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Interrogating Integration explores how international sporting spectacles, media campaigns, and public debates construct racialized national identity in an era of rising right-wing nationalism. Across Europe, “integration” has emerged as a guiding concept to regulate cultural differences, particularly in Germany, where integration became a watchword after the introduction of birthright citizenship in 2000. The legal expansion of German citizenship threatened the homogeneous definition of the nation and spurred increased scrutiny of immigrants and Germans of color, primarily Muslim and Black Germans. This opened a new chapter in the long struggle over German identity. The celebrations, scandals, and debates analyzed here reveal how the admission of new citizens inspired an optimistic cosmopolitanism that claimed to differentiate the new Germany from its fascist past while simultaneously reinscribing racialized hierarchies and providing fuel for rising far-right politics.

Using touchstones of public memory, including events surrounding men’s World Cup soccer and the record-breaking success of a book blaming Muslims for Germany’s decline, Zambon examines persistent problems in European conceptions of race, where racializing projects take place under an “ideology of racelessness” and the atrocities of historical and transnational racisms are used to deny current local forms of racism.
 

The recent flashpoint of Colin Kaepernick taking a knee renews a long tradition of athlete-activists speaking out against racism, injustice, and oppression. Like Kaepernick, Jackie Robinson, Paul Robeson, Muhammad Ali, Bill Russell, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos—among many others, of all races, male and female, pro and amateur—all made the choice to take a side to command public awareness and attention rather than “shut up and play,” as O. J. Simpson, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods did. Using their celebrity to demand change, these activists inspired fans but faced great personal and professional risks in doing so. It Was Always a Choice traces the history and impact of these decisive moments throughout the history of U.S. sports.

David Steele identifies the resonances and antecedents throughout the twentieth century of the choices faced by athletes in the post-Kaepernick era, including the advance of athletes’ political organizing in the era of activism following the death of George Floyd. He shows which athletes chose silence instead of action—“dropping the baton,” as it were—in the movement to end racial inequities and violence against Black Americans. The examples of courageous athletes multiply as LeBron James, Megan Rapinoe and the activist-athletes of the NBA, WNBA, and NFL remain committed to fighting daily and vibrantly for social change.