Race and Cultural Identity: Playing the Race Game Inside Football

The first part of this paper explores the biographical and academic attention white writers have given to the black athlete. There is an examination of the links between how sport and race have been interpreted in relation to the black body, and how this has led to ambiguous assumptions about the capacity of black families to enable black players to adjust to English society. The paper shows how Fanon's () approach to identity and race, combined with ideas about performance and dramaturgy (Goffman ), form a theoretical framework called ‘racialized performance’ that focuses on the pressure to perform to white masculine standards and values. Through a series of case studies, there is an interpretation of the ways that black players talk about their arrival into English soccer and the types of privileges and routines that have been developed by white men in their absence. The discourse of black players reveals the types of inclusion and exclusion that operate through the processes of class, race, masculinity and sexuality, through a number of relationships with white men, be that in the crowd, in the playing field, or in the changing room.