The Bittersweet Science: racism, racketeering and the political economy of boxing - Softcover

Horne, Gerald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0717808297 ISBN 13: 9780717808298

Publisher: International Publishers Co Inc.,U.S., 2020

Synopsis

Based upon exhaustive research in court records, memoirs, the files of the New York State Athletic Commissions and related bodies from Nevada to New Jersey - not to mention the gangster venues from garish Las Vegas to venal South Philadelphia, this pioneering work tells the untold story of the grimy intersection of racism and racketeering in boxing. Revealing previously unrecorded stories of punchers from Jack Johnson to Joe Louis to Sugar Ray Robinson to Muhammad Ali, Horne also details a fascinating story of the waxing and waning of anti-Semitism. Toxic masculinity and other offshoots (including homophobia) are a major theme of this book and the author does not neglect women boxers--and wrestlers too---whose skills were honed in day-to-day battles with the pestilence that is male supremacy. 

An intriguing chapter concerns--ironically--the mob's chief executive in boxing in the 1950s, when profits piled up because of television broadcasts: Truman Gibson, a Negro, became the "fall guy", however, when a scapegoat was needed to take the blame for the fixed fights, the murderous attacks on those who refused to cooperate and the broken lives of what amounted to desperate workers eager to make a buck to support their starving families.  

This book traces the story of Black dominance in the sport, from fighting enslavers in Africa, through the brutal "battle royals" of slavery when enslaved men were placed in a ring blindfolded and forced to fight until one man was left standing, while, at the same time, it exposes the gross exploitation of fighters and the gargantuan profits garnered by the likes of Don King, Bob Arum--and a former Atlantic City casino poseur named Donald J. Trump. 

About this title

About the Author

Gerald Horne is Moores Professor of History & African American Studies at the University of Houston. He has published more than three dozen books including "White Supremacy Confronted: US Imperialism & Anticommunism vs the Liberation of Southern Africa from Rhodes to Mandela", 'The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, and White Supremacy and Capitalism in 17th Century North America and the Caribbean.

Edition details

• Publisher: International Publishers Co Inc.,U.S.
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0717808297
• ISBN 13: 9780717808298
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 342