‘Elite athletes are not interested in political action … activism of prominent black athletes went down after Muhammad Ali’

John Hoberman, a social and cultural historian at the University of Texas, Austin, has researched the relationship between sports, politics and race relations. He locates the recent racial justice protests in the US in the context of activism of black athletes in a chat with Siddharth Saxena:

Has George Floyd’s death become a tipping point in race relations in the US?

I think it’s politically inevitable. This was unanticipated. I’ve been working in the area of race relations now for 30 years; I could not have predicted what has happened over the past several weeks. When you look at the number and range of organisations and institutions that are frantically climbing aboard this train, it’s very striking. And so, there’s some sort of mood change or attitude change towards the status of black people in this society. Now how this translates itself into real change that is going to benefit African Americans and everyone, is really quite unclear at this point.

Another factor is the presence of Donald Trump in the White House. This is really an openly racist political gangster who is going to inspire activism in a lot of people who understand what he represents and what he is trying to do to the country. I think that’s an important background aspect of this.

Elite black athletes and white spectators – has that relationship changed the equation between the two communities?

The relationship between the white sporting public and elite black athletes is through entertainment, provided primarily through television. It’s very easy to enjoy the performances but the long-standing question is, do these performances affect white racial attitudes? Does it build goodwill? Well, there are a lot of African Americans who for most of the last 100 years have hoped that black athletic performances would create respect for black people in the population. It’s impossible to measure to what extent that is the case or not, but it is not the sort of social engineering that is going to cure white racial attitudes.

You have spoken about how sport has, in fact, perpetuated many stereotypes.

To the extent that black athletes are seen as representing black community’s abilities, that is not good at all. I worry about the implications of black athleticism as being representative of black humanity. Because you want that community to have a whole set of abilities and those draw on intellectual achievement and not simply athletic achievement.

How vocal have black athletes been in raising issues of the community and have they been heard?

The activism of prominent black athletes went way, way down after Muhammad Ali. And it lasted that way for decades. The issue was raised again in September of 2016, when Colin Kaepernick took the knee. That is what brought the issue back as a significant social issue but it did not go very far. What we have seen in the last month is revolutionary.

Did it help that Ali probably had a more global appeal because of his sport? 

You know his role as a boxer, the solitary man in the ring. That must have played a role. His ego, his personality, his attachment to principles from the very beginning, his Muslim identity was important. You had the sports celebrity, you have the religious affiliation. You have the public pronouncement of principles such as he refuses to go to Vietnam, so he was just on a different scale than Kaepernick. The thing about Kaepernick is that he is literally the only big story of this kind to appear after Ali and it took 40 years! And now we have this very unexpected political phenomenon happening in the US, and that is encouraging many African American athletes to get into the political sphere, which is a good thing. But it required this massive public phenomenon in order to provide enough cover for most of these people to act the way they have.

Does the silence of the elite athletes have to do with the million dollar salaries and lucrative deals?

Elite athletes in general are not really interested in social and political action. The activists tend to be few and far between, it doesn’t matter which country you’re in.

Do you see a change in the sense that more black athletes are speaking up this time?

There are definitely more people speaking up. LeBron James has just announced that he is going to become an activist to get people out to vote. If James can make a dent, if he is sophisticated enough to run an operation that is really going to fight back against voter suppression, that would be significant. You know he’s worth $400 million; I’ve been waiting for him to do something useful with it for a long time. And notice that it took this unique historical moment for him to make up his mind and try to make an effort.