Has the great white hope left the building? White attitudes and Black opportunity in American heavyweight boxing, 1949-1983

Abstract

The past half-century has seen thousands of black athletes play professional sports in America, with dozens heralded as superstars by the white media and audience. Many have become rich and lead their sports in performance. Yet black sports involvement is still not a story of completely equal opportunity. Black sporting prowess is far more likely to be credited to natural endowment, black players are over-represented as the statistical leaders of team sports, under-represented at the role player level, and leadership positions on the field and coaching opportunities off it are still mostly white. These examples beg the question how far the racial majority has traveled in accepting black opportunity in sport? To answer this question, it was asked whether white Americans still need a Great White Hope. Boxing is ideal to examine if whites are still uneasy about black athletic domination. Boxing once disturbed white sensitivities more than any other sport. In 1910, whites needed a white champion to feel good about their race. The huge social changes that have racially transformed America in general, and sports specifically, make it seem that race is no longer an issue to white fans. Anecdotal evidence from modem boxing, however, hints at an ongoing white yearning for a white champion. Multiple measures were applied to the careers of black and white heavyweight boxers between 1949 and 1983. These measures illuminated whether boxing opportunity was colorblind. Statistical advantages for white heavyweights were thought to be evidence of a sport whose agents (media, promoters, governing officials) were pandering to a white desire for a Great White Hope, suggesting white acceptance of black sporting success was qualified. Statistical equality was assumed to be evidence that white fans no longer cared about skin color, that they no longer needed to reassert racial pride through sports. At the level of top ten contention, there was no evidence of white boxers being fast-tracked to opportunity. At boxing’s pinnacle, however, a different picture emerged. Even less than three decades ago, the typical white heavyweight challenger had done less than his black counterpart. There is still a market for a white champion in America, simply for being white. i