#levelingtheplayingfield

The SIFTMedia 215 - DIY Artivist Workshop will take a deep dive into effectively covering protests and high-stress situations during times of social unrest.

 DIY Artivist Workshop will empower, inform, and engage filmmakers of all skill levels to pick up their cameras and document our society’s turmoil with confidence, safety, and creativity. Led by Sabaah Folayan, the producer and director of WHOSE STREETS?, we will take a deep dive into effectively covering protests and high-stress situations during times of social unrest. Folayan will draw upon her experiences to inform attendees of best practices and practical solutions to possible protest production issues.

(Photo by author from the start of the exhibit)

“At times, sports leads social change. Other times, sports stymies social change.”

That deceptively simple formulation is one of the four ‘main messages’ listed for the ‘Sports: Leveling the Playing Field’ exhibit at the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington DC. I had the luck and pleasure of visiting the Museum this summer while on a family vacation in DC. I’d read some of the positive reviews, and was glad to find it lived up to the hype – the whole Museum was powerful, and the sports exhibit was as thoughtful and well-executed as any I’ve ever seen.

The excellence of the sports exhibit was partially about what they had compiled: sharp videos offering brief social histories of major sports; interesting memorabilia representing critical moments in sports history; visually appealing photos and statues conveying the vibrancy of sport.

(Photo by author from the start of the exhibit)

But, for me, the best thing about the museum was what was not there: the usual pabulum about sports as a great equalizer that directly builds character and community. Instead, the exhibit presented sports as what it is: a rich social and cultural space, always political either implicitly or explicitly, that takes on a variety of meanings depending on the context and actors. “At times, sports leads social change. Other times, sports stymies social change.”

I was actually surprised at the degree to which relatively progressive political ideologies, usually suppressed in sports spaces, were featured at a national museum that is part of the Smithsonian. The basketball exhibit gave prominent space to “I can’t breathe” shirts;

(photo by author from the ‘basketball’ room wall)

The football exhibit included a picture of Rams players entering the field using a ‘hand up, don’t shoot’ gesture;

(photo by author from the ‘football’ room wall)

The commentators in almost all the videos the accompanied exhibits were full of powerful progressive sports voices such as Dr. Harry Edwards and Dave Zirin – along with other thoughtful, if more mildly progressive, commentators such as Jemele Hill and Michael Smtih (thankfully absent are more blustery and, unfortunately, conventional sports voices such as Stephen A. Smith and Jason Whitlock).

(Photo by author shot from one of several videos with rich commentary from Dr. Edwards and others)

And, as has been much publicized, the whole exhibit starts with a statue commemorating Tommie Smith and John Carlos (along with Australian Peter Norman) raising their gloved fists on the medal stand at the 1968 Olympics. By making the relationship between sport and social change a core feature of sport history, the exhibit itself becomes a reminder that sports is always political. The exhibit articulates sports as a space where African-Americans, and all Americans, express individuality while also negotiating social rules that constrain that expression. The exhibit ends up putting the conservative instincts of sport (towards segregation, bias, inequality, and stasis) on display, and highlights how often those instincts end up being wrong when viewed as part of a historical arc. Though Muhammad Ali may be the most visible, and he gets much merited space in the exhibit, he is not the only example of how sports positioning can oscillate between villain and hero.

Being an academic, I do have a few minor critiques. It was cool to see prominent sports figures such as Michael Jordan and LeBron James as major donors. For those types of sports stars to leverage their wealth towards this type of exhibit felt right.

(Photo by author)

It was less cool to see tributes to major corporate sponsors such as Nike. Allowing shoe companies to put in claims to African-American sports history felt like another way of privileging corporate sport as a business endeavor over participatory sport as a human endeavor. But, of course, I realize that is just the way the world works.

(Photo by author)

I also thought the displays were a little light on gender issues. There was a small display about Title IX, strangely positioned next to the gloves Brianna Scurry wore during the penalty kick shoot-out final of the 1999 Women’s World Cup.

(Photo by author)

And the Williams sisters got some decent coverage—including one of six statues in the exhibit. But all the other statues were men (Tommie Smith, John Carlos, and Peter Norman at the 1968 Olympics; Jackie Robinson sliding into base; Jesse Owens running at the 1936 Olympics; Shani Davis speed skating at the Winter Olympics; and Michael Jordan's last shot as a member of the Chicago Bulls). And the major quadrants of the exhibit were devoted to baseball, football, basketball, and boxing – meaning, aside from a few mentions in the basketball display, male sports were predominant. Looking carefully back at all the pieces, there is plenty about women’s sports. But the overall layout felt very male.

I am, however, nitpicking. I should reemphasize that this was as good a sports exhibit as I’ve ever seen, and I’d highly recommend it. The curator, Dr. Damion Thomas (who has a PhD in history from UCLA and looks to have been a prof briefly at U of Maryland), would seem to deserve a ton of credit. As he explained to the NY Times: “I very rarely give a sports statistic during these tours…[instead, the gallery] focuses on sports in the larger African-American struggle and fight for greater rights.”