More on Covert Racism in Sport – Samoan Football Players

Yesterday, NPR’s “All Things Considered” ran a story headlined, “Young Polynesians Make a Life Out of Football.” The story profiles the high proportion of star high school football players in Utah who are of Samoan ancestry. The large number of Samoan families in Utah is, of course, due to Mormon influence in American Samoa and (Independent) Samoa.

Not surprisingly, the story frames the issue of Samoans’ prevalence in high school football as uncritically positive, all the while covertly interweaving verbiage that cements stereotypical notions of Samoans as all brawn and the additional social qualities typically associated with fierce physicality.

First, however, this story further cements the common notion that all Polynesians (Samoans in particular) are big boned, physically imposing, and therefore innately suited from a physical standpoint to be successful linemen across the gridiron.

Polynesians have distinguished themselves at football's elite levels for many reasons, including their traditional body types: broad shoulders, wide hips, thick legs. These football players' love of hard physical contact and fierce competition has its roots in Polynesian culture as well.

[…]

They have the classically thick Polynesian builds that Miami Dolphins football executive Bill Parcells once called "perfect for the trenches." That's the key area around the line of scrimmage in a football game, inhabited by the biggest players on the field.

Notice how NPR's story naturalizes the Samoan body:
"A calf comparison between Thomas Hamilton and one of his teammates. At 5 feet 11 inches and 305 pounds, Hamilton has the traditionally thick body many Polynesian players have."
How does this racialized portrayal of Samoan youth resonate within society's broader cultural framework?

Additionally, the story draws on traditional Samoan culture, associating it with athletic drills that build quick feet, agility, and balance that are useful for linemen. And even when the Polynesian culture is presented in a non-violent, gentle way, American football swoops in to provide a mix of attitudinal aggression with that so-called massive physical size.

They also share a cultural heritage of Polynesian dance, which most Pacific Islanders learn as kids. It adds agility to their size.

[…]

Of course the biggest, most agile football players are nothing without a mean streak. And here, Teo and Hamilton are confounding: In the traditional Polynesian way, both are nice, respectful, laid-back people. But in pads and helmet? They become snarling, Samoan warriors.

Teo remembers playing high school football in American Samoa

"Your mentality is to get ready to kill somebody. That's no joke. We would spend hours talking about, 'Hey, this is our village, this is our family.' So the coaches would build that up to the first hit," Teo says.

And herein lies the crux of many problems. Whether in sport or beyond, the predominant racial stereotype of Samoan youth is that they are big, mean, impervious to pain, athletic in explosive sports, but lacking in intellectual capacity and motivation. The story does briefly mention one player has a 3.7 grade point average. However, the latter part of the story waffles between the larger number of Samoan youth (in this case males) who drop out of school and experience cultural dissonance.

Football then is framed as an intervention that can successfully bridge the Samoan-American culture gap.

For many young Polynesian men, playing football in the U.S. and seeing that experience through the end seems a way to straddle the culture gap. On one hand, the sport is a source of great pride among many Pacific Islanders. On the other, it can be the classic means to an end — Katoa hopes a much bigger end.

"Football has been really good to us in a sense of publicity and getting our kids out there and some going on to the NFL arena," he says. "It's that we just want to be known for more."

Haven’t we heard this same narrative before with African Americans? Big, dark, dangerous, athletic in explosive sports, etc. And in reality, when an increase in this type of athleticism is tagged upon a certain group, it tends to hold an inverse relationship with intelligence in popular culture – as athleticism goes up, intelligence goes down.

In turn, for the much greater number of Samoan youth who do not make it to the NFL but have invested so much of their time, efforts, and emotions into football rather than other activities, where do they go once football ends after high school or college? Given the physical and cultural stereotypes cast upon Samoans and how they are funneled into a violent, collision sport, should we really be surprised Samoan youth are also disproportionately represented in arrests and adjudications for violent offenses in numerous cities (e.g., Honolulu, Seattle, Oceanside, Salt Lake City, Oakland)?

And what about gender? Seeing as this is the masculine domain of football, girls are not even mentioned. Thus, as I’ve written before, only Samoan males are privileged in the one conventional institution (sport) that values Samoan youth. Samoan female athletes, even highly successful ones, take a serious back seat to footballers, in the rare cases that they are recognized at all.

Promoting youth sports for any particular group is not the problem. The problem is using sport to naturalize social categories and not presenting sport for all that it is (good and bad). The lack of critical analysis when covering Samoans’ over-representation in football speaks to our society’s infatuation with football and inability to see sports’ negative relationships with other societal sectors.

And these types of images (University of Hawaii mascot) don't exactly help.

(Photos courtesy of NPR).