Messner, for his part, has shown how high status men (white and from middle-

class backgrounds) and low status men differently understood themselves as

athletes. The former tended to transfer what they learned in sports about being
men to pursuing success in other spheres, such as education and career. Men
from lower status backgrounds saw sports as their only hope for success as a
manan accomplishment that the higher status men looked down upon as a
narrow, atavistic type of masculinity. Expanding from this, some scholars have
demonstrated that in popular culture the masculinity of African-American
athletes is often exaggerated and linked to racial stereotypes about violence,
risk, and threat. Pg 268 in Sports in Contemporary Society
Talk about blackness of basketball?
o Steph Curry, LeBron James, Klayton Thompson
o Basketball creates a racial hierarchy and those who are darker play the
game harder and being light-skinned is not a compliment
o That black guy who swims! And the black speed skater in the Olympics
o Simone the black swimmer Simone Biles
o Katie Ledecky vs Michael Phelps
o Serena Williams is basically the greatest athlete of all time, and she knows
she wouldve been declared that ages ago if she was a white man
o https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2016/jan/06/kobe-bryant-steph-curry-
light-skinned-remark-hints-at-nbas-peculiar-racial-politics
In addition to this a study was done recently (2016) that showed that The darker someones
skin, the more apt people are to assign hateful stereotypes to that person (The Guardian).

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