Sports, race and identity

Sports fans are an interesting breed.

Many take extreme pride in their local team and passionately assume the identity of "local team fan." As such, the need to express affiliation and identity, which once produced great cultural works, has become a matter of painting one's face and screaming about the outcome to some game that has nothing to do with the physical world. It is a total re-funneling of identity, emotion and pride into something completely inconsequential and immaterial.

For each game, fans journey into the city that they identify with and claim to be all about. Yet they would never live there - because of, you know, the "high crime rate." After a couple beers, that might sound more like "because of the Blacks." But, there they are, getting all hyped up because a bunch of Blacks are running around on a field wearing a certain jersey color. It is a truly bizarre contradiction. The same fans tend to have macho bumper stickers on their cars, like: "Welcome to America: now speak English." They also tend to identify as "tough, red-blooded Americans". Yet when football season ends and winter turns to spring, you'll find them back in the stadium, their safe space in the city, cheering for citizens who can deliver fastballs but cannot deliver more than a few sentences of English. The hypocrisy is staggering.