David Leonard | Playing While White

Please join us at BookPeople of Moscow for a reading and signing with author David Leonard. Leonard is a professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies at Washington State University. Leonard's latest book, "Playing While White", argues that whiteness matters in sports culture, both on and off the field. Offering critical analysis of athletic stars such as Johnny Manziel, Marshall Henderson, Jordan Spieth, Lance Armstrong, Josh Hamilton, as well as the predominantly white cultures of NASCAR and extreme sports, David Leonard identifies how whiteness is central to the commodification of athletes and the sports they play.
"Playing While White thoughtfully engages in a discourse around the privilege that whiteness affords, highlighting the ways that white athletes and whiteness are profiled as innocent, desirable, smart, and exceptional. This poses the following query: do black lives matter in the world of sports? Leonard's brilliant and thorough analysis of the institutionalized racism that is perpetrated in sport is one that we must all delve deeper into, and grapple with, as a society." -Michael Eric Dyson, author of "Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America"