15 Aug 2013
Thursdays at Lecture Theatre G7, Pavilion Street (opposite The Royal Pavilion)
27 October 2011: "'Fear of a Black Athlete' Revisited: Sporting Mythologies and White Ignorance in the Age of Obama"
Ben Carrington (University of Texas at Austin)
In 2001, Ben published an essay entitled 'Fear of a Black Athlete: Masculinity, Politics and the Body' in the cultural studies journal new formations. Ten years on he revisits the arguments made in that article regarding the ways in which 'the black athlete' has become a fantasmatic figure within the white western imagination. His suggestion is that colonial fantasies about the excesses of black sexuality continue to exercise a hegemonic role in the commodified representation of blackness; the black (male) body occupying a central metonymic site through which notions of 'inherent athleticism' and 'animalism' operate. These sexualised tropes of blackness provide the discursive limits through which the black subject continues to be framed.
After the 2008 US presidential election of Barack Obama, many commentators argued, first, that the success of black sports stars had paved the way for white acceptance of black success and authority, thereby making possible Obama's election. Second, they argued that the election itself signaled a new post-racial moment in America's troubled racial history. In this talk, Ben will demonstrate how (1) racialised mythologies are produced within the white sports/media complex in the context of the current political backlash to Obama's modest program of social reform, and (2) how the history of white fears and western mythologies concerning black sexuality and violence continue to be articulated in and through the trope of 'the black athlete'. [Carrington, B. 'Fear of a Black Athlete: masculinity, politics and the body', new formations, 45 (Winter 2001-02), pp.91-110]
Ben is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas, Austin and Carnegie Visiting Research Fellow at Leeds Metropolitan University. From 1997 to 2004 he taught at the University of Brighton's Chelsea School. Published widely on the cultural politics of race, nation and sport, he is the author, most recently, of Race, Sport and Politics: The Sporting Black Diaspora, Sage 2010.
