ABSTRACT
It is well known that the overwhelming majority of boxers come from popular milieus, and especially from those sectors of the working class recently fed by immigration. Thus, in Chicago, the predominance first of the Irish, then of central European Jews, Italians, and African Americans, and lately of Latinos closely mirrors the succession of these groups at the bottom of the class ladder. 1 The upsurge of Chicano fighters (and the strong presence of Puerto Ricans) over the past decade, which even a casual survey of the program of the great annual tournament of the Chicago Golden Gloves immediately reveals, is the direct translation of the massive influx of Mexican immigrants into the lowest regions of the social space of the Midwest. Thus, during the finals of the 1989 edition of that joust, clearly dominated by boxers of Mexican and Puerto Rican extraction, DeeDee [The manager of the gym, Eds.] points out to me that “if you want to know who's at d'bottom of society, all you gotta to do is look at who's boxin’. Yep, Mexicans, these days, they have it rougher than blacks.” A similar process of “ethnic succession” can be observed in the other major boxing markets of the country, the New York–New Jersey area, Michigan, Florida, and southern California. By way of local confirmation, when they first sign up at the gym, each member of the Woodlawn Boys Club must fill out an information sheet that includes his marital status, his level of education, his occupation and those of his parents, and mention whether he was raised in a family without a mother or father as well as the economic standing of his family: of the five precoded income categories on the questionnaire, the highest begins at $ 12,500 a year, which is half the average household income for the city of Chicago.
