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5. Dark Spirits: The Emergence of Cultural Nationalism on the Sidelines and on Campus
- University Press of Mississippi
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Dark Spirits The Emergence of Cultural Nationalism on the Sidelines and on Campus —Kurt Edward Kemper In early October , the hapless Oregon Ducks football team visited the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to play the host UCLA Bruins. TheBruinssportedthenumber-onerushingteaminthenationanden route to setting the NCAA single-season rushing record they demolished the Ducks -. Strangely enough, however, portions of the student section stood throughout the game with their backs turned to the field of play and at other times they booed. What generated such animosity from the student section was not a display of poor sportsmanship towards the Ducks or frustration over the lopsided score that night. Rather, students directed their venom at UCLA’s cheerleaders by hurling boos, invectives, and trash in their direction. Usually consisting of male yell leaders and female song girls, UCLA’s spirit squad in also consisted, for the first time, of a group known as cheerleaders. It was this group which faced such withering hostility in the Oregon game and throughout the season because it forced the school administration to acknowledge the exclusive nature of the UCLA’s undergraduate extracurriculum; because it had the temerity to challenge the decades-old sorority control of UCLA spirit groups; because it challenged existing notions of traditional undergraduate femininity; and because all of its members were black. The cheerleaders shrewdly aligned themselves with the campus Black Student Union at a time when that group placed itself at the forefront of the movement that would carve Kurt Edward Kemper out a greater role for blacks on campus. Thus, the cheerleaders found their local struggle for justice and equality placed within the larger context of Black Power. In addition to its political significance, the event simultaneously demonstrated the emerging strains of black cultural nationalism and campus feminism. In marking a significant departure from demands for mere inclusion to expectations of cultural autonomy in athletic participation, the episode foreshadowed the current debate in athletics regarding the hair, tattoos, and the “gangsta” persona of many athletes, both black and white. The cheerleaders at UCLA not only successfully demanded access to the already acute shortage of female extracurricular outlet on campus, but did so by insisting on replacing dominant assumptions of white femininity with a new Black aesthetic. Thus, blacks, whether playing on the field or posing on the sideline, would no longer apologize for being black. When William Van Deburg published his groundbreaking examination of Black Power and American culture, New Day in Babylon in , he persuasively argued that the Black Power movement exceeded mere political boundaries and implied a broad and far-reaching movement to assert an empowered, autonomous black presence in every facet of American cultural, social, and intellectual life. Indeed, though Black Power initially emerged as an expression of opposition to political exclusion, its most articulate proponents always envisioned a far more expansive application. In their reexamination of Black Power, Stokely Carmichael and Charles Hamilton declared that Black Power inherently sought out new forms and rejected externally imposed boundaries by its “bold readiness to be ‘out of order.’” As such, it was important for adherents of Black Power to exhibit a willingness to assert themselves across a broad spectrum of institutional authority. For Black Power to succeed and resonate with the people, however, it did not have to limit itself to institutions of power per se, such as government, police, and social agencies. Indeed, notions of Black Power could and did arise wherever exclusion or proscription occurred, whenever an establishment expected deferential behavior. Adherents to Black Power felt it was just as important to challenge these institutions not for what success would bring, but for what failure to challenge them at all represented. Thus, Black Power was less about which institutions were challenged than in the process itself. In this context, the clues to deciphering Black Power as a process are not found in the target or the dividends, but the rhetoric and the circumstances. [18.189.13.43] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 19:47 GMT) Cultural Nationalism on the Sidelines and on Campus Historians generally agree that at its heart, Black Power implied control over institutions that affected black life in America. Frequently, the realization of Black Power required the creation of new institutions, such as community empowerment centers at the local level or black studies curricula at the university level. Just as frequently, the assertion of Black Power required a direct challenge to existing white institutional control, a challenge often resisted by white opponents whose opposition left them...