EP 14 - Ch 13 - Sports and Politics

We begin by discussing NFL players’ protests during the US national anthem against police violence in Black communities, and many white people’s negative reactions. This leads into a discussion of people’s belief sports and politics should be kept separate. We challenge that idea by discussing obvious ways in which sports are politicized. We then discuss how larger social context can cause people to interpret the same protest actions differently since context changes people’s personal relationship to the issue protested. We also discuss socially conscious marketing or when corporations use politics and values to sell commodities. We then address the current debates about “sportswashing”. We move away from protests to focus on the myriad mundane ways in which states at the municipal and regional levels as well as national level engage sports through public health and urban planning. We conclude by moving to politics at the international scale.