The white moderate, sport and black lives matter: echoes from Martin Luther King Jr.’s “letter from birmingham jail” at the University of Iowa

Abstract

This article examines responses of the “white moderate” in U.S. sport to Black Lives Matter and the current movement for racial justice. We combine Martin Luther King Jr.’s (1963) conceptualization of the white moderate as the “great stumbling block” in the stride toward Black freedom with Shannon Sullivan’s critique of contemporary white middle-class anti-racism. We analyse statements made by student athletes, coaches, and athletic department officials at the University of Iowa following a racial controversy to illuminate how the “good white moderate” responds to moments of racial crisis. We argue that the good white moderate does not acknowledge complicity with white domination of people of colour, or attempt to eliminate racial injustice, but seeks recognition of the league, brand, or organization as “not racist.” Further, we contend the good white moderate is mobilized in highly organized, commodified, and commercialized spaces of sport to safeguard the social and economic institutions that benefit those in power. Implications for how the institution of sport can move toward better responses to racial injustice are briefly discussed.

Keywords:

• White moderate
• black lives matter
• anti-racism
• systemic racism
• college football

Notes

1 As former doctoral students at the University of Iowa and current sport studies scholars, we are in a unique position to interrogate the ostensible “racial reckoning” happening in the “Hawkeyes” athletic department. As graduate students and teaching assistants, we developed, for lack of a better term, a critically contextualized affinity for the Hawkeyes. While the program never managed to compete for a national championship, the facade of excellence the athletic department sought to portray always made a fan feel that “this year could be the year.” We acknowledged then as we do now that white supremacy and racism exists at the university, a predominantly white institution.

2 The second author, Eileen Narcotta-Welp, would like to disclose that she was part of the University of Iowa athletics department from 2006 - 2010. During that time, she witnessed the many ways in which the mantra “The Iowa Way” was used to reinforce hegemonic social identities (For more information about Iowa’s past history with gender and sexuality, see Associated Press, 2017).