Sport in Aotearoa and sport on a global level experience a certain
degree of racism, specifically institutional racism. Stuart Hall’s ‘The Grammar
of Race’ includes ideologies by which minorities are described and categorised,
one such category is ‘clowns/entertainers’.
The idea behind this ideology is that minorities have
natural abilities being naturally funny, or naturally great singers or even
naturally great athletes. This is problematic because totally attributing
talent to a persons ethnicity totally disregards any hard work, training or
effort that was put into becoming that great athlete or singer etc. Through the
continuation os this ideology, certain groups of people are being stereotyped
in certain ways which become normalized in our society – eg. ‘Polynesians are
better at sport than in the classroom’
An example of this is in 1997 a study took place which
analyzed NFL broadcaster comments, it was found that when individual players
were described, intellect-related qualities were highlighted in white players
but physical qualities (particularly their appearance) for black players.
Maybe a link could be made between this stereotype of
minorities being named natural athletes and the concept of the noble savage,
whose physical characteristics involve being strong and brave – perhaps these
characteristics still play a significant role today in determining someones
natural abilities.
This is very similar to my post earlier, it is definitely true that coloured athletes
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