ABSTRACT
When the United Nations make statements about the presence of racism in sport it should be clear that “race”, sport and politics are not only linked, but inextricably so. There are numerous instances through history where “race”, sport and politics have taken centre stage as a form of resistance, or more broadly as a cultural tool. The nature of politics is such that, depending on perspective, these events have shown sport as not always a vehicle for good, yet it remains a tool for the expression and reinforcement of values for the broadest spectrum of actors and political issues. Many commentators have identified sport and “race” as triggers for social and political events. The image of Martin Luther King Jr explaining to his daughter why she could not go to a public amusement park because it was closed to Black children offers us further insight into sport and recreation as spaces for social control, subordination, oppression and dysfunction (Wolcott 2012). Further, King’s “I have a dream” speech that followed this shameful event is brought into sharper relief, as his personal and political lives are further focused in what some would paradoxically describe as the benign fields of sport and recreation. This state-sponsored support of racism through the systematic defence of individual and institutional actions against minoritised Americans reinforced racial hierarchies in a plethora of ways. The social relations in sport and recreation not only reflected the broader travails of the racial and political landscape of the 1960s; it also symbolised a “frontline” arena for the state of the nation (Hylton 2014).
