ABSTRACT
Since Victorian times, and indeed earlier, educationalists in Britain have variously embraced the belief that sport, inter alia, can provide an invaluable medium for ‘character building’. Sport, as Hargreaves has suggested, may be regarded as having an important role in socialising youth into mainstream-conformist values. This chapter attempts to detail the social processes which have been variously identified as contributing to the apparent orientation of Black British youth towards achievement in sport. Nonetheless, several believed that racial stereotypes prompted teachers to divert Black youth away from the academic mainstream into sport. Several of the teachers at the school were found to perceive Black pupils as having superior physical endowments and skills and to rationalise their sporting achievements in naturalistic terms. Various commentators have referred to the cathartic effect of sport when accounting for the heightened value placed on sports participation in Afro-Caribbean youth culture.
