COURSE STRUCTURE
Module 2 Topic D: Discussion Questions
Following the lecture, and having read the assigned readings and watch relevant video clips, you are expected to prepare answers for TWO (those questions in green) of the following discussion questions. Your prepared answers will form the basis of your verbal contributions within discussion sections
These answers should:
1. Be a minimum of 150 words for each answer (not including the question or reference list).
2. Be typed and double-spaced.
3. Have the complete question immediately prior to the answer.
4. Cite appropriately any sources used in your answer (use appropriate Style and Format Guidelines).
5. Include a complete reference list (use appropriate Style and Format Guidelines).
6. Hand in a hard copy of answers during discussion section
The aim of these answers is to get you to engage and extend the information covered within each theme, in order to generate a better understanding of core concepts, knowledge, and issues.
These questions are intended as preparation for both the discussion section and exam related to this topic.
PLEASE NOTE: Within the multiple choice section of the module exam, you should expect to be asked questions on the information related to any of these questions.
However, the ONE thematic essay question for the module exam will be selected from those questions in green.
Following the review session for this module the selected question will be designated in red.
Theme 1: The Compelling Myth of Race and Racial Difference
1. How is it possible to say that race and racial differences are myths or illusions? On what basis are such claims made? Why, then, is race such a compelling fiction which influences many aspects of our lives? What are some of the very real social consequences of racial myths or illusions?
2. Racial typologies are said to be political socio-historic constructs in that they establish clear racial hierarchies, which empower and privilege some groups, while disempowering and constrain others. Discuss this observation in relation to the racial typologies with which you are familiar.
3. What is your view of Professor Sérgio Pena–the Brazilian genetic scientists–project for mapping the DNA of all athletes at the 2014 Brasil World Cup and the 2016 Rio Olympic Games? Would it be beneficial to carry out a similar project within the American sporting context, if so, which sporting sites/populations would you choose? What effect, if any, do you think such a project would have on exploding the myth of race and racial difference?
Theme 2: Ethnicity and the Social Consequences of the Race Myth
1. What are the differences between race and ethnicity, are are they one and the same thing? Also, how–if indeed at all–are are race and ethnicity related?
2. Within the lecture, ethnicities/ethnic groupings was identified as being collective and creative cultural responses to common histories and experiences shared by groups of individuals. Provide examples of such common histories and experiences (both those rooted in privilege and empowerment, and underprivilege and disempowerment), and the types of cultural practices, values, and identities that helped to demonstrate membership of the ethnic grouping.
3. Provide an ethnically-driven explanation for the stark “race” based differences in income, poverty, employment, and crime rates.
Theme 3: Native American (Indigenous) Ethnicity and Sport:
1. In what ways was the historic treatment of the Native American population based upon, and justified by, particular racialised assumptions about Native Americans. How have the common histories and experiences of Native American populations influenced the cultural practices and values of Native American’s today?
2. What is the Native American sporting paradox? How does Native American ethnic culture both incorporate and resist elements of mainstream American sporting culture? Does the paradox help or hinder the expression and experience of Native American ethnic identity?
3. How can Bourdieu’s understanding of social class be used to explain the role of sport and physical culture within reservation-based, Native American populations?
Theme 4: African American (Black) Ethnicity and Sport:
1. What role did the slave trade play in the development of the Black-White racial binary? How were black bodies, and black physicality, racially mythologised as part of the process of justifying the inhuman treatment of the African American popular within the slave economy and afterwards?
2. Are any of the historical (dating back at least to the North Atlantic slave economy) racial characterizations and stereotypes of blackness and black physicality evident within contemporary sporting culture? In other words, is biological and/or cultural racism against African Americans still prevalent within sport culture?
3. What is hyperghettoization, and what are some of the social and economic forces responsible for it. How has this process impacted the lives of African Americans living in hyperghettoized communities?
Theme 5: Basketball and African American Ethnicity
1. Basketball is often described as the “urban game”. What is meant by this, and what role has the game played within the culture’s of the ethnic groupings that populated America’s inner cities.
2. How can Bourdieu’s understanding of social class capitals, habitus, and hexis be used to explain the relationship between basketball and African American ethnicity?
3. Outline the competing explanations for the over-representation of African Americans within the NBA and WNBA, utilizing biologically-based understandings of race, and socio-historically-based understandings of ethnicity.
Theme 6: Ignoring Ethnicity/(Re)Naturalizing the Black Athlete
1. Apart from basketball, what are some of the other elements of African American expressive culture? Do they display any similarities or differences with basketball?
2. Why is sport a cultural form which would appear to attract biologically-based understandings of race and racial difference? What does it mean to fetishize either Black or White athletic bodies?
3. If you asked 100 people in your local mall, what percentage of them do you think would adopt the biologically-based as opposed to the ethnically-based understandings of individual/collective difference? Give reasons for your percentages. Do you view the sporting world in racial or ethnic terms? Is this different for different sports? Critically evaluate your own viewpoints in this regard.
