Minority athletic and artistic success attracts attention because whiteness dominates those fields

Evidence

When Tiger Woods wins a flurry of golf tournaments it becomes national and international news not because he is an individual but because we live in a world in which the vast majority of golf players are white men. When Venus and Serena Williams attain high rankings in tennis they attract dramatic attention in a world in which most successful professional tennis players are white. When Spike Lee produces a film called White Men Can’/ Jump, its meaning is understood in a society in which the vast majority of NBA players are black men. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1824

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the tokenism and model-minority dynamics noted elsewhere in race scholarship about exceptionality reinforcing norms.