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Book Cover
Book
Author Hoberman, John M. (John Milton), 1944-

Title Darwin's athletes : how sport has damaged Black America and preserved the myth of race / John Hoberman
Published Boston : Houghton Mifflin Co., 1997

Copies

Location Call no. Vol. Availability
 W'PONDS  796.0899073 Hob/Dah  AVAILABLE
 W'PONDS  796.0899073 Hob/Dah  AVAILABLE
 MELB  796.0899073 Hob/Dah  AVAILABLE
Description xxvi, 341 pages ; 24 cm
Summary Darwin's Athletes zeroes in on our society's fixation on black athletic achievement. John Hoberman compellingly argues that this obsession - one shared by both blacks and whites in the media, in corporate America, and even by athletes themselves - has come to play a disastrous role in African-American life and a troubling role in our country's race relations. The sports fixation originates in the painful century-long exclusion of blacks from every other path to high achievement. The scarcity of other kinds of "race heroes" has conferred messianic status on the most popular black athletes, fostering a delusion of integration while contributing to deep social divisions. Ironically, Hoberman argues, the decline of European empires and the rise of the black athlete helped to preserve rather than undermine the inferior status of nonwhites
Notes "A Mariner book"
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages [297]-319) and index
Subject African American athletes -- Public opinion.
African American professional athletes.
African Americans -- Attitudes.
Public opinion -- United States.
Stereotypes (Social psychology) in sports.
SUBJECT United States -- Race relations. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85140494
LC no. 96036170
ISBN 0395822912 (hbk)
0395822920 (paperback)