Final Blog

As mentioned in my last blog, I currently am taking a class on race and sports. We have recently been discussing the role of race in baseball’s history; how different people were categorized, who was accepted, and who was not. Native Americans, Latinos, Cubans, African Americans, and every other racial group had to fight for their right and continue to prove their value to the major leagues in order to participate. This discussion of all the different racial categories in the United States emphasized, for me, the amount of categories we assign people.

In South Africa, there were three main racial groups of people; white, colored, and black. If you were a South African citizen, you fit into one of these categories. So, while in American we assign everyone a different race, South Africans don’t make such strong distinctions. While segregation is wrong on every front and South Africa’s system for categorizing people was not the right thing to do, it is interesting that this country, which the whole world condemned for being so racist, didn’t see a need to strongly distinguish between all the different types of people represented in their country. And, at the same time, all the different racial categories play such an important societal role the United States, a country that boasts its equality.

The United States has this need to categorize people. You can’t just be American; you have to be something else too. And, while a thing like race is so incredibly fluid, people’s lives are constantly being shaped by the racial category that other people put them in. Tiger Woods, for example, is perceived as black even though he has a mixed racial background. Because people think that he looks African American, that racial category is forced on him.

In our society we have tons of racial categories and force every single person to adopt at least one of these. Why do we have this ongoing need to categorize? Do we think that by creating more categories we are being more inclusive? Because we have Afro-Cuban instead of just Black or Cuban we are progressive? What are we saying with such an expansive system of categorization based on physical qualities? We seem to claim that we are accepting of all these racial categories, so creating them is okay. But, again, why can’t we all just be American?

6/3/10

On Tuesday I started a class called Race and Sports taught by Daryl Maeda. Our second day, the assigned reading was Sports Matters Race, Recreation, and Culture, edited by John Bloom and Michael Nevin Willard. The first chapter, Duke Kahanamaoku’s Body by Willard, discusses the racialization of the Hawaiian people through the context of the famous swimmer and surfboarder, Duke Kahanamoku. In the middle of the chapter, Willard discusses how Kahanamoku handles aggressive photographers who treat him as a lower class citizen because of his skin color.

“When [Kahanamoku] accommodated crowds of tourists who wanted their picture taken with him, the press of bodies and cameras often became so intense that people would begin to order him around and speak to him as an object: ‘Hey you. Get up there! Want your picture.’ He would calmly refuse and say, ‘I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood for a picture today.’ His biographer cites this as an example of Kahanamoku’s natural grace, his courtesy and kindness. I argue that it may also have been an effort to manage and negotiate (if not resist) the conflicting racial discourses of primitivism versus civilization that trapped his body in the tourist industry” (21).

It amazes me that, despite being treated as an object, Kahanamoku was able to maintain his composure and calmly reject the photographers’ obnoxious requests. I can’t say how I would react in that situation, but I know that I would definitely resent anyone who addressed me in that manner.

The South African people, like Kahanamoku, have also been able to maintain their composure after the violently brutal apartheid period. I think that this is what has remained to amaze me the most. Despite all the hatred and oppression directed at the black and colored people, they have not taken revenge. And, as Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom emphasizes over and over again, throughout the struggle the ANC did not want to kick out the whites, but wanted to create equality for all the South African people.

It is hard for me to understand how it is possible that people who went through so much are able to peacefully deal with their former oppressors living across street. I know that all the oppressed people have not granted forgiveness, but even living in harmony seems like a stretch for me. If a group of people forced me to live in poverty and killed much of my family I don’t know if I could live peacefully with them in my community.

This honorable and ideal attitude that the South African people have adopted and projected seems to be the thing that has been keeping the country above water. The victims have been willing to set aside the pain and violence they endured for a greater good. Without this mentality, South Africa would disintegrate.

The United States also needs to adopt an attitude that the greater good is more important that the individual if we are going to move forward with deconstructing racialization. It sounds idealistic, but we need to set aside our differences and past wrong doings if we are going to become one united nation. It has been mentioned time and time again that Americans do not have an identity which is centered around America. If we are going to develop one, we need to first become one people.

Bloom, John, and Michael Nevin. Willard. Sports Matters : Race, Recreation, and Culture / Edited by John Bloom and Michael Nevin Willard. New York: New York UP, 2002. Print.