[If it’s Super
Bowl week, it’s time for another SportsStudying
series! This time on the fraught and contested, and not the slightest bit
new, intersections between sports and politics. I’d love to hear your thoughts
on any of the week’s posts or any related issues!]
On an ugly
moment when white supremacy took precedence over athletic supremacy.
I was super
excited when I was invited
to review Cecelia Tichi’s book Jack London: A Writer’s Fight for a Better
America (2015) for the American
Historical Review. There were lots of reasons for my excitement, including
how important Tichi’s book Shifting Gears: Technology, Literature,
Culture in Modernist America (1987) was for my development as an
AmericanStudier, and how much I appreciated her goal in this new project of
recuperating London as a public intellectual (and thus a model for that role in
21st century America as well). But I was also just super excited to
learn more about London, whom I knew largely as the author of hugely popular boys’
adventures stories about wolves and sailors and that one incredibly realistic
and depressing story about a man who needs to build a fire in order to keep
from freezing to death and the dog who becomes a witness to the unfolding
horrors (all of which of course was a central rationale behind Tichi’s attempt
to recreate the more socially and politically engaged sides of London as both a
writer and a public figure).
I’m not trying
to dwell on my one criticism of Tichi’s book here, but it turned out that one
of the things I learned about London was a frustratingly bigoted moment that
Tichi understandably but problematically minimized in her project. She did note
(if still to my mind a bit too briefly) London’s lifelong fascination with
Social Darwinism and that philosophy’s consistently hierarchical and racist
worldviews; but it was in response to the controversial
(at least for white supremacists) rise of early 20th century African
American boxing champion
Jack Johnson that London would articulate much more overtly his own racism.
In December 1908 Johnson became the first African American world heavyweight
champ, defeating the reigning champ Tommy Burns, and that historic moment led
London to implore a retired white champion to return to the ring and defend
his race. Covering the 1908 fight as a
syndicated sportswriter, London concluded his column, “But now one thing
remains. Jim Jeffries must now emerge from his [Burbank, CA] Alfalfa farm and
remove that golden smile from Jack Johnson's face. Jeff, it's up to you. The
White Man must be rescued.”
Initially
reticent, Jeffries did eventually emerge from retirement, facing Johnson in a July 4th, 1910
championship bout in Reno. Jeffries was by this time so out of shape that
“bout” probably isn’t the word, though, as he was quickly knocked down for the
first time in his career and threw in the towel at that point. Given that white
Americans often find reasons to riot in both sporting events and racism
(although not usually at the same time), it’s unfortunately no surprise that
Johnson’s victory led to riots
around the country that left a handful of African Americans dead and many
more injured (riots, I’ll note, that to this day, when they’re remembered at
all, are usually and all too typically described with that deeply loaded phrase “race
riot”). Perhaps it should be no more surprising that when an African
American athlete reached the pinnacle of his sport, theories of physical
prowess and the survival of the fittest gave way to white supremacist bigotry
and ignorance, even from an otherwise intelligent and (as Tichi convincingly
argues) socially progressive figure like Jack London. But it’s still
frustrating to see how powerful such white supremacist nonsense can be—although
it’s also deeply satisfying to see it literally and figuratively knocked on its
ass.
Next sporting
post tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other sports and politics intersections you’d highlight?
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