Shades of white: an examination of whiteness in sport

Apart from millennium concerns about what it means to be English, 'whiteness' has largely escaped examination, particularly in the leisure literature. Where 'black' people have been seen as the significant other in British sport, 'whiteness' could be seen as the 'silent' other. This paper begins to redress this by drawing on the experience of a suite of studies conducted by the Centre for Leisure and Sport Research into racism in sport. During those we solicited self-definitions of ethnicity and explored perceived characteristics not just of Asian and African-Caribbean, but also of white footballers and cricketers. From this we examine personal identity in the context of normalized, privileged 'whiteness' and demonstrate the processes by which these operate in sporting environments. Examining 'whiteness' more closely should allow researchers to make it visible and open to discussion. Moreover, an understanding of its construction generates the possibility of a clearer understanding of the processes of racism, hence a better chance of disrupting them. The paper demonstrates the complexity of these processes and their interpretation, which cannot, of course, be achieved independently of the researchers' own blackness and whiteness.