Anti-Black Racism and the Foreign Black Other: Constructing Blackness and the Sporting Migrant

View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship Repository ANTI-BLACK RACISM AND THE FOREIGN BLACK OTHER: CONSTRUCTING BLACKNESS AND THE SPORTING MIGRANT BY MUNENE FRANJO MWANIKI DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor Margaret Kelley, Chair Professor Tim Liao Associate Professor Moon-Kie Jung Associate Professor Monica McDermott ABSTRACT The popularity and globalization of sport has led to an ever-increasing black athletic labor migration from the global South to, primarily, the U.S. and Western European countries. While the hegemonic ideology surrounding sport is that it brings different people together and ameliorates social boundaries, sociologists of sport have shown this to be a gross simplification. Instead, sport is often seen to reinforce and recreate social stereotypes and boundaries, especially as it regards race and the black athlete in body and culture. At best we can think of sport as a contested terrain for both maintaining and challenging racial norms and boundaries. The mediated black athlete has thus always, for better or worse, impacted popular white perceptions of blackness broadly and globally. While much work has been done to expose the workings of race and racism in sport, studies have tended to homogenize black populations and have not taken into account the varying histories and complexities of, specifically, black African migrant athletes. In my work here I take ten black African (im)migrant athletes as a conceptual starting point in order to analyze and interrogate discursive representations of blackness, anti-black racism and global white supremacy, in a transnational manner. The athletes examined in my research here are Hakeem Olajuwon, Dikembe Mutombo, Didier Drogba, Mario Balotelli, Tegla Loroupe, Christian Okoye, Mwadi Mabika, Catherine Ndereba, Tirunesh Dibaba, and Tamba Hali. As athletic celebrities competing in the West, these athletes are wrapped in social and cultural meanings by predominantly white owned and dominated media organizations with histories of white supremacist discourse. Using an approach grounded in discourse analysis and cultural studies, I analyze the various power relations, via media texts, surrounding the athletes above as it regards race, gender, sexuality, class, and nationality. My aim throughout is to better understand which discourses are privileged and which are marginalized in the representations of black African migrant athletes. Additionally, with more recent black African immigration often conceived as a 'new' African diaspora, I engage with diasporic studies in order to theorize how the representations of black African athletes may impact the possibilities for diasporic communication, identity, and politics. Whereas previous African diaspora studies have tended to focus on the experiences and importance of African Americans, especially in sport, I argue that black African athletes in the U.S. and Europe are now equally significant to those recent immigrant communities in the West, ii not to mention their home countries. Black African migrant athletes, as highly visible actors, are potential points around which black immigrants can create or maintain a positive identity as 'Black' and/or 'African'. To do this, I focus on the inconsistencies, slippages or 'cracks', in the hegemonic media discourse and elsewhere where we can see the importance of these athletes to black immigrants which is otherwise hidden or made invisible. In a context that has seen black immigrant communities face recent increases in racial discrimination and violence, uncovering the cultural resources that help these communities struggle against white supremacy is important. Hence, in this interdisciplinary study I engage with various academic areas and theories in order to gain better insight into the workings and politics of anti-black racism, immigration, and diaspora in globalized sport. iii To my parents and Sarah iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my parents for their years of love, support, and guidance. I feel like your experiences have made my own seem like a walk in the park. I would also like to thank my wife Sarah for being a loving friend and partner through the final years of finishing this dissertation. It has been an amazing start to our lives together and I look forward to our future and new adventures. Additionally, I would like to thank my advisor, Margaret Kelley, for her guidance through this process, advice and comments on my work, and belief in my project. I would also like to thank my dissertation committee, I have certainly learned a great deal from each of your respective research interests and approach to your work in the field. Lastly, I would like to thank the sociology department, the administrative staff, and the teachers for whom I have been a teaching assistant for their support in the program and giving me insight into how to be an effective teacher. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………1 CHAPTER 2: HISTORIES OF BLACK AFRICAN IMMIGRATION TO THE WEST ………..7 CHAPTER 3: IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCES, TRANSNATIONALISM AND DIASPORA...27 CHAPTER 4: GLOBAL SPORTS MEDIA……………………………………………………..48 CHAPTER 5: METHODOLOGY...……………………………………………………………..61 CHAPTER 6: EVERYDAY OTHERING: BOUNDARY MAKING AND MAINTENANCE………………….....................................................................................89 CHAPTER 7: MODEL MINORITIES: ORIGIN STORIES, HARD WORKERS, AND HUMANITARIANS………………………………………………116 CHAPTER 8: 'BAD' BLACKS: CONTINGENT ACCEPTANCE AND ESSENTIALIZED BLACKNESS……………………………………………………….139 CHAPTER 9: IMMIGRANT RECEPTION: NATIONALISM, IDENTITY, POLITICS AND RESISTANCE............................................................................162 CHAPTER 10: THE DIASPORIC ATHLETE: BLACKNESS AND MEANING IN THE AFRICAN DIASPORA……………………………………….......196 CHAPTER 11: THE SPORTING MIGRANT: ANTI-BLACK RACISM AND THE FOREIGN OTHER………………………………………………………...………222 NOTES………………………………………………………………………………………….234 WORKS CITED………………………………………………………………………………..265 vi CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Popular sport often serves as one of the first cultural spaces in which recent immigrants can gain social recognition within their host countries. As sport increasingly globalizes, a rising number of athletes are migrating to fill the talent needs of various sports around the world. However, this labor migration is currently dominated by black athletic labor movement from the global South to, primarily, the U.S. and Western European countries. This trend makes sense given current global economic developments and, despite increasing rules and regulations, shows no signs of slowing down. The hegemonic ideology surrounding sport is that it exists as a social good by bringing different peoples together, ameliorating social differences, and inherently developing desirable moral values. However, sport historians, philosophers, and sociologists have shown this apolitical ideology to be a utopian ideal. Instead, academics see sport as a contested terrain for both maintaining and challenging socio-cultural norms and boundaries, especially so as it regards race and the black athlete in body and Western culture. That most individuals in the U.S. and Europe access sport through a Western media that perpetuates the hegemonic norms and cultural values of neoliberalism means that discourses on black athletes have tended to reinforce white supremacy. Media representations of the black athlete have thus always, for better or worse, impacted popular white perceptions of blackness in a broad manner (Hoberman 1997; 2000; Markovits and Rensmann 2010). However, while Western media outlets play an important role in the creation and maintenance of racist modes of black representation, they also give us glimpses of how black athletes, black African migrant athletes in particular, navigate and understand their lives in the West. By 'glimpses' I mean that there are inevitably inconsistencies, 'cracks' or 'slips', within the dominant, or hegemonic, media discourse(s) of black athletes which contradict the dominant discourse or reveal to us something seemingly innocuous yet filled with meaning (Hennessy 1993). If we are aware of the histories of black peoples around the world and their diasporic movements then we can use these cracks to interrogate the hegemonic discourse and construct a counter discourse. Combined with other materials such as interviews, presentations, and (auto)biographies, we can begin to piece together otherwise hidden and marginalized efforts of 1 meaning making and identity creation in the black diaspora and bring them to the forefront. The black African celebrity athlete, akin to the diasporic African American athletes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, stands as a focal point around which black communities in the diaspora, as well as in African countries, attach meaning. My work is about exploring the discursive practices of racism in Western sport media as it concerns black African migrant athletes. It is a project that deploys discourse analysis and a cultural studies approach in an attempt to understand how black African athletes navigate their lives and what they may mean to black African diasporic communities in the West. While there

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