A Level Playing Field : : African American Athletes and the Republic of Sports / / Gerald L. Early.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter E-BOOK GESAMTPAKET / COMPLETE PACKAGE 2011
• VerfasserIn: Early, Gerald L.,
• Place / Publishing House: Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, , [2011]; ©2011
• Year of Publication: 2011
• Language: English
• Series: Alain Locke Lecture Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (288 p.)

As Americans, we believe there ought to be a level playing field for everyone. Even if we don’t expect to finish first, we do expect a fair start. Only in sports have African Americans actually found that elusive level ground. But at the same time, black players offer an ironic perspective on the athlete-hero, for they represent a group historically held to be without social honor.In his first new collection of sports essays since Tuxedo Junction (1989), the noted cultural critic Gerald Early investigates these contradictions as they play out in the sports world and in our deeper attitudes toward the athletes we glorify. Early addresses a half-century of heated cultural issues ranging from integration to the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Writing about Jackie Robinson and Curt Flood, he reconstructs pivotal moments in their lives and explains how the culture, politics, and economics of sport turned with them. Taking on the subtexts, racial and otherwise, of the controversy over remarks Rush Limbaugh made about quarterback Donovan McNabb, Early restores the political consequence to an event most commentators at the time approached with predictable bluster.The essays in this book circle around two perennial questions: What other, invisible contests unfold when we watch a sporting event? What desires and anxieties are encoded in our worship of (or disdain for) high-performance athletes?These essays are based on the Alain Locke lectures at Harvard University’s Du Bois Institute.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- PART I. Leveling the Playing Field -- 1. When Worlds Collide: Jackie Robinson, Paul Robeson, Harry Truman, and the Korean War -- 2. Curt Flood, Gratitude, and the Image of Baseball -- 3. Donovan McNabb, Rush Limbaugh, and the Making of the Black Quarterback -- PART II. Heroism and the Republic of Sports -- 4. American Integration, Black Heroism, and the Meaning of Jackie Robinson -- 5. Performance and Reality: Race, Sports, and the Modern World -- 6. Where Have We Gone, Mr. Robinson? -- Notes