SANCTUARY, SOCIAL POWER, & SILENCE: UNDERSTANDING BASEBALL AS A SITE OF CONTESTED ETHNIC AND RACIAL TERRAIN

Abstract

This research examines connections between race, ethnicity, and professional baseball. I use a multi-method approach looking at secondary source data on player positions and contemporary stacking, media analysis, fan narratives and sport blogs in the two contexts of Philadelphia and Los Angeles. I find that minorities are well represented in leadership positions and portrayed positively by the media, but that some racial inequality still exists. Whites and light-skinned Latinos are more likely to hold leadership roles than blacks and dark-skinned Latinos. In addition, media narratives reinforce the mind/body dualism by emphasizing the character make up of white players while highlighting the physicality of darker skinned players. Despite this evidence, fans from all ethnic and racial groups spoke highly of sport as a space that represented racial progress and a place where they felt comfortable are interacting with others who were different from themselves. These narratives were closely connected to fans' desires to maintain positive emotions within the leisure context of sport. Ultimately, I argue that baseball can serve as a site of racial progress and change but that it does so partially within a narrow cultural context. Baseball thus alters symbolic meanings of race but simultaneously misses important opportunities to make deeper social change at the material level.