When Race, Religion, and Sport Collide

Darron T. Smith is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Memphis in the Department of Sociology. He has lectured and published widely in the fields of healthcare disparities, religious studies, and transracial adoption and the black family. Dr. Smith is coauthor of White Parents, Black Children: Experiencing Transracial Adoption as well as coeditor of Black and Mormon and The Impact of Social Factors on Health. He is a frequent political and cultural commentator for the Huffington Post on various issues of U.S.-based oppression and has contributed to various media, including Religion Dispatches and ESPN's Outside the Lines.

Arguing that the close and complex relationship between race and religion can be uncovered through sports, Smith does a masterful job of weaving together critical race theory, US religious history, and sports to examine institutionalized racism in intercollegiate athletics. Specifically, Smith examines the realm of the sacred through the uneasy relationship between black student athletes and Mormonism’s larger theological constructions of race. Smith points out that within the Mormon Church blackness, especially in regard to black male athletes, is in tension with the notions of freedom, justice, and equality. However, Brigham Young University is not very different from other primarily white schools where, when it comes to sports, big money commands more interest than does the need of athletes. Black student athletes are especially under attack from the systemic white racism of the NCAA sports world. Perhaps most interesting here is Smith’s attention to how change can occur both within Mormon circles and in the sporting world at large. This book is timely, excellent, and worth a very close read. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels.

• IntroductionThe Meaning of Sport in the Popular Imagination: The Collision of Race, Religion and Sport The Origins of Racism and Framing: Setting the Stage for the History of Blacks in Sport The White Racial Framing of Blacks in Mormon Theology Black Student Revolts and Political Uprising in the Late Sixties and Early Seventies: Fanning the Flame of Black Student-Athlete Revolts Mormon Attitudes toward Civil Rights: It’s God’s Law, We’re Not Racist! No Honor in the Honor Code: The Suspension of Brandon Davies and the Incompatibility Nexus between Blackness and Mormonism Colorblindness and the Health Consequences to Black Male Student-Athletes through the Illusion of a Free Education Pipeline to a Pipedream: The Elusiveness of Change in the Era of “Black Lives Matter” Notes