black as well). What is instructive here is that

Bailey seems to be responding to the fear that occurs if Ben's name sticks around. If Ben's name sticks, you may become iess "Canadian". konicdly, or perhaps not, Bailey is

responding to the sarne panic that motivates conservative nationaliçts such as Dick Pound

and others.

7. Conclusion

As 1 have shown above, racism continues to inscribe itself in the national sponing

imaginary. In track and field, where the big stars are black and male, the way that track is

represented is very different fiom hockey. Whereas hockey is the timeless and essentially

Canadian core, track and field suggests a different temporality. This temporality is

influenced by a number of factors, not the least of which is the way the influence of

nation- state practices on blackness and its demand that it exists as a flexible labour

supply, as well as on Canadian fantasies of cleanliness, as witnessed through the analysis

of the Dubin Inquiry.

These discourses manifest themselves in a continued (re)-making of Ben Johnson

as the "ghost" that haunts the nation. The inability to forget Ben, or the injunction to

104 forgetfdiy remember hirn marks the limits of the nation. Remembe~-ing/forgettingBen is what marks the nation's boundaries and separates good fiom evil, pure fiom impure,

"Canada" fiom "immigrant." Thus, reading Donovan Bailey's performance is a very important piece of the puzzle- Bailey's performance does not rnitigate the racism of the press and public, nor does it in any way lessen Ben Johnson's status as a ghost. in fact,

Bailey's dissing of Ben is in fact what reproduces a manicheism between a good blackness and an uncanadian one.

Once again, there is an attempt to incorporate blackness into the nation, or the nationai Iandscape if you dl. However, what happens is that one kind of blackness becomes Canadian at the sarne time as another is pushed to the border, deported.

Injunctions by black Canadian sprinters to run clean are a gesture at erasing Ben Johnson.

Donovan Bailey's performance is evidence that to be Canadian is to dis Ben, or to forget him. In a sensz, forgetting Ben is similar to forgetting social problems, and the possibility of resistance.

But fiom an anti-racist perspective, this does not have to be the way it goes. To begin, one way to resist racism is to rernember Ben differently, which is to remember the hypocnsy and maliciousness of state officiais. In addition, this would also entail a refusai of the racist demand to dis Ben in order to be granted citizenship, or rights to the nation.

Refùsing to invoke Ben in such a fashion opens the door to imagining Canada differently, as was witnessed by Bailey's brief penod of solidarity. Such an imagination opens the door to making critiques of Canadian racism and capitalism.

105 Moreover, such an imagination offers the chance to develop creative spaces to understand blackness di fferently, whic h is my second point regarding anti-racist critique.

In other words, it must ailow us to deveIop strategies that continually resist the conflation of al1 black bodies into one - in this case the conflation of Bailey into Johnson and vice versa, Writing the nation differently means developing a way of conceiving and figuring blackness, or black subjectivity, that would resist simplifications and monosyllabic, or manichean versions. Res isting manicheism, the good-evi 1 dic hotorny, is crucial since the demand to be Canadian ofien rests on such binaries in order to secure itself. In the next chapter, 1 continue to examine blackness as it is performed in the Canadian sporting imaginary, with particular reference to basketball in Toronto. Chapter 4: Wlio Got Raptor Morufity and Bfack Public Masculinity in Toronto

1. Introduction

In the previous chapter, I andysed the way that certain discounes of crime and nationalism impacted upon the way that black masculinities are imagined in track and field.

Moreover, 1 suggested that these discourses were another way of pushing certain foms of blackness to the nation's margins. In this chapter, I continue to examine these themes, however the emphasis is on basketball. There are a couple of key areas in which this chapter diffes fiom the previous one. First, the shift fiom track and field to basketball involves the shift fiom thinking about largeiy individual to tearn sports. In addition, it involves thinking about die difference in the corporate character of both sports. At the highest level, in track and field, the ernphasis is not on Ieagues and tearns as much as it is on individual stars and national teams. In basketball, as is the case with other high profile tearn sports like hockey and football, the emphasis is on Ieagues and tearns.

While these two differences are more generic, the following are particularly important in ternis of the study of hlack masculinities in Canada. First, the kind of blackness at work in track and field is a largely Caribbean idected blackness. Moreover, it is safe to Say that a Caribbean presence in track and field is, in spite of media's discourses of resentment, somewhat organic to nation.99 This presence seems to meet the nation head on, and from there, there are attempts through the media and certain state oficials to circumscribe and

Canadian-ize these identities. The case of basketball is somewhat different, in that basketbail's imagined home is arnong biack populations in the United States. What this

1O7 rneans is that the dialogue about basketball, as 1 show in the early part of this chapter,

concerns the way that blackness has been received in relation to official naiiw-state practices

in Canada. These practices are similar to those we see in track and field, but equally

important are the discussions of hybridity within blackness that occur as the aesthetic and politics of a blackness highly mediated by the National Basketball Association migrate

northwards. These movernents have profound consequences for understanding the role of

black masculinities in (re)colouring the national landscape. IW

2. RaptorSpace

The end of the essential black subject also entails a recognition that the centrai issues of race always appear historically in articulation, in a formation, with other categories and divisions and are constantly crossed and re-crossed by the categories of class, gender and ethni~ity.'~'

As a way to begin a discussion on the (re)colouring of the national landscape in

Canada, 1 want to relate to you two phenomena in the recent history of basketball in Toronto.

This fust phenomena, or rather, vignette, is a page that appeared in the Toronto Star on

December 6, 1995. The page featured two stories wherein black men figure as the main characters. However, their realities, so we are told, could not have been more different. On

the top part of the page is a picture of Clinton Gayle, who as we saw in the previous chapter,

was convicted of shooting and killing Metropolitan Toronto Police Constable Todd Baylis.

The story tvas about the previous day's trial hearing, which featured the Meîro police officer

Michele Leone, Baylis' partner the night he was killed, pointing his finger at Gayle and

positively identifying him as the man who shot and killed Baylis. The Toronto Star noted that Leone's arm "shook" and his "fmger quivered" as he pointed to Gayle and identified him.

Moreover, during the moment that Leone identified Gayle, "the accused (Gayle) sat impassive in the prisoneis dock".

Beneath this story, another picture of a black man. !t is that of Sheldon Aberdeen, who died in his high school in Toronto'" of "an apparent heart condition" after a basketbdl practice. The Aberdeen story tells of the funeral held the day before. Moreover, the writer notes how, at the funeral, Aberdeen had been named an honourary mernber of the city's new

National Basketball Association (NBA) team, the Toronto ~a~tors.'"James Williams, the

Afi-ican Amencan CO-ordinatorof the Raptors community outreach, presented Aberdeen's family with a letter detailing such. In addition, the story noted that Aberdeen's family was presented with "an offkial basketbail, signed by al1 Raptor players."

The second phenornena has been commented on recently by Andrew ~homton,'~and involves a curious dialogue between geography, politics, blackness and history. Thomton pointed out the ironic fact that the site of the annual Raptorfest (a 3-on-3 tournament, hosted by the Raptors, which is largely becoming one of the most important (black) sports spectacles in Toronto) on University Avenue in fiont of the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), is the same stretch of turf as that which saw massive anti-racist resistance by members of Toronto's black community against the ROMfs 199 1 staging of the "Into the Heart of Afiica" exhibit. This protest went on for several days and culminated in the violent arrests of eleven protesters, al1 of whom were black, and their subsequent trial.'''

In beginning with these vignettes, 1 do not wish to speculate on the intentions of either

109 the Raptors, or the layoit people at the Toronto Star. instead, I want to use these examples

as illustrative of a process. This process exemplifies the struggle over who's got next nin in

terms of the representation of a black public masculinity in Toronto. 1 want to suggest that

both phenomena point to the place, and prominence, of the colour purpleio6 in the

(re)colouring of Toronto's landscape of blackness. In so doing, 1 hope to show how public

forms of racialized masculinity are tied to questions of capital accumulation, globaiization, and the quest for markets; and what this tells us about the limits, or borders, of the relations between Canadian nationalism, gender, and blackness. Moreover, 1want to make a political argument for a necessary suspicion and activkm against certain versions of Amencan imperid masculinity, regardless of colour.

1 organize this chapter as follows. First, I locate the emergence of the Raptors on to

Toronto's sporting scene; second?1 show how original notions of basketball as trouble help to fiame such a thing as a Raptor Morality; third, 1draw a connection between the successfiil staging of a public masculinity and the overall financial successes of the Raptors; fourth, 1 show how this relates to understandings of blackness in Canada, and moreover, how a "darker side of b~ack"'~~,cal1 it a certain form of Afiican Americana diaspora aesthetics, has settled into the Canadian landscape of muiticulturalism.

2. BasketbaZZ as a sport of dzrerence in Canada:

Et is important to locate the place that the Raptors rumbled into when they played their first basketball game in Toronto, at SkyDome, in November, 1995. Such an analysis may help give a background to how and why the Raptors market themselves as they do. It is fair to Say

110 that at the moment of theù first garne, the Raptors were not the most welcome bunch in town.

Despite the myth of origins that has basketball being invented by a Canadian, Dr. James

Naismith, basketball was seen by Toronto's sporting establishment as a sport of d&@ererencein

a "hockeytown".

There are other "important" Canadian sports, such as rowing, lacrosse, and curling.

But these exist on a second tier to hockey. There is, if you will, a third place (space?) of sports (basketball, track and field, boxing) in Canada. These sports, it could be argued, have only recently been on the medal podium in Canada because of their "colour". These "black" sports, by virtue of the fact that they are played by immigrants or by people who "look like"

immigrants, have largely been narrated as uncanadian sports. By extension, its participants have not been narrated within the national sporting iconography.

What this means is that athletes who accornplish in these sports are often seen, as opposed to reaffirming our Canadiamess, as a threat to it. Otherwise, their accomplishments are merely ignored. A few examples demonstrate this reality. With respect to black athletic accomplishrnents being ignored in these sports, 1 will cite two examples. First, witness the complaints made by members of Canada's Olyrnpic gold rnedal-winning 4 x 100 mens' relay team. These complaints centred around the fact that, in spite of reaching the pinnacle of their sport, something necessary to be attractive to advertisers, the team received hardly any advertising revenue. Second, witness the continuous migration of black athletes, which minors the migration of other black Canadian cultural producers, to the United States and/or

England in search of more support and recognition.'"

11 1 In addition to such athietes being simply ignored, there is another familiar pattern, which is that these same athletes are seen as threats and potentidly disruptive of the national sporting fabric. This is seen if we take a look at the "cornmon-sense ra~ist"'~understandings of basketball in recent years. In conjunction to basketbail's recent boom in popularity, there have been corresponding atternpts to demonize it, both officially and unofficially.

First, at the hi& school level, the meteoric rise in popdarity of hoops in Toronto has been met with various attempts at repression. For example, several school basketball prograrns have been shut down as principais cite basketball as a sport that is ungovernabIe.

In addition, there have been the inauguration of unprecedented "violence in sports workshops" that try to target and "tame" basketball's attitude. These workshops are ail the more bizarre given the fact that hockey, with its legendary violence, has historically merited no such conferences. In addition, in 1995, the Toronto Board of Basketbail officiais passed a series of restrictive des governing the conduct and dress of ballplayers, including such absurd regdations as prohibiting players fiom wearing cut-off T-shirts to games and preventing players from bumping chests after a basket.'1° In addition, some high schools prevent the attendance of fans at basketbail games owing to two incidents at high school games in the city."' Second, at the media level, there have been several articles on violence in basketball.

Articles cite the rise of the NBA and the antics of superstars like Dennis Rodman as being a bad influence on young boys.lt2 ui other cases, authors write about the good old days, before

West Indians played basketball in Toronto, as being safe and fkiendly."' Third, at the level of the Canadian National basketball team, Basketball Canada, in the winter of 1994, issued

112 a report exonerating Ken Shields of charges of racisrn. In its justification, the authors of the report explained that the lack of black ballplayers in Canada's national program, was not due to racist practices or beliefs within the national team, but rather, it was the result of black and

"inner-city" ballplayers inability to adapt to "Canadian" standards ofwhat basketball is like.""

In sum, these instances point to a general attempt by Toronto's sporting establishment(s) to narrate basketball as a sport ofboth difference and trouble within Canada's sporting cultures. lo addition, this degree of surveillance is worth commenting upon. These actions, most of which are highly extreme, demonstrate the extent to which racist fears and fantasies about blackness as trouble, structure the space that basketball operates in. As Judith

Butler suggests, these sentiments are deeply stnictured processes. Borrowing on the eariy work of Frantz Fanon, Butler (1993) narnes these feelings, which are psychic, but clearly influence economic and political terrains, "white paranoia." Moreover, she offers a more detailed explanation in the passage 1 cite below. Speaking specifically about how videotapes of the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police offices were manipulated by the presiding jury, so that the police were construed as victims, she notes (1993: 18):

In Fanon's recitation of the racist interpellation, the black body is circumscnbed as dangerous, prior to any gesture, any raising of the hand, and the infantilized white reader is positioned in the scene as one who is helpless in relation to that black body, as one defuiitionaily in need of protection by hisher mother or, perhaps, the police.

Butler's speculations can be applied to the context of the reception of basketbail in Toronto to help contextuaïize some of the more extrerne reactions. We may refer to "white paranoia" as an unconscious of iïâtion, and of race. As we saw in chapter one, the way that whiteness structures nation in evidence through the constant reference of hockey as under siege. These

sentiments are worth underlining as we loo~at the kind of rnorality that the NBA and

specifically the Raptors attempt to put forward.

3. Negotiating Difference: Introducing... - Your Toronto Raptors!

However, as we are dl aware, these efforts did not deter bailplayers, young and old,

male and female, black, white and other, from looking for the next nui. Far fiom being a

marginal or subaltem sport, basketball is leaping fonvard as the leading sport in a

cosmopolitan and multi-sport city. It is now a popular and big-time sport in both Toronto and

in its suburbs. The popularity of hoop cultural styles wom by young men and women,

regardless of their colour, is evidence of this growth. It is hard not to see young people wearing Nike, Reebok and other paraphemalia that signiQ basketbail ~ulture."~The popularity ofbasketball, as against histoncaily dominant sports like hockey or basebail, is also evident by the fact that Toronto's largest sporting spectacle of 1996 was not a hockey or baseball game, but it was the Toronto Raptors - Chicago Buils game on December 10,1996 at Skydome. Third, Toronto is gaining notoriety on the world basketball map, as seen in the signing of Trinidadian-born Torontonian Jamaal Magliore to the high-profile University of

Kentucky basketball program; the staging of the World Championship of Basketbail in

Toronto in 1994; and the first Nike "Exposure Camp", recently held in Scarb~rough."~

As a long-time basketbail fan, these changes are exciting and inspiring. Yet this growth is not without its tensions. Pnmarily, there is a tension around what kind(s) of black public masculinity idare possible in Toronto. Part of this tension is informed by the ''white

114 paranoiay' 1 spoke about. There has been a price to pay for the rise of popularity of hoops in

Toronto. This plice is a result of the negotiation of dzrerence that informs basketbalI1s

movement fiom a sport of difference to the coolest game on the block. What 1mean is that

at the same time as the sport of basketbal1 has taken off and is enjoying immense popularity

in Toronto and beyond, we have seen a new discourse ernerging around basketball and black

public masculinities which have replaced, or overlaid, what could be called indigenous forms

of representation. This new discourse is what I am calling Raptor Morality, as seen in the

place of the Raptors in both vignettes 1began with. This is in large part, a rnorality rooted in

ritualistic, Afican Amencan bourgeois aesthetic and politics; moreover it represents a

hardening or petrification of the political possibilities of black public masculinity. 1 will explain.

4. "This is a public service announcement, paid for by the MA..... "

In both vignettes 1recounted above, what is crucial about the Raptor is that it acts as the neighbour, or border, to conventional representations of blackness, as trouble; in both cases, the Raptor can be seen as allaying or responding to racist fears about "violent" black masculinities. The public positioning of the Raptor as a border is revealing since it accords with histoncal practices of simultaneously narrating black subjects as both "noble savage and vengefui warrior" (Hall, 1988).

Aberdeen's appearance on the same page as the pervasive face of the "cop-killer","' or the gangsta, is suggestive of this bordering. In contrast to Gayle, Aberdeen is narrated as the good kid who worked hard. It is for this reason that the Raptors choose to immortalize

115 him. The placement of Aberdeen into the Raptor family, by virtue of making him an honourary Raptor, the first and only such designation to my knowledge, is typified by comments made at his fimeral. According to the Toronto Star:

Williams said the teen's life mirrored his own and that of Raptor general manager Isiah Thomas, who both came fiom poor families in Chicago, but through their drearns and aspirations overcame their hardships.

The story continues to quote Williams, who said of Aberdeen, that "his spirit and what he exemplified in his character are examples of what we want the team to be." in addition to the words of the Williams, Aberdeen's teacher, Neil Langley, is quoted as saying that Aberdeen was "generous and honourable and cared about others-" In this case, the syrnbolic Linking of

Aberdeen, hard work and basketball is symptornatic of a Raptor Morality in the making,

(Imagine the Raptors' community out-reach CO-ordinatorattending the Gayle hearing!) The positioning of the Raptors at Aberdeen's fimeral attests to the fact that in order to establish themselves, there is a certain kind of community they have in mind. This community is not simply "black", but rather it is community of hard-workers, and good students who are black.'18 The Raptors' presence at the Aberdeen fimerai tells us something about the kind of

black public masculinity that will fit within their project.

In the second case, the dialogue between the Raptorfest and the protests by the

Coalition for the Truth about Afnca (CFTA) against the ROM can be seen as a metaphor of the struggle of what public displays of black masculinity are possible. The Raptorfest -

replete with biow-up Raptors and booths selling products made by Nike, KFC and Gatorade -

is a two day advertisement~camivaifor the Toronto Raptors. This past year, over 600 teams participated, which equates to ahost 2000 players, mostly black and male. The games, especially the better ones, were very well attended, as were such events like the slam-dunk cornpetition and the three-point shootout.

Whether the choice of venue on the part of Raptors was conscious or not, the fact is that the steps of the ROM are familiar terrain to many anti-racist activists in the city.

Moreover, the ironic fact that the turf in front of the ROM saw both one of the most charged anti-racists protests the city has seen, and one of the most Milgar displays of (black) capitalism

underscore the tension 1 spoke of earlier, and stress with incredible gravity, how important

the next run is.It9 In the case of the Raptors, it seems they are ody willing to sponsor black

nuis buttressed by corporate heavyweights and without the siightest hint of an anti-racist, or

ad-capitalist sensibility.

In some respects, Raptor Morality is not new. It is a fairly longstanding way of

representing black masculinity within capitalist sporting cultures, especially those south of

the border. Specifically, Raptor Morality is an example of an aesthetic of black masculinity

popularized recently in the documentary Hoop Dreams and in fictional films such as White

Men Can't Jump. This aesthetic ties together notions of capitalism, black masculinity, a failed

nuclear family, basketball and an inner-city. "O The kind of black man the Hoop Dreams

aesthetic puts forth is a determined one who is fiercely individualistic and committed to the

dream of "making it" through the brutal channels of professional sports. Regarding Hoop

Dreams, bel1 hooks (1995: 23) notes that "(u)ltirnately, Hoop Dreams offers a consenrative

vision of the conditions of 'making it' in the United States."

117 In addition, what centres, or grounds this aesthetic is the belief in the redemptive values of cornpetitive individualisrn. hooks (1995:23) goes on to Say, in describing the attitudes of one of the main characters in the documentary:

An almost reIigious belief in the power of competition to bring success permeates American life. The ethic of competition is so passionately upheld and valued in (Arthur) Agee's family that it intensifies the schism between him and his dad.

In place of collective stmggle to combat the nightmares of racism, police bmtality and class exploitation, the Raptors offer a Hoop Dream. This Morality is oriented to individualistic and liberai-humanist ideds of comrnunity. In contrast to popuiar assurnptions about the redemptive or cornmunitarian ideals of such dreams, hooks (1995) refers to this particular subjectivity as holding on to "dreams of conquest."

Moreover, Raptor Morality does not operate solely within Toronto, but is exemplary of a kind of morality that the NBA uses to market and sel1 its product. In fact, this process is not an accidental one, but it is highly calculated. Lindon Barrett, via a reading of Dennis

Rodrnan's autobiography, Bad As I Wanna Be, suggests that this has to do with the fact that the NBA must allow for the representation of young black males, who are presumed to be icons of trouble, in what Rodman cails "the most positive light." Barrett continues by elaborating how this process works. He notes that (1997: 108):

the NBA trafEcs indefatigably in heroism made to confom to the rnost proprietary standards. Heroisrn, as it is carefulIy and lucratively managed by the NBA, as well as US.moral and commercial culture, enforces market-driven colonizations of desire (and representation).

Barrett's suggestions are vital here, and help to contextualize some of the ways in which the Toronto Raptors appear in the public imagination. Notwithstanding the United States- centrisrn of Barrett, certain realities are nonetheless at play. Raptor Morality, then is not rnerely a Toronto phenomenon, but it operates both in relation to the more locai cultural politics of Toronto, as well as within the burdensome morality proffered by the NBA. This morality, and the fact that it "enforces market-driven colonizations of desire" means that cliches and stereotypes hold a much greater significance, as do fantasies of accumulation.

Moreover, in the context of Barrett's discussion of Rohan, these fantasies reinforce heterosexual codes of conduct. According to Barrett (ibid: 108):

These colonizations - given their way - wodd reduce desire in al1 its material, imaginary and symbolic manifestations to a narrow set of calculable, idealized civilities and afXabilities ultirnately resolving themselves in the "heterosexual space ,.. as an inviolate sanctuni."

In the context of Toronto, Barrett's suggestions are helpful in gaining a sense of the politics of the Raptors, and the making of Raptor Morality, in the past few years. It is this moraliw, this dreamhision of blackness, that the Raptors, in attending Sheldon Aberdeen's funeral, hope to establish in Toronto. This is Merexemplifieci in the efforts of the Raptor

Foundation, a very public organization designed to help prornote the Raptors in the city. In one of their most recent events, a press conference for the NBA Tearn Up program, Damon

Stoudarnire, Raptors' superstar fiom 1995 to 1997, was quoted as saying: "you gotta work hard and stay out of trouble if you want to be suc~essful."'~'These invocations suggest the extent to which this phenomenon is both Ieague wide and local.

4 Raptor Moraiity and the cornmodzjîcution of public blackness Recently, commentators have discussed the commodification of blackness as a conternporary feature of black popular culture.'" in sports, this is evident given the multi- million dollar salaries and shoe contracts paid out to black players, coaches, broadcasters et cetera. One of the piayers at the forefiont of this commodification of blackness has been the

NBA, which markets a certain kind of blackness as entertainment, and does so with immense skill. IUOne of the things that distinguishes the NBA is its community outreach programs and its emphasis on fun for "the entire family." More than any other league, the NBA tries to, and has thus far been successful, in marketing itself as everybody's sport.

There is a curious element to this phenornenon; which is that the NBA is an ahost ail-black league in a racist culture."* It may follow therefore that this sport wouid be marginalized and literally seen as a sport of difference. However as we have seen, this is not the case. 1 want to suggest that the phenornenon of the success of the Raptors and the NBA is possible not so much a result of a tidal wave of anti-racism in Amenca and Canada, but rather due to the NBA's skilful troping of the Hoop Dreams aesthetic, and/or its cultivation of the Hoop Dreamer. The Raptors' success attests to the ways in which forms of capital have relied on pop cultural notions ofblackness to sel1 an image to everyone, regardless of anyone's

Ievel of race consciousness. While this formula for success ctearly motivates al1 sports franchises, the case of Toronto poses particular challenges to the marketing project of the

NBA. This is so since Toronto is perhaps the first hockeytown the NBA has corne to. in other words, the NBA could not simply rely on an indigenous "base" of basketbail fans to corne to the games in Toronto. For this reason, the Raptors' public profile is al1 the more

120 important, and may help to explain the tireless efforts of the Raptor Foundation as opposed to that of other pro sports clubs in the city. As a result of basketbaIlls initial representation as a sport of difference, the cultivation of the Hoop Drearner becomes al1 the more imperative to establishing the Raptors in the city.

In order to get a handle on this, some of the work of James Baldwin is suggestive. In an essay on the Arnerican Liberal passion for black suffering entitled "EverybodylsProtest

Novel", Baldwin (1955) suggested that while the figures of Bigger Thomas and Uncle Tom may seem opposite characters in the legend of American fiction, the reverse is tme. In both cases, the black man in the fiction is a Puritan character who draws empathy, but in many senses, is a parody. Baldwin's critique is that what lies at the core of the reproduction of these images is the Arnerican racist (1 might add capitalist) passion for simplicity which supersedes a desire to live an anti-racist politics.

Moreover, it is no secret that capitalism and anti-racism have contradictory logics.

One, to put it simply, sees life as essence and the other seeks to argue against essence. What this means is that in order for the Raptors to self tickets, they must market a certain version of black public masculinity which accords with the ngid (essentialist) caricatures of black masculinity popular in racist American fiction. Thus, the Raptors supply a clear demand among sports consumers for drarna, pathos, and notions of the good. In an almost clear cut case, the Raptors have to produce a kind of commodified public black rnasculinity ti:~tit is firmly rooted within Arnerican (or Americanadian) liberal notions of what blackness is really like - the kind that brought forward such iconic figures as Bigger and Tom. As evidenced in

121 the Aberdeen fimeral and the Raptorfest, the apolitical, or rather, conservative Hoop Drearner becomes consumable to everyone.

Specifically, what that has meant given the historical ways of representing blackness in colonialism, is that the Raptor Morality, or the Raptors version of blackness is reliant on the classical manicheism of the good NegroBad Negro. In addition to the two vignettes 1 began with, this is seen in the representation of two players who were on the team's L 996-97 roster. For exarnple, there is the character of Carlos Rogers, who is continually representing himself as a good Christian who believes its vital to care for farnily and is not really concemed with money. In the case of Rogers, he was front-page news in the winter of 1997-8 when the

Raptors revealed that his sister Renee, was dying of cancer, and Carlos had offered to give hic kidney in order for Renee to remain alive. Renee Rogers was too sick to receive a kidney transplant and she died shortly afterwards. What was remarkable is the extent to which

Rogers' grieving was so public. The day after Renee's death, both the Toronto Star and

Toronto Sun carrïed front page pictures of Carlos crying at the news of his sister's death.

In contrast, there is the character of Marcus Carnby, who is represented, by both the

Raptors and the mainstream press, as the brother who just can't get it together. Camby's public masculinity is constantly narrated (by himself and by media) as that of a wiId man. In an act resembling the spirit of the Million Man March, Carnbÿ recently heId a press conference to issue an apology to the Raptors and fans of Toronto for his excesses. which include the not uncommon practice of receiving gifts and sleeping with several prostitutes while he was a star player at the University of Massachusetts. Camby's desire for atonement,

132 Rogers' patience through suffering, and the prevalence of patriarchal farnily values, as seen in the ubiquitous presence of Isiah Thomas organizes these sentiments are signposts of a

Raptor Morality, and, represent historically conservative (self)-representations of blackness.

It's important to understand that, within the context of the Toronto sporting scene, these kinds of dramas are particular to the Raptors. Many other Toronto sports heroes have had similar personal tragedies and private troubles, yet their troubles are not those which frame their public masculinities for al1 to see. While we must clearly note the double standard, 1 want to point out that the Raptors, at least as far as the management goes, under general manager Isiah Thomas,are perfectly at home with these representations. In both cases

1 cited above, it is the Raptors who issue press releases to announce these e~ents."~

The spectacles of the Raptors, however "private" they may appear, are in fact very public affairs. For example, both Renee Rogers' death and Carnby's repentance, mented staged events held by the Raptors at the team's headquarters. Also, the Raptors were responsible for issuing initial press releases that broke both stones. This tells us that not only are Raptor athletes hyper-visibIe (this is true of many sports stars) but that the Raptor's

"private" troubles are everybody's business and are disseminated often by the team itself. This space, which aIlows sports consumers to "know" the Raptors, to know Carlos and Marcus, is a cruciai component of selling the Raptors. Given that the Raptors are doing business in a

(dying?) hockeytown, it is not enough for the Raptors to pIay good ball. In this sense they must present a story which is tangible to be held by its fans, black and white. It is this story, this Hoop Dreams aesthetic, which draws heavily on anthropological traditions of voyeurisrn,

123 or gazing at the other, that accounts for the exceedingly "private" nature of the Raptors' public travails.

5. Dreams of AmeriCanada: Biackness, nation. and the public sphere

Understanding the establishment of a Hoop dreams aesthetic, or Raptor morality in

Toronto, is important for two reasons. It is important to pay attention to the kind of blackness that the Raptors attempt to narrate and locate this process within the history of Canadian attempts to write black experiences out of the nation. Such a placement suggests that there is a link between state narratives of blackness and the cultivation of the Hoop Dreamer.

Second, it shows the extent to which capitd is informed and organized through conventional notions of blackness. 1want to suggest that there is a connection between the whiteness of official narratives of Canada and the establishment of a Raptor Morality. It is important to do some contextuaiizing here.

The media representations of Clinton Gayle is an example of this process. Gayle's

Jarnaican heritage was not missed by crime reporters in the city as another instance of the crime-Jamaica connection. Moreover. the constant naming of Gay le as a "cop-killer", the name of the infamous rap song by bIack Amencan artist Ice-T, helps to locate him as both outside and exterior to nati~n."~While this is done in the Arnerican and Canadian contexts regulariy, its effects when done in Canada is to re-enforce the idea that black folks are not

Canadian, Gayle is framed as either Jamaican or American; he is out-law, external to the boundaries of the nation.

Such representations, unless challenged, make the space of black public masculinity

124 very narrow. Adherence to such representations is an admission of the impossibility of black public masculinity in Toronto to have something which it can truly cal1 its own. While 1 do not wish to argue for essentialism here, f want to stress that such a belief?or memory of what being a black man in Toronto is, necessarily must erase, or forget other stones of blackness.

For example, histones of struggle (e.g. the CFTA protests; resistance to racist cops in

Toronto). Further, it erases the muitiplicity, and the contradictions of black experiences in

Toronto, and what these mean in tems of identity for the city of Toronto and anyone who lives inhith it.

The fact that btackness in Canada, and in this case black masculinity, is seen as the border on the public sphere, in effect makes the black public sphere in Canada almost a no- man's land. This is seen both in terms of the rarity of images in civil society of black men, but also in the paucity of such images within the Canadian public sporting sphere. The fact that "official" Canadian sporting culture is a white thing, whereby images of the land are tied to the bodies of white men and women, means that one of the other predominantly visual places of black public masculinity, which is sports, is aiso absented fiom the oficial narrative of the nation.

The cultural void opens up a space for black masculinities to corne forward, but ai1 too often these are highly Arnericanized models, given assumptions about the presumed "organic" connection between America and blackness. This situation can be seen if we look at the example of the popular appeal of the Raptors vice-president and general manager, Isiah

Thomas. Thomas' appeal is widespread, as evidenced by bis current status as somewhat of

125 a dariing among the Canadian business media, among the sporting establishment in Toronto, and in his appeal to members of the black community in Toronto. Moreover, in Aprïl, 1997 during a furore over claims made by Cito Gaston about racist media in Toronto, it was Isiah who was quoted as saying that Toronto was not racist for him. Thomas' positioning, both by himself and the media is interesting given his status as someone who does not live in Toronto, but cornmutes by plane fiom Detroit. While the history of black Amencan sporting stars actually locating in Toronto is rare, and treated with surprise by members of the media, this reality is telling about the make-up of black popular culture in Toronto.

Thomas' contradiction of Gaston's claims is concurrent with a Canadian practice of

"irnporting",.* American blacks to police and discipline black Canadian foms of protest. "'

Such an effect can only occur given the void that obtains with respect to blackness in Canada.

This transplanted feel can be seen if we look at the vignettes 1 began with. In both the

Aberdeen funeral and the Raptorfest, experiences of black rnasculinity in Toronto are read through the Amencan lens of the (carkaturing) Hoop Dream. By contrast. both the CFTA protests and the reality of the Clinton Gayle trial, if taken seriously, force us to examine the very foundation of what Canada is and what it has historically meant for nonwhite peoples.

To Raptor-ize the Sheldon Aberdeen fimeral is a way of writing over a certain version of

Canadian history. Such a tension, between the borders of blackness and the borders of the nation, attests to the stmggle over who has the next run in the city, and moreover, to the fundarnentally political nature of such a stmggle. It appears that the Raptors themselves are content to overiay Canadian histones of blackness, and in so doing, see/promote life as a

126 Hoop Dream as their way of "cementing"themselves to the nation's playgro~nds."~

Alas, it seems more "Canadian" to borrow an Amencan version of blackness, that of the Hoop Drearner, than to probe (and pose) the question of what it means to be black in

Canada. This tells us something about how current black public masculinities are imagined in Canada, and points to what may be a shifi in the contours of such an imagining. Moreover, it points to an all-too familiar process of what Car1 James (1 997b) calls "going south" by sporting fans and athletes in this city, for representations of black masculinity, and it points to the importance of the fann-team statu of blackness which 1 spoke of in chapter one. The success of the Hoop Dreams narrative, now remade as Raptor Morality and embodied in the representation of the success of Isiah Thomas as anti-dote to the gangsta, is evidence of three things: first, the inability of Canadian state narratives to produce local versions of black masculuiity; second, the power of certain kinds of blackness to travel across borders with greater ease than others; and last but definitely not least, the cultural politiss of young black men who take up this Raptor Morality. It is to this Iatter process that i tuni.

6. Playhg with Modernity: Rapror Morality and the new Black nation

In this section, 1want to make an attempt at explaining why and how Raptor Moraiity has rooted itself in Canada, or at least Toronto, with a particular focus on the practices of young black fans and ballplayers in the ~ity.''~In this regard, I take my cue fiorn Homi

Bhabha (1994), whose work we have been exposed to in previous chapters. Bhabha's claims

that discourses of the nation are only possible both through the pedagogical instruction to "be

a national citizen" are once again important here. Thus, nationalism is onIy possible through

127 the repetition of the rituals of nationdisrn. If these rituals are interrupted, and they ofien are, they reveal the limits of the modem nation. As an example, the historical marginalization of nonwhite peoples in Canada's official narrative, and the practices of many nonwhite

Canadians which are counter to the xlarrative represent "this process of splitting" that Bhabha talks about. Ln that sense, the nation's borders are revealed, and other cultural possibilities are engendered.

However, the success and the institutional soIidity of the Raptors, as embodied in their huge following by young fans, black and white, point to another process that we need to pay attention to. That process is that of another nation-building project, that being the familiar

imperialistic variety known as Americanisrn. While it is clear that blacks have historically been written out of the officiai text that is Canada, the Raptors represent the most successhl attempt to date to wnte them in. However, the narration that the Raptors are involved in is that of a new black nation; and, more to the point, its American! Thus, in reading Bhabha's observations about performativity through the lens of black aspirations to modemity, we must

re-think the perhrmance of Raptor fans as evidence of a persistent socid desire to redraw

national boundaries.

Thus, given that it is only through the willingness of young brothers to perform a

certain blackness which corresponds to that sanctioned through the Hoop Dreamer, something

evident in gyms throughout the city, 1 want to suggest that paying attention to the bourgeois

revoiution of blackness, embodied in the entrenchment of a certain class of black folks in

Canada and the United States, is crucial to understanding the success of the Raptors.'j0 We

128 cannot simpiy read the Raptors success as either attributable to a wave of anti-racism, as 1 stated earlier, nor can we read it soiely tfirough Bhabha's fkmework. The margins of the modem nation. sornething that Bhabha astutely pointed us to, is not in this case the place where yomg black fms are asking what is this nation al1 about, but rather, it seems to be the place that is now implicated in another nation.

in placing Raptor Morality within the narrative of black capitalism, or modernism, some of the work of Arjun Appadurai is suggestive. More specifically is his discussion of cricket in the former British Empire. In discussing the way that cricket becarne hegemonic in India, Appadurai suggests that the ability of colonized subjects in hdia to play the garne of the colonizers affords a certain power. He writes (1997: 106):

Transformed into a national process by the process of spectacle... cricket has become a matter of mass entertainment and rnobiiity for some.

Appadurai's Iinking of sports and subalten rnasculinity is suggestive and can be translated to the context of the Raptors. As 1 stated earlier, the Raptors' success is clearly wrapped up with young black males identifj4ng and performing the dream of "going south" both literaily and figuratively. This process, of looking south, is the performance and repetition of a certain notion of identity, namely a bourgeois African Amencan version of blackness. Moreover, it does accord with a hierarchy of blackness, where many folks assume that the United States is the center of blackness. Thus, being a Raptor fan, for many, is to participate in an Amencan way of seeing and understanding basketball and blackness. In other words, it attests to a kind of rnobility which is contingent on the discursive power of blackness in the United States. Moreover, it is a way of responding to the whiteness of

Canada's official narrative.

This is so for two reasons. First, this is true given what has been said earlier about the incompatibility of discourses of Canadiana and blackness. Second, it shows up the weakness of narratives of Canadian nationdism to interpellate large sections of the Canadian public.

One of the curioiis features of Canadian nationalism is its inability to speak to its many citizens, often for reasons of class (whereas the most ardent nationdist assume bourgeois or petty bourgeois positions) and for reasons of its whiteness. Thus the yeamings of young

Torontonian Hoop Drearners are not unlike the actions of a number of Canadians. However, it is worth noting that there is a clear power dynamic within which this works. This power dynamic is both liberating and constricting. Here, it is important to consider the way it works in relation to nationdism and masculinity. Speaking about this dynamic, Appadurai (1 997:

1 1 1 :my emphasis) notes:

But because cricket, through the enormous convergence of state, media, and private- sector interests, has corne to be identified with "India," with "Indian" skill, "Indian" guts, "lndian" tearn spirit, and "Indian" victories, the bodily pleasure that is at the core of the male viewing experience is simultaneously part of the erorics of nationhood.... The erotic pleasure of watching cricket for lndian male subjects is the pleaszwe of ugency in an imagined cornmunity, which in many other arenas is violently contested.

Appadurai's insights are helpfid here since they point to one of the ways that transborder sporting cornmunities are made. More specifically, they point to how impcrtant capitdist foms of sporting spectacle are to questions of identity. It should not surprise us that this is equally true for white folks and black folks. For Appadurai, initiation into the sporting imagined community is a bodily and erotic experience which allows sports enthusiasts a chance to play with the "means of modernity". If we substitute the word "Indian" with the word "bIackn in the above quote, we get a sense as to how Raptor MoraIity works and what tropes it relies on. In many representations, notions of skill, guts, and tearn spirit are presented by the Raptors as elements of black style."' Thus, the performance of Raptor

Morality is a performance of blackness, the same kind of blackness, or more specifically the same kind of sporting black masculinity embodied in Sunset Park, Boyz N the Hood et cetera.

The Raptors are drawing on the immense popularity of basketball throughout the world which is discemible by a few signal events. In the case of basketball, the success of

Dream Team 1992; the immense popularity and wealth of stars like Jordan, Pippen, Rodman and Shaq, are signs of the success of a bourgeois revohtion of black public masculinity. This reality is a new (modernist) configuration of blackness. Such hi& profile successes, dong with the immense popularity of Isiah Thomas as general manager of the Raptors across the sporting spectrum in Toronto, suggest that the attempts by young brothers to perforrn Raptor

Morality in gyms throughout the city is partIy about power. The desire to be "like Mike" is, in the words of Appadurai, a desire to partake in the "erotics of (black) nationhood".

By virtue of Canadian fears about blackness and black presences within the national borders, it should perhaps corne as no surprise that the kind ofblackness that would settle here would be a very conservative one,"' which is reliant on a series of tropes about what blackness is "really like". However, the possibility of an Arnerican modernist version ofblack masculinity settling in Toronto, and the ease in which it is reproduced arnong black fans in

131 the city, indicates the power of hegemonic and imperialistic notions of blackness, which the

Raptors are reproducing in their marketing of the team. The strength of the Raptors' success underscores the power that capitalist sporting institutions hold in the (re)fonnation of national identity.

7. Conclusion

The batîle over who's got the next nin in Toronto continues. 1 have shown that this is a political battle, and its victory will signal the triurnph of a neo-conservative version of black modemism. The Raptors have Ianded on to the cityscape in a very permanent way. Yet we must be careful not to celebraie the arrivai of the NBA to Toronto as the epiphany of

"integration" of the national sporting landscape. Rather, by paying attention to the place of the Raptors, namely, where and how we see purple, we may understand their attempts at permanence as attempts to overlay black Canadian histones and stmggles.

In place of what Dionne Brand calls the "tough geography""' that is Canada for many black people, the Raptors provide the blacktop, and the myth of the Hoop Drearner. In this regard, the Raptor Morality is ruled by what Baldwin called "a theology of terror". Houston

Baker, cornmenting on Baldwin's insights, notes (199527) that this theology "reduces black humanity to a cipher; a will-less Christian thing incapable of resisting even its own denigration." Concomitant with this myth is the conservatism dispiayed in such admonitions as "stay in school", "say no to drugs" et cetera. Thus the Raptor. appearing when and how it does, is the attempt to (re)colour the national landscape by means of replacing one

Arnericanism - the nightmare of the 'hood, with another - the hoop dream. In both cases,

132 indigenous Canadian black masculinities are overlaid, thus keeping within official narratives which name the nation white. in addition, politicai forms of resistance. something indigenous to black Canada if nothing else, is overlaid. Thus, it is hard to cal1 the Raptors' arrivai in

Toronto something which helps cements a positive blackness on the sporting landscape.

Moreover, there are some interesthg conclusions to make if we consider the similarities at play between track and field and basketball. In both cases, the policing and manichean presentation of blackness in Canada continue. However, here, we see the importance of the way that blackness is also stnictured within a hierarchy dong the United

States-Canada border. This phenornenon demonstrates the way that this hierarchy works in conjunction to structure the dreams and aspirations of young black men in Toronto. In this sense, the arriva1 of the Toronto Raptors seems to underline the tension and the stmggie to politicdly embody the "essential black subject" that Hall spoke of. This struggle is a testament to the importance of Hall's work, and as we move to the next chapter, we can see again how it works in the case of professional football in Canada. Chapter 5: Scrambling through the Black Atlantic: Black Quarterbacks and Antericanada

I. introduction:

As I suggested in the conclusion of the previous chapterr the work of Stuart Hall is important work in thinking through black mascuiinitles in Canada. Given that what he referred to as the struggle to embody the essential black subject is fkaught in al1 sorts of ways,

Hall articulated a position against it. Following in the tradition of black anti-essentialists such as C.L.R. James, Frantz Fanon, Audre Lorde, and Edouard Glissant, Hall's work (especiaily the cited essay) is usefui to thinking about the problematic of football and quarterbacking that

1 raise in this chapter. This is the case since Hall's work pays attention to the perils of the persistent fantasies of unanimity within black popular culture. As we saw in our dismssion of the NBA, this is clearly a political struggle, and one that folks should be engaged in. But in addition, there is a particular way that discourses of Canadiana are also implicated in these processes.

First, there is the question of the way that rnost official or common-sense representations of Canada allow for a forgetting of black and First Nations presences here.

Second, there are a senes of strategies and processes that emerge in response to these absences, some of which are seen in the examples of Herb Carnegie, Donovan Bailey, and young Hoop Dreamers in Toronto. In the following chapter, another problematic emerges.

Whereas in the previous chapter, 1examined questions ofthe translation of foms of Amencan blackness mediated through the NBA, in this chapter 1 read a more minontarian form of

Amencan blackness and examine what this means for sporting cultures and black masculinity

134 in Canada. Specifically, 1 discuss the black American quarterback to raise questions about hybridity and essentialism.

2. Theories of racial stacking

in sports sociology and history, one of the predominant ways that blachess in sports is taken up is through the study of racial stacking. For those damiliar with the term, racial stacking is the process of segregating players in sports based on race or perceived racial characteristics. More specifically, it involves moving white pIayers to positions that are named as "mental" (for example the quarterback in football, the catcher in baseball, and the coach in al1 sports). As well, the process of stacking involves moving black players from these positions to "physical" or "athletic" positions, such as outfielder in baseball, wide receiver in football. So typicaliy, most of the quarterbacks in football are white, and most running backs and receivers are black. This process has rightiy warranted a literature that studies racial stacking and attempts to document instances of stacking and how frequently it occurs. This literature, which examines the racialized division of labour in sports such as football and baseball, expands on some of the early work done in the field of the sociology of race and sports by people such as Harry Edwards, who detailed the ways in which black athletes were marginalised in the apparatus of professional and United States collegiate sports.

While important, thliterature has severe limitations. First, it can only be descriptive in nature; as such, it offers very Little to the reader except to show what we already kmw, that sports, like al1 institutions in racist culture, is ruled by racist paradigms and structures the world according to Enlightenment/colonialistdivisions of physicality and rationality. Second,

135 it puts fonvard very little in terms of concrete strategies for change, other than for us to recognize that stacking exists and then to put our energies towards disproving the racist hierarchy in place, or making "progress". In other words, it operates with an integrationist assumption at its core. This assumption is that sports is necessarily a fair place wherein ultimately, the best man will win and the best players at every position will be duly rewarded.

Or, within the opportunist logic of pro sports, coaches and managers are sornetimes willing to forget racism in the interests of winning.

A third limitation of the literature is that it remains frozen in time. In remaïning focussed on pointing out instances of racism in athletics, the literature has not been able to accommodate or engage with feminist and queer interventions in black popular culture that argue that racism is not the only unequal social relation at work in contemporary society.

Therefore, the literature cannot begin to help us think about how racism, sexism and heterosexism intersect. As such, it becomes reduced to repeating the sarne mono-causal view of the social again and again without turning its gaze on to more rnessy political realities.

One of the key sites where the debate about racial stacking is played out is vis-a-vis the football quarterback. The exclusion of black quarterbacks in the collegiate and United

States professional sports is well known and has been well documented.'" With specific reference to the question of black quarterbacks, and with an eye on the limitations of the stacking literature for contemporary political concerns, the following is a meditation on the phenornenon of black quarterbacks, the current political context and the histoncal and sociological enterprise. Specifically, 1 mean to ask about the meaning and value of recent

136 nostalgic attempts to search for bIack pioneers at the position of quarterback. Even more specificaliy, 1 want to ask about the timing of such desires. Why now? Why in such a fashion? How do we go about undertaking such a project? And, with my eyes always focussed on the political, which routes are opened and which are closed in doing so?

Two current phenornena are worth detailing to begin my discussion. The first is the general emergence of black quarterbacks as a regular feature in professional and collegiate football in the United States. This emergence is significant given the historical exclusions that black quarterbacks have faced in these organizations. In the National Football League

(NFL), young stars such as Kordell Stewart and Steve McNair represent what we could cal1 s "golden age" of black NFL quarterbacks. In addition, the United States collegiate football industry, grouped together under the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), now features many black quarterbacks. In 1998, for the first tirne, the two top-rated quarterbacks in pre-season polls in the NCAA were black: Dante Colpepper of Syracuse University and

Donovan McNab of Central Flonda University.'" These realities point to a shifi in football demographics and ask us to give pause when considering the racial stacking literature. While these shifis do not point to the eradication of racism, they do suggest a major revision in thinking is necessary, one that cannot be accomplished through the manichean logic of the stacking literature.

The second phenomenon is of a more political nature, and it has do with the way black masculinity is represented in the post Civil Rights-era both in Canada and the United States.

This representation features a rush to "unanimism", or oneness (Hountondji, 1983) which

137 seeks to canonize and reify categories of black mascuiinity- This kind of black masculinity can be seen in people like Reggie White, Louis Famakhan, Michael Jordan, and Spike Lee.

Albeit varïed, this politics privileges a black community (read: black heterosexual patriarchy) and yearns for its renaissance and stable maintenance as the most urgent and pressing sociai and political task. This is exemplified in the recent work of Reggie White, a star defensive end for the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers, who has been an outspoken advocate in United States national campaigns against same-sex rights in that country.

In terms of its aesthetics, these politics are minimalist, restrained and Puritan. This can be seen if we think about how images of Jordan and Farrakhan pnvileges what could be called a denial of the body or the denial of blackness. in the case of Farrakhan, think about the requisite uniform for men in the Nation of Islam and their suits and bow ties. In Jordan's case, his aesthetics is signified by his shaved head and steady diet of Armani suits and also, in his monotone, rneasured patterns of speech and his avowedly apolitical nature.

Minimalism, restraint and Puritanism. What is ironic here is that as well as being quintessentially bourgeois characteristics (black or white), these are also the traits that define the essential quarterback, at least as they have been historically narrated at the level of the

NFL. The quarterback, as we know, is often seen as more than merety an athlete. He occupies a highly valued cultural position. in the United States, the quarterback is the "field general", part politician, part military hero, part colonialist al1 wrapped in one? For these reasons there has been historical discrimination in the NFL to keep the quarterbacking ranks lily white. in addition to that, quarterbacking styles are defined by absence of physicality as

138 it were. Stand in the pocket, do not nui, and do not let reason override passion. Much like the bourgeois,

Perhaps there is no correlation at dl between the emergence of more black quarterbacks and the emergence of neo-conservative forms of black masculinity put forward in the public sphere. Perhaps there is. In any case, I think the imaginative work in sports and cultural studies has to do with linking sports to the "outside world". Thus, 1 want to read black desires for Amencan quarterbacking success in light of the right-wing trend in black gender politics in general. 1do so hoping that we may question these desires and ask whether or not politically and intellectually, these are the most challenging and sustaining positions to take in light of the current economic and politicai crisis. In other words, my question is this: Does what bel1 hooks (1991) cd1 the comrnodification of blackness, or what we might more aptly cal1 the Nike-fication of black mascuiinities, have an effect on what we see as the possible political subject positions that circumscribe black masculinity?

2. black public masculiniîy: petrification and post-modernity

While it may be premature to Say that the position of quarterback is "integrated", it is clear, as 1 showed above, that stacking is not the modus operandi for many tearns and organizations today. This may be due to a form of capitalist oppomuiism that is no longer possible to deny, or whatever. However, the shifi rneans that the documentation of racial stacking is incomplete and prevents a discussion of the politics of peopIe like Reggie White

for exarnple. Therefore, the question becomes: who benefits by the reproduction of the

stacking literahiw: who benefits by telling a story that is in large part fdse or at least highly

139 distorted? To help contextualize such a discussion, it is important to place the literature on stacking within the larger questions of blackness and debates on mascuiinity more generally.

Recenùy, the question of black rnasculinity has been a topic for considerable debate both in popular culture and the academy. In the last few years, public spectacles in the US. and Canada, for instance the Ben Johnson &air, the Million-Man March, the Thomas-Hill hearings and the O.J. Simpson and Rodney King cases, have put black masculinity on the public stage in a pronounced way. In addition, these events have Mered a debate about black masculinity in the academy. Many publications and journals are devoted to questions of black masculinity from many political sides. Such texts include the recent journal entitled

The Jotirnnl of A'icun American kfen and the publications The Black Male (Golden, 1995);

Representing Black Men (Blount and Cunningham, 1995); and Black Men Speaking. While coming fiom a variety oftheoretical perspectives, such publications point to the fact that black masculinity has become an important site for academic theorizing in recent years.

However, while black masculinity has always been on the public stage, these stones tell us something more. Namely, there is a political lesson to be leamed in terms of the way that black public masculinity is represented. These developments have borne out what bIack ferninists, queer activists (e-g. Isaac Julien, Audre Lorde, Kobena Mercer), and socialists (e-g.

Frantz Fanon, C.L.R. James, Stuart Hall) have been saying for years: that blackness as a sign is not a unanimist place. Regarding masculinity, these developments demonsuate the fiagmented nature of black masculinity, or, the fact of its multiplicity. Moreover. they place importance on the way that political performance impacts upon identity. Whât has been

140 niptured through these developments is what Hall (1992) called the "essential black subject".

Regzlrding sports, these developments have shattered assurnptionsabout a mirnetic co~ection between blackness and goodness, an assumption nurtured in the black power era and in the

"revolt of the black athlete" about the inherent goodness of political desires that narne themselves as black and only black. Third, they have forced us to question the politics of anti- racism whi& is rooted in the search for heroes. They have given us reason to reconsider the assumption that pedagogically, sports heroes are role-models andlor sites of freed~rn."~

Unfortunately, the "we" that 1 speak of is not a consensus. These post-modern irruptions, symptoms of what Corne1 West (1990) has called a "new cultural politics of difference", coincide with a bourgeois revolution of black public masculinity, both in Canada and the United States. .4t the sarne time as black folks are embattled through the dismantling of a welfare state and increasingly vicious [MF restructuring, increasing attacks on immigrants, a new black middle class has grown considerably, both in Canada and the United

States. In terms of politics, a black bourgeoisie is now challenging the multiplicity of black post-modernity through a fimdamentalist aesthetics that dernands a mythical retmto days of oneness. In other words, the demand for heroes and heroic narratives persists. As the recent

Song, by a Tribe Called Quest, Forte and Busta Rhymes (a tribute to Muhammad Ali) goes:

Block's on fire, fiends gettin' higher Robbing biue collar, killing for a dollar, Youth's getting tired, dealin with them Liars, From Brooklyn to Zaire, We need a ghetto messiah

While 1 sympathize with the sentiment that things are indeed falling apart fiom Brooklyn to Zaire, 1 wonder: to what extent these lyrics are imparting a patriarchal message as a response to these realities? 1 certainiy do not cvant to over-analyze song lyrics, which rnay in fact flatten out rhetorical aims, but 1 do think this theme is worth paying attention to.

I wonder to what extent a "ghetto messiah" is in fact desirable giver. the flawed history of rnasculinist leadership as a response to oppression, both in Africa and the diaspora.

Specifically, I want to place this desire in light of the quest for heroism evident in the Puritan politics which motivate the Nation of Islam and the cal1 to a retum to black family values.

As Robert Reid-Pharr has recently suggested, what was most disturbing about the Million

Man March (and Farrakhanist politics more generally) is the way that genuine black feelings of dienation, loss and dis-empowerment are channelled into a patriarchd narrative. He writes

Minister Famakhan's peculiar talent is his ability to sensitize wildly diverse black audiences to their very real oppression while steering them, not simply away from a critique of the political and economic structure of the United States, but toward a reinvestment of the ideological processes that work to create, and maintain those structures.

Specifically, Reid-Phan claims that Farrakhan succeeds in speaking to disebchised peoples and allows them to speak in the language of oppression, which in the Million Man

March, amounted to blarning black folks for institutional shortcomings. in the face of cutbacks, deficit-reduction, and job losses, Farrakhan enunciated his own version of cutbacks.

Black men, his rhetoric went. were responsibie for their own problems and needed simply to

tighten their belts and al1 would be well."'

According to bel1 hooks, the conservative and minimalist process that Reid-Pharr talks about has its correlate in the representation of athletes. Ln a recent article in the collection

The Black Male, hooks suggests that given political and econornic changes, previously challenging images of black male athletes - strident and afXrmative - no longer hold the sarne subversive potential (1 994: 133):

Conservative change in this politicized visual representation of the black male body began to occur in the late seventies with the cornmodification of blackness, particularly the use of the black male body, mainiy that of sports figures, in television comrnercials to sel1 products. hooks goes on to emphasize that this representation is dso subjectively taken up by black men interested in putting fonvard a hegemonic masculinity as opposed to one that challenges. hooks' argument is clear if we listen to what she says about Mike Tyson (1994: 135):

To counter the "soft" image created by subjugation via commodification, the black male body must re-figure its hardness. For a hypermasculine athlete like Mike Tyson, that refiguring must be pIayed out both in the boxing arena and via the assertion of sexual dominance over the female, even if that means one must rape.

Politically, this becomes conservative, and places primacy on an unimaginative mimicry of the dominant values. hooks' continues (1 994: 133):

Black male capitulation to a neo-colonial white supremacist patriarchal commodification signals the loss of agency, the ab:ence of radical politics.

To bear out what hooks is saying, this style cm be seen not only if we look at Tyson and Jordan, but also if we think about the homfic politics underlying many black cultural productions, most recently Spike Lee's He Got Game. In citing Lee's recent film, I want to name it as a thoroughly Farrakhanist film. In this regard, it should serve as a reminder to activists about the hegemony of the Nike-fication of black selves and what this means for questions of black politics and anti-racism and anti-capitalist stntggles more generally. What unifies both Lee's film and the Nation of Islam is a demand for patriarchd wholeness to be restored at al1 costs. This petrification is a conservative reaction to black difference and multiplicity which have been on the agenda for some the now. In the face of black difference, Lee's film, the Million Man March and other "race spectacle^"'^^ work to re- temtorialize black identity as a singular, essential entity. Specifically, what emerges is the figure of the Puritan brother, or as the main character in the Lee film is called, Jesus

Shuttlesworth. In contrast to more socialist visions of Jesus as a communist or as one who embodies the cornrnunity's struggle for fieedom, Lee's Jesus becomes a conservative figure who polices desires for fieedom and becomes a he-ro, apart fiom the cornmunity. In this regard, Lee's main character is akin to Farrakhan, especially as Reid-Pharr describes him

He stood, then, as a sort of Ernersonian representative man, embodying a masculinity so pure that simply by gazing upon it one could extinguish the fires of ambiguity and uncertainty that rage in the hearts of black men across Arnerica.

The implications for black public masculinity are clear to see fiorn the above passage.

Farrakhan, and by extension, the fictional Jesus Shuttlesworth,become agents of freedom and the rest of us are destined to watch and hope for the best. This however, may not be so bad if these charactes actually espoused a progressive politics. But this is not the case. These are hardly liberating practices. Regarding these politics, Stuart Hall (1 992: 3 1 ; my emphasis) argues that they embody:

certain ways in which Black men continue to live out their counter-identities as black masculinities and replay those fantasies of black masculinities in the theaters of popular culture are, when viewed fiom dong other axes of difference, the very masculine identities that are oppressive to wornen, thut chim visibility for their hurdness only at the expense of the vulnerability of black women and the feminization of black gay men.

In other words, this politics, while affirming black masculine "pnde", if we can cal1 it that, often directs its most brutal energy not at the oppressive structures of whiteness and global capitalism, but rather at black bodies which are read as less than masculine. As Hall rightly points out, this identity is reliant on an erasure of black femininity in the most literal way.

Recall that in the cdfor the Million Man March, black women were directed not to participate in the March but to stay at home. Reid-Pharr notes that the precarious place that queer brothers occupied leading up to the March challenge the very identity category "black" itself. He suggests that (199634):

if the definition of blackness hinges on heterosexuality, then either blackness or homosexuality are incommensurable (and black gays are not really black) or the notion of blackness is untenable, as witnessed by the undeniable existence of Large numbers of black gay men.

These politics, emphasizing hardness as they do, bear out hooks' claim that the image of the black maie as athlete has ceased to challenge us semiotically must be taken seriously.

Specificaily, as activists have been saying for years, we cm no longer be beholden to such heroes as a response to racism nor as sites of freedom. In fact, it appears that the image of the black athlete, who once used to chailenge racism, is now a gatekeeper for proper black identities, which are predicated on the denial of black femininity and homosexuality.

In sum, this is the terrain on which black masculine identifications are currently played out. Without oversimplif$ng, on the one hand is petrification, on the other, post-modemity, or multi-vocaiity. Therefore, our reading of black quarterbacks cmot exist outside of this context. Specifically, my question is whether or not the search for black heroes at the position of quarterbâck and the masculinist drive to restore a "wounded" black patriarchy are interconnected cultural practices that are noux-ished by the same mimetic desires. In the rest of the chapter, 1 will suggest that these two desires have similar origins, namely an aesthetics committed to restraint and absence. In the conclusion 1hope to show that other positions are possible and indeed desirable. in what follows, 1will show the limitations to these dernands in terms of what they mean to questions of black rnasculinity and, by extension, cornmunity.

3. The New Stacking Literature

in doing so, I want to begin by retuniing to the question of stacking. As the above discussion shows, the question of sports and b1ack masculinity is far more messy than a stacking perspective would allow. But the stacking paradigm persists, in what 1 cal1 the new stacking literature. In fact, the new stacking literature is the sarne as the old stacking literature, except the difference lies in the context. As 1 mentioned earlier, images of black athletes who used to challenge have now become fiiendly fare for consumer diets. In that case, we need to ask the question: who remains committed to a racial stacking literature in the face of such demographic changes? Once again, there is a familiar answer. Without oversimpliQing, 1 want to suggest that the retention of the stacking literature is a black bourgeois macho thing.

As support for my daims 1provide the foiiowing exarnple: the recent book by Kenneth Shropshire (1996) entiîled In Black and White: Race and Sports in Arnerica. lMShropshire details racism in the mens' sponing industry in the United States, with discussions of how blacks (read: men) are excluded from the old boys' networks and sports, fiom the boardroom of sports corporations and league fiont offices to the actual practices on the field. It is filled with examples of white racism towards black athletes and coaches in Arnerica. In this regard,

Shropshire's book is very much the story of racial stacking, about how black male athletes are streamed into certain positions and denied the opportunity for others. His book is in line with a tradition of books which goes back to some of the early work done on racial stacking by

Hamy Edwards and others,

1 do not want to minimize expenences of racism no matter what they are. However, and this is also a limitation on the early stacking literature, what is disturbing about the book is the claim about black male invisibility, the claim that black men are hard done by in sports.

Whiie 1 cannot deny that racism exists in sports, I have experienced it too, 1certainiy cannot hold to the mode1 of black invisibility and to the race reductionist view of things in

Shropshire's book. For exarnple, it is hard to take seriously the daims put forward by Kellen

Winslow, in the book's foreword, about his experiences of racism in Arnerica. He writes

(1997: xi):

Mer a nine-year career in the National Football League filled with honors and praises, 1 stepped into the real world and reaiized, in the words of Muhammad Ali, that 1 was "just another nigger."

What is hard to fathom is by now, Winslow is probably a multi-millionaire who has profited fiom nurnerous endorsement deals and a professional football salary somewhere in the millions. It is certainly not the case that Winslow is "just another nigger." We may be more correct in calling him just another millionaire nigger.

in addition to using race and racism to mask class privilege, this framework also works to mask male privilege. In detailing that he was asked to %are his soui" about his experiences in the world of sports, we find nothing in Winslow's foreword on the construction of race, heterosexuality, and masculinity in the world of sports."" It is clearly a (straight) man to man dialogue. This is borne out not only in the foreword, but also in the main body of the text.

It is done so poignantly in the reference to O.J. Simpson in Shropshire's introduction.

Shropshire uses the example of O.J. Simpson not to probe the question of domestic abuse, or to question the cornmodification of black masculinity (as has been done in Roediger and

Johnson (1996)) but to point to the way that the issue of race divides Amencans and that the trial and verdict strained "race relations".

The above exarnples illustrate who the audience for the new stacking literature is. The audience is a very narrowly constructed black bourgeois male subject who will continue to cite racism and only racism as the evil that haunts America. In this sense the new stacking literature adds nothing new to earlier black nationalist arguments, such as those of Harry

Edwards and Eldndge Cleaver, who argued, in different contexts, that the structures of

Arnencan rnasculinity were racialized and that this had an effect on the sports industry.

However, and this is perhaps the most politically disturbing eiement of the new stacking literature, the masculinism and the homophobia at work in the early black power literature has remained unchecked. It is as if none of the black feminist and queer positive arguments of

148 the past twenty-five years have made any difference.

3. peirification und "positive images"

As 1 suggested above, the petrification of black masculinity and the exceedingly conservative discourses which try and re-present it, be it through the Million Man March,

Nike, or the NBA, are rnotivated by a politics of restraint. More specifically, these politics are beholden to a search for "positive images", whereby positive rneans a series of reactionary things. Simply put, the search for positive images, which demands that we see black (heroic) faces eveyvhere, regardless of al1 else, is exempIary of a manichean response to colonialism and the invisibility that black people suffer under it. It is a demand for a certain kind of visibility; a demand that "we" see "ourseIves" and it is rooted in a notion of ethnicity and identity as mimesis. In other words, it argues that black folks need to see black faces; asians need to see asian faces et cetera, in order to be whole. This politics has severe limitations.

First of dl, it canot provide an analysis of how cultures are made in and through difference"'; Second, it ignores how easily "positive" images can be colonized and colonizing, as hooks' observations above attest to.

In football, the black search for positive images accords with the previous exclusion of black quarterbacks in professional Arnerican football. Once again, while I am al1 in favour of breaking down barriers, 1 want to argue that manichean responses to oppression are often done through individualist means and use the same logic of oppression they are purporting to overturn. They represent, if you will, a buggin' out demand. Recall the character Buggin'

Out (Giancarlo Esposito) in Lee's Do the Right Thing. Buggin' Out is always visiting Salk

149 Fanous PiueIILa (a white farnily-owned establishment that employs a black delivery man) and complaining about the Iack of pictures of "great" Black folks on the restaurant's wall of farne, which is populated by photos of "great" Italian Americans such as Joe DiMaggio and Frank

Sinatra. in response to this absence, Buggin' Out demands that Sa1 (Danny Aiello), the owner, put up pictures of black folks. What marks Buggin' Out's project is that he is locked into the sarne logic of thinking as Sai, one which privileges icons and weaIth. Any other political projects, something indispensable for black freedoms, is never considered by Buggin' Out.

In fact, as Wahneema Lubiano (1 995) has recently suggested, the message in Lee's film is thoroughiy capitalist and blarnes black foks for their own shortcomings. And this is where 1think the link exists between positive images and conservative politics- Lubiano is

insightful in spelling out that the demand for positive images is also an affirmation of

capitalist values. Thus, it does not offer a vision of political alternatives in opposition to capitalism. In supporting her case, she notes that the language used in the film is thoroughly

bourgeois individualist, which is ty-pified in Sd's response to Buggin' out's demand for black

icons on the wall of fme. Sal says to Buggin' Out (1995: 192): "When you own your own

pizzeria, then you cm put your own pictures up." What is instructive about this passage is

that it tells it like it is under the desof capitalism: when you own something, you are in

control. It therefore leaves anyone who doesn't own anything, or opposed to the capitalist

ethics of ownership, without a political alternative. In that sense, the search for positive

images is caught up with capitalist rules of ownership and forecloses the political imagination. Invoking Buggin' out here to me seerns to be an appropriate place to discuss one piece in the current quarterbacking iconography. As an exarnple, I will discuss the recent Nike advertisement featuring Kordell Stewart, who is the current quarterback for the NFL1s

Pittsburgh SteeIers (see Appendix A). The ad features Stewart in a University of Colorado uniforrn, which is his alma mater. He is shown fiom the waist up, with his arms at his elbows, and with his head tilted to his right. On the Colorado jersey which he wears, there is the ubiquitous Nike "swoosh" on his left shoulder. He appears with slight beads cf sweat on his body and with Nike gloves on his hands. He is positioned in front of a metal backdrop, and fiarned bji a metal "vcindow" of sorts, which allows us to peer in at him. In addition, around his head appear six rays of Iight, which emanate fiom his head and continue until the frame of the picture. On the opposing page, there remains the metal backdrop, and there is an inscription branded into the metal which reads, " Whosoever dons this cloth, if knightly? shall possess the spirit of Stewart." Beneath this inscription, there is a Nike "team sports" logo, which is representative of its tearn uniform line of clothing and accessories.

There are several elements to this picture that we could analyze. First, i want to stress the element of hardness which appears. To begin, the metai encasement and its backdrop, symbolize a sornewhat industrial theme, which 1 read as another instance of the equation of blackness and hardness. Moreover, this combination and the aesthetics of hardness should be read in light of the other metal which usually has corne to mean blackness in the current period, which is the chah link fence which is standard fare in most basketbail commercials, rneant to represent the 'hood. In both cases, metai is used to "translate" blackness to the

151 consumer. Working in conjunction with the metal, is the quasi-religious tone of the ad. If not

evident in the print copy, the rays of light and the positioning of Stewart's body work to

establish him as a Christ-like, or saintly figure' which we al1 must emulate.'"

Clearly, one could argue that this represents a positive image, an image of a black man

in a position we have yet not seen; an NFL quarterback advertising for Nike. Moreover, it

could be argued that this is an empowering image for young black folks which may enable them to dream. This, in effect, is the argument put forward by Michael Eric Dyson (1993) in his recent essay on Michael Jordan entitled "Be like Mike?". Dyson argues that the sphere

of sports has been a crucial site for the production of black identities, and in that sense images of Michael Jordan have a sornewhat liberating eiement to them for black kids watching him.

Dyson writes that the figure of Michael Jordan, in "his big black body - graceful and powerful, elegant and dark, symbolizes the possibilities of other black bodies to remain safe long enough to survive within the limited but significant sphere of ~port."'~

However, and my position here coincides with that of hooks, as long as positive images are represented through hardness if you will, the question becomes: Positive for whom? Regarding Jordan, hooks' notes that in effect Jordan's body does not transgress at dl, but serves to reproduce what she calls "repressive racialized body politics". In fact, in terrns of the quest for positive images, we must ask what it means when Nike cmgive folks positive images? In other words, how much are those of us who are anti-racist and activist willing to give to corporations in order that they can bearn back "positive images"? It seems to me that the price, once again, is pretty high. Moreove- at what point does this image becorne an

152 oppressive version of blackness?

1 want to suggest that the Kordell Stewart ad represents the limits of a search for positive images and the search for visibility on capitalisrn's own terms. In the case of the

Stewart ad, the search for positive images leaves Nike to define what "positive" looks like.

What is ironic and perhaps most disturbing about the Nike ad to me is that it represents

Kordell Stewart encased in his fixity. In fact, this is the exact opposite of Stewart's contribution to the game. What has made Stewart exciting to watch for me and many others, is his polyvalency. Aptly named SZash for his ability to pas, run, and his incredible speed, it could be argued that Stewart represents a depamire fiom the traditional NFL quarterback.

In that sense, he is a black Atlantic cultural practitioner in line with many black CFL quarterbacks that 1 will address below.

This aesthetics has a parailel in the case of Buggin' Out and Spike Lee more generdy.

Buggin' Out's search for positive images as a solution to racism is mirrored by desires to see black faces at the position of quarterback. This is so for the following reasons. First. this is the case given the way that footbalI hos structured itself according to

Enlightenmentkolonialist binaries that divide rationality and physicality and then assign more value to rationality. In that regard, pnvileging the quarterback arnounts to privileging rationality. Such logic mirrors and does not thereby subvert racist definitions of invisibility/visibility and cannot conceive of "the visible" in other ways.

This, by the way, is the common way of representing black subjectivity in films such as Hoop Dreams and in much sports writing anthr~pology.'~~In other words, such cultural productions represent the ghetto as a space of criminality and poverty and argue that the solution to this nightmare is for young folks to try and get out.'* Living in the ghetto and actuaily working to build community is never really entertained; it is never seen as something the hero could conceivably do. Red1 that in the end of Hoop Dreams, William Gates, who seems less enamoured with the basketball enterprise, is relegated to the second narrative, in order for Arthur Agee to shine. What is important about Gates' relegation to the second narrative is that he is clearly uninterested, or at least ambivalent about the search away fiom home which is clearly what most people in the film want him to do. As hooks (1995) suggests, Arthur Agee's story is hyped up given that he fits the theme of the ghetto bildungsroman more closely. Such a narrative structure rneans that the ghetto or the 'hood is never seriously represented as the site of politics, desires, and cornmunity. Attention is dways focussed on the outside, and the political emphasis is placed on those who want to "get out".

Similarly, this individualist politics is at work in desires for black heroes at the position of quarterback. The search for black heroes at quarterback is a search for blackness to compete with whiteness on an individualistic terrain, which of course are the terms of struggle in capitalism. In order to be recognized, "we" need to have our own quarterbacks, just like pizzerias. Listen to Doug Williams, tallcing to Ieff Blake, a young black quarterback with the Cincinnati Bengals of the NFL:

"Just keep doing what you're doing," he tells (Blake). "There will be a lot of obstacles in your way, but you can't let that deter you. A lot ofpeople have paved the way. and now its your tm."

1 cite this quote since it stresses the way that community and blackness are inscribed within such a worldview. Moreover, I cite it to serve as an exarnple of what the search for black quarterbacks entails. We al1 should know (by now!), most irnportantly Doug Williams should know, that it rnatters little how hard you work. His case is perfect testimony: he is the only bIack quarterback to have won a Super Bowl and to have been selected the WPof the

Super Bowl. However, perhaps most notoriously. he is the only Super Bowl MVP to not be signed by any team in the NFL the following year. Williams' meteonc rise and fdl is testament to the fickie nature which the sporting establishment deais with its black quarterbacks, but more emphatically, it is also the story of how resistant power structures cm be to change. Moreover, it underlines the weaknesses of the kinds of analysis put forward by people like Shropshire, which in fact are only empowering to very few of us.

Williams' case shows that individualist responses to racism are limited in that they cannot provide collective or long-term hope or strategies for change. Contra Shropshire, I want to suggest that the tragedy of Williams' lies not oniy in the fact that he was unceremoniously dropped in the year after leading his tearn to the pimacle of success. For me, and for questions of black comrnunity, the tragedy is his continued faith in bourgeois individualism as seen in his exhortations to Blake.

Given that such desires are destined to lead to disappointment, I suggest less cheenng take place with respect to the quarterback as a site for securing stable black masculinities and for questions of freedom and cornmunity. While it may be so that the cheering for people like

Kordell Stewart and others can secure a stable identity, the disturbing element is the erasures and silences which prop up such heroes. It is clear that an investment in the position of

155 quarterback is an investment in existing power relations, dong the lines of class, gender, sexuality and race.

These disappointrnents could be the place where we imagine new political possibilities beyond individudist approaches to racism, invisibility and other forrns of discrimination.

Those motivated to do so continually offer individudistic solutions through some notion of black pnde must ask themselves the question: to whom does their blackness speak? And of equal importance: whom does it liberate?

4. an other visibility: back to life, back to Canada

Clearly, besides those handful of black quarterbacks who get paid and make it in the

NFL, those liberated within such a project are few and far between, Therefore, we need to seek more sustaining and rewarding positions. But before 1 talk about that, 1 want to take a trip back over the border to comment on the kind of blackness which is being constnicted by always focussing on NFL quarterbacks as sites of fieedom. Back to Canada. Earlier, 1spoke about how black fbndamentalism was excluding black women and queers fiom its agenda in order to narrate such a thing as bourgeois black masculinity. In the construction of the black quarterback, this exclusionary practice works as well, yet in addition, there is the question of geographical exclusions to consider.

The linking of geography and theory has been a welcome addition to much recent culturaltheory. In relation to Canada, Rinaldo Walcott (1 997) has suggested that there is an inability within black studies as a discipline to hear "other" black voices, in this case those fiom Canada, as authentic. He writes (1997: 19):

156 A refusal to acknowledge bIack Canadians... might be considered the histoncal Iimit of the current discourse of diaspora.

Walcott's insight is not a mere demand for a corrective inclusion of black Canadian experiences into some black history archives. Rather, the strength of his argument lies in his dernand that we think about Canada as an instance of the hybridity that marks the production of black identities, wherever they are. This hybridity can thus be used as a heuristic tool to think about how we "see and hear" blackness, outside of existing ways. In the current context. this could mean thinking of blackness outside of the oppression ofbiack fundamentalism. He notes (1 99729):

As a location for post-emancipation and post-national independence for Caribbean migrants, and more recentiy for continental Aiiican migrants, and as a sanctuary for escaping enslaved Afncan Arnericans and their descendants. the multiplicities of blackness collide in ways that are important for current diasporic theorizing.

To Walcott's list of black Canadians, 1 would add the category of black American labourers in Canada, specifically football players. More specificaily, 1 want to add black quarterbacks to this list. Since as far back as the 1960's there has been a significant black quarterbacking presence in the Canadian Football League (CFL). These men played their college bal1 in the United States and came to Canada to play because of racism in the United

States. In the CFL, many clubs have featured and continue to feature black quarterbacks as starters or as back-ups. 1 will narne a few. Turner Gill. Warren Moon. Roy Dewalt. John

Henry Jackson. Condredge Holloway. Damon Allen. Chuck Ealey. Homer Jordan. J-C.

Watts. Don Macpherson.

The presence of black quarterbacks in the CFL has less to do with anti-racist initiatives fiom the league than the differences in the social meaning of football north and south of the border, sornething outside the purview here- What is important about the different histones of black quarterbacks in Canada and the United States is that it messes up the claim about black exclusions which support the individualist claims put fonvard by people like

Shropshire, Doug Williams and Spike Lee. Moreover, it suggests that Canada often serves as the piace for farm-tearn versions of blackness. Specifically, it suggcsts that the discourse of black invisibility, a pre-condition to the search for black heroes, relies on a wilful denial of comectedness. Thus, black Canadas are relegated to the margins. Once again, as Walcott suggests, and as we saw in the work of Michael Hanchard, black United States experiences stand in as representative.

The exclusion of Canada is about retaining and reproducing a masculinist narrative.

On the relation between gender, memory and the mapping of certain histories, 1 once again cite bel1 hooks. In a recent piece on masculinity, hurnanisrn and the work of Frantz Fanon, hooks argues that in many places, Fanon's desire for love is in fact a desire for white masculine recognition. Specificaily she suggests that Fanon's theory of love is too wrapped up in the desire for recognition by white masculinity. Refemng to one of Fanon's well-known claims that "the black has no ontological resistance in the eyes of the white", hooks argues that this tnith is only possible if you "erase the feminine". and discount other "looks" as having value. She writes (1 996: 83):

Fanon feels "nausea" when confionted with a corporeal schema that demands he be "responsible at the same time for my body, my race, my ancestors". This ttirnfiorn the past makes fixation on the bonds between coIoniser and coionised the only site of struggle. Hence, he can never tum his gaze away Çom that of the white male other."

1 want to apply hooks' work to this discussion by noting that her insight is that Enlightenment masculinity, and black ressentiment, are predicated on the fetishization of the modem, or the real.'" in this sense, voices fiom the "past" are ignored, be they ferninine, queer, or proletarian voices. In addition, we should add Canada tn this list as an example of a "queer" or unauthentic black space in the discourse of diaspora. in the context of the desire for quarterbacks, which is a masculinist desire for inclusion into the sphere of rationality, hooks notes that (1996: 84):

it is precisely the mutual patriarchal gazing - the competition for the status of 'real man' - that creates the blind spot in the libratory anaiysis of the those white and black men who cannot see 'the female' and thus cannot theorize an inclusive version of fieedom.

In other words, the daim of black invisibility in the post-modern context relies on a host of exclusions and fictions. Narnely, there is a comection between geography and gender in order for our eyes to be constantly set on the body of the hero. Thus, in spite of the passion which motivates desires for black histories, it should corne as no surprise that these historical terrains are highly mediated landscapes.

As we know, the CFL story is not a story about black invisibili+y Rather, the CFL experience tells us about men who are professionai and black, and who play the game as well as anyone ever has. It is only by ignoring these accomplishrnents that one can keep hoping for people like Blake, Stewart and McNair. Remembering black quarterbacking in the CFL automatically re-maps the historical boundaries and therefore, makes us reconsider the political project. if you accept that Warren Moon and Turner Gill are as good as anyone, even though they play in Canada, it changes the way you orient to exclusion and discourses of black authenticity. Moreover, it could possibty change the orientation to rationality that motivates the desire for black quarterbacking historiography. Remembering Canada in other words, allows us to respond to those who claim black mental inferiority is the reason brothers have not been quarterbacks. To repeat the words of James Baldwin: "I'rn saying 1 have nothing to pro~e.""~

What then becomes of the pedagogy of desire as Michael Dyson describes it? What do we desire and who is the pedagogue? Also, what becomes of the search for positive images? If vie accept that including Canada allows us to think very differently about the question of invisibility, the question of the visible, or as Dyson would cal1 it, the desirable, changes. In addition to hooks' criticisms of Dyson's work, 1would like to add that what limits his conception of Jordan is that he locates Jordan as the site of desire. It is worth noting that a similar argument to Dyson's could be made for Kordell Stewart as a contradictory site of desires for black kids in the world of sports. But, doing so leaves the question of the Puritan masculinity with which 1 began this chapter unanswered. My trouble with such a project is that it leaves the question of desire within oficid parameters, and alternative or subahem black masculinities, the CFL quarterback for exarnple, cannot inform questions of desire and community. While 1 do admit that folks take their own meanings frorn signs and narratives,

I do think that the question of the focus on hegemonic versions of heroism must be qualified; and we must examine what is lost and gained by doing so.

160 5. Scrambling through the Black Atlantic

Time would pas, old empires would fdl and new ones take their place, the relations of countries and the relations of classes had to change, before 1discovered that it is not quality of goods and utility which matter, but movement; not where you are or what you have, but where you have corne fiom, where you are going and the rate at which you are gening there.ld9

In closing, 1 hope to pvide a few points in ternis of discussing a method that cm move us away f?om black fundamentalism, including the demand to see black faces at the position of quarterback. in other words, 1 want to ask: what becomes of our pedagogy of desire if we include Canada and rely less on official versions of the "hero"? While 1 began with showing the minimalist politics of both the position of quarterback and the New Right version of black masculinity, 1close wi~hthe opposite. Historically, NFL quarterbacks, as we know have been represented as models of restra.int. Yet, if we think about CFL quarterbacks, restraint is not the dominant charactenstic. When 1 think of black CFL quarterbacks, what cornes to mind is a verb. Namely, the verb is: to scrarnbte. These are the farthest cry from drop back passers.

To support my claims, 1 wiil cite two examples. In citing these examples, 1 want to stress the emphasis on scrambling both on the field and off, which we would do well to pay attention to. The first is Condredge Holloway. What is important to stress is Holloway's polyvalency. Holloway played at starting quarterback at the University of Tennessee in the late 1960s where he set and broke anurnber of school records. While at Tennessee, Holloway was also a star at shortstop on the varsity baseball tearn. However, Holloway's success on the football field did not translate into an offer to play quarterback in the NFL. As was the custorn for black collegiate quarterbacks then, he was drafted and told that the tearn wanted to bring hirn in "as an athlete" and the team wanted hirn to play defensive back, which was a typically "black" position. Holloway's talents as a baseball player made him the most highly sought afier baseball player in North Arnerica. Upon graduation, he was drafted first overall by the expansion Montreal Expos. In addition to these offers, he was also drafied in the first round of the CFL draft by the Ottawa Roughnders, where he was told he wodd be given the chance to start and play quarterback. Holloway specifically chose the CFL, above baseball and the NFL, because of his desire to play at quarterback professionally. During his CFL career with Ottawa and the Toronto Argonauts, Holioway was an outstanding player and became well known for his scrainbling and his ability to improvise and make opportunities out of nothing.

In addition to Holloway, there is the example of Turner Gill, who played with the

University of Nebraska and Ied his team to great success in the early 1980s. Gill was also a

two-sport star at Nebraska, and he also played shortstop for the Nebraska baseball team, and

when his playing career ended with the Montreal Alouettes of the CFL, Gill went on to a brief

pro baseball career with the Cleveland Indians of the American League. Gill's story was very

much the same as Holloway, in that despite his success in the NCAA, he was stacked to play

a position other than quarterback in the NFL. What distinguishes these two quarterbacks and

a host of others, is their polyvalency and their ability to play different positions other than a

traditional quarterback, who is a drop-back style passer. Moreover, what distinguishes them

is their ability to scramble, to be many things in one, passer and merif need be.

162 In defence of my claims of the connection behveen geography and theory, we must pay attention to the (ironic) way that the metaphor of scrambling appears within some trends in black cultwai studies as well. As I stated in chapter 1, there is a value to thinking about the black Atlantic as a metaphor and a conceptual apparatus.

6. Conclusion

Such a coincidence means that we might consider scrambling as a methodology for current politics. As I stated in the first chapter, both C.L.R. James and Paul Gilroy stress movernent as a key theoretical tool. In The Black Atlantic, Gilroy suggests that knowledge of a history of movement among "new world" black peoples may take us away from the constrictingand politically disastrous forms of chauvinism, what he calls "ethnic absolutism." in this vein, 1 suggest that thinking of scrarnbling, or rather thinking as scrarnbling, becornes an endAing and subversive practice in the political landscape. More to the point, I want to name Holloway and Gill as exarnples of the black Atlantic sports stars, who because of discriminatory labour practices, prized polyvalency and improvisation as necessary features of their adwork. Zn the sense that the black Atlantic is the counterculture of modernity, it is clear that their emphasis on scrambling and polyvalency is countercultural to the modemist and colonialist paradigm of the quarterback: white, tall, unitary, reserved and appearing "in control".

This reading of Holloway and GilI makes us read the appropriation of Kordell Stewart

via the Nike ad, and his complicit performance in such, very differently. Getting back to the themes of visibility that 1have discussed throughout the chapter, 1want to suggest that paying

163 attention to the black Atlantic quality of CFL quarterbacks Iike Holioway and Gill rnean that we can read them as emblematic of Gilroy's claim, that (1 992: 19):

The specificity of the modern political and cultural formation I want to cd1 the Black Atlantic cm be defined, on one level. through this desire to transcend both the structures of the nation state and of the constraints of ethnicity and national particularity. These desires are relevant to understanding politicai organizing and cultural criticism. They have always sat uneasily alongside the strategic choices forced on black movements and individuais embedded in national political cultures and nation states in Arnerica, the Caribbean and Europe.

Thus, 1want to scrarnble away fiom such a reading and think about a bIack Atlantic reading of the black quarterback, which automatically includes Canada and changes the relation to exclusion. In that sense, since we are both moving the rnap and moving on the map, the question of visibility changes and we may move into spaces that we didn't think existed. Also, given that the question of visibility changes, so does the corresponding question of desire, which means in this case what kind of blackness is possible and what kind of blackness do we want? I suggest thinking of movement as a key elernent in our pedagogy of desire. Conclusion:

Somof the insights in the previous chapter will shape the direction of the concluding remarks that 1 make here. After having discussed the way that sports, masculinity and black popular cultures operate, some concluding remarks are necessary. While the thesis used different and somewhat uncomected case studies, there were several concurrent thernes which cmbe drawn out for analysis.

First, 1 have made clear how outdated and mythical are the studies which seem to equate hockey with nation. Such studies, however continue to be written, and they suggest a pernicious political project at worst, or a gross unfamiliarity with the Canadian sporting scene at best. In any case, those interested in the cultural studies of sports, and sociology of sports, would do well to put this myth behind them. in this sense, 1am not suggesting we do not study hockey, but rather, that we think about the ways that hockey begins to speak to the experiences of those who play it, those who are prevented fiom playing it, and so on.

Second, 1 have shown how vital "black" sports are to the nation's fabric. In spite of attempts at marginalization, policing, and repression, there is no way to deny the import of these sports, both within "local" communities, and on the national stage. For example, witncsa the recent 1999 World Track and Field Charnpionships in Sevilla Spain, where considerable media energy was spent on Canadian Track and Field stars such as Donovan

Bailey, Glenroy Gilbert and Bruny Surin. Also, the staging of these same World

Championships, to be held in Edmonton in 2001, means that track and field, with the

Canadian team made up of largely black Canadians (most of whom trace their heritage to the

2 65 Caribbean and West Afica) may be fmdly offered a chance to run in a world class event on

"home" soil. This reality is by no means utopian, but it does suggest a shift from the hostility toward black sprinters in the early 1990s and suggests how important this sport is, both for economic and cultural rea~ons.'~"

Moreover, in the preceding chapters I have shown that merely celebrating, or categorizing black experiences in sport is insuficient to thinking about how nationalism works in Canada. Discourses of celebration, as they are constnicted within the terms of anti- racism, offer no way for us to think about the multiplicity of black experiences here. Further. they offer no way to way to think about performances of blackness, given that "black" often equals "good" within discourses of celebrations. These celebrations ofien fix the biack subject, thus making it compatible with Canadian nationalism and oficial rnulticulturalism.

For example. in the chapter on hockey. 1 suggested that the celebration of Willie O'Ree was insuficient on two counts. First, it borrowed upon the Jackie Robinson narrative, which is centred in the United States, and second, that the mere celebration of O'Ree is merely one way to counter the nationalist narrative of hockey, wherein hockey is always read as dead or dying. Thus, I have demonstrated how nationalist or United States-centric approaches to these sports often produce cliches, which often work in conjunction with conservative Canadian nationalism.

My concems with celebration bear out the strength of Gilroy's work, as well as those who have been inspired or intrigued by him. Blackness, as Gilroy noted, perhaps more strongly in his first book, cannot be read solely within a nationalist frame. Gilroy's post-

166 national reading of blackness has proved crucial to my analysis. in addition, and we may read this as one of Gilroy's limitations, reading blackness as outside of nation is not in itself suffkient. As people such as Hanchard and Walcott have shown, the notion of a diaspora does not connote equality. In fact, as we saw, diaspora is a notion that can be easily CO-opted and hierarchichalized. Discussions of diaspora within black popular culture have to note both the ways that certain border crossings enable new positions, and how these same border crossings can be imperial gestures. With respect to sports in Canada, it means thinking about the way that Canada often works in relation to the United States in the sarne way that a farm- team works to its parent club. Black ballplayers in Canada find this relation difficult to manage, which means that many of them go to the United States and England in search of better support and/or opportunity. It should be stressed that this is ofien an unequal relation.

As 1 showed with respect to the Toronto Raptors, this meant that a purportedly authentic version of blackness travelled north with imperial overtones. 1 also suggested that this process was both a highly and hotly contested one. In addition, this metropolis-hinterland relation means that new positions of blackness are enabled. Thus we cannot read al1 border crossings as negative. For example, as 1showed in relation to black quarterbacks, (this was also at work in the case of Jackie Robinson) Canada's second-string position in the hierarchy of blackness was what sustained the creation of new position^.'^' In terms of method, 1 have shown how important it is to move beyond boundaries in ternw of discussing sports. This thesis bears out the methodological strengths of C.L.R. James, who implicitly argued against the reification of sports, and any assumptions which treated sport as its own hermetic sphere. This insight

167 is one of the lasting legacies of James' work, and for me, it is certainly a place to begin in the culturai studies of sports. This is so for three reasons. First, this insight disrupts the capitdist and Enlightenment~colonialistidea that sports is its own sphere, which requires its "own" experts, statisticians, academics and so on. Second, it also refutes rhc notion of a separation between sports and the realm of the political and economic. Third, it disrupts the racial manicheism which is al1 too-comrnon, and almost foundational to conternporary representations of sports.

The staging of manicheism is crystallized in the way folks generally talk about race and sport, whereby it is presurned that there are two essences at work, a white and a black, which are competing for some kind of prize. It is clear that in the major authors on race and sport, beginning with Hany Edwards and through to contemporaries such as Billy Hawkins,

Allan Wiggins? Kenneth Shropshire, and Jay Coakley, this is the predominant focus.15'

Patrick Taylor (1989) was critical of this manicheism for its lack of ema~îipatory possibilities, and, writing in another context, referred to this staging as "mythical narrative."

James' work makes it very difficult to stage this manicheism, what Fanon would cal1 (1 967:

10) a "dual narcissism." in fact, James' work is sirnilar to Fanon's in that it does not offer guarantees, but rather opens up questions and stresses the importance of thinking about the post-manichean as a crucial guideline in terms of thinking about race, politics, and culture.

In this sense, we could read sports in the sarne vein as Fanon read the politics of decolonization. According to Seky-Otu (1 W6), Fanon read the politics of decolonization as a "dialectic of experience." Sekyi-Otu suggests that this diaiectic can be described as follows.

168 He notes that (1996: 3 1):

the terms of Fanon's discoune are radically political, ... they are in consequence essentialiy contestable and inescapably open, answerable claims of collective wilIs rather than the gratuitous "fniits of an objective dialectic3.

The emphasis on openness, or the lack of guarantees means that Fanon's work offers a way of recognizing both the manichean and post-manichean moment in every political space.ls3

Sekyi-Otu suggests that Fanon has ofien been misread as a manichean thinker, but his argument is that Fanon "stages" or notes that manicheism is one "moment" within the diaiectic of decolonization. in applying these insights to the study of race and sport, we might read the major works on race and sport as caught within the manicheism of black essences and white ones, v;Li:h pq:iak or no attention to a whole series of post-manichean realities such as class, gender, sexuality?geographic location and history.

The other consideration in fonning conclusions is to consider the question of masculinity. While many have commented upon the destructive relation between sports and masculinity, and have gone so far as to argue against sport (e.g. Messner and Sabo (1994);

McBnde (1995)), my work differs. In stressing the performance of masculinity, 1 have shown that it is important to talk about the construction of masculinity and not simply demonize it, as the work of Sabo and Messner do. What 1 have done instead is to show how black masculinities are performed, and second, how they can be performed with the intention of reproducing patnarchy and gynophobia. I have also suggested that this is not the only performance. Moreover, 1have show how Canadian nationalism relies upon a conservative black masculinity to reproduce itself. In this sense, my work is a study ofthe making of black masculinities with a view toward constructing them differently. It has been inspired by some of the important works in the field, notably those of bel1 hooks, Michelle Wallace, Philip

Brian Harper and Kobena Mercer. In that sense, 1 agree with Lyle Ashton Harris, who notes

(as quoted in hooks, 1994: 140): "1 see myself involved in a project of resuscitation, of giving life back to the black male body."

However, in conciuding, 1 also wish to acknowledge some of the limitations in the thesis. First, on the question of mascuiinity, the one limitation that strikes me is the absence of wornen in the text, narnely women athletes. It would certainly be interesting to think about how femininity works within blackness and Canadian sport as well. Moreover, it would be equally ùiteresting to think about how women's lives structure black rnasculinities, something that has ken comrnented upon recently by hooks (1996). Third, the other important consideration would be to turn our gaze away fiom a study of what is wrong with conventional masculinity, and vr;rite different stories. in the words of Deborah -McDowell

(1997: 38 l), we might:

Move beyond a focus on the artistic, scdpted body bat "looks harci"... to one Iess taut, Iess muscle-bound. One less shaped, less secured by the stresses of repetition. One less threatened by the presence and power of tiic iciiiiiiiiie.

In this regard, we might think about what McDoweli is saying to think about race, given the way that discourses of race, gender, and sexuality work together. In bat sense, another limitation of the work might be its inattention to what we might cal1 the post-black public sphere, and its reference to sport and masculinity in Canada. Any cüsuûi perusai of the daily sports pages refen to the presence of athletes who are not directly inscribed by the black Atlantic, as cod~guredby Gilroy. We can see the presence of Iranian, Bosnian, Eritrean athletes in Toronto and other places who have to negotiate blackness in Canada at the same time as they are negotiating a whole history of discourses of home, gender and so on. in addition, in sports which are often read as "white," the presence of nonwhite athletes is also a constant - witness rower and 1996 Olympic silver medaiist Tosha Tsang.

Thus? furùler research in this area rnight be to re-map the black Atlantic to consider these migrations, or it would be to suggest alternative rnaps and routes. niese projects would be attempts to account for these particular histories and their relations to nation. -Moreover. it may be more rewarding to think through the way that each of these experiences conforms to, interferes with, and distance themselves from one another. Such work would be post- manichean, and would cal1 to mind the work of Stuart Hall in his now famous piece entitled

"New Ethnicities." In that essay, Hall suggested that a position after rnulticu!turalism was absolutely indispensable. This was due to the fact that we would need to stop thinking about race as oniy in relation to nation. In that sense, Hall's need to refocus our attention away from the state, something al1 too comrnon in discourses of anti-racism, strikes a similar note to that of McDowell. Hall notes (1988:274):

This marks a real shifi in the point of contestation, since it is no longer only between antiracism and multiculturalsim but inside the notion of ethnicity itself. What is involved is the splitting of the notion of ethnicity between, on the one hand the dominant notion which connects it to nation and 'race' and on the other hand what 1 think is the beginning of positive conception of the ethnicity of the margins, of the periphery.

While 1would suggest that my thesis moves in that direction, post-black investigations should continue to go this way.

Thus, there are a number of new directions to be taken in tems of thinking through blackness, sport, and gender in Canada. 1 have provided some direction about how 1 think the field should move in the fiiture. Notes

1. Please note that this argument does not reference Québécois nationalisai, which is outside the purview of this paper. Moreover, it could be argued that Kidd's work fits within a left-nationalist perspective and is therefore different than that of Grant and Atwood, but he shares the same themes with the others without confiict. Third, Kidd's left-nationalism is quite different from the much stronger work of Tony Wilden, 1980' in The Imginary Canadian. Wilden is ernphatic about the racist and sexist foundations of both the Canadian state, and Canadian nationalism. 2. Please see Kidd and MacFarlane, 1973. 3. For more on Robinson, please see chapter 2 of this thesis. 4. For more on this, please see Gruneau and Whitson, chapter 2. 5. Please see Jack Johnson, 1992. Regarding Jackie Robinson, please see Rampersad, 1997. 6. It should be noted that Kidd's work is also silent about the experiences of other people of colour and First Nations, except for his discussion of Tom Longboat, and Jackie Robinson, who is mentioned briefly as a member of a (1996: 6) "subordinate and disadvantaged group" dong with Rick Hansen, Marilyn Bell, and Alwyn Morris. 7. 1am grateful to Ray Morris for helping me think through the way patchwork is connected to Canadian sporting cultures. 8. 1 do not mean to suggest that First Nations people and indigenous black folks are foreigners and less Canadian. But 1 am suggesting that with respect to First Nations people, they have positioned outside of Canadiana, except through the most exoticizing and anthropological means. Please see Daniel Francis, 1992. With respect to black folks, there have been repeated attempts to place them outside of nation. For more, see Peggy Bristow et al, 1994. 9. James unfortunately ornitted gender as an organizing principle in his work. For more, please see chapter 1 of this work and Carby, 1998. 10. There have some beginning attempts, such as Gruneau and Whitson, whom 1 discuss in chapter 2 of this thesis; and Gary Genosko, 1999. 11. On the way that acais seen as Europe's other, please see Mudimbe, 1986. With respect to how this works to carnivalize black masculinities, please see Davis, 1983, chapter 1 1. 12. Black women are also read as extremely masculine within this discourse. For example, please see Davis ,1983, chapter 1. 13. For exarnples of parody, please see chapter 5 of this thesis. Also, this is the case if we think about both Louis Farrakhan, as a parody of Malcolm X; and Mike Tyson, as a parody of Muhammad Ali, to gain a sense of how useless one politics has becorne over the last thirty years. 14. Many people have comrnented on de-reifjnng race from a liberal perspective. This perspective argues that "race" is a social constnict and therefore cannot be relevant scientifically. This Kantian approach is typified in Appiah, 1992. The shortcorning of this approach, which informs much of Morimoto's conclusions, is that it does not ground race and the effects of racism, but merely wishes it away. 15. For instance, please see John Nauright's ,1998 collection. 16. Please see Lorde, Lubiano, and Michele Wallace. 17. See Sarnrnons 1994. 18. This kind of attitude is seen so often in mainstream press, both in print and television. 19. Critiques of reductionist theorizing of race have been made fiom many political and intellectual schools. For example, see Appiah, 1992 and Outlaw, 1996 (esp. chapter 6) for critiques of race as biological or proto-cultural. 20. Please see Rick Telander, 1995 for an exarnple of how black athletes in urban ghettoes are mythologised. There is also a host of literature on black ballplayers in playgrounds which also reads blackness this way. The most prominent example here is Hoop Drearns. 2 1. For more, please see Butler, 1993. 22. The one exception here is the performance of the Canadian Men's Junior Hockey Tearn, which had won six consecutive World Junior Championships, until losing it in 1997. 23. I do not mean to suggest that these celebratioris are necessarily emancipatory or democratic, however, here is not the place to :et into a discussion of sports fans and rnulticulturalism in Canada. 24. For more on the way that black women have been positioned in recent black popular culture, please see the essays by Jacquie Jones and Michelle Wallace in Dent, 1992. 25. For more on the way that this "movement" is patriarchal, please see Reid-Pharr. On its representations in popular culture, please Deborah McDowell, 1997. On its middie class foundations, please see Willie Legette, 1999 26, See Dionne Brand, 1997: 43. 27. Throughout this chapter, 1 will be suggesting that hockey is buil : upon silencing native presences as well. At times, 1 will use "black" to signiQ thos-. presences which whiteness marks with the sign of aiterity. It is safe to assume that hockey as a hegemonic narrative reads black folks and native folks as equally hostile to their project. 28. See Dionne Brand. 1997: 43. 29. For example, please see Singh Bolaria and Li, 1988; Brand and Sri Bhaggiyadatta, 1986; Silvera, 1983. 30. For more on white paranoia, please see Butler, 1993.

3 1. There have been other conferences similar to the 1994 "Writing Thru Race" conference. For more, please see McFarlane, 1995. 32. Another important exarnple of national panic was the "Oh!Canadal' exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 1996. For an excellent survey and critique of this exhibit, please see Walcott, 1996. It is worth noting here that the ody aspect of the "Oh!Canada" exhibit related to sports was a forum in February 1996 entitled "The Group of Seven versus the.. . Maple Leafs." 33. New York Times, May 27, 1999, 34. For example, see Dryden and MacGregor, 1996. Please note that most of this literature is about boys. 35. British Columbia Report, January 20, 1997. 36. Globe andfifail, August 25, 1999, SI. 37. As quoted in Gruneau and Whitson, p. 26. 38- Note that this economy does not work if we are talking about girls. What this suggests it that the authors were using "people" to mean young boys. 39. For a fiuther discussion of re-territorialization and de-tenitorialization, please see Deleuze and Guattari, 1983, esp. chapter 1. Basically, their argument is that desire produces de-territorialization and comrnunity, whereas capitalism works to close down or re-temtorialize desire wihin the fiamework of capitaiism and the Oedipal triangle. In terms of Robinson, the knowledge of sexism acts to de-tenitonalize the myth of hockey; and the enactment of the myth of hockey works to re-territorialize and restore order. 40. Scott MacFarlane, 1994. 4 1. Al1 of the hockey works are silent on questions of race. Robinson does gesture to racist exclusion in hockey in her conclusion, by citing the experiences of the Carnegie brothers. 42. Genosko, 1999: 145. 43. PIease see Gruneau and Whitson, chapter 2. 44. One fact worth noting in comparing O'Ree and Robinson is that both had to cross the border to begin their careers. Robinson came to Montreal, and O'Ree went to Boston. 45. For more on this, please see Duberman, 1989. 46. Homi Bhabha, 1994: 140. 47. For more on the way that race acts to constnict black wornen's bodies as accessible, please see Angela Davis, 1983, chapter 1. In terms of a discussion on the confluence of the sexual and economic subjugation of black women, and the role of the Canadian state in such, please see Silvera, 1989; and Brand, in Bannerji, 1993. 48. Globe and Mail, 3 1 Oct. 1994, A 1. 49. ibid. 50. Share, 18 Nov. 1993. 5 1. ibid; my emphasis. 52. Globe and Mail, 3 1 Oct. 1994, fiont section. 53. Rose's work is not as detailed in terms of linking racism and economic crisis. 54. There are many sources to cite regarding this, in terms of an overview, please see Bolaria and Li, 1988. 55. Calgary HeraZd, 25 Aug. 1994, fiont section. 56. Montreal Gazette, September 24, 1988, A1,3 57. Montreal Ga~ette,September 27, 1988, A 1,2 58. ibid. 59. Globe andMail, October 13, 1988, A7 60. ibid. 6 1. See Goldberg, 1993. 62, Toronto Star, February 1 1, 1998, C 1. 63. For a longer discussion on the actions of Charest and Mulroney, see McAloon, 1990. 64. Toronto Star, February 12, 1998, A6. 65- Bhabha, 1994: 143. emphasis on "historical" in original; other emphases added. 66. There is a resonance betw-een my concept of forgetful remembering and Bhabha's clah that nation and its unanimism are in fact challenged. Whiie 1 argue that remembering to forget is a necessary task in Canadian nationalism, Bhabha ,1994: 160, suggests that its opposite, "forgetting to remember", opens up ways to imagine the nation differently. 67. While 1 am writing the revisions to this chapter in September 1999, this is no longer the case. However, 1 cannot go into detail here about the current representations. 68. Toronto Star, 7 Aug. 1995; my emphasis. 69. Toronto Sun, 7 Aug. 1995; my emphasis. 70. ibid; my emphasis. 7 1. Globe and Mail, 7 Aug. 95; my emphasis. 72. Toronto Sun, 7 Aug. 1995, sports section; my emphasis. 73. Globe and Mail, 7 Aug. 1995, sports section; my emphasis. 74. Toronto Star, 7 Aug. 1995, sports section. 75. PIease see dso Anne McClintoch, 2995, chapter 5. 76. ibid. 77. Toronto Sun, 7 Aug. 1995, sports section; my emphasis. 78. Globe and Mail, 7 Aug. 1995, sports section. 79. Toronto Szm, 7 Aug. 1995, &ont page. 80. Toronto Star, 7 Aug. 1995, sports section. 8 1. Globe and Mcd, 7 Aug. 1995, sports section. 82. This obsession with cleanliness necessary for healthy nationhood has been a hallmark of Canadian nationalism for quite some time, and perhaps had one of its most fervent penods in the early twentieth century. For more on this, please see Valverde, 1991. 83. Dionne Brand, 1994: 178, emphasis added. 84. Globe and Mail, 7 Aug. 1995, sports section; my emphasis. 85. Recently, Tess Chakkalakal ,1999, has shown to what extent being "humanitarian" is central to Canadian nationalism, espedly in the area of foreign policy. 86. Such inversions are cornmon in what Butler ,I 993, calls "the racist imaginary". Borrowing on Fanon, Butler shows how the Los Angeles police justified their continued beating of Rodney King through a belief that King, while almost unconscious, was attacking them. 87. With specific reference to nationaiism, this is also a longstanding practice, the most poignant example being the D.W. Griffiths' film Birth ofa Nation which features a white woman being raped in by a black man (a white actor in blackface) to syrnbolize the defilement of the nation. 88. The reason 1have placed public in quotation marks is because of its dubious reality. For me, and many others with an anti-racist conscience, what we were watching was a completely different spectacle, one which was cleariy about pinning the blarne on Ben Johnson while other guilty parties walked off. While McAIoon is for the most part aware of this, he does often refer to public in a white way. The sarne is true for Steven Jackson's ,1998, use of "Canada". 89. Toronto Star, April 13, 1989, A1 7. 90. In the wake of the Tour de France steroid scandal, Ben Johnson argued in an interview with The Daily Mail, an English newspaper, that this proves he was "not the only bad guy". See Toronto Sfur, Wednesday, August 5, 1998, E9. 9 1. While there is little place to get into such a discussion here, 1 suggest that the reason many fans refuse to believe in athletes impurity have to with persistent desires for our superheroes to be superhuman. 92. Note also that in 1997, when Johnson applied to be re-instated by the International Amateur Athletic Federation, he and his agent, Morris Chrobotek, were arguing that effectively Johnson did not do anything wrong because everyone else was on steroids as weli. 93. Sports fllzrstrated, July 22, 1 996. 94. For more on this, please see The Globe and Mail, October 13, 1988, A7. See also "Responding to the crisis", Nation of Immigrants Project, Phase II, 1996, Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants (OC ASI). 95. Munoz (1997: 353) suggests that: Disidentification... is the way that a subject looks at an image constmcted to exploit and deny identity and instead finds pleasure, both erotic and self-affirming. 96. Toronto Star, July 28, 1998, D 1. 97. The title of this chapter refers to a common vernacular reference heard at gyms or playgrounds where pick-up basketbail is played in the city. If, on the court, there are already two teams playing, and there is one or more players waiting to play on the sidelines, the first person who loudly announces "1 got next" or "1 got next run" gets the right to play in the next garne and has the right to choose her players. 98. The Caribbean presence in Canadian track and field cm be seen in the Caribbean heritage of most of the top sprinters in Canada, including Bruny Surin, who is of Haitian origin, and Donovan Bailey, who is of Jamaican origin. However, recently, there is a West Afiican presence in Canadian track and field, with the successes of women's sprinter Philomena Mensah and men's high jumper Kwaku Boiteng, who are both of Ghanaian origin. 99. Note that these examples are fiom the years 1996 and 1997, when the Raptors began in Toronto. Thus, many of these examples are out-of-date, and same of the key players in the Raptors organisation have left. 100. Stuart Hall, 198828. 10 1. Bloor Collegiate 102. Hereinafter, 1 will refer to Toronto's tearn as "the Raptors". 103. PIease see Thomton, 1997. 104. For more background on the protests, please see Eva Mackey, 1995. 105. The Toronto Raptors uniforms are purple, red and white. 106. 1 borrow this term fkom the title of Isaac Julien's 1994 film. 107. Regarding the migratory practices of black Canadian musicians, please see Rinaldo Walcon, 1997, especially chapter 4. With reference to boxing, there are the cases of boxers Egerton Marcus and Lennox Lewis. Marcus, a silver medalist in the 1988 Seod Olyrnpics, left Canada to train in the United States shortly derhis victory. Lewis, a gold medalist in Seoul and Canada's most decorated boxer in a generation, left Canada for England because of a lack of support and media friendhess to his career. This coldness was only more intensified in light of the endless hype which surrounded Sean O'Sullivan and Willie DeWitt, two white boxers who had very mediocre pro careers. In the realm of basketball, there is a legion of young black men who have gone to the United States rather than stay in Canada to play. For more on this see C.E. James, 1997a. 108. 1 borrow this term fiom Errol Lawrence, 1983. 109. See Basketball Rules Book 1995, and aiso conversations with basketball officids in Toronto. 110. The most paranoiac version of this is the cailing of police officers to garnes where there are no fans! This evidence was attained in conversations with Peel Region basketball officiais. 11 1. For example, see James Christie, Globe and Mail, February 13, 1995. 112. Evidence of this type of article is Joyce, 1994. 1 13. Please see Report of the Review Comminee, Men's National Basketball Team, December 1994. See also Abdel-Shehid, 1997. 114. Recently, Nike has corne to be synonyrnous with the rise in popuhrity of the NBA, given the popularity of its icon, Michael Jordan, and its P.L.A.Y. program. For more on Nike, P.L.A.Y and basketball, please see Cole, 1996. 11 S. With reference to the Nike camp, see Toronto Star, September 19, 1997, E 12. 1 16. Throughout Clinton Gayle's trial, the media in Toronto referred to him as a "cop- killer", which was a riff on the rap Song by Ice-T. 117. While the Raptors were absent at the tria1 of Gayle, it is worth mentioning that Raptor community personnel do not generaliy attend anti-racist rallies either. 118. The reason that 1 put "black" in parentheses in fiont of capitalism is because at the time of the 1997 Raptorfest, Isiah Thomas, at the time the Raptors general manager, had an agreement in pnnciple to buy the Raptors fkom its white orner, Alan Slaight. However, since then, Slaight withdrew his offer of sale of the tearn. Thomas retained his nine per cent share of the team wfiich he has owned since the team's inception. 1 19. For more on Hoop Drearns anthropology, please see Abdel-Shehid, 1997. 120. See Thornton. 121. For more on this, please see the essays in Dent et al., 1992. 122. On the comection between blackness, entertainment and sports, Isiah Thomas, Raptors generd manager, recently cornrnented upon Tracy McGrady, one of the Raptors players, that "he understands that this is a business but its also entertaining." Please see Toronto Star, October 16, 1997, C4. 123. 1 bomow this term fiom Goldberg, 1993. 124. The extent to which Raptor players themselves are also complicit would involve more detailed interviews of the players, which is Mortunately outside the purview of the paper. 125. For more on this, see Rose, 1994. 126. It is true that Gaston is American, but he was clearly speaking to the realities of the Toronto media. The policing of blackness by black Amencans is most succinctiy illustrated in the appearance of black American academic Henry Louis Gates at the request of Garth Drabinsky to quel1 black Canadian protests of Drabinsky'ç staging of Show Boat at the North York Centre for ~5ePerforming Arts. For more on this, please see Sanders, 1999. 127. For the tensions between borrowed blackness and the cernent of the nation in Canada, please see Wdcon, 1997, chapter 7. 128. In doing so, 1 recognize that the category "black", like di identities, not in any way complete or closed. In addition to what could be described as black fans in the city, 1 will provisionally include many nonwhite boys and men such as South Asians, Asians and Latin Amencans into my analysis. But this is a far too complicated issue to take up in this chapter. 129. For a comment on the rise of neo-conservatism in the United States, please see Houston Baker, 1995. On the neo-conservatism of the black Canadian bourgeoisie, please see Wdcott's ,1997 discussion of Third cinema in Canada. 130. For an essay on the synonymous relation between blackness and basketball in contemporary popdar culture, please see Nathan McCall, 1997. 13 1. Basketball aficionados should also note the modemist configurations of the Raptor bal1 club itself. It is significant that Isiah Thomas drafted a point guard Darnon Stoudamire, first, and then when he traded for center Sharone Wright later in that sarne year. In doing so, he made it clear that this would help Darnon because he would now have a "naturd center" to pass to. The insistence on this approach to building a tearn, one with a natural center and natural point guard, points to an adherence to a conservative style of play, straight out of the John Wooden tradition, and shows the influence of Bobby Knight, Thomas' college coach at Indiana University. The classic text of basketball modemism is Wooden's Pracfical Modern Basketball. 132. Brand, as quoted in Walcott, 1997:35. 133. For example, please see Jones et al, 1987; Lapchick, 1996. 134. It is worth noting that on the Canadian collegiate scene, grouped together under the Canadian tntercollegiate Athletic Union (CIAU), black quarterbacks are non-existent. The information regarding Colpepper and McNab appeared on the ESPN Sports Center pre-season poll, May, 1998. 135. This reality and correlation was made most poignantly in the 1Y9 1 Gulf War, in the way that football and militarism were simultaneously positioned. Please see Curry Jansen and S2bo for more on this. 136. For an example ofthis approach, please see Dyson ,1994, and Van Deburg ,1997. 137. For a critique of this positioq please see Robin D.G. Kelley, 1997, especially chapter 3. 138- 1 borrow this term fiom Reid-Pharr (1996: 39) who argues, following Guy Debord, that spectacles have littie transfomative value. 139. Other examples of rhis work are BilIy Hawkins, 1998. Please see aiso Earl Ofari Hutchison, 1997. 140. For work on the intersection of race, sexuality and masculinity in pro sports, please see Roediger and Johnson ,1996, and Kane and Disch ,1995. 14 1. For more on this please see Bhabha, 1990. 142. On a somewhat unconscious level, 1 could not help noticing the place of "knightly" in the middle of the page of text and noting that Knight is the last name of the Nike Chief Executive Officer, Phi1 Knight. 143. Dyson, as quoted in hooks, 1994: 134. 144. For an example other than Hoop Dreams of sports writing as anthropology, please see Rick Telander's Heaven is a Playground, 1995. For a longer discussion of blackness, sports and anthropology, please sec Abdel-Shehid, 1997; and Kelley, 1997, esp. chapter 1. 145. The way that the 'hood is represented in Hoop Dreams and other films is not merely fictional. It accords with reading black urban centers as what Goldberg calls periphractic spaces. 146. 1 do not in any way want to reduce Fanon to a black ressentiment thinker, however, 1 think that in certain passages, especiaily in his earIy work, he betrays a rniddle-class desire to foreclose "other" members of the community and to speak directly to white masculinity. 147. This quote is taken from Thomas, 1995: 6 1. 148. C.L.R. James, 1992, 113. 149. It is worth mentioning that the City of Edmonton, and a nurnber of local businesses, stand to make a lot of money on the championships. 150. This is aiso the case with blacks who are not Canadians, but who corne here fiom other places, and eventually hope to "make it" in the United States. A very compelling case is seen if we look at some of the black ballplayers on the Montreal Expos, many of whom are latino, perhaps the most notable example being Moises Alou who began with the Expos but lefl to Florida, who could provide a much higher salary. 15 1. In this regard, as 1 mentioned in the first chapter, 1 do not wish to equate the work of Edwards with those of the contemporary figures. Edwards deserves his props as an important figure, but 1 want to stress that the decontextualized application of his work thirty years later is seriously flawed. select Bibliography

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