ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the ways in which certain sporting bodies become racialized as a way to think about embodied forms of politics and black cultural politics in particular. It shows that the performative aspects of black physicality are, in and of themselves, important sources and sites of scholarly enquiry. The chapter discusses how forms of movement and physicality, sometimes taking violent forms, and often channeled through sports like boxing, have historically constituted a modality of black cultural politics. It then examines arguments that suggest that the hyper-commercialization of sports, driven by global capitalistic logics, has led to the commodification and depoliticization of the sporting black body. The chapter focuses on contemporary forms of sporting politics that have grounded questions of race and sport alongside social justice movements. Modern sport is able to symbolically impact the racial order precisely because it can claim to be a space 'removed from politics'.
