Beyond the White Shadow: Philosophy, Sports, and the African American Experience

Beyond the White Shadow combines the disciplines of history and philosophy to examine sports and its influence on American history.As professors of philosophy, the authors bring a unique and fresh critical approach to the study of sport. With this work, they have created a new and complex paradigm which combines both the philosophy of history and the philosophy of sport. Beyond the White Shadow's Marxist analysis will fundamentally reveal the material and historical basis for the dialectics of racial sport conflict, at both amateur and professional levels, and its hierarchy of exploitation based on white power and authority. Beyond the White Shadow features: A Marxist analysis of history. Marxism clarifies the political economy of sport and its capitalistic social relations, which commodify all athletes but Black athletes in particular. "Footnotes" achievements/figures that were lost to history because of Jim Crow exclusion on the field of play and field of "selected history." An entire chapter addressing the triple burden of sexism, racism and class exploitation, which is gender history and revisionism at its best. Uses the television show "The White Shadow" to examine how pop culture misappropriated the field sociology of sport. The late 1970s series uses the sociological cultural deprivation model and applies it to the sociology of sport via a pop culture television series. Thought-provoking questions at the end of each chapter promote lively discussions and assignment opportunities. Extensive chapter-by-chapter references and a listing of influential African-American Sports Films.