Race, politics and sports history : 1960-1980

Abstract

This thesis project encompasses the overlap of sports, political, and social history. This provides a unique insight into issues of racial inequality and how they relate to larger geopolitical context of the 1960s into the 1980s. Political engagement appeared at international events, including the Olympics. At the 1968 Olympic Games, for instance, athletes here used symbolic protests to address social unrest. In the transition into the 1970s, athletes continued to engage with issues of equality. African American athletes used domestic and international competitions in order to articulate protests against discrimination. Those athletic events held some level of politicization stemming from the Cold War. The United States used the Olympic Games to project a political stance by leading sixty-five nations by leading a boycott of the 1980 Olympics. Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, two soccer fans, Riaz Khan and Mark Kelly provide insight into themes of sports violence, racial discrimination and other challenges within the same timeframe considered. They paradoxically engaged with hooliganism through anti-social behavior in order to find acceptance into society. This research explores how the athletes and fans used athletic competitions in domestic and international settings to critique and find new ways of coping with social inequality. The realm of sports provides a space for belonging and worthiness through community, culture and empowerment for underrepresented communities.