Race relations, Indigenous Australia and the social impact of professional Australian football

Abstract

We consider how Indigenous athletes have become symbols of what is perceived by white Australia to be progressive race relations. In particular, the men's professional sports of Australian football and Rugby League draw the most heavily mediated attention as well as significant numbers of Indigenous players. We draw upon the narratives of key advocates of Indigenous participation and performance in professional Australian football: journalists and recruiting managers. The emergent theme of white privilege is used to examine how their advocacy of Indigenous performance masks shortcomings in access and opportunity beyond playing roles. We conclude with the idea that race relations progress fulfils the needs of white Australia but fails to sufficiently deliver genuine opportunity for Indigenous Australian participants.

‘The ball and the rhythm in her blood’: Racialised imaginaries and football migration from Nigeria to Scandinavia

“…An early, though still key, concern in research on sport and race has been the exploration of racial stereotypes and 'racial stacking'; the ways in which racial imaginaries and categorisations affect the distribution of athletes in different positions on the field (Coakley, 1998;Hylton, 2008;King, 2004;Maguire, 1991). Although most research on racial stacking has traditionally focussed on male sports in North America, similar trends can also be found, for example in men's Australian Rules Football (Hallinan et al, 1999;Hallinan and Judd, 2009) and women's netball in Europe (Chappel et al, 2004).…”

How elite sport helps to foster and maintain a neoliberal culture: The ‘branding’ of Melbourne, Australia

“…It should be noted that the model of talent identification for elite sport taps directly into the vast areas of grassroots sports organisations. This is evidenced not only by the massive overrepresentation of certain ethnicities in elite sport (Hallinan and Judd, 2009;McDonald et al, 2018), but more so through the enormous numbers who embark on the same pathway but never make it. Sport becomes a vehicle for social mobility, but far more likely social servility, as sport programmes operate as forms of 'sportfare ' (McDonald et al, 2018: 12).…”

More than a Game: Embodied Everyday Anti-Racism among Young Filipino-Australian Street Ballers

“…[6] The increased participation of young African-Australians in grass roots basketball is the topic of my current research. The active recruitment of these young men to development leagues, local and abroad, shows signs of the racialisation of black athletic prowess studied in the Australian context among Indigenous Australians (Coram 2007;McNeill 2008;Hallinan and Judd 2009) and in the USA with African-American males (Louis 2005;Brooks 2009) and in UK among and Afro-Caribbean men (Back et al 1998;Johal 2001;Carrington 2010). …”