Stretching To Find Racism In The Jogging Craze
The New York Times says about the author of this piece excerpted below: "Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is an associate professor of history at the New School and is working on a book on fitness culture in the United States."
I guess there wasn't enough factual material she could find because she's especially...shall we say...limber in this piece in how she comes up with "support" for her claim that racism keeps blacks out of jogging:
Free! Easy! Relaxing! That's how jogging was marketed in the late 1960s, when the idea of heading out on a regular run was unfamiliar to most Americans. Unlike other physical fitness programs that required heavy, expensive gear, jogging was accessible to all, boosters claimed.But history shows how untrue that is, and how long the sport of running has maintained this fiction.
When video surfaced of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, the young black jogger gunned down in South Georgia, distance runners became a new voice among the usual chorus of social justice activists who grimly parse such tragedies. But among runners, reactions largely differed by one important factor: race.
Black runners recounted their own routines, intended to deflect the sort of suspicions that turned deadly for Mr. Arbery: steering clear of certain neighborhoods, going out only in daylight, wearing an Ivy League sweatshirt to broadcast respectability. Many white runners, by contrast, were aghast that the sense of peace they feel when hitting the open road reflected their racial privilege.
This disparity should come as no surprise: Running has been a pastime marketed primarily to white people ever since "the jogging craze" was born in the lily-white Oregon track and field world of the late 1960s. Black people have not only been excluded from the sport -- one survey by Running USA found under 10 percent of frequent runners identify as African-American -- they've also been relentlessly depicted as a threat to legitimate, white joggers.
Black people have been excluded from running? Um, Jesse Owens, anybody? All the way back in 1936, when he showed up Hitler by taking home four gold medals in the Olympics.
The most apparently egalitarian exercise of all, running, is anything but -- especially when it comes to race....Marketing and media didn't help: From the cover of People magazine to ads for Nike, which Bill Bowerman co-founded, the joggers were almost uniformly depicted as white.
The cover depicted -- People Magazine -- has Farrah Fawcett and Lee Majors on it. I'm pretty sure they were picked because they were big stars and this has sold magazines in the past!
She continues:
By the 1980s, jogging had become known as a "yuppie" affectation, like eating croissants, owning a fancy juicer, and working on Wall Street.Blacks were constantly defined in contrast to this "legitimate" white jogger. The consequences could be fatal: In 1980, a white supremacist trying to make a point about the danger of "race mixing" fatally shot two black men jogging with two white women in Salt Lake City.
Joggers across America were not being shot. One racist crime in 1980 does not make a jogger-shooting epidemic.
Ahmaud Arbery being shot is a horrible outlier.
The problem with pieces like this is that yes, there is real racism in the world, but when you stretch to deem everything racist, perhaps to serve your career, it waters down what we need to fix with whom we need to ignore: you and your self-serving claims.
And the reality on running: Nobody stops people from running. You put on shoes and go. (I ran seven miles three times week late at night till my knee and a orthopedist told me to stop.)
Another perspective this morning on 1970's fitness.
(Why exactly was FFM considered so striking?)
Crid at May 14, 2020 7:07 AM
In the end, the blacks will have to admit that we've been judging them on the content of their character all along.
jdgalt at May 14, 2020 7:14 AM
Eh, I'll buy it. If I were black, I wouldn't want to jog in black neighborhood (in fact as a white person I wouldn't want to either), and if I were black I could see being worried about running in a white neighborhood.
Super preppying myself up could work, I suppose.
NicoleK at May 14, 2020 8:51 AM
I think it was FFM's million dollar (watt?) smile. Also, this poster
https://www.biography.com/news/farrah-fawcett-swimsuit-poster
I R A Darth Aggie at May 14, 2020 8:57 AM
It had to be the teeth.
They were the whitest I've ever seen in an era when whiter teeth was not something every dentist offered.
Conan the Grammarian at May 14, 2020 8:59 AM
People went running due to marketing? huh. The only thing you can sell to runners is shoes and maybe a running outfit. Track and field is a tiny sport. This writer thinks we are all helpless and totally do what ads tell us to do. Absurd. Running was encouraged by health experts because it was free, no team is needed, you can fit it into your schedule, etc. If fewer blacks run that may be because they would rather do something else, like basketball. Blacks from E africa dominate long distance running and blacks from west africa (Nigeria) dominate sprints. No one stopped them.
As to feeling unsafe running in a white neighborhood--a nice jogging suit will mostly take care of that and they are in reality only minutely at risk.
cc at May 14, 2020 10:56 AM
The racists are coming! The racists are coming!
Yawn.
Jay R at May 14, 2020 11:43 AM
If the unhinged liberal ideologues running today's news media were to discover that the world was going to end the next morning; the lead story on the nightly news would be: "World ends tomorrow. Women and Minorities most affected!"
Jay at May 14, 2020 11:46 AM
I long for the day when American casts off its racist chains and elects a black President.
Gog_Magog_Carpet_Reclaimers at May 14, 2020 12:08 PM
Nobody actually believes this guy was a “jogger” Why not just admit he was casing construction sites looking for stuff to steal?
Doesn’t mean he deserved to be killed for it. Let’s separate that out, and deal with it appropriately in a court of law. Forget the jogging pretext.
Isab at May 14, 2020 1:24 PM
Isab, what makes you think he WAS a criminal or even a potential one?
But back to jogging.
Many would say that the "mania for exercise" got started about 50 years ago mainly because machines had made all sorts of chores too easy, and even farmers and their families could no longer cook and eat all the tempting greasy or starchy foods they might crave, since they couldn't burn off the calories as easily as they used to. (Veterinarian James Herriot wrote, with great disgust, about farmer's diets back in the 1930s.) That would also explain why, as early as 1960 or so, Peg Bracken had a bestseller when she wrote "I Hate to Cook Book." Why would you enjoy the laborious hours of cooking delicious food if you couldn't eat any of it yourself, after all?
However, even forfeiting certain foods wasn't enough to keep young people fit. (Or, they just couldn't abstain.) Hence, jogging and going to gyms.
Lenona at May 14, 2020 1:58 PM
A few points:
1. The fact that blacks dominate running events in track and field has nothing to do with recreational jogging.
2. As to feeling unsafe running in a white neighborhood--a nice jogging suit will mostly take care of that
That's the point--white joggers don't have to worry about what they're wearing, so long as their private parts are covered.
3. what makes you think he WAS a criminal or even a potential one?
According to what I've read, the guy who took the video had seen someone who looked like Arbery steal something from a nearby construction site. (That does NOT justify what happened; "he looked like a burglary suspect" doesn't meet the legal standard for a citizen's arrest.)
Rex Little at May 14, 2020 2:28 PM
Rex, I heard that too.
But again, what makes Isab think that the two were one and the same, when, last I heard, there's no proof of that?
Lenona at May 14, 2020 2:36 PM
“Isab, what makes you think he WAS a criminal or even a potential one?“
1. His criminal record.
2. The web cam in the property he was casing
Isab at May 14, 2020 3:30 PM
Rex, I heard that too.
But again, what makes Isab think that the two were one and the same, when, last I heard, there's no proof of that?
Lenona at May 14, 2020 2:36 PM
Just a quick legal note Lenona. To arrest someone the police don’t need proof. All they need is a reasonable suspicion.
As a property owner I don’t need proof of a crime either to ask someone to leave. They have to be uninvited, or I need to have rescinded my invitation.
You libs really have to tie yourself in knots to keep alive the principled snitch brigade, and still be racially sensitive.
Isab at May 14, 2020 3:37 PM
Lenona, your question was, "what makes Isab think (emphasis mine) the two were one and the same?". Proof has nothing to do with it. (For the record, I think so too, but none of our opinions are relevant.)
Rex Little at May 14, 2020 5:09 PM
I admit, I never heard of his conviction for shoplifting until I looked him up. (Carrying an illegal weapon is serious, of course, but one could argue it's not as bad as stealing.)
However, the media are not - YET - unanimous as to who was actually spotted in the webcam.
In the meantime:
...Wanda Cooper Jones, Arbery’s mother, requested (D.A.) Barnhill’s recusal from the case. Her attorney, Lee Merritt, said that the father and son would have “gotten away with murder” if Barnhill had not recused himself.
“This speaks to the wider issue of mass incarceration,” Merritt said. “If Black people have any kind of criminal record somehow that justifies their murder."
Lenona at May 14, 2020 9:35 PM
However, the media are not - YET - unanimous as to who was actually spotted in the webcam.“
They never will be. And it isn’t their call.
The guy wasn’t “out of a jog“ as I said before. Still didn’t mean he deserved to die.
Isab at May 14, 2020 9:57 PM
First of all, he wasn’t jogging in a ‘white neighborhood’. The town in question is 59.3% black, 33% white, 11% Hispanic and a fraction Asian. The media is presenting this as a white guy seeing a black guy running past his house, banjo music starts, and the white guy chases him down and kills him. He was seen leaving a house under construction, and they yelled at him to stop, and he took off. He should never have been shot, but it wasn’t a lynching because he was running while black.
The owners of the house have found him on the security camera footage numerous times in the past few months. His parents have identified him as the person in the video recorded on the day of the shooting .
The reason recusal was requested was that the Gregory McMicheals had been a career detective in the local police force, and the family thought he’d get off easy if tried by a prosecutor he had worked with for years.
crella at May 15, 2020 3:41 AM
First of all, he wasn’t jogging in a ‘white neighborhood’. The town in question is 59.3% black, 33% white, 11% Hispanic and a fraction Asian. The media is presenting this as a white guy seeing a black guy running past his house, banjo music starts, and the white guy chases him down and kills him. He was seen leaving a house under construction, and they yelled at him to stop, and he took off. He should never have been shot, but it wasn’t a lynching because he was running while black.
The owners of the house have found him on the security camera footage numerous times in the past few months. His parents have identified him as the person in the video recorded on the day of the shooting .
The reason recusal was requested was that the Gregory McMicheals had been a career detective in the local police force, and the family thought he’d get off easy if tried by a prosecutor he had worked with for years.
crella at May 15, 2020 3:50 AM
Yes, depending on the circumstances, black people can receive unwarranted suspicion just by jogging/exercising in public.
Yes, we don't know if the victim was really out jogging; I doubt it because of the way the video shows him to be dressed.
Yes, if I saw someone coming out of frequently-burglarized home I might wonder if they were casing the joint and maybe keep my eye on them, or call the police.
Yes, it's a terrible idea for civilians to chase such a person down because the situation becomes fraught with danger and unpredictability. This is especially so if you are armed! I say this as someone who is very pro-Second Amendment.
RigelDog at May 15, 2020 12:19 PM
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