‘We've got team spirit!’: ethnic community building and Japanese American youth basketball leagues

ABSTRACT

This article examines the role co-ethnic youth basketball leagues play in shaping ethnic community among third- and fourth-generation Japanese American youth. With dwindling rates of Japanese immigration, increased rates of out-marriage, and fewer cultural hubs available, finding a thriving ethnic community has become a particular challenge for later-generation Japanese Americans. Drawing from ethnographic data, I argue that even among highly ‘assimilated’ Japanese Americans, youth basketball leagues serve as an active space for constructing and preserving ethnic community and social networks. I demonstrate how through social, cultural, and spatial interactions facilitated by sports, some Japanese Americans have found a sense of ethnic ‘connectedness’ within basketball leagues while performing their own renditions of ethnic identity that is simultaneously attentive to fluid local and global connections. These findings illuminate the role and importance of sport through which Japanese Americans challenges the racial contours of American-ness and belonging while claiming their place, locally, nationally, and transnationally.

KEYWORDS:

• Ethnic community
• race
• Japanese American
• sports
• youth
• identity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. See Thangaraj's (2013, 2015) work and his examination of Asian American leagues participation on the East Coast and US South.

2. All names have been changed to protect the identity of participants and the organizations involved.

3. This percentage was determined through informal interviews with families and by examining the names and photographs of players in the tournament handbook and team yearbook.

4. Players who apply to participate in the Yonsei Basketball Program are self-selected; these players and their families have an explicit desire to visit Japan and participate in a cultural exchange that is different from their own.