Whiteness and Sport

Abstract

Here I am as a young white boy, playing rugby and soccer, and running and cricket, not very good at any of them but doing it all like it’s the natural thing to do. We play sports in our own way, with our own rules — these are informal sports practices, more like other games we play than the grown-up versions our teachers and fathers talk about. In playing soccer I learn the importance of competition — I need to win, to beat others, whatever it takes, even in the bounds of the old bowling green we play on. My friends feel the same. We are boys becoming men, learning to be men, to be tough, to be ruthless in the quest for glory, watched by the girls on the benches at the edge of the green. In playing rugby I learn to keep my tears to myself, to smile and joke at the cuts and bruises and sprains. My brother, another white boy learning to be a proper white Yorkshire man, breaks his ankle at rugby training and walks home limping. We all soak up the lessons of football and rugby: sports for men invented by white, British men, our sports that had spread with our British customs across the world. We understand the importance of England’s success in the World Cup and other test matches, and dream long, crazy dreams of pulling on white jerseys and playing for our country. As I get older I become more of a spectator, learning to get my sports fix like other young white men through the transference of my energies and desires onto the mainly white men in the teams I support.