Sports, Race, Social Movements, and Social Change

An unprecedented recent wave of sport-based activism has brought renewed attention to sport as a force for racial progress and change. Researchers have investigated factors that facilitate protest, analyzed media coverage of and polarized reactions to such activism, and begun to document institutional and societal impacts. In contrast to long-standing sociological critiques, this work suggests that sport can make contributions to racial justice and change. However, these contributions necessitate deliberate contestation and are mainly symbolic and communicative; more concrete, institutional change requires other, nonsport movements and organizations. Also, athletic activism can be co-opted by the sport industry's complicity with profit and its fraught relationship with politics, and it often provokes backlash that can have unintended, countervailing effects. Ultimately, sport's multifaceted, mostly cultural contributions are best analyzed when situated in a broad sociopolitical field and theorized via a critical-dramaturgical framework where sport serves as a platform for the public display of social struggle.