Coaching whiteness: stories of ‘Pacifica exotica’ in Australian high school rugby

Abstract

The intersection of sport and education is a potentially powerful site for the production of class and gender. This paper examines how the relationship between sport and education can also serve to (re)produce ideas about ‘race’. Drawing on research conducted during my time as a coach of the first XV rugby team at an elite private school in Australia, I consider how whiteness creates the ‘other’. In particular I highlight how, despite their absence, the Pacific Island ‘other’ is (re)produced through stories that coaches share during training. These stories revolve around the themes of the ‘natural’, fear and violence and commodity. As themes they resonate with a larger meta-narrative that informs dominant ‘white’ culture on Pacific Islanders in Australia. Such stories have the power to shape students’ subjectivities, both of themselves and Pacific Islanders. Deconstructing the white-stream narrative identifies sport settings in education as important pedagogical sites where ‘race’, class and gender are learned. As such, there is a need to utilise critical pedagogical approaches in the education of sports coaches.

Keywords:

• Whiteness
• Education
• Coaching
• Narrative
• Pacific Islander
• Racialization
• White-stream
• Rugby

Notes

1. I am mindful of Hylton's (2010, p. 338) caution that the unproblematic use of race inadvertently reinforces ‘essentialism, myths, stereotypes and inequalities’. For the purpose of this paper, I have used the terminology ‘Pacific Islander’; however, I recognize that this is far from adequate in describing the enormous range of Pan-Pacific identity in Australia (not to mention those born in Australia with Pacific Island or Maori ancestry). I would suggest that the tendency of most mainstream Australians is to lump Maori and Pacific Islanders as being ‘Islanders’ or ‘Polynesians’. It is from this reductionist perspective of identity of the other that I engage with the white (re)production of Pacific Islanders.