Abstract
American's traditional relegation of sport to the "toy department" of human affairs conceals both its signifi cance as an institution and the seriousness of its impact upon social relations and development. Nowhere is the validity of this assessment more evident than in the situation confronting Afro-Americans. Here, sport is revealed to be neither "fun- and-games," a citadel of interracial brotherhood and harmony, nor blacks' passport to the "good life." Rather, for blacks, it emerges as a fog-shrouded, institutional minefield, even further obscured by naivete, ignorance, and decades of selec tively accumulated myth. In reality, sport not only exhibits the same structure and ideological rationalizations of human rela tions as exist in the larger society, but it plays a fundamental role in sustaining the character of those relations. Only through a thorough understanding of the functions of sport as an insti tution and the dynamics of its disproportionately powerful influence upon Afro-American life can black people ever hope to extricate themselves from what can only be termed a politi cal and cultural tragedy.
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