Politics cut across all social institutions, even those which we too frequently feel are immune from political underpinnings, such as athletics. Obviously, this will be all the more transparent when this summer’s Olympic Games commence in Beijing, China.
Among the innumerable variables that have played into American sporting politics, race has always been a major factor, and boxing exemplifies this racialized history as well as any other sport.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Jack Johnson won boxing's heavyweight crown, making him the first African American to do so. With his athletic success, Johnson found himself the most hated man in America.
Flaunting an affinity for white women, Johnson was characterized by white America as an example of African Americans’ so-called danger in society as a whole to white women’s “purity.” Thus, boxing promoters at that time worked desperately to find “the great white hope” who could dethrone Johnson and symbolically prove African Americans’ alleged racial inferiority.
They were unsuccessful. Instead, Johnson was arrested in 1913 and charged with offenses falling under the White Slave Traffic Act of 1910, known more commonly as the Mann Act.
According to Sammons (1990), “the law was so worded that any man who crossed a state line with a woman other than his wife and had sex with her could be prosecuted” (p. 43). Not surprisingly, white men committing the same offense were never charged with this crime.
Skip up to the 1960s and the era of Muhammad Ali. Like Johnson, Ali was initially despised by conservative white America. Ali, however, was hated more for his open disdain for American prejudice and his association with the Nation of Islam.
Hence, the strategy used to bring down Ali was to identify a more politically compliant African American heavyweight boxer who would defeat Ali and symbolize what conservative Americans wanted from the general African American populace during the Civil Rights Movement.
After the U.S. government stole what would likely have been Ali’s best sporting years, Joe Frazier (who was hardly patriotic) and George Foreman were utilized, ultimately unsuccessfully, in this manner.
By the time the 1980s rolled around, boxing began to expand in racial dynamics, seen first through the emergence of Mexican and Chicano boxers. From Roberto Duran to Oscar De La Hoya, boxing saw a huge surge in the number of prominent boxers whose familial ties were rooted in Mexico.
And in the years following, boxing’s international composition grew to the point where today, the average American sports fan barely recognizes names of those who hail as champions in the “sweet science.”
Moving from heavyweight (the Ukranian, Wladimir Klitschko) to junior lightweight (the Filipino, Manny Pacquiao), boxing’s various organizations are comprised of many athletes who do not resonate strongly with large pockets in American society.
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