ABSTRACT
The issue of race in sport comes to Britain from the United States where the discourse has focused until recently around African Americans and skin colour; more recently studies have included Hispanic groups. In Britain from the late 1970s serious study has developed from the issue of skin colour to that of culture, though studies of South Asian, Chinese, and even more, white cultural minorities in sport (Irish, Polish, Ukrainian), are progressively rarer. In the US, issues have been:
• why black people are well-or over-represented in some professional sports (notably athletics, American football, basketball and baseball) but not much or at all in others (such as tennis, golf or swimming). In Britain these same contrasts are made between athletics, soccer and cricket and other sports; but in 1999 the Football Association held a major conference into the lack of Asian players
• the idea of ‘stacking’ – the placing of ethnic minority professional players in certain positions within a team
• the use of professional sport as a route ‘out of the ghetto’, and • more recently, the unequal chances of participation by minorities in
sport as recreation.
