Sport and politics always mix
“Sport and politics simply don’t mix.” That is the old reactionary chestnut.
It has been hauled out time and again – to try to stifle protests against the all-white South African Springboks rugby tour of Australia, the boycott of Israeli sporting tours, protests by women tennis players demanding respect, and to criticise St Kilda champion Nicky Winmar responding to racist taunts by pulling up his jumper and pointing to his black skin.
One positive that has come out of the furore surrounding the racist booing of Adam Goodes is that it has made the argument that sport is somehow separate from politics and the rest of our social existence appear absolutely ludicrous.
Sport has been central to the lives of hundreds of millions of people for centuries. It has provided relaxation, enjoyment and an escape from our humdrum experience of work on the factory or office floor.
It has provided an identity and a side to champion. It has delivered the occasional tantalising victory for millions who rarely had real victories in their lives.
Success in sports such as boxing, cycling or athletics has for generations offered one of the very few ways out of the bottom ranks of the working class.
Socialists should have no truck with middle class elitists who sneer at workers’ enthusiasm for sport. The fact that so many millions of people can, however briefly, escape from the grim and dreary reality of their normal existence under capitalism is not something to be derided.
However, precisely because sport is so central to so many people’s lives, it has become a highly social and politicised activity. This is even more so under modern capitalism because sport has become a profitable commercial activity and a key element in imperial rivalry between nations.
It is impossible to separate sport and politics. There is hardly an issue in society that is not also played out on the sporting field – whether it is corporate power, gay rights, sexism, workplace safety, union rights, freedom of speech, the rights of the disabled, the oppression of children, police violence, the influence of the media or national rivalries.
Indeed, around issues such as racism the sporting field has become a key site of struggle for liberation. In athletics, boxing, soccer, basketball, baseball, cricket, rugby and Australian Rules football, Black athletes have asserted themselves in magnificent acts of defiance.
Jesse Owens memorably shoved it up the nose of Adolf Hitler by winning gold at the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Tommy Smith and John Carlos made their never to be forgotten Black Power salutes on the victory dais at the 1968 Mexico Olympics.
Muhammad Ali taunted the racists time and again with his mastery of the boxing ring and defied the draft for the murderous imperialist war in Vietnam. Two generations of West Indian cricketers showed, with their mastery of the bat and their blistering pace with the ball, that they were more than equal to their former masters from the white colonial powers.
Adam Goodes’ Aboriginal war dance is very much part of this inspiring fighting tradition. It is an assertion of pride and defiance, something to be applauded by everyone opposed to racism.
