Sports, Racism, and Social Reproduction

            In Chapter 6, I was intrigued by MacLeod’s description of this school.  Lincoln High School seems to be an anomaly in public education.  How can a school be run efficiently with so many sub schools to deal with.  The administrative bureaucracy must be a mess.  That aside, I find it a little bit unnerving that some of the Brothers are allowed to compete in sports at all.  Mokey has failed three times yet still manages to play on the JV football team (pg 90).  The same goes for Super who is barely skating by with a D+ average.  Most school system I’ve ever been aware of have academic floors (2.0, 2.5 etc) that must be maintained to play sports.  It was always a big ordeal at my high school, especially during basketball season when first semester grades came out.  Usually there was at least one key player that ended up finishing out the season in the stands because he (or she) could not keep his grades at the mandated level.  One would think that since the academic standards in many of the vocationally oriented programs have already been lowered that the GPA requirement for sports would be kept with high expectations.

            In Chapter 7, MacLeod describes an important historical concept of social reproduction.  “The Man” for years has pitted the two lowest of the low classes against each other in order to maintain his supremacy.  Typically, it is usually blacks against the most recent crop of immigrants.  From the days of black sharecroppers fighting for jobs against Irish white tenant farmers in the 19^th century to the current plight of isolated and poor blacks against Hispanics seeking jobs in the backrooms of restaurants, the system remains unchallenged.  By giving the lower class and working class residents a weapon of racism, sexism, bigotry, etc, the nation’s power brokers are yet unscathed.  Being that the Hallway Hangers are white, they have potential to free ride the perks of “white privilege.”  However, generations of failure have reinforced that same failure in the Hallway Hangers.  Instead of blaming the politicians or the CEOs, the “bad” boys are resigned to hostility towards their black neighbors.