Black athletic prominence can reinforce rather than challenge the racial status quo

Evidence

If anything, Jesse Owens’s golden runs deepened the color line, and especially the racist ideas of animal-like Black athletic superiority. … But Jesse Owens did not possess the “Negroid type of calf, foot and heel bone” that supposedly gave Blacks a speed advantage, Howard anthropologist W. Montague Cobb found in 1936. Since some track stars could pass for White, “there is not a single physical characteristic, including skin color, which all the Negro stars have in common which definitely classify them as Negroes.” Cobb did not receive many admirers in a United States where people were convinced about the benefits of natural Black athleticism and biological distinctions. Almost everyone still believed that different skin colors actually meant something more than different skin colors. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 878 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Radio’s racial stereotypes reinforced blacks’ second-class status — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 320; Opposing affirmative action remains the respectable vehicle for resisting black competitive success; Athletic prominence can isolate black athletes from both conservatives and liberals (+10 more)

Broader Connections

• Great Black athletic feats fed rather than refuted biological racism #expands (0.93) — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 878