In 2008 on the April cover of Vogue magazine, basketball superstar LeBron James stands holding thin, blond, fair maiden Gisele Bundchen in his muscular tattooed arms. His mouth is open, much like the fabled gorilla King Kong, and he is clad in black. This young beast of a man, standing six feet and eight inches tall and looking primal, holds what many consider the epitome of beauty in his large hand and muscular arm. Is race at play? Indeed. In fact it is in play in sport more than most want to admit. Subtle and overt racial messages, images, and half-truths are interrogated in this book. People often ask me how I can justify mentioning race in the same breath as sports when two of the most respected and iconic individuals in American culture (Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali) are African American. "Is not the greatest professional golfer Black or at least part Black, Asian, and Caucasian? Are not two of the best women's tennis players Black? Is not the home-run king Black (previous and current)? Is this not proof positive that racism does not rear its ugly head on fields where sporting events take place? See, non-Whites are excelling-what more do you want?" I am sometimes scolded. Of course, these same people also argue that long before Dr. King was marching on Washington and describing his "dreams," Jackie Robinson marched onto all-White baseball fields living the reality of desegregation that King only dreamed about...

Dear Lutalo,

Your birthday recently passed and I did not send you a gift or call. For your previous landmark birthday when you became a teenager, I bought you a leather basketball, invited you out for the week, and schooled you in several games of basketball. I promised to give you another chance after you worked on your game some more. This year you turned sixteen-an important age for most young men and women. I did not send a sports-related gift this year because I was having trouble with your gift: this letter. Indeed, it has given me trouble, as I have been trying to figure a way to begin. Several times over the past few weeks, I have stopped and started composing it, in search of the precise words, the correct message that alarms, even frightens without nihilism. Finally, inspired by my rereading of James Baldwin's classic essay "My Dungeon Shook," which he composed for his nephew, I realized that if I let my heart and truth guide me the proper words would follow.

As I write this message to you and young women and men of your generation, James Baldwin's accusations in his letter to his nephew that we are not expected to succeed, nor aspire for much beyond life in ghettos, continues to haunt me. I cannot bear to watch you or other youth limit yourselves to professional athletic aspirations to fulfill expectations of social mobility. I am aware that your generation represents an era of somewhat different young men and women who see mega-rich Black entertainers and athletes "shining" for an adoring public in society that looks to be "all good" or to have achieved the dream of equality and economic success. I am also not far removed from this generation that has taken a term like "nigger" and attempted to poetically turn it into a term of endearment, detonate its racial sting, and flatten its bite by changing the spelling to "niggas." While I understand the intent, history will not allow me to swallow such reasoning. It is a bitter pill, for the implications and outcomes are too regressive. The true travesty is that descendants of those once enslaved, who risked death for resisting such degrading terms, or for literacy, find education to be out of reach or not a viable option for making it in the twenty-first century.

When did you become one of those people? Now that you have turned sixteen, you should feel that the entire world is at your fingertips, and it is. Instead, the only thing you see at your fingertips is a basketball. Believe me, there is so much more...

Black identity, specifically Black male identity, represents several extremes in American sport from egocentric and barbaric to excessively humble (the latter being most appealing to mainstream culture). While most contemporary Black athletes do not exude the political or racial consciousness of Curt Flood, Andrew "Rube" Foster, or Paul Robeson, the problem is that not enough contemporary athletes display subservience or humility. Although largely apolitical, modern athletes, whom I call Ballers of the New School (BNS), are trouble because they do not "know their place." The contemporary Black athlete-represented by an impressive, mostly White armada of advisers-demands rather than asks. These Ballers of the New School use performance on and beyond fields of play to claim space in the American landscape, boldly asserting their own modern voice, style, rules, and values. What they assert is often limited personal concerns. BNS are complex because sometimes they transform and other times they reify the socially produced minstrel distortions of Black people. Athletes of the last three decades are problematic because they are not intimidated nor will they kowtow in front of a White presence. Athletes of this era demand as much respect and money as they can claim, without apology or overstated humility. Perhaps Latrell Sprewell's words in his famous And 1 commercial best epitomize the complexity of sports culture, race, and BNS: "You say I'm an American nightmare; I say I'm the American Dream."

As I listen to reporters and commentators and read sports columns, I have one question to ask: "Why isn't it okay to be Black?" Most aesthetic or cultural values affiliated with non-Whites are condemned as immoral or negative-until appropriated by the dominant culture. The athletes whose on- and off-court styles or values reflect those of White American culture are embraced. All "others" are labeled outlaws, criminalized, their bodies a fetish or engrossment, the subject of ridicule and gaze. In his political autobiography Die Nigger Die! H. Rap Brown explains the phenomenon of Black pride, acceptance, and success in America this way: "When a Black man looks at Black people with a Black mind and a Black soul, it is immediately apparent that Black people possess certain unique characteristics that not only distinguish them from Whites and Negroes, but that have greatly contributed to the survival of Blacks. Whites recognize this and have always attempted to eradicate these characteristics or discredit them. In instances where they have succeeded, Negroes have been created." 1 Brown characterizes a situation that persists in American culture in the twenty-first century. Of course, the true problem that non-White sports stars present is that they sometimes resist the invented; they resist being made "Negroes." The harsh response to BNS who reject these expectations is an indication that we still inhabit a world that is threatened by and does not respect the cultural values of "others." The expressive Black youth culture that BNS represent is thought to be threatening and detrimentally different from the dominant culture.

In fact, a closer examination of the corporate embrace of Michael Jordan, the modern symbol of racial progress, reveals that its okay be "like Mike" as long as one embraces a nonracial persona deemed "acceptable" as outlined by Whites. But people get a case of selective amnesia when it comes to remembering the young Jordan with his New School swagger, big diamond earring, outlaw red-and-black shoe with his name on it, gold chains, baggy shorts, fat rides, as a representative of the new culture of basketball, even sports. Young Money (Jordan) was as counterculture and trendy as some of the most hated ...

On 31 December 2007, NCAA president Myles Brand headed the NCAA convention, where he made a plea for equality on campuses for women and minorities in the field of head coach and athletic director. Brand cited the paucity of Black head football coaches as an "embarrassment" to college athletics and encouraged the leading members of NCAA institutions to take immediate action regarding the hiring of Blacks and other minorities into these positions because the historically slow rate of increase among minority head coaches or athletic directors. Furthermore, Brand, seizing the moment and aware of the racial inequities in collegiate sports leadership, reminded the gathering that if intercollegiate athletics is to play a key role of helping to promote social justice in higher education, as it should, then all of us, the NCAA national office and the universities it represents, must recognize the challenges and commit to meeting them.

This chapter extends a similar challenge, but not just to collegiate sports. Here the query is where is the diversity at the coaching and executive levels of American sport culture in the 21st century? There is little doubt that in the high-profile sports such as football, basketball, and baseball the presence of non-Whites speaks volumes regarding racial progress, but positions of leadership beyond the playing fields are far from diverse. Contrary to popular notions, the world of sport, which has been lauded for its racial progress, is filled with discrimination, inequities, and lack of diversity. Racism, inequality, discrimination, and nepotism in sport are real. Instead of being frustrated by repeated declarations that race is a problem, what should more frustrating is the variety of ways discrimination exhibits itself in American sport culture. Indeed, sports culture is a reflection of our society. Further, the disenfranchisement of people of color in sports culture reinforces false notions of intellectual inferiority, ensuring a regime of racial discrimination that systematically keeps people of color out of positions of leadership...

In December 2002 a group of Harvard economists named the NCAA "the best monopoly in America" (Keating 56). The only remedy is for someone to launch an antitrust challenge against the NCAA, because it is a contradiction to sell television rights to the highest bidder, yet forbid amateur athletes from earning one penny of what the market will pay them. The spoils of war go to coaches and administrators, who get raises, perks, commercials, and endorsement contracts totaling in the millions, while athletes are pimped and punished if caught accepting payment beyond tuition, room and board, and small stipends. "Education" and "protection from exploitation" are a smoke screen for exploitation. In American culture, college athletics has become wholly commercialized. It shamelessly exploits amateur athletes, especially youth of color in high-revenue-producing sports like football and basketball where their graduation rates lag. While the graduation rates for all college athletics are slightly alarming, a fire alarm needs to be sounded regarding football and basketball athletes, where the numbers tend to slip, particularly among Black athletes...

People complain that modern athletes earn too much money, are greedy, and do not care about the team. But rarely is there outrage that team owners, presidents, and league executives earn too much money. Why? Could it be because the latter are primarily White and male and considered deserving? What we too often hear are recitations of how athletes, especially those of color, are not worth the money they earn, or unappreciative of their opportunity. There was outrage when Latrell Sprewell (now broke) complained that several millions is not enough to feed his family, and when Rasheed Wallace (while playing for the Portland Trailblazers), told Portland reporters that all he was concerned with was for the Blazers to "just cut the check" (JCC). In fact, the Portland area was livid when Wallace appeared more concerned about his money than with what fans thought about him. However, sport has always been about money. There is no secret that it is a billion-dollar industry. Fans clamor for players' autographs because they are worth money. Romantic is the notion that teams, fans, or racial goodwill and equity are guiding forces in American sport culture. Historian Davarian L. Baldwin perhaps best expresses this point in his book Chicago's New Negroes when he explains:

Clearly, as Baldwin details above, money always has been and will continue to be the bottom line. Sound economics is the basis of what many mistaken as benevolent social goodwill in American sport culture. It has always been more about making dollars change hands than about making change. Earning dollars has historically made the most sense in America. Most civil rights progress was pressured by impending economic perils...

Film representations are part of a larger subset of systems of social representations that determine how people live (Vera and Gordon 185). The images of non-Whites in contemporary sports films are quite unsettling. Since slavery, Black masculinity has been framed in notions of Brute Negro, Stud, noble savage, Uncle Tom, and Bad Nigger, while post-Reconstruction/neo-slavery images (1865-1954) have portrayed the Irresponsible Negro, Terrible Freedman, Uncle Tom, Stud, Buffon, and reprised Bad Nigger. In the modern world, sports films frame Black masculinity as the Hustler, Militant/Bad Nigger, Super Jock, or Womanizer-lazy, flashy, and consistently anti-intellectual or dumb. To counter these negative images, Black films in the early 1970s-beginning with Melvin Van Peebles's successful, yet at times problematic, Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) and subsequent films like Shaft (1971) and Superfly (1972)-hit the screen with financially lucrative results (Bogle 240). But the films primarily featured heroes who were apolitical flashy individualists and also sexually audacious. To some extent such images were necessary to counter earlier images. But one consistent element with all of these Black heroes or anti-heroes is that they were renegades who were never intimidated by Whites. They were all the antithesis of the asexual, accommodating Uncle Tom.

Film has been a dominant purveyor of the discourse of White supremacy, a notion effectively situated in sports-particularly the arena of prizefighting. Modern sports films have emerged as a common launchpad for reprising many of the aforementioned stereotypes...

Once while giving a lecture on racism in sports and American culture, I was asked why there is so much emphasis placed on sports in our culture. It was the type of question I usually pose to my students during the first week of a class then return to at the end of the semester. It was a question that perplexed ancient Rome. It was precisely the type of question I had hoped my lecture would produce. In a society that prides itself on being filled with intelligent people, the American sports fetish or preoccupation seems in direct conflict with the superior culture signals projected worldwide. One obvious answer is that sport allows an escape from it all-one can let go and root for the home team. Sports also proclaim America as so stable and wealthy that its citizenry can organize and preoccupy themselves with games.

Another answer might be that sports remind us of all of the games we played as kids: kick ball, dodgeball, wall ball, and so on. Sports are youthful, and we take great pleasure in watching talented young men and women at play. Thus, despite the hue or social background of the professional players, we all connect because games allow us to recall a different time in our life-a period when our life went at an easier pace, was less structured and more impromptu. Sports remind us of our childhoods, when we were free and time was actually timeless. Sports are the linchpins to our youth and, sadly, signifiers that we have grown up. Sports remind us to have hope.

Of course, the best answer to why we like sports is a combination of all the above. However, I contend that sports also prove the following: (1) equity and opportunity are never far away, but money, race, and class divisions are real deterrents; (2) sports also divert us from conversations of political, economic, or social criticisms and analysis, while subtly cultivating jingoists; and (3) along with this diversion, sports shape how Average Joes (hereafter "Josina" is inclusive, for I use this term without limiting gender, race, or class) discern these very issues via the heroics of gladiators' exploits on and off fields of competition...However, the answer I like best is Noam Chomsky's contention that sport is an important tool for governance because "if you can personalize events of the world . . . you've succeeded in directing people away from what really matters and is important."...

In many ways, this book took its original shape during my first visit to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. While somewhat unorthodox it is necessary that I end by discussing the book's origins. Interested in the emergence and history of this segregated baseball league, I jumped in my car early one Saturday morning and left St. Louis for a day trip to Kansas City. As I neared the area where the museum was located, I slowed down to read the addresses but kept skipping past where the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum was supposed to be! I repeated this three times before I reluctantly got out of the car to walk the street for a better view of the address. What I discovered was that the storefront building with the construction paper forming a man holding a bat was not an abandoned building but the museum! (It has since been replaced by a swank new building)

My struggle to locate the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum symbolizes the notion of race being an invisible relic of the past-its history difficult to locate. The Negro Leagues are a reminder that race is a construct. Just as the museum was difficult to locate, the form that race takes in the modern world can be difficult to articulate, especially in sport. But the museum's existence is evidence against denials of racism in America. It is also evidence that independent institutions and sports can be used to change America's racial problems...