Derby and race: 1. The whiteness of derby

So, as I outlined in this entry, I'm going to be looking at a couple of interrelated issues about race in roller derby. To start with, we can ask whether derby is predominantly white, and how that came about.

I think that, very roughly speaking, roller derby is a very "white" sport. That is, the vast, vast majority of people in the derby community seem to be white, although of course there are exceptions. Here are some of the team photos for the WFTDA teams that played at the championships (minus Gotham's, which I have already posted in the introductory entry):

  ...And you get the idea. 

They're predominantly white. Even Angel City, which of all the leagues' locations has the highest minority population, is made of up mostly white skaters. Notice, firstly, that all of these teams are either in the US or UK. I started looking down the WFTDA rankings for any teams ranked that were not from a western country, but I couldn't find any (although admittedly the list goes to 175 and there are plenty of non-WFTDA leagues out there, and given the stringency of the WFTDA membership process the lack of non-western WFTDA leagues might just suggest that leagues in non-western countries are not on the WFTDA wagon for some reason or another).

At my own league, there are what, 2.5 minority people (by which I mean, people who don't identify as white). Of course, I don't know if that's a good example though because hey, we're in southwest Virginia. But I've also skated in San Francisco, Santa Rosa, Melbourne and Canberra, and even though those places have more diversity among their populations, most people who do derby are still white. There's some variation though, so there were more Asians and Latina skaters in California, but it's still predominantly white.

Now here's the kicker: why is this the case? Why is derby so white?

A lot of discussion has been generated by this question at Elektra Q Tion's blog entry here, and there are several explanations provided. I'll touch on some of these below.

Visibility: One contributing factor which explains the ongoing whiteness of derby is that derby is seen to be white. What race you are is very, very visible in most cases, so you can see who is of a race similar to you almost right away just by looking at people.

And therin lies the problem. Suppose I go to practice and I'm fresh meat, and I don't see anyone like me. Maybe I will feel like I don't fit in, especially if there aren't that many other FM with whom I can otherwise connect to. Or I look in FiveOnFive or on DNN and see very few people that look like me. I don't know how much this really factors into it, but I've seen similar arguments made to explain the gender disparity in certain parts of academia. (For example, here's an article about the problems of visibility and academia.) The general idea is something like this: if I don't see people that look like me, I'm not going to connect as well or be as inclined to stay in derby.

As a result, the whiteness of derby also self-perpetuating in this way. If I am a minority skater and didn't feel like I was fitting in or relating well to the people around me, I might not stick around in the league. And then that'd make minorities less present, so that other potential minority skaters would also see less minority skaters in the league, and therefore be less inclined to stay, and so on.

(Elektra talks about this in her blog and in her post, Paris suggests that the minority skaters on a team have a responsibility to act and go out there and be visible. I'll talk about this in a few weeks' time when I talk about the role of minority and white skaters.)


Socioeconomics: There are some cases where we might have reason to think that race and socioeconomic status has a correlation. In particular, there is some good evidence that there is a disparity in the median net worth between whites and blacks (although the study I'm looking at only looks at the black/white difference; it might be interesting to see where Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans fit on the scale.

Here's a graph of wealth distribution across races:

Source: 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances

As you can see, even the wealthiest black and Hispanic families have much less wealth than white families, even when you compare blacks and whites within the same income groups. (Even in the bottom quintiles where you can barely see the wealth distribution, the white groups still do better.)

If we accept that there is a wealth gap between races, that might explain why we see fewer historically-poor races being represented. Derby gear is expensive! If you have a limited amount of money, then cost of gear and skates and league membership would have a higher likelihood of trading off against other things, like rent, student loans, groceries or whatever. Plus there are additional costs in things like travel costs on the car (gas, repairs, etc.) as well as time taken away from when one could potentially be working to earn more money.

Fresh meat packs run for several hundred
dollars usually. (And then there's also the
need to upgrade gear after a few seasons.)

Socioeconomics doesn't explain the race gap completely, though. On a small scale, leagues do often help with loaner gear or setting up payment arrangements for members who can't cover their membership dues right away. But if the wealth gap is something systemic, then the small-scale remedies might be of little help in changing the overall face of derby.

There's a similar argument for why ice hockey is so white; it's because a lot of historically poorer areas with minority kids didn't have access to rinks or equipment. (Football is also expensive, but schools will often provide gear.) And then, there's a lot of travel that has to go on since rinks are less common than fields or basketball courts. So parents would have to be free to drive their kids around further to practice, and at times that can impinge on work times.

So, by extrapolation, maybe that goes some way to explaining the whiteness of derby. One difference with derby is that it's mostly played by adults who can drive themselves, but with the advent of junior derby we might have another wave of whiteness coming in the next few years.

Blatant racism: And then one thing that might explain the whiteness of derby is when stuff like this still happens in other predominantly white sport, like hockey:

If you are a minority person, there's already enough difficulty with everyday racism, so why would you want to be subject to overt racism as well? I don't think that derby is as subject to outright racism as much as professional sports are (just because of the smaller scale on which leagues operate on), but racism isn't just contained in sport, and the potential for this would be pretty much a turn-off.

Next on race and derby: If (as I outlined at the beginning of this article) that pretty much all of the WFTDA leagues are western, then how does this affect the development of derby worldwide? I'll look at the the impact of culture on derby in non-western countries, and see if there's something about derby culture that lines up with western culture.