ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the relationship between ‘race’, whiteness and sport. It provides an overview of the concept of whiteness and how it has been applied to sport. The chapter assesses the state of research regarding ‘race’, whiteness and sport, and suggest research directions. Numerous studies articulate the possibility of sport acting as a legitimate space for political struggle, resistance and change, and as a modality for ‘self-actualization and the reaffirmation of previously abject identities’. Critical race theory is often described as an emergent, liberatory, ‘race’ centred theoretical framework that sharpened its intellectual tools in the crucible of American ‘race’ relations and critical legal studies. Fundamental state-sponsored racialized inequalities were regularly the central agenda for their contestations and discourses of racial liberation. Critical race theory has used by sport and leisure scholars to apply a new lexicon to the study of racialized relations in sport and leisure arenas.
