Codes of (un)dress and gender constructs from the Greek to t.docx

Codes of (un)dress and gender constructs
from the Greek to the Roman world
he
By 6th c. BC: Greek male and female dress codes firmly
established
Archaic kouros
and kore statues
demonstrate how
the body was
used in the
naturalization of
gender
constructs
The naked male
body in the
classical period:
the Doryphoros as

a heroic athlete-
warrior citizen
Male sexuality: conditions by the patriarchal ideology of
domination, it restricted sexual expression and freedom
in homosexual
relations
and heterosexual
relations
In the classical
period,
while the naked
male body was
idealized and
heroized,
the female naked
body was always
sexualized and
objectified.
Centauromachy (late 5th c.
Bassae): the Greek female is
defenseless and sexualized
(must be defended by Greek

men).
Gendered
nakedness in
mythological
scenes:
the Greek
male is
always
heroized
Amazonomachy (4th c.
Halikarnassos): the non-
Greek female is wild and
sexualized (must be
dominated by Greek men).
Aphrodite (Roman Venus): at first fully dressed
The gradual disrobing of Aphrodite in monumental statues, late
5th to
4th c. BC (Roman copies)
“Venus Genetrix”,
original late 5th c. BC
“Venus of Capua”,
original 4th c. BC
Aphrodite of Knidos,
original 4th c. BC

Late 5th c. onwards: minor goddesses were also represented
sexualized in
statues, but only Aphrodite appeared entirely naked by the 4th
c. BC.
Nike (Victory), late
5th c., Olympia.
Aphrodite of Knidos by
Praxiteles, 4th c. (Roman copy)
Aphrodite “Beautiful
Buttocks”, Roman
copy (Greek ca. 300).
Doryphoros and
Aphrodite of Knidos
(Knidia or Knidian
Aphrodite), Roman
copies.
What main
differences do you
observe?
Was her nakedness
really threatening to
patriarchy (Andrew

Stewart)?
Or, in what ways
was her nakedness
aligned with
patriarchal ideology?
Could she have been
empowering for
women?
The traditional visual
presence of a divine
statue at the far end of
a rectangular temple
was very different
(Olympian Zeus)
Aphrodite of Knidos was displayed in an unusual temple (round
plan), so as to
be seen from all sides, like a beautiful object.
The original
Aphrodite of
Knidos is lost.
Numerous
Roman copies

of the Knidian
Aphrodite exist
(with variations
in details).
“Colonna
Venus” Vatican
Museums.
“Ludovisi
Venus”,
Palazzo
Altemps, Rome
(only the torso
is ancient, the
rest is 17th-c,
restoration.)
Capitoline Venus, Rome
Medici Venus, Florence
Variations on the
“Venus pudica” type,
Greek Hellenistic
originals, Roman
copies.

Are they more modest
or also more shamed?
Latin pudore: modesty,
chastity, shame.
Greek aidos: shame,
modesty
(aidion=vagina)
There is no male “pudicus”
type in Greco-Roman
sculpture.
These unequal gender
constructs are still around
today,
to the detriment of all of us!
There is no male
“pudicus” type in Greco-
Roman sculpture.
An effective way to realize
how absurd yet largely
unchallenged such

constructed sexist tropes
are,
is to imagine them
reversed!
Imagine the Doryphoros in
the pose of the Knidia
and Aphrodite in the pose
of the Doryphoros.
Some reversals of
contemporary sexist visual
tropes below…
Petter Lindqvist (from Swedish fashion label byPM) posed like
a
female model in an American Apparel ad seen in the insert
(2013)
Eli Rezkallah reversed sexist ads of the 50’s in his project In a
Parallel Universe (2018)
Kevin Bolk has given this
Avengers poster a gender
swamp in his

Avengers Booty Ass-emble
(2011).
Kevin Bolk said: ”I couldn’t help
but notice that in most of the ad
material, the guys are all in heroic
stances but Black Widow is almost
always in an impractical, curved-
spine “booty shot” pose. Figured I’d
flip it around for my lady friends
out there. Seemed only fair.”
Endeavour to create your
own images and stories:
challenge –isms and
stereotypes by celebrating
our wondrous and diverse
identities and potential…
Yinka Shonibare CBE, Aphrodite of
Knidos (After Praxiteles), 2017.
Unique fiberglass sculpture, hand-
painted with Dutch wax cotton
pattern, custom-made hand-colored
globe and steel baseplate.
Dimensions: 143.5 x 57.0 x 37.0 cm.
From the artist’s website:
“Shonibare questions the

meaning of cultural and national
definitions. His trademark
material is the brightly colored
‘African’ batik fabric he buys in
London. This type of fabric was
inspired by Indonesian design,
mass-produced by the Dutch
and eventually sold to the
colonies in West Africa. In the
1960s the material became a new
sign of African identity and
independence.”
Up to now we have
examined the
construction of gender
identities through
ancient Greek
monumental sculptures
like the Doryphoros and
the Knidian Aphrodite.
Below we consider
material from the
Roman period.
Periodization of History: conventional and often biased
From the Greek point of view:

“Coming of the Greeks” c. (circa) 2000-1900 BC?
Mycenaean period c. 1700-1200/1100 BC
Syb-Mycenaean or Proto-geometric c. 1100-900 BC
Geometric period c. 900-700 BC 9 th-8th c.
Archaic period c. 700-500 BC 7th-6th c.
Classical period c. 500-323 BC 5th-4th c.
Hellenistic period 323-31 BC 4th-1st c.
Roman period 31 BC to 330 or 476 AC?
Periodization of History from the Roman point of view:
Latins (Latini, in Latium, where Rome would be founded):
identifiable Italian culture from around 1000 BC.
Rome founded: 753 BC
Roman Monarchy: 753-509 BC
(Etruscan influence)
Roman Republic: 509-27 BC
Roman empire: 27 BC-476 AC?
The Roman Empire 1st c. BC-2nd c. AC
Horace: Greece captured its captor (with its culture)

The Romans were a patriarchal
warrior culture.
They embraced Greek myths
and visual traditions because
they could serve their own
social and cultural values.
This wall-painting from
Herculaneum, 1st c. AC depicts
the Greek hero Herakles,
Roman Hercules, as a model
fighter-heroe and father of
heroes. He discovers baby
Telepheus whom he fathered
with Auge (Arcadian princess).
Both the myth and its visual
rendering support the
patriarchal values of the Greek
and Roman warrior cultures.
Characteristic Roman tradition of the Late Republic (1st c. BC):
“Pseudo-athlete of
Delos”, 1st c. BC
What is the point of this combination of
features?
idealized “Greek” body combined with veristic
“Roman” portrait (Latin veritas=truth).

Which type of Greek statue does the pose and body of the
Pseudo-athlete imitate?
“Pseudo-athlete of
Delos”, 1st c. BC
A copy of the
Diadoumenos by
Polykleitos was
found in the same
house in Delos
(same pose as
Doryphoros).
Another example of the “Pseudo-athlete”
tradition: the “Tivoli General”, dedicated to
the Temple of Hercules at Tivoli, 1st c. BC.
Another characteristic Roman tradition
(of the imperial period):
Mythical (heroic or divine) figures
combined with portraits of specific
individuals (imperial or not).
Venus and Mars, 2nd c. AC,
Louvre Museum, Paris, France

The Venus and Mars type is based on the combination of two
pre-existing
Greek types: “Venus of Capua” (4th c. BC) and “Ares
Borghese” (5th c. BC).
Their “Greekness” was appealing to wealthy Roman patrons.
They were adapted to serve Roman values.
In Greek and Roman mythology,
Aphrodite (Roman Venus) was forced
to marry Hephaestus (Roman
Vulcan).
Ares (Roman Mars) was her lover.
So why did the Romans choose this
adulterous couple as a worthy
subject?
Venus and Mars were particularly important to the Romans, as
their
progenitors:

Mars: the father of Romulus and Remus
(founders of Rome).
Mars was particularly venerated as the god of
military might and virility.
Venus: the mother of Aeneas (another Roman
ancestor and founder).
The family of Julius Caesar and Augusts traced
their lineage back to Venus.
Caesar dedicated the temple of Venus Genetrix.
Augusts dedicated the temple of Mars Ultor.
Mars and Venus groups could have political and
cultural significance for all Romans.
Fragment of a Venus
and Mars sculpture
from the Temple of
Mars Ultor, Forum of
Augustus, late 1st c. BC
2nd c. AC: the adulterous Mars and Venus
are given portrait features and are meant
to symbolize marital love.
How could this be considered
appropriate?

Oral tradition, flexible and selective use
of myths, adaptations in pantomimes
which were familiar to all classes.
Symbolizing the values, virtues and
identities of the people portrayed:
• Beautiful, desirable, loving wife.
• Valorous, brave, virile husband.
• Affectionate relationship according to
Roman cultural values.
Message appropriate for funerary and
domestic contexts.
Venus and Mars, 2nd c. AC, possibly from a home,
It seems the
sculpture has
reversed the
literary
description…
What gender roles are
articulated through
differences in pose,
clothing, expression,
gaze, etc.?
Lucretius, “On
the Nature of
Things”, 1st c.
BC: Mars
reclines on the
lap of Venus,

conquered,
breathless,
gapping at her…
Venus and Mars, 2nd c. AC, Louvre
Venus and Mars, mid-2nd c. AC, Musei Capitolini, Rome, Italy.
Possibly from a
tomb. Similar gender dynamics seen in the Louvre group.
Sarcophagus with Venus and Mars, ca. 200-250 BC. Munich,
Künstlerhaus.
Confirmation that Venus and Mars statues were also used in
funerary contexts.
Venus and Mars, second half of the 2nd c. AC, Palazzo Chigi,
Rome, Italy.
Similar gender dynamics.
Venus and Mars, 2nd c. AC, Louvre
and Palazzo Chigi.
Dupondius of Faustina Minor (wife
of emperor Marcus Aurelius), with
portrait of empress on the obverse
and Venus and Mars on the reverse,
ca. 162-175 AC.
Faustina Minor (Younger) and

Marcus Aurelius had a loving
relationship.
She followed him in his campaigns
and was respected by the soldiers.
Aurelius gave her the title “Mother
of the Camp” (Mater Castrorum).
Later sources accuse her of
corruption and adultery.
In light of the above, how should
we interpret her dupondius Venus
and Mars group? Consider the
intentions of the imperial couple
and the views of the public.
Perhaps in Roman eyes these statues spoke of proper conjugal
affection,
in which the wife is more emotionally attached in comparison to
the husband.
19th-c. statues of Mars and Venus present a different emotional
relationship between the two gods.
Leopold Kiesling, 1809. Antonio
Canova, 1815-22.
Roman wall-paintings from
Pompeian houses (1st c. AC):
House of Mars and Venus (left) and
House of Meleager (right), National

Archaeological Museum, Naples.
In domestic paintings, the interaction between
Mars and Venus is more intimate, unlike the
public roles embodied in the sculptural group.
Mainstream gender roles are upheld once more.
In paintings, Mars actively desires irresistible yet “passive
looking” Venus.
His attention on her is sexual. His focus is her beauty and
sexuality.
Disarmed Mars, enjoying life: harmony and peace at home?
Fertility of marriage (especially when pictured with children,
always male).
Slide Number 1heSlide Number 3Slide Number 4Slide Number
5Slide Number 6Slide Number 7Slide Number 8Slide Number
9Slide Number 10Slide Number 11Slide Number 12Slide
Number 13Slide Number 14Slide Number 15Slide Number
Number 41Slide Number 42Slide Number 43
C H A P T E R 1
MOLECULAR ME
WELCOME TO THE COMING
SOCIAL GENOMICS REVOLUTION *
The social genomics revolution is now upon us. In a little more

than
one hundred years, a gene— a discrete unit of heredity— has
been
transformed from a vague notion among a small group of
scientists
to almost a ubiquitous news item and a consumer commodity.
The
black box of the genome has been cracked open by inexpensive
DNA
genotyping platforms that for a mere hundred dollars allow one
to
measure around a million of the base- pair differences between
indi-
viduals. We can now all drink from a firehose of new data and
re-
search findings aimed at describing the underlying genetic
architec-
ture of human health and well- being. In addition to the large
number
of biologists and medical scientists working in this vein, a small
but
growing group of sociologists, political scientists, and
economists have
joined forces with statistical geneticists to make serious
arguments
about the role of genes in the broader domain of human social
dy-
namics and inequalities.
*A note on how to read this book: We wrote the main text with
the general reader in mind.
Endnotes and appendices to each chapter are meant for those
who want to dig deeper into the
technical details and scientific minutia.
© Copyright, Princeton University Press. No part of this book

may be
distributed, posted, or reproduced in any form by digital or
mechanical
means without prior written permission of the publisher.
For general queries, contact [email protected]
2 • Chapter 1
This component of the genomics revolution is somewhat
unusual
in that it follows a long history during which geneticists and
social
scientists have been unwilling to work with each other on
important
scientific issues. Indeed, for most of history since Darwin
penned The
Descent of Man— his 1871 follow- up to The Origin of Species
that fo-
cused on the evolution of human differences— there has been a
con-
tentious relationship between biologists and social scientists,
with
many examples of interdisciplinary exchanges having
devastating
impacts on society. There was Herbert Spencer, who applied
natural
selection as a metaphor to human society leading to the
ideology of
“social Darwinism,” which justified inaction in addressing all
manner
of social ills and inequities. And there was Darwin’s cousin,
Francis
Galton, who pioneered eugenics. Even Darwin himself became

em-
broiled in a debate about whether blacks and whites constituted
sep-
arate species.1
Part of the reason for trepidation by social scientists when it
comes
to the examination of genetics as it relates to human behavior is
that
it is commonly assumed that the answers obtained by looking at
ge-
netics are deterministic ones, which is at odds with much of the
so-
cial science enterprise. Furthermore, to the extent that genes
explain
any social phenomenon, this fact “naturalizes” inequalities in
that out-
come. In other words, the degree to which IQ (or height)
differences
between people are genetically influenced might anchor beliefs
that
these outcomes are innate and thus immutable. If these
“natural” dif-
ferences between people extend to outcomes such as education
levels
or earnings (i.e., income inequality), such inequalities may be
argued
to be natural, unchangeable, and thus outside the realm of
policy
intervention— “naturalizing” or rationalizing inequity.2
One important example of the naturalization of social or
economic
inequality can be found in the best- selling book, The Bell
Curve: Intel-
ligence and Class Structure in American Life, in which Richard

Herrn-
stein and Charles Murray argued that thanks to meritocracy,
class
stratification today is based on innate (i.e., genetic)
endowment.3 By
selectively breeding with others of similar genetic stock,
parents rein-
force their offsprings’ advantages or disadvantages. According
to these
authors, social policy to promote equal opportunity is
counterpro-
may be
mechanical
Molecular Me (Introduction) • 3
ductive since individuals have reached the level of social status
best
suited to their native abilities. This conclusion is the nightmare
of
progressive social scientists and the primary reason most of
them
avoid genetic data.4
We, instead, head straight into this domain of inquiry with eyes
wide open. The genetics of inequality is, in fact, a major theme
of this
book. Specifically, we ask how integrating molecular genetic

informa-
tion into social scientific inquiry informs debates about
inequality
and socioeconomic attainment (of individuals as well as of
entire
nations). We argue that there are three main ways.
First, by dealing directly with the contention that innate,
inherited
differences are the primary engine of social inequality, the
integra-
tion of genetic markers shows the residual social inequalities in
stark
relief. By actively accounting for the portion of IQ, education,
or in-
come that is the result of genes, we can see more clearly the
inequi-
ties in environmental inputs and their effects on individuals’
chances
in the game of life.
Second, we show how genotype acts as a prism, refracting the
white
light of average effects into a rainbow of clearly observable
differen-
tial effects and outcomes. Our intuition is that genotype is a
tool that
will help us understand why, for example, childhood poverty
wreaks
havoc on some individuals whereas others are resilient to such
trau-
mas. Or, by explicitly integrating genetic information into
social sci-
ence, we can go from the adage that a gene for aggression lands
you
in jail if you are from the ghetto but in the boardroom if you are

to
the manor born, to a scientific research agenda showing how
envi-
ronmental and genetic effects mutually depend upon each other.
Third, we think that public policy will have to deal with this
new
information as lay citizens get a hold of their own (and others’)
ge-
netic data. There is much written about privacy, “genoism”
(genetic
discrimination by the likes of insurance companies), and
personal-
ized medicine. We shift attention from these topics to tackle the
more
traditional social policy domains of education, income support,
eco-
nomic development, and labor markets and interrogate the
implica-
tions of genotype for those realms. We argue that, contrary to
claims
in The Bell Curve, we have not yet become a genotocracy (a
society
may be
mechanical
4 • Chapter 1

ruled by the genetically advantaged), but that would not be such
a
far- fetched possibility once those with power and resources
start to
control their own genetic information and use it to selectively
breed
themselves. The social genomics revolution means that new
forms
of inequality may emerge based not only on genotype but also
on
whether individuals know their genotypes (and the genotypes of
those
around them) and can act on that information.
This revolution, however, ran into some stumbling blocks early.
A
few initial successes in finding “the gene for X” (such as age-
related
macular degeneration) produced false hope and optimism that
un-
covering the genetic basis for much common disease, and even
socio-
economic outcomes, was within reach.5 These successes were
followed
by failures— both null findings for some outcomes and (in
hindsight)
false insights into others. The lessons of statistical research—
the need
for adequate sample sizes and clear hypotheses— were learned
anew
the hard way by this emerging field. The result of these and
other chal-
lenges was that measured genetic markers did not seem to
explain
the amount of variation in outcomes— ranging from
schizophrenia

to height to IQ— that was predicted to be due to genetics
according
to the prior generation of studies. For example, some earlier
herita-
bility estimates for schizophrenia reached higher than 80
percent,6
yet some of the best studies that used DNA data produced
heritabil-
ity estimates closer to 3 percent— leading some scientists to
dub this
problem “missing heritability.”7 (We discuss heritability in
chapter 2
and the mystery of missing heritability in chapter 3.)
Recently, geneticists began to reevaluate the reasons that this
heri-
tability was missing. Perhaps because the earlier studies used
twins
and family relationship data instead of actual DNA data, the
role of
genes was overestimated to begin with. Or maybe researchers
had
been looking in the wrong places in the genome. Genotyping
com-
panies have traditionally focused on measuring common genetic
vari-
ants rather than rare ones. Perhaps there are still genes for “X”
(e.g.,
schizophrenia) that remain undiscovered because they are rare
in the
population and not typically measured in the DNA data that are
available. Slowly but surely, statistical geneticists have made
significant
may be

mechanical
progress in solving this “missing heritability” mystery by using
a
range of newly developed tools.
The current and more widely accepted answer to this
missingness
relies on a paradigm shift— moving from a mindset of a “gene
for X”
to one of “many variants with small effects.” Instead of a single
im-
portant genetic variant (or allele), there are often hundreds or
thou-
sands that contribute to variation in a given outcome. But the
“small
effects” aspect of this paradigm has called for ever- larger data
sets to
find the needles in the genomic haystack because the needles
are now
thought to be much smaller than originally suspected.
Along with this shift, more national surveys have been asking
re-
spondents to spit into a cup, adding genotype data to the rich
tapes-
try of social variables that economists, sociologists, and
political sci-

entists had previously used. It seems that genetics has finally
gained
a foothold in social science. And why not? Why should we be
afraid
of additional data that may help scientists better understand
patterns
of human behavior, enhance individuals’ self- understanding,
and de-
sign optimal public policy? Why be apprehensive, especially
when
the answers we get from carefully peering into the black box are
not
always— or even often— the kind that crudely reify existing
inequal-
ities, assumptions, and policies? As it turns out, new
discoveries made
by adding genetic data to social science are overturning many of
our
assumptions. For example, were Herrnstein and Murray correct
in
The Bell Curve when they argued that meritocracy has
perversely re-
sulted in more intransigent inequalities today because we are
now
sorted by genetic ability? Probably not. The data show that the
magic
of sexual reproduction and other genetic processes do as much
(if not
more) to upset existing inequalities (i.e., create social mobility)
than
they do to reinforce social reproduction. This molecular shake-
up
results from two main forces. First, while spouses are somewhat
cor-
related in their genetic signatures, that correlation is weak
enough to

suggest that there is much dilution and resetting that occurs
when
someone at one end of the genetic distribution seeks a mate with
which to reproduce: her offspring are likely going to revert to
the
mean. Second, to the extent that outcomes depend on particular
may be
mechanical
6 • Chapter 1
combinations of alleles (known as dominance or epistasis),
mating
disrupts extreme genotypes. We can describe this magic in
terms that
card players understand. In a common version of stud poker
called
Pass the Trash, players are dealt seven cards but then must pass
three
of them to their neighbor (and receive three from their other
neigh-
bor). You can be dealt a royal flush at first (i.e., be born with
great
genes), but once you have to join your cards (DNA) to someone
else’s,
all your advantages can be reshuffled (i.e., your kids have no
particu-
lar genetic advantage). This reshuffling can have big effects

even if you
have an advantaged neighbor (i.e., spouse) with whom to trade
cards
(DNA). You might lose your diamond royal flush when your
queen
of diamonds (which you were forced to pass to your neighbor)
is re-
placed by his queen of hearts. In these two ways, then, the
magic of
sexual reproduction acts to reshuffle the deck of cards in each
gener-
ation, preventing stable genocratic castes from emerging despite
the
well- observed affinity of like to marry like (we discuss trends
in this
kind of sorting along genetic and nongenetic lines in chapter 4).
Or take the case of the most sensitive issue of all when it comes
to
human genetics: race. What if we said that both of the authors,
Euro-
pean mutts of mixed white ancestry, are genetically more
similar to,
say, a Mongolian, than the Luo tribe of Kenya is to the Kikuyu
eth-
nic group of Kenya? You may not believe me (or your eyes), but
it is
true. Looks can deceive when it comes to racial classification.
In fact,
the entire community of non- African (and non– African
American)
human beings collectively can display the same level of genetic
sim-
ilarity as the population of a single region of sub- Saharan
Africa
(namely, the Rift Valley, where humans originated and which

remains
the deepest wellspring of human genetic diversity). That result
is be-
cause the population that first left Africa to populate the rest of
the
world was at one point as small as 2,000 individuals, creating a
bot-
tleneck that filtered out much genetic diversity. It is not clear
whether
that 2,000 figure was the result of mass starvation from an
original
intrepid caravan of 10,000 or whether the 2,000 was the total
num-
ber of adventurous eccentrics who thought it a good idea to
cross the
Sahara or the Red Sea in search of their fortune. Either way, the
result
of such a bottleneck is to reduce diversity. So, while it may be
obvi-
may be
mechanical
ous why the new (mostly humorous) iPhone app “Wait! Don’t
Fuck
Her, She’s Your Cousin” has cropped up in an island
community like

Iceland, the real question is why we all have not downloaded it.
In-
deed, new research by us and others shows that the typical
marriage
in the United States is between people who are the genetic
equiva-
lent of second cousins (see chapter 4).
The upshot is that our very notion of race— often based on
“natu-
ral” physiognomic differences such as eye shape, hair type, or
skin
tone— is, for lack of a better word, just plain wrong in genetic
terms,
as we discuss in chapter 5. Indeed, thanks to the window onto
human
history that genomic analysis provides, we are now able to
resolve
all sorts of mysteries of human prehistory, ranging from
whether we
did it with Neanderthals (yes, if you are of European or Asian
descent)
to how fertile Genghis Khan was (very) to when and how
humans
populated New Zealand (not all that long ago, it turns out).
From a
contemporary perspective, our newfound understanding of
human
migration and genetic segregation can explain some
conundrums.
This book will tiptoe through the minefield of race and genetics
to
confront unspoken beliefs head on. What does a reconstituted
under-
standing of race look like in light of surprising genetic
information?

How should policy deal with this stubborn concept?
It is not just racial difference (and sameness) that is informed
by
genetic analysis. The genetic prism can help us understand the
rise
and fall of entire nations. In chapter 6, we step back and take a
macro
view of how genetic theories and findings are infiltrating a
broader
class of global questions; for example, a fundamental domain of
in-
quiry in macroeconomics is why some countries have thrived
while
others have stagnated during the past several hundred years.
There
is a long- standing set of hypotheses suggesting that long- ago
events
and circumstances had lasting impacts that have shaped the
tremen-
dous differences in economic success and growth that exist
around
the world today. Everything, from the north- south versus east-
west
continental orientations to the shapes carved into the Earth
during
the last ice age, seems to matter for the wealth of nations. A
new-
comer to this discussion of “deep determinants” of economic
success
is population genetics. A new breed of macroeconomists has
posited
may be

mechanical
8 • Chapter 1
that genetic diversity within countries is a key to development.
In
2013, Quamrul Ashraf and Oded Galor published a paper
claiming
that a “Goldilocks” level of genetic diversity within countries
might
lead to higher incomes and better growth trajectories.8 The
authors
discuss the observation that there have been many societies with
low
diversity (e.g., Native American civilizations) and populations
with
high diversity (e.g., many sub- Saharan African populations)
that have
experienced pallid economic growth, whereas many societies
with
intermediate diversity (“just right”— i.e., European and Asian
pop-
ulations) have been conducive to development in the precolonial
as
well as the modern eras. The researchers hypothesize that the
Gold-
ilocks advantage results from disadvantages at the extremes of
genetic
diversity— very low levels of diversity lead to a lack of
innovation be-
cause everyone is the same, but populations with very high

levels of
diversity cooperate less because no one is the same.
In addition to calculating the Goldilocks level of genetic
diversity
with respect to economic development, economists have
considered
the role of population genetics as it interacts with
environmental
resources to affect growth patterns across countries. Justin Cook
has
shown that populations in early human history with the
(genetic)
ability to digest milk after weaning were conferred large
advantages
in population density around 1500 CE.9 Because other studies
have
shown that historical differences in economic development have
been remarkably persistent into the present day, the implication
of
Cook’s study is that (relatively) small changes in the genome at
the
right time and in the right place (i.e., during the Neolithic
Revolu-
tion in areas able to domesticate cattle) can lead to large,
persistent,
and accumulating differences in economic development across
coun-
tries. But these genes confer advantages only when they occur
in en-
vironments that have the ability to foster agriculture. With no
cows,
goats, or other domesticable mammals, the gene confers no
popula-
tion advantage.

In chapter 7, we further expand our discussion by more
explicitly
bringing the environment back into the conversation and discuss
the
many complications that emerge when one takes an integrative
view
of genes and environments. Indeed, genetics and environmental
fac-
may be
mechanical
tors seem to interact with one another in a complex, dynamic
feed-
back loop that further explains several aspects of the behavior
of hu-
mans and entire societies. One strand of this research asks
whether
genetic factors may predispose people to be particularly
sensitive to
environmental variation. The idea is that some people are
orchids and
will thrive (or wilt) based on environmental enrichment (or
environ-
mental disadvantage), and other people are dandelions and are
rela-
tively immune to their surroundings, for better or worse. If we

can
tell the difference between orchids and dandelions at a young
age,
should we use this information in assigning them to their
teachers,
classrooms, after- school programs, and the like?
This question is evoked by the very mixed success rate that
social
policies have had up to the present time. Some interventions are
suc-
cessful for some people or during some periods of time, but not
oth-
ers. New evidence merging genetics and public policy has
started to
uncover why we see such different impacts of the same policy
for
different people and how future policies might be adjusted
accord-
ingly, thus extending the concept of “personalized medicine” to
allow
for “personalized policy.” If for genetic reasons some people do
not
respond to health policies, such as taxes on sugary drinks or
ciga-
rettes, should we still make them pay the tax?
Evidence has also suggested that some educational interventions
have greater or lesser effects depending on the targeted
students’ gen-
otypes. Should some students be targeted for future
interventions
while the resources are diverted from other students? What if
we find
out that the Earned Income Tax Credit spurs low- wage workers
to

labor more or less depending on their genes? Whether we want
to
go down the path toward genetically personalized policy is one
of
the topics of our conclusion.
While the implications of the genetic revolution for social
policy
are being debated, a second implication of the social genomics
revo-
lution has been the democratization of genetic information.
Now-
adays, scientists can no longer conceal this information from
the
public or shape the information to fit their research agendas or
polit-
ical predilections. The cost of human genotyping is dropping
faster
than Moore’s law predicts for the price of computer chips. As a
result,
may be
mechanical
10 • Chapter 1
Americans are genotyping themselves in record numbers using
con-
sumer services like 23andme, Navigenics, and Knome. And

those
persons are acting on the information they receive, sometimes
even
when that information only weakly indicates a predisposition:
they
are asking their doctor if a procedure or test might be right for
them.
This is a new direction of consumer- driven medicine, in which
pa-
tients no longer need to get their medical data from their
doctors. A
longer- term trend starting with home pregnancy tests and
diabetic
blood sugar tests has shifted abruptly to assessing immutable
health
traits— your genotype. Some individuals (such as Angelina
Jolie) are
seeking preventive bilateral mastectomies to reduce their risk of
breast
cancer. Couples learn about their status as carriers for a
hereditary
form of hearing loss and make family- planning decisions based
on
the health of their unconceived children. In our epilogue we
outline
one dystopian scenario of genotocracy that could emerge from
this
brave new world of self- directed eugenics— or what the
biologist Lee
Silver calls reprogenetics.10
In short, this book interrogates how new findings from genetics
in-
form our understanding of social inequalities. We survey the
literature
(including much of our own research), synthesize findings,

highlight
problems, put forth new hypotheses, and stir in a lot of
guesswork.
We show how new genetic discoveries may be both disruptive
as well
as transformational. Indeed, these discoveries often overturn our
pre-
existing notions of social processes. They also show how
limited our
current understanding of genetic effects is and that our attempts
to
cleanly separate genetic and environmental influences face huge
chal-
lenges. But rather than wallowing in this perceived
intractability,
we pivot toward a richer integration of social science with
genetics
to enhance both fields of study. The potential implications are
far-
reaching. Will we extend ongoing efforts in personalized
medicine
to create personalized policy? Will we use our new molecular
under-
standings of human difference to fundamentally transform how
we
view and use race/ethnicity categories around the world? How
will
we insure that these new discoveries do not further widen social
in-
equalities, as the rich take advantage of genetic information at a
faster
may be
mechanical

pace than the poor? We discuss these and many other issues in
the
pages that follow.
While progress in this burgeoning field is happening at a break-
neck pace (at least as compared to typical social science), we
feel we
must also note that it is still early days. We think the nature-
nurture
debate that dominated the twentieth century and a portion of the
nineteenth is now over, as evidenced by the proliferation of
social
science surveys that now collect genetic data. That said, the
tools for
integrating these data are only just being developed and suffer
from
many limitations that may or may not be overcome in the next
de-
cade or two. Sample sizes are still too small. Biological
mechanisms
are hard to pin down. And social systems have a tricky way of
learn-
ing and adapting, thereby undermining the stability of findings.
De-
spite these challenges, we think this is an exciting new field
worth
sharing with you. We hope you agree. The genetics revolution
may

be well underway, but the social genomics revolution is just
getting
started.
may be
mechanical
http://abs.sagepub.com
American Behavioral Scientist
DOI: 10.1177/0002764296040002003
1996; 40; 123 American Behavioral Scientist
JONATHAN MARKS
Science and Race
http://abs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/40/2/123
The online version of this article can be found at:
Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com
can be found at:American Behavioral Scientist Additional
services and information for
http://abs.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Email Alerts:

http://abs.sagepub.com/subscriptions Subscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:
http://abs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/40/2/123
SAGE Journals Online and HighWire Press platforms):
(this article cites 10 articles hosted on the Citations
© 1996 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for
commercial use or unauthorized distribution.
at UNIV CALIFORNIA IRVINE on November 12, 2007
http://abs.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://abs.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
http://abs.sagepub.com/subscriptions
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav
http://abs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/40/2/123
from the SAGE Social Science Collections. All Rights
Reserved.

http://irs.sagepub.com/
Sociology of Sport
International Review for the
http://irs.sagepub.com/content/43/4/347
The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/1012690208099871
2008 43: 347International Review for the Sociology of Sport
Laura Azzarito and Louis Harrison, Jr
`White Men Can't Jump': Race, Gender and Natural Athleticism
Published by:
On behalf of:
International Sociology of Sport Association

at:
can be foundInternational Review for the Sociology of
SportAdditional services and information for
http://irs.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:
http://irs.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:
http://irs.sagepub.com/content/43/4/347.refs.htmlCitations:
What is This?
- Dec 16, 2008Version of Record >>
at UNIV CALIFORNIA BERKELEY LIB on August 18,
2013irs.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://irs.sagepub.com/content/43/4/347
http://www.issa.otago.ac.nz/
http://irs.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts
http://irs.sagepub.com/subscriptions
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav
http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

http://irs.sagepub.com/content/43/4/347.refs.html
http://irs.sagepub.com/content/43/4/347.full.pdf
http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtml
‘WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP’
Race, Gender and Natural Athleticism
Laura Azzarito
Loughborough University, UK
Louis Harrison, Jr
University of Texas at Austin, USA
Abstract This study examined the ways young people negotiate,
take up and/or resist dominant dis-
courses of race, athleticism and sport in school physical
education contexts in the southeastern United
States. The participants in this performance ethnography study
were 28 high school students and one
physical education teacher/coach. Data from multiple sources
were collected, including field notes,
and formal and informal interviews with each participant. The
results of this study show that white
boys complied with the notion of blacks’ ‘natural’ physical
superiority, and black boys occupied an
ambiguous position within dominant discourses of race and
natural athleticism; while girls, in general,
rejected racialized discourses of the body, instead adopting a
liberal humanistic position. Considering
these findings, we advocate for sport educators’ and physical
education teachers’ adoption of critical
media pedagogy to promote a democratic consciousness among
young people in sport and physical
education settings.

Key words • critical pedagogy • discourse • gender • race • sport
Introduction
In the past decade, notwithstanding sport sociologists’ increased
interest in
addressing race/ethnicity and gender issues in sport, a
proliferation of discourses
of racial differences in sport performance, formulated as blacks’
innate physical
‘edge’, has reinvigorated cultural racism (Banet-Weiser, 1999).
Narratives of the
racialized performance of sporting bodies circulating through
globalized sport
media are leveraged as striking pseudo-scientific evidence of
blacks’ natural
athletic prowess (Entine, 2000). The ‘fact’ that blacks dominate
professional
basketball in the United States, for example, is then articulated
into the differing
genetic propensities of black and white players.
Indeed, in contemporary sport media culture, American radio
personality
Don Imus’s 4 April 2007 on-air description of the Rutgers
University women’s
basketball team as ‘nappy headed ho’s’ is another example of
widespread re-
invigorated cultural racism, and in this case, its intersection
with sexism. The
black edge discourse, moreover, implies blacks’ intellectual
inferiority to other
INTERNATIONAL REVIEW FOR THE SOCIOLOGY OF
SPORT 43/4(2008) 347–364 347

© Copyright ISSA and SAGE Publications (Los Angeles,
London, New Delhi and Singapore)
http://irs.sagepub.com
10.1177/1012690208099871
Sabeen Sandhu
Sabeen Sandhu
Sabeen Sandhu
Sabeen Sandhu
Sabeen Sandhu
Don Imus & Rutgers
racial groups. Epitomizing contemporary arguments for
biological racialized dif-
ference, Murray and Hernstein (1996) argue in their work, The
Bell Curve that
blacks demonstrate intellectual inferiority compared to Whites
and Asians. While
Lawrence (2005) argues that sport contexts sustain a deeply
rooted ‘culture of

racism’, Carrington and McDonald (2001) extend this analysis
to state that
whether cultural or biological, racisms share the belief in the
biological separa-
tion of the human population into racial discrete groups.
Racialized Sporting Bodies: Media, Pedagogy and Schooling
Sport media discourses play a crucial role in pedagogizing
young people’s cultural
sporting imagination, and mediate their embodiment of
racialized and gendered
sporting bodies. While the popular media provide cultural
material for young
people’s making sense of social identities, young people, in
multiple ways, take up,
perform, reject and reconstruct the proliferation of sporting
bodies, images, and
symbols panopticized through the media. Like schools, media as
sites of the social-
ization and institutionalization of dominant discourses of race
and gender, operate
to produce and re-inscribe meanings of physical performance by
perpetuating the
gender (Messner and Sabo, 1990) as well as the racial order of
sport. By construct-
ing an explicit and implicit link between race, athletic
performance, and specific
sport representations, sport media, as popular sporting artefacts,
operate pedagogi-
cally ‘in the cultural landscaping of national identity and the
“schooling” of the
minds of young children and adults alike’ (Giardina, 2005: 7).
For instance, in his
discussion of race, film and images, Dyer (2002) explains that
the creation of the

racial category occurs in films when the social boundary of
black/white is natural-
ized. He argues that in the film White Men Can’t Jump (1992),
for example, the dis-
course of black physical superiority is performed on the
basketball playground in a
black ghetto, functioning to fix the racial stereotype.
In this text, natural athletic superiority is constructed around
black players in
contrast to the white basketball player, who cannot overcome
his innate inability
to ‘dunk’ the basketball. In the film, the black players’ ability
to jump higher than
the white player distinguishes blacks from whites, and
naturalizes a socially con-
structed binary opposition between whiteness and blackness.
According to Dyer,
‘It is the way that black people are marked as black (are not just
“people”) in rep-
resentation that has made it relatively easy to analyze their
representation . . .’
(2002: 128). The false assumption of the stereotype portrayed
by the media,
according to Bhabha, relies on fixating and stabilizing a
particular colonial dis-
course to a specific context, denying the acknowledgement of
subjective identi-
ties. Adopting Bhabha’s notion of ambivalence to characterize
the discourse of
stereotype, opens up possibilities for the rupture of the fragile
the colonial dis-
course, and thus reveals potential sites of resistance and
transformation (Huddart,
2006). For instance, sites of subversion of the natural black
athlete stereotype can

be created by recalling the performance and success of white
athletes in sports
‘dominated’ by blacks, such as Jerry West, John Stockton, or
Jonathan Edwards,
the world record holder for the men’s triple jump and former
World and Olympic
Champion.
348 INTERNATIONAL REVIEW FOR THE SOCIOLOGY OF
SPORT 43(4)
Sabeen Sandhu
Sabeen Sandhu
Sabeen Sandhu
Sabeen Sandhu
Racial Discourses about Athletes: A Review of Literature
Notwithstanding Bhaba’s writing on the fragility of racial
stereotypes, a number
of recent studies have evidenced the way the myth of the
‘natural black athlete’
circulating in the media is yet pervasive in society, and difficult

to destabilize
(Azzarito and Solmon, 2006; Carrington and McDonald, 2001;
Harrison and
Lawrence, 2004; Harrison et al., 2004; Hayes and Sudgen, 1999;
Stone et al.,
1999). For instance, findings from Harrison and Lawrence’s
(2004) research
show that college students in a predominantly white midwestern
university in the
United States embodied the notion, among a number of
racialized perceptions,
that black athletes are superior in certain sports to whites. The
racial stereotype
of black natural sporting abilities, however, is pervasive not
only in American
society, but also widespread in the UK (Carrington and
McDonald, 2001; Hayes
and Sudgen, 1999). In the UK, Hayes and Sudgen’s (1999)
research demonstrat-
ing that physical education teachers of different ethnicities in
England believed
in blacks’ natural physical superiority raises urgent questions
about the role of
schooling in challenging the social inequalities that inform
young people’s
physicality.
Further, the work of Stone et al. (1999) evidenced how black
and white indi-
viduals’ embodiment of negative stereotypes about the body can
adversely affect
their performance in sport. Their experiments showed that when
college students
were exposed to a negative stereotype about their identity, they
experienced dis-
tress, which in turn adversely affected their performance in

sport. In this vein,
another study evidenced that white male high school students’
embodiment of the
natural black athleticism discourse can discourage their
aspirations to play colle-
giate sports (Harrison et al., 2004). Likewise, Stone et al.
(1997) found that
college students (predominantly white participants) internalized
the ‘white men
can’t jump’ stereotype, and this racialized belief informed their
evaluations of
basketball players’ abilities and performance during a radio
broadcast of a colle-
giate basketball game.
In sum, as results from a number of studies show, the racialized
discourse of
natural black superiority and/or ‘white men can’t jump’
promoted by the media,
coaches, physical education teachers, parents, and young people
themselves, is
institutionalized in schools, sport contexts, and embedded in
society, shaping
youth’s identities, racial perceptions, and athletic performances.
Young people’s
internalization of discourses centring on blacks being physically
more skilled
than whites, and on the other hand, whites being more
intelligent than blacks,
shapes their participation (or lack of participation) in certain
sports, and affects
their performance in sport and academics. Indeed, this problem
is exacerbated
when physical education teachers and coaches embody these
beliefs, adopting
pedagogically discriminatory practices. Therefore, to create

pedagogies of
resistance to racial myths of the body, it is crucial to further
research young
people’s embodiments of race and athleticism, and to continue
anti-racist socio-
educational dialogues. While significant research in the
sociology of sport has
expanded conversation about the media, the body, and race, a
dearth of research
remains on the ways young people use discourses of race and
athleticism in
school physical education (Harrison et al., 2004). Considering
this significant
AZZARITO AND HARRISON: WHITE MEN CAN’T JUMP 349
Sabeen Sandhu
Sabeen Sandhu
Sabeen Sandhu
Change Curriculum
Sabeen Sandhu
void in the research, the purpose of this study was to investigate
the ways young

people negotiated, took up and/or resisted dominant discourses
of race and ath-
leticism in physical education settings.
Methodology
Setting and Participants
The settings of this research were two public (state-funded)
schools located in the
southeastern United States. The first high school, Molson High
School, is located
in a rural area near a state penitentiary, and had an
approximately 50 percent
white and 50 percent black student population. The second
school, Walters High
School is a suburban school with a predominantly white student
population.
While in the second school only three percent of students
qualified for free or
reduced lunch, at Molson High School, 37 percent of the
students qualified for
free or reduced lunch (Louisiana Department of Education,
2005). Before con-
ducting the research, university Institutional Review Board
approval, parents’
permission and students’ assent were obtained. Two co-
educational physical
education classes were observed at Walters High School, and
two other classes –
a single sex boys’ class and a single-sex girls’ class were
observed at Molson
High School.
To explore young people’s negotiations of discourses of race
and natural ath-

leticism in physical education, researchers in this study
employed performance
ethnography (Giardina, 2005). Performance ethnography allows
researchers to
disclose the complexity of participants’ multiple positionings
within dominant
discourses of race and gender in specific contexts. In writing
this text, the
researchers align with Scraton et al.’s (2005) approach to
race/ethnicity, recog-
nizing the widely criticized limits of using black/white
dichotomous terminology
in terms of identity politics conversations. This terminology is,
therefore, adopted
in this text as it was performed by the participants of this study
and people in this
specific US context.
The participants in this study were 28 high school students (13
boys and 15
girls) in four ninth grade physical education classes (13–14-
year-olds), and one
physical education teacher. The teacher-participant of the study
was the white
male physical education teacher of the boys’ class at Molson
High School, Coach
Grenoue. During the observational period, when the researcher
tried to explore
the two other teachers’ perspectives on this topic, both white
female teachers
were reluctant to talk about race issues. Therefore, only
informal interviews with
the two female teachers were conducted. Twenty-eight students
were interviewed
in order to represent the diversity of each class in terms of
gender, race, diversity

of skills, and participation level in physical education.
Data Collection and Analysis
Data were collected from multiple sources, including 12 weeks
of field notes, and
formal and informal interviews with each student and the
physical education
SPORT 43(4)
Sabeen Sandhu
9th Graders
Sabeen Sandhu
teacher. A second formal interview, a follow-up member check,
was conducted
with each participant, which provided participants the
opportunity to add and
clarify information (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000). Formal
interviews questions
centred on the following the three themes: a) students’ lifestyle
and their partici-
pation in physical activity inside and outside of physical
education (i.e. on team
sports, for recreation, with family, etc.); b) explaining the
overrepresentation of

black people in certain sports such as basketball and American
football; and
c) commenting on the film or common phrase ‘white men can’t
jump’ and
‘natural black athlete’. All of the student and teacher interviews
were transcribed
verbatim.
The data analysis procedure was conducted in two steps: first,
the two
researchers separately conducted a content analysis of the
students’ and the
physical education teacher’s responses using the interview
questions and theo-
retical framework (Denzin and Lincoln, 2000). Then, after
reading the transcripts,
both researchers looked for themes emerging from the data. To
enhance the trust-
worthiness of the data, a cross-checking technique of different
data sources, a
member check with all the interviewees, and a multiple analyst
technique were
adopted. In the following section, we report the two themes that
emerged in this
study, ‘Pedagogizing the Colours of Natural Athleticism’, and
‘“It’s Bull!”
Deconstructing the Black Edge’.
Results
Pedagogizing the Colours of Natural Athleticism
Fixating the Black Edge
During one lesson the researcher observed, Coach Grenoue’s
boys’ physical edu-
cation class occupied a quarter of the gym for track and field

training. At the start-
ing point of the indoor triple jump site, some students
surrounded Paul, who was
concentrating, readying himself for a jump. They were loud and
impatient to take
their turn. Other students, stood like spectators on the side, next
to the bleachers.
The physical education teacher was positioned on the side of the
take off line with
his grade notebook. Slim and toned, Paul looked more like a
long distance runner
than a triple jumper. During his preparation, he rocked his body
back and forth
and focused on the take off line. With natural grace and light
feet, Paul started
running. As he quickly approached the line, his medium length
golden blond hair
flew out behind him. Paul took off with his right foot a few
inches before the line,
landed on his left and stumbled over his feet. Out of the small
crowd standing
around Paul’s starting point, one of the black male students,
Randy, ran toward
Paul and teased him shouting, ‘White men can’t jump . . . White
boys can’t
jump!!’ Everybody, including the physical education teacher,
chuckled. Paul
grinned and walked defeated to where he’d remain for the rest
of the lesson – near
the rest of his mostly white classmates, next to the bleachers.
Paul was one of the very few white boys who sometimes played
basketball
for at least a half game with his classmates, mostly black
students, before walk-
ing out of the gym to play soccer with the rest of his classmates,

all white boys.
Sabeen Sandhu
Sabeen Sandhu
Asked to Comment on White Men Can't Jump
Sabeen Sandhu
Sabeen Sandhu
Blk Student Forward White Men Can't Jump
Sabeen Sandhu
Sabeen Sandhu
The researcher’s following conversation with Paul, whose
classmate Randy had
teased him by shouting ‘White men can’t jump!’, illustrates his
position on race
and natural athleticism:
Int.: When you were doing the triple jump, and sometimes in
basketball, I noticed that some

of your classmates would tell you ‘White men can’t jump’.
Could you please explain this
comment?
Paul: Hooyah, I think it’s just the connotation that black guys
usually jump higher, and of
course they jump higher. I think it’s just the connotation that
they give to white guys that
they can’t jump higher or be faster, not that they [whites] can’t
be physically fit, but that they
can’t jump higher.
Int.: What do you mean specifically?
Paul: Maybe not that they are more skilled, but they are more
fitful, they are more naturally
able to play, they (blacks) are more skilled – they are more
naturally able to play, but I
wouldn’t say that they are more skilled. You know it’s just their
history, where they come
from and their genes . . . the white guys are not as good, and
some of them are not as
strong. You know they (blacks) are kind of rough, they can
move you out and some of the
white guys just don’t like it. The black guys as a rule like
basketball more than the whites and
that is shown by the teams, there are more black guys than
white guys. I think it’s just their
preferences and their abilities to play.
Paul was a long distance runner on the high school track and
field team and
played soccer on a recreational team occasionally. Although
Paul experiments in
this interview excerpt with a few different reasons to explain
why ‘white men

can’t jump’, he reiterates and seems to settle squarely on the
idea that the black
edge is a ‘natural’ genetic phenomenon. Paul’s naturalization of
blacks’ sporting
success as related to muscular ability, contrasts discourses of
skilfulness and
technique that individuals develop through hard work. While
working hard to
develop skills and superior technique in sports are seen as a
marker of whiteness,
in opposition, roughness, power, and natural physical abilities
are viewed as
blackness, signifiers in racialized discourses (Stone et al.,
1999). As Paul repeat-
edly asserts, blacks are not more skilled, they have the genes.
The natural physi-
cality discourse that Paul uses to explain the ‘white men can’t
jump’ remark
functions to identify blacks as the ‘other’ by marking
differences in black sport
performance from the ‘normal’, the white. According to King,
participating in
white supremacy discourses ‘involves making invidious
distinctions of a socially
crucial kind that are based primarily, if not exclusively, on
physical characteris-
tics and ancestry’ (2005: 401). Blacks’ success in sports, in
discourses of race, is
rarely attributed to hard work, technique, or intellectual strategy
(Nayak, 2005).
During basketball and track and field activities in physical
education class,
Paul was not the only student who was often called ‘white boy’
by his black class-
mates. Black students in the boys’ class used the same remark,

for instance,
during basketball practice when a white student missed a basket
or made an error.
When the interviewer asked Coach Grenoue, Paul and Randy’s
physical educa-
tion teacher, about the triple jump episode, he explained:
Right, the triple jump, right. Well, first of all, it’s been my
experience in teaching where I
teach that on average black kids seem more athletic than white
kids. Now, there are some
SPORT 43(4)
Sabeen Sandhu
Agrees that White Men Can't Jump
Sabeen Sandhu
Sabeen Sandhu
Preference, Ability, & Genes!
Sabeen Sandhu
Sabeen Sandhu

white kids who are just as athletic as any of the black kids, but
on the average black kids
typically seem to be more athletic. I personally, I do believe,
that some part of it is genetics,
there’s no doubt about it in terms of the muscle structure.
There’s just differences, and
anybody who says anything else is not facing the facts . . .
Coach Grenoue concorded with Entine’s argument, ‘It’s time to
acknowledge and
even celebrate the obvious: it’s neither racist nor a myth to say
that “White men
can’t jump’” (Entine, 2000: 341). The dominant discourse of
blacks’ natural
athleticism circulating through media in society is embodied not
only by young
people, but performed also by educators and coaches in schools,
as Harrison et al.
(2004) found in another study.
Further explaining the relationship of race and athletic
performance, Coach
Grenoue commented:
. . . black kids’ emotions flow a lot easier, the conversation is a
lot louder and a lot more
dramatic, just dealing with something very simple. Black kids
typically are going to compete at
a higher level, you know. They don’t like to lose, they don’t
like somebody to beat them.
They are going to get out and play, and play the game hard,
which typically makes you better
at what you do. And then same thing if you don’t want to make
a B in a class, you study hard
to make an A. Where, if somebody is happy with a B, they’re
not going to push themselves

the extra. So, that holds true in all areas of life. But, the white
kids typically just don’t push
themselves as hard . . . and it’s just, typically you got movies
that you see ‘White Men Can’t
Jump’, you know and it’s funny, it’s a comedy. Woody
Harrelson plays in it, and Wesley
Snipes. It’s funny, but you know you have those types of things.
Int.: What do you mean? Do kids believe in those types of
things?
Coach Grenoue: Yeah, yeah! Well, our society today I think has
just created what I would
call a false impression that white, you know, white kids can’t
compete with black kids. And I
think a lot of white kids buy into that, that they can’t compete
with, you know, black kids
athletically.
Coach Grenoue pathologizes blackness by characterizing the
black students as
lacking emotional control, positioning them as the ‘other’
(Azzarito and Solmon,
2005). From Coach Grenoue’s white male racialized position,
blacks’ participa-
tion in sport is naturalized, ‘they get out and play, and play
hard’. According to
him, white males demonstrate limited skills compared to black
males, and more-
over, white males don’t work hard enough in sport. However, in
his fantasy to
restore white masculinity in the eyes of society, Coach Grenoue
hopes for young
white boys to push themselves to work hard and to compete
with black males in
basketball. In Pinar’s (2002) terms, sports such as American

football, basketball
and baseball are masculinizing contexts, sites of the contested
representation of
racialized masculinities, symbolic representations of an ‘affair
between men’.
While according to Pinar (2002), white men’s obsession with
black bodies and
anxiety about their performance reflect an internalized,
repressed desire for the
black body, Mercer (1994) theorizes that fetishization of the
black body might
implicitly represent a white male colonial fantasy, an erotic
objectification of the
body, through which the black male body depends on a
stereotypical fixation of
‘Otherness’.
However, Erickson (2005) offers a differing interpretation of
race discourses
in sport. From his view, the internalization of whiteness as a
racial identity
Sabeen Sandhu
Sabeen Sandhu

creates anxiety because of the possibility that the privileged and
colonizing space
represented by white masculinity might be taken away by a
black hypermasculine
body. This is evidenced in Coach Grenoue’s interview; his
participation in the
discourse of the black genetic edge and performance of
whiteness might repre-
sent anxiety around the privileged position he occupies as a
white male.
Like Coach Grenoue and all of the white male student-
participants at Molson
High School, Coach Grenoue’s student Kevin, took up the
dominant discourses
of race and athletic performance, explaining the relationships
and the teasing
among boys in the gym in general as follows:
Oh, we, like, usually, a black person in America can jump
higher than a white person. Like
Michael Jordan, he jumps, I don’t know how, but he jumps. I
tell you what, we are just
messing with them [black students] like they mess with us
[white students] and we mess with
them, but we don’t mean on being bad, we are just playing
around.
Int.: But, do you think black boys really jump higher than
whites?
Kevin: I think it’s proven that black men jump higher than
white men because they got extra
muscles or something like that in their legs, like I heard they
got extra muscles in their legs
and that causes them to run faster usually or jump higher. I

mean, like take Randy; he is my
height, he is a little shorter than me and he can jump higher
than me. He can jump and do a
360 and not worry about it. I can barely grab the net. I mean,
it’s just different.
Kevin contrasts Randy’s performance in jumping and running to
his own, thus
constructing a racialized justification for Randy’s better
jumping performance.
Kevin was an American football player for one year at Molson
High School, and
said he still loved American football, but had stopped playing
because he wanted
to finish school, ‘get a job and make money’. As Nayak (2005)
theorizes, cultural
imaginings produced by the media, like White Men Can’t Jump,
become real to
individuals who attribute racialized significance to specific
social practices,
embody and perform them. Perhaps, the function of racialized
discourse in
society produces and reinforces the naturalized boundary
between black/white.
The production of normative white masculinity created in
opposition to black
hypermasculinity, displayed through ‘natural’ physical ability,
represents a white
male backlash (Denison and Markula, 2005). Discourse
constructing the black
body as the ‘other’, the ‘abnormal’, the one with ‘extra
muscles’, to some extent,
protects and maintains the fantasy of the ‘normal’ white body.
Similar to Coach
Grenoue, Kevin, Paul and other white male students aim to
stabilize normative

white masculinity in opposition to black masculinity.
Black Boys’ Ambivalence: ‘White Men Can Jump . . . But Not
as High as Blacks’
– Randy, who teased Paul about his performance of the triple
jump, was one of
the students who frequently used the ‘white boy’ label. Randy,
as he explained to
the researcher, considered himself a superior athlete, played on
the American
football, basketball and track and field school teams, and with
the support of his
family dreamed of becoming a professional American football
or basketball
player. During the formal interview, when Randy was asked to
explain the triple
jump episode, he commented:
SPORT 43(4)
Sabeen Sandhu
It’s mainly from a movie that we have seen and the name of the
movie is called White Men
Can’t Jump, that is the name of the movie. Well, it’s just
because the movie stereotypes that
white boys can’t jump so it’s like we have white boys in our
class that can’t jump, but they

laugh [when we tease them].
Int.: But, do you believe that white boys can’t jump as high as
blacks?
Randy: Well, I think that it’s mainly from the genes. If you
have them, if you come from a
family that has them, like the family has athletic people, you
actually should be able to jump. If
you are from a family with non-athletic people, you won’t be
able to jump. I think it’s just
something you are born with it, it’s a gift. If you have the skills
you can do it.
Randy’s response is ambiguous and ambivalent to some extent,
as he participates
in contradictory discourses of race. Randy positioned himself
simultaneously as
a superior athlete by accepting the genetic edge discourse (his
self-perception and
his comment that athletic performance is ‘mainly from the genes
. . .’), and as a
black boy rejecting racial stereotypes, including movie fictions
of whiteness. As
the racialization processes of identity are fluid and
contradictory, blackness, like
whiteness, is an expression of multiple and conflictual
signifiers with malleable
boundaries (Nayak, 2005). Randy therefore negotiates these
boundaries by posi-
tioning himself regarding discourses of race and athleticism in
contradictory
ways: he simultaneously accepts the discourse of the black edge
(Harrison, 2001)
because his performance as an athlete centres him in the
discourse, a source of

black power and pride, and discards ‘white men can’t jump’.
Indeed, his rejection
of the discourse of ‘white men can’t jump’ might have reflected
his awareness of
white mass media stereotypes, considering that the sport media
industry is a
white male-dominated institution. Whiteness is visible to the
ones who are
excluded, as Frankenberg (1993) theorizes. Differently from
Randy, the other
two black boys interviewed resisted the notion of natural black
athleticism, but
they all, like Randy, embodied the ‘hoop dream’ discourse. All
of the black boys
interviewed hoped to become professional basketball players,
and they all
expressed a desire to achieve economic success through sport.
In their expression
of blackness, black boys often accept positive and empowering
socially con-
structed notions attributed to their ethnicity, being unaware of
the academic
implications (Harrison, 2001).
A Momentary Rupture of the Black Edge – As mentioned above,
the racial teas-
ing between the boys did not occur only between Paul and
Randy. During the
course of the observational period, the dominant discourse of
black athletic
superiority was subverted when Steve beat John during a 100
meter race. When
Steve finished before John, Rick teased John by shouting, ‘You
let a white boy
beat you! A white boy beat you!’ Coach Grenoue, while he
usually chuckled at

students’ ‘teasing’, firmly intervened in this instance, asking
Rick to stop scream-
ing, and commented later to the researcher that Steve had very
good athletic
skills. Steve explained to the researcher during his informal
interview that he had
never been on any school or recreational teams. A few times
during the observa-
tional period, Steve sat by himself on the benches and did not
participate in
physical education class. ‘I don’t feel like it’, Steve would
respond when the
researcher inquired about his lack of participation. However, ‘a
white boy beat
Sabeen Sandhu
you’ was a unique episode during the physical education
classes, a rupture of the
much more frequent comment ‘white boys can’t jump’.
This episode made visible the hidden curriculum on race
supported by Coach
Grenoue, revealing the fragility of ‘white men can’t jump’
discourse (Huddart,
2006). While on one hand, Coach Grenoue’s conscious and/or
unconscious

assertive intervention functioned to dismiss the rupture and to
re-establish the
racial order, on the other hand, the follow up silence among
students marked a
moment of anxiety in the class. The silence symbolized a
momentary loss of the
regime of truth of the black edge circulating in this physical
education class; it
signified the vulnerability and instability of the discourse
(Huddart, 2006), opening
possibilities for the creation a contradictory one, ‘white boys
can jump’. During this
episode, Steve negotiated his position within the dominant
discourse of race in
multiple, conflictual ways. While his performance provided a
momentary but
serious challenge to the black edge, at the same time, Steve
negotiated this event by
maintaining and accepting a peripheral position within
discourses of athletic per-
formance and superiority. To some extent, Steve’s lack of
participation in sport
practices, the marginal position he occupied in the gym by
sitting out of activities,
re-established and upheld the racialized notion of the athletic
performance in sport,
obscuring the ‘white men can jump’ discourse again. ‘A white
boy beat you!’ was
a unique episode in Coach Grenoue’s physical education class.
‘It’s Bull!’ Deconstructing the Black Edge
In the girls’ single sex class at the same high school, episodes
similar to the
‘white men can’t jump’ teasing were never observed by the
researcher. A pre-

liminary explanation, thus, would suggest that the ‘white men
can’t jump’
episode was isolated and/or was allowed by the physical
education teacher,
Coach Grenoue. However, in the physical education classes at
Walters High
School, most of the white boys interviewed (all but two, both
non-athletes) firmly
took up the black genetic edge discourse. Notably, all of the
girls in the girls’
single sex class, most of the girls in co-educational classes
(except for two white
girls) and only two white boys resisted the natural black
athleticism discourse.
Strikingly, all of the black girls interviewed dismissed the black
physical superi-
ority discourse.
(En)gendering ‘White Men Can’t Jump’ . . . It’s about
Upbringing, Money and
Working Hard! – For instance, Ashley, a black girl in a
predominantly white
physical education class, who loved sports, such as
cheerleading, but never had
access to formal training, negotiated the discourse of race and
athleticism by
commenting:
I just think that African American students, maybe because their
lives are harder and they
have to like work harder than like white people, you know, like
kids, and, I think, go to
sports to help them go through school, you know. ’Cause you
know, like at this school, the
majority of whites have wealthy parents, and a majority of
African Americans don’t have

wealthy parents. So I guess it’s more of a scholarship, so they
can have, like, more money for
college, you know.
SPORT 43(4)
Sabeen Sandhu
In explaining how black students perceive sport as an avenue
for college and
achieving social success in society, Ashley uses an economic
discourse that
describes social class as a structural barrier that black students
must overcome.
Although she rejects the black athletic superiority discourse, her
narrative imag-
ines whites and blacks as belonging to different social classes.
Ashley views and
experiences whiteness as a system of privilege and wealth in
and through which
white people have access to social avenues such that they do not
need to excel in
sports to go to college or become successful in society. Low
socio-economic
status and working-class students often do not perceive success
in society as
available to them through common means such as schooling; for
these students,

sport might be viewed as a prestigious but alternative pathway
(Goldsmith,
2003). School sport offers not only prestige among peers, but
also a ‘non-white’
avenue to obtaining college scholarships.
While Ashley generalizes the class experiences of her fellow
students based
upon their race (black or white), race is not a unitary category;
it is fluid and
intersecting with other categories, like social class, and it is
performed through
young people’s sport participation and academic success in
school (Azzarito and
Solmon, 2005). These young people’s differing cultural contexts
and gendered
experiences in sport inform their negotiations of the dominant
discourse of race
present in their narratives. While Ashley adopted an economic
discourse to
explain the ‘fact’ of black overrepresentation in certain sports,
Yasmin, a black
student at Walters High School who had never participated in
athletics outside of
physical education, concisely argued:
I don’t think you are better than someone at birth just because
you’re African American or
white, it just depends on you, how you want to be. If you
practice to be good, then you’ll be
good, no matter what race you are.
Yasmin resisted the racialized body by stepping outside of the
white androcentric
discourse of black natural physical superiority. She apparently
rejects the social

ascriptions of blackness or whiteness which, through
institutionalized practices
produce the racialized body, by asserting that such race
narratives classify human
beings ‘from birth’. Yasmin’s willingness to distance herself
from biological
discourses of race is evident in her response. She resists a
history of human
classification, from Social Darwinism (Carrington and
McDonald, 2001) to The
Bell Curve and Taboo, which has functioned as racial
discrimination by certain
groups against others. Yasmin’s concise statement ‘no matter
what race you are’
in particular disavows dominant hegemonic discourses of race,
resisting any con-
ceivable biological explanation. While most of the girls agreed
with Yasmin and
Ashley on this point, only two white girls took up racial
stereotypes fixating the
‘natural’ black athlete notion. For example, Kathy, a white
tennis player, confi-
dently states:
I mean African Americans, I mean they have the genes and they
are usually tall, and they have
the muscle mass that genetically helps them play sports. They
are more, I mean, they already
have that jump to help them, they get into it because, because of
that and then they get
better with practice.

Sabeen Sandhu
It’s a Guy’s Thing . . . We Are All the ‘Same’! – Yasmin was
not an athlete, but
Brittney, another black student interviewed for this study,
played basketball, soft-
ball, and volleyball and was on the school cheerleading team. In
an informal
interview, Brittney’s physical education teacher, Ms Breck,
commented that
because Brittney was one of the very few girls who played on a
variety of teams
at Molson High School, and especially because she was a
cheerleader, she was
sometimes called ‘white girl’ by her classmates. Brittney
explained during the
interview that sport was very important to her family – all her
siblings played
sports, and her father and grandfather were involved in sports
too. When the
researcher asked Brittney about the notion of ‘natural’ black
athleticism, she
responded:
I totally disagree with that because . . . I think guys are like, I
don’t know they’re weird, it’s
hard to explain I guess . . . The black guys want to look like
[they’re on the] basketball team,
and then you have your soccer guys who want to look like
what’s his name, um Beckham, and
they are mostly white. You know people want to look like this

and the other people want to
look like that and guys just split up. But I mean girls, it’s just
like one big thing. I think that our
[boys’] basketball team is mostly black, except for one guy, like
they [whites] think that [blacks
are naturally skilled], but it’s not true, because I mean, I know,
I have white friends who play
basketball and just don’t go out for it because they are like ‘Oh,
they’re better than me, I’m
not going to make the team.’ And I’m just like you know, they
are pretty good, but they don’t
think so. That is what they think . . . I think like they’re equally
good, and so I mean like, they
just don’t play because they don’t think they’re good enough to
play . . .
Referring to her experience in sport, Brittney continued:
. . . I totally disagree with that . . . [blacks’ natural athleticism]
I mean, for girls it’s different, I
mean girls do everything. I mean, I do softball which is a
predominantly white sport, but like
myself, and another girl and another girl we are like the three
blacks on the softball team. Like
we have white girls on our team that are 30 times better than
some of the black girls on our
team. I have to disagree with that because there’s this one
[white] girl on our team who
scored 15 points the other night, and she scored the highest out
of all the girls who played . . .
Like all the other black girls interviewed, Brittney emphatically
rejects the
genetic edge attributed to blackness. As Brittney navigates
white and black
spaces in school through sport, she resists the dominant

narratives of race by
pointing out cultural differences in boys’ performances in sport:
white boys want
to look like Beckham, black boys want to look like basketball
players. Therefore,
whereas Brittney adopts an ‘oppositional reading’ to the black
edge discourse
(Van Sterkenburg and Knoppers, 2004), she subverts the
racialized narrative of
the body by sharing her experience as a black female athlete on
predominantly
white teams. As a black girl, she rejects blackness as a signifier
of natural physi-
cal superiority by explaining that on her softball team, some
white girls are better
athletes than the black girls. In Brittney’s case, truth telling
becomes a form of
resistance to and subversion of racial discourses (hooks, 1992;
Ward, 2000).
Resistance depends on individuals’ effort to invoke an
‘oppositional gaze’ to
dominant discourses of race, by being positioned and by
positioning themselves
at margins of mainstream social spaces (hooks, 1992).
However, while Brittney’s narrative transcends the natural
physicality dis-
course and deracializes the body, it engenders the phenomenon
of ‘natural’
SPORT 43(4)

athletic prowess. Brittney’s position becomes more complicit
with a hegemonic
discourse of gender in sport when she argues that the natural
black edge in sport
is ‘a guy thing – . . . for girls it’s different, I mean girls do
everything . . .’ As one
of the few girls who played a variety of sports in a school where
male sport was
centred in the community, Brittney’s gender plays a more
significant role on her
views of race than her race does. Indeed, as a young black
woman who plays
‘white sports’ (i.e. softball and cheerleading), and is sometimes
called ‘white girl’
by fellow students, her position within these discourses seems
to shift toward a
liberal humanistic standpoint (Frankenberg, 1993) or liberal
democratic discourse
(Cooky and McDonald, 2005).
As mentioned in the methods section, both white female
teachers were reluc-
tant to talk about race issues. During the researcher’s one brief,
informal conver-
sation with each of them about race, they seemed to disavow the
notion of racial
difference. Taking up a liberal democratic discourse, Ms Breck
at Molson High
School asserted firmly and sharply, that all kids, whites and
blacks, are ‘the
same’; she believed that they all had the same potential to
succeed if they worked
hard. Ms Rayne at Walters High School responded also very

briefly, contending
that she did not believe in biological differences between blacks
and whites with
regard to athletic performance. The only additional information
Ms Rayne shared
with the researcher during that informal exchange was that she
suspected that
white students on the basketball teams at her school were
intimidated when they
played against predominantly black teams. The liberal
democratic discourse they
both adopted, founded upon notions of individualism and
meritocracy embedded
in whiteness, operates to erase cultural, economic, and political
differences
among ethnic groups (differences relevant to people’s access to
opportunities in
society), toward the ideology of ‘sameness’ (Cooky and
McDonald, 2005).
A similar position of ‘power evasiveness’ was adopted in this
study by other
girls, white students, who resisted the black edge discourse. For
example, differ-
ently from Brittney, Virginia, who did not play any sports
outside of school but
loved her physical education class, asserted:
I don’t think blacks have different genes or different muscles. I
just think that it’s just normal.
Because I know there’s a lot of, like baseball players like Mark
McGuire, he has one of the
best hitting averages in the US, and he’s white. So you don’t
really see black people in the
category for baseball, you see ’em in basketball mostly. I think
people judge’ em by like the

different sports that they are in, other than their structure. I just
believe that, we’re all people
and we can all do whatever we think we can do. I don’t think
there is a certain type of person
. . . it just depends on, like it depends on your structure, like
you push yourself to do it.
Virginia debunks the genetic argument of blacks’ natural
prowess and re-
positions blacks from the ‘other’ of whiteness to a deracialized
being, a ‘normal’
human. She disavows the black edge by drawing from the notion
of culturally
relevant physical activities, and offers the contrasting example
of athletic
performance in a predominantly white sport to prove that the
overrepresentation
of blacks in other sports is a matter of culture and structure (i.e.
environment). By
adopting a cultural context discourse, and in her effort to
dissociate herself from
racist notions, Virginia reconstructs people as raceless,
asserting that blacks are
‘just normal’ and ‘we are all people’.
Supporting and extending Virginia’s explanation, Desire,
another white girl,
emphatically commented on the natural athleticism discourse as

follows:
I think that’s bull, because you can have races in just about
anything. Look at it this way, Tiger
Woods – I mean golf is supposed to be like a white sport, you
watch a golf tournament, all
the guys are whites. Tiger Woods is black and he’s an awesome
golfer. Michelle Wei is
Chinese or Hawaiian and she is an awesome golfer. Then go to
basketball and if you look at
Duke, you’ve got some very good players that are white . . . and
just because you see a
majority of one race in one sport, it doesn’t mean that they are
better athletes, it just means
that they like the sport more . . . anyone can play any sport they
want regardless of their skin
color. And just because you see a lot of like, a majority of one
race in one sport, doesn’t
mean that they are better athletes, it just means that they like
the sport more.
Like all the other black girls and almost all of the white girls,
Desire, a student at
Walters High School, positioned herself outside of the
racialized discourse of
naturalized black athleticism. In this narrative, Desire views
Tiger Woods as
black, misperceiving but not necessarily disavowing Woods’
Asian identity, as he
is often misrepresented in mass media. She continues her
explanation by provid-
ing various examples of athletes of different ethnicities who are
underrepresented
in their sport, but portrayed as successful. By critically using
sport media images
of white players on the Duke basketball team to highlight white

athletes’
performance in sport (Stone et al., 1997), Desire subverts the
racial stereotype,
asserting that basketball is not just a ‘black thang’. Her
identification of elite
athletes of diverse ethnicities allows her to refute the
classification of particular
sports settings as dominated by any one, homogenous racial
group. Race is not a
‘sticky sign’ (Dyer, 2002) which attributes natural jumping
ability to one race,
according to Desire. At the same time, Virginia, Desire, and
Brittney’s narratives
feature primarily male athletes popular in sport mass media to
reject the dominant
discourse of race. Conceivably, as Brittney’s, Virginia’s,
Desire’s, and Yasmin’s
narratives demonstrate, girls’ resistance to the natural
physicality discourse
reflects an attempt to distance themselves from what they view
and experience as
a male androcentric discourse of race in sports, ‘a male terrain’.
Discussion
Race, like gender and class, shapes young people’s ways of
thinking about athleti-
cism, sport, and society and their performance of sporting
bodies. In this study it
first appeared that the socially constructed notion ‘white men
can’t jump’ was
embedded in a male sport culture; it was especially produced
and functioned in the
physical education setting of Molson High School, where this
racialized discourse
about the black edge was promoted by the teacher. However,

white boys (except for
two students who were not involved in sport) from physical
education classes at
Walters High School, a predominantly white school, were also
complicit with the
notion of black physical superiority. On the other hand, it was
certainly striking
how all of the girls interviewed at Molson High School and
almost all of the girls
(except for two white girls) at Walters High School instead
emphatically rejected
the black genetic edge discourse, evading race and, at the same
time, among other
discourses, performing liberal humanistic discourses of
sameness.
SPORT 43(4)
Young people’s construction of race reflects their range of
experiences, the
cultural context of their upbringing, and therefore their
standpoints toward
notions of black athletic superiority. They inhabit discourses of
race, but their
performance of these discourses, as Frankenberg (1993)
suggests, links to their
social position of privilege or distance in relation to the
dominant discourses pro-
duced in society. Findings from this study show the ways girls

performed a range
of discourses to explain the overrepresentation of blacks in
certain sports, which
in general encompassed an ‘oppositional reading’ (Van
Sterkenburg and
Knoppers, 2004). Girls, in differing degrees, positioned
themselves outside of
discourses of athletic performance upheld by sport, resisting the
adoption of the
dominant discourse of natural athleticism. They instead adopted
an array of dis-
courses, economics, the context of upbringing, and ‘sameness’
to explain the
overrepresentation of blacks in certain sports.
Like Ms Rayne and Ms Breck, most of the girls disavowed
cultural differ-
ences among ethnic groups, arguing for the recognition of
people as ‘the same’.
Although their attempt to distance themselves from stereotypes
of black physical
superiority might reveal a liberal humanistic position, a
discourse of ‘power
evasiveness’, their disassociation might also represent a
rejection of male hege-
monic discourse circulating in sport. Like in the film White
Men Can’t Jump,
where girls are located outside of the basketball court, girls’
position of resistance
in this study might reflect their view of themselves as outsiders
to sport, as dif-
ferent from boys, and therefore as gendered beings. A rejection
of this discourse,
then, represents girls’ participation in gendered discourses – as
femininity is con-
structed in opposition to masculinity, remote from the

masculinized mechanism
of sport, resisting what they viewed as ‘an affair between men’
(Pinar, 2002), or
a ‘male preserve’ (Therberge, 1991). Since the construction of
femininity, in
opposition to the construction of masculinity, is not tied to the
performance of
physical prowess through sport practices, girls at the margins of
these discourses
upheld alternative narratives of race.
It is not surprising, therefore, that boys in general were more
complicit with
dominant discourses of race in sports, considering that sport and
sport media
remain male institutions (Scraton et al., 2005). Boys
participated in the discourse
of blacks’ ‘natural’ athletic performance in racialized,
hierarchical terms – seeing
blacks as biologically different from whites and as physically
superior, or by
embodying the ‘hoop dream’ discourse. While the majority of
the white boys
adopted a ‘preferred reading’ of the dominant discourse of race
and athleticism
(Scraton et al., 2005), black boys, except for Randy, negotiated
this discourse by
rejecting the black edge narrative, but at the same time,
complying with the ‘hoop
dream’ discourse. White males, in particular, were more
complicit with the main-
tenance of the racial order in sport, the ‘essentialized project of
race’, which
implicitly upholds the construction of ‘normal’ white
masculinity; a masculinity
imagined as threatened by the presence of hypermasculine

blacks in sport.
Implications
There is no doubt that the power of sport media and sport as an
institutionalized
practice enters schools, merges with the school culture, and
colonizes young
people’s and adults’ body performances. Sport, physical
education, and media
function as pedagogical sites of identity construction and
culture, through which
young people as subjects negotiate dominant discourses of race
and gender. The
school culture produced by physical education teachers,
coaches, students, and
administrators might reinforce dominant discourses of race,
sport and athleticism
produced by the media. As findings in this study suggest, the
notion of the black
edge is not only a racial stereotype, but it is also profoundly
gendered. Since
girls’ performance of discourses of race and natural athleticism
might reflect their
marginal positioning within the status quo of sport as yet a
‘male preserve’, undo-
ing race through critical pedagogy should be informed by the
contemporary ‘per-

Codes of (un)dress and gender constructs from the Greek to t.docx

Codes of (un)dress and gender constructs from the Greek to t.docx

Recommended

Recommended

More Related Content

Similar to Codes of (un)dress and gender constructs from the Greek to t.docx

Similar to Codes of (un)dress and gender constructs from the Greek to t.docx (13)

More from mary772

More from mary772 (20)

Recently uploaded

Recently uploaded (20)

Codes of (un)dress and gender constructs from the Greek to t.docx