Why So Few African–Americans Play Elite-Level Ice Hockey?

Posted on by Wolfgang Childerglas
Regional History

Non-white names and faces in North American ice hockey are conspicuously absent from the sport at the highest level. Just over five percent of players in the North American men’s National Hockey League (NHL)—the world’s premier ice hockey league—are blacks or people of colour. Compare this to basketball or American football, eighty and seventy-five percent respectively, coloured player participation at elite-level⧼a̼⧽. The absence of non-whites in the sport goes further than that. Participation in ice hockey of non-playing staff including management is similarly heavily skewed towards whites. NHL club owners and coaches have been predominantly white, in 102 years of the League only one coach has been black. The lack of diversity is reinforced by the composition of the NHL’s fan base – over seventy-seven percent are white (cf. basketball, forty-five percent), and the white supporters of ice hockey are more conservative and wealthier than non-white fans (“The NFL Says ‘Hockey Is For Everyone’. Black Players Aren’t So Sure”, Terrence Doyle, FiveThirtyEight, Upd 19 October 2020, www.fivethirtyeight.com).

Why have non-whites in American and Canadian ice hockey always been outliers in the sport? The lack of participation by players of colour starts at the beginner’s level with youngsters not taking up the game in great numbers. The prohibitive cost is a real factor. A recent survey indicates that sixty percent of the parents of young players were forking out more than US$5,000 a year on equipment, competition fees and travel. This alone immediately disadvantages many black parents whose family finances are absorbed by the basic necessities of day-to-day living. Another significant allied factor is that blacks lack prior exposure and access to the game of ice hockey…so, unlike say with basketball or ‘gridiron’, there is for them a disconnect, an absence of cultural affiliation with the sport. With the game’s full-on physical impact aspect, playing ice hockey has long been considered the epitome of “white machismoism”. Budding non-white players tend to find this stereotype of an “affluent white culture” unwelcoming and a deterrent to the majority from progressing with the sport (“Why The Ice Is White”, Wes Judd, Pacific Standard, 14 June 2017, psmag.com). Those who do make it to the NHL (only 70-odd black players in the League’s entire history), often report a feeling of isolation and alienation from the rest of their team and the club.

Underlying all of this is the basic explanation for the out-of-kilter status quo – the persistent, overarching LCD spectre of racism. Those black players who take up the sport, starting at the junior level and proceeding to the senior leagues, have consistently found themselves the targets of racial abuse – from white fans, from opposing players, from their own white team-mates, and from their own coaches and support staffs…in recent years coaches from two NHL teams Carolina Hurricanes and Toronto Maple Leafs were sacked for racially vilifying their coloured players⧼b̼⧽. 

With the impulse for diversity and inclusion embracing modern sport as a whole today, the NHL has come under increasing pressure from wider North American society to reform its sport. The response from the governing body so far has been at best tokenism, bereft of any substance, the League’s ”Hockey is for everyone” sloganeering is seen as merely hollow rhetoric when there is follow-up efforts from the League’s administrators to make meaningful reforms to rectify the imbalance. The pressure for reform in ice hockey has In fact come from non-white players within the NHL — such as Matt Dumba (left) from the Minnesota Wild who have come out on record, putting the spotlight on the racial discrimination pervading the sport, in so doing trying to drag a reluctant NHL still digging its heels in towards real action to remedy the inequitable situation (Doyle). Willie O’Ree

Footnote: in 1958 Willie O’Ree, was the first black player to break into the NHL, which meant the Canadian winger was also the first non-white major league hockey player to experience the avalanche of racism hurled in his direction from fans and players alike during his two seasons with the top-flight Boston Bruins side before being traded initially to the Montreal Canadiens and then back to the minor leagues. In his post-playing days O’Ree has become a diversity ambassador for ice hockey.

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⧼a̼⧽ this is not to presume that ice hockey is “Robinson Crusoe” in the exclusion of non-whites from specific sports…sports like golf (take out Tiger Woods) and swimming (often contrasted with athletics) have been massively disproportionately lite-on for black and coloured participation at the highest professional levels

⧼b̼⧽ one of the coaches even physically assaulting their black playing staff

The Chequered History of the Beleaguered League of Nations

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Military history, Regional History

ARISING from the ashes of the catastrophic Great War the League of Nations was founded in 1919 on high Liberal ideals but with the most challenging of tasks – “to promote international cooperation and achieve peace and security “. Ultimately, the League failed to live up to its mission statement, in the end floundering badly in its efforts to stop aggressive acts by rogue states and prevent the outbreak of a second world war.

Fear of failure?
The interwar years were marked by numerous incidences of disputes between states over territories and borders. One of the most apparent shortcomings of the League (LoN) was its choosiness in deciding which conflicts to intervene in and which not to…under the League’s foundation secretary-general Eric Drummond, the approach was a cautious and selective one, prompted by the fear that failure might undermine the body’s authority in the international arena (‘League of Nations’, History, Upd. 23-Mar-2023, www.history.com).

Opening session of the League’s assembly, 1920 (Source: Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

The LoN’s reluctance to involve itself in every international dispute also came down to the inherent weakness of its position. Where one of the discordant parties was not a member of the LoN and especially a larger power, the capacity of the organisation to effect a viable resolution was severely curtailed. The LoN declined to intervene when Soviet Russia attacked a port in Persia in 1920 in the belief that non-member Russia would disregard its authority. The LoN’s dispute resolution capacity was similarly neutralised in the 1923 Corfu incident…Mussolini’s Italy had bombed and invaded the Greek island leading to Greece asking the LoN to intervene but Mussolini, though a member, simply ignored the LoN’s attempts to mediate in the conflict.

Structural and functional weakness, the power of single veto
The League’s organisational structure proved a further impediment to the realisation of LoN’s primary purpose of maintaining inter-governmental peace. Unlike its successor world body the UN, all LoN members, whether powerful or minor players on the world stage, had equal voting rights in the assembly with the making of decisions requiring unanimity from the members, the necessity of universal consent a recipe for perpetual indecision and impasse (‘Why Did the League of Nations Fail?’, Luke Tomes, History Hit, 27-Oct-2020, www.historyhit.com).

Map of LoN member countries

“League of Victors”, minus the US
Critically, several of the more internationally significant nations were excluded from the new world body. The United States by choice excluded itself from membership, a massive setback to a world body’s claim to inclusiveness. In the aftermath of WWI and the Russian Revolution the vanquished Germans and the USSR🅐, were prevented from joining. At LoN’s point of peak membership (1935) there were 58 League nations, at its dissolution (1946) this had dwindled to only 23 members.

League idealism trumped by real politik
Viewed through rose-coloured glasses the LoN’s proponents assumed the organisation’s creation would herald in an era of internationalism. Their naïveté between the wars was exposed by the rise of ultra-nationalism especially when it coalesced in a totalitarian regime (acerbated by the Great Depression): for individual nations, League of Nations or no League of Nations, fundamental self-interest remained paramount (Tomes).

2nd Italo-Ethiopian War, 1935-36

Expansionism by far-right regimes unchecked
In the 1930s, in a deteriorating international climate, the eruption of serious crises demonstrated the LoN’s impotence vis-a-vís aggressively inclined renegade states. When the imperial Japanese army invaded Manchuria (Northeast China)—a clear breach of Article 10 of the League’s Covenant (disrespecting another member’s sovereignty)—the LoN took no action against the offending nation. When the Commission eventually ruled that Manchuria should be returned to China, Tokyo responded by simply relinquishing its League membership and staying put🅑. When Fascist Italy’s provoked a colonial expansionist war against a much weaker state Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1935, the LoN’s condemnation and subsequent economic sanctions on the Italian aggressors were undermined by the great powers Britain and France who in a secret deal green-lighted Italy’s action in East Africa. The British and French concession to Italy was meant to help lure Mussolini away from allying with Germany and Hitler. Once again particular countries put self-interest ahead of the collective security goals of the LoN. Rome’s response to the League’s threats, like Japan and Germany before it, was to to pull Italy out of the LoN. The Ethiopian crisis damaged the League’s reputation further and reinforced the paucity of its peacekeeping role.

The LoN failed miserably in its stated objective of bringing about international disarmament, on the contrary under its watch rearmament and military buildup in Germany, Italy, Japan and the USSR greatly expanded in the 1930s. Without armed forces of its own the LoN was reliant on the great powers to enforce its authority which they were generally unwilling to do. The League in time of state conflicts thus fell back on negotiation and arbitration and the threat of sanctions (never fully implemented), in which it had a sorry track record (‘The League is Dead. Long Live the United Nations’, The National WWII Museum, 19-Apr-2022, www.nationalww2museum.org).

Palace of Nations (Geneva) League HQs (Photo: League of Nations Archive)

Footnote: The League’s legacy
While the League of Nations was unable to realise its raison d’être, a workable system of international cooperation and security, there was a positive side to its existence. Where smaller nations were involved the LoN did have some success in settling disputes of neighbouring countries peacefully, eg, between Finland and Sweden in 1921 over the Aland Islands. The organisation’s activities embraced many issues of concern and urgency in its day, including efforts to curb the opium traffic; tackling the scourge of tropical diseases like malaria and leprosy; post-WWI refugee crisis and POW repatriation; recognising the rights of ethnic minorities; regulation of workers’ wages and conditions; curtailing the arms trade. While not always successful in these projects the pioneering LoN can be credited for providing a framework for its successor the UN to carry out its humanitarian work.

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🅐 Germany was eventually allowed to join in 1926 and Soviet Russia in 1934
🅑 Nazi Germany likewise relinquished League membership in 1933 when challenged by the League, freeing it to embark on a massive military buildup and pursue its territorial expansion goals in Europe. The Soviet Union was another significant withdrawal from the LoN family, expelled in 1939 for invading Finland

Slavery, the Elephant in the Room: Myth-making about the United States’ Uncomfortable Past

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Cinema, Inter-ethnic relations, Popular Culture, Regional History

When human rights principles buttressed by international law took root, slavery in both its traditional and modern forms became ever more of a dirty word in First World societies like the US. Little wonder then that faced with the stark realities of such a repugnant and vilified practice staining their own country’s history, some might seek to lay a euphemistic guise over the unpalatable nature of the institution.

⊳ Texas, 1835-36 (Source: texashistory.unt.edu)

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“Involuntary relocation”, denial, whitewashing?
One topical example of this involves Texas and its long and vexed relationship with slavery. A conservative group of Texas educators in 2022 proposed that schoolchildren should be taught about the state’s history of “involuntary relocation”, which enables teachers to neatly avoid the dreaded word “slavery” altogether (on the pretext that references to slavery might be too confronting for the tender ears of small children). Needless to say this attempt “to blur out what actually happened in that time in history” has been heavily criticised by progressive historians (‘State education board members push back on proposal to use “involuntary relocation” to describe slavery’, Brian Lopez, The Texas Tribune, 30-Jun-2022, www.texastribune.org)ⓐ.

⊳ The Alamo, San Antonio (Photo: age fotostock)

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Texas creation myth
Conservative groups in Texas have good reason to try to bury the spectre of slavery as the institution is very much connected to the state’s most sacred historical symbol, the Battle of the Alamo in 1836. The traditional Alamo story—brave American freedom fighters against the far superior forces of tyrannical México, their heroism inspiring the (Anglo-led) Texians under Sam Houston to achieve independence—is ingrained on the consciousness of all Texans and all flag-waving Americans…it is in fact a story central to the creation myth of Texas. The defenders of the Alamo, so the conventional Anglo narrative goes, made the ultimate sacrifice for liberty. The heroic Alamo myth has been reinforced by fictionalised screen versions of the Alamo’s leaders: Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and William Travis come across as courageous martyrs for the Texians’ cause (largely thanks to Walt Disney and John Wayne)…in reality they were far from lily-white, Crockett was a slaveholder and an unsuccessful politician who resorted to buying votes, and his glorified death at the Alamo as portrayed on the screen—going down valiantly fighting “evil” Méxicans to the very end—was a fiction (first-hand accounts verify that Crockett surrendered and was executed). Bowie and Travis were both slave traders and the morally dubious Bowie also made a living through smuggling. Hardly 19th century model citizen stuff (Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson & Jason Stanford, Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, (2021)).

⊳ The Alamo according to the John Wayne movie

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Slaveholder rebellion, Manifest Destiny, American exceptionalism?
Similarly, the traditional view of why the American colonists revolted—because they were supposedly being oppressed by a tyrannical regime in Mexico City—is at variance with the inconvenient facts. American colonists came to Mexico’s Tejas with the purpose of making money through from cotton, the only viable cash crop in the territory at that time. For this to happen, black slave labour was a necessityⓑ. Once the Texians declared their independence in 1836, the centrality of slavery in the new republic became even more apparent with the institution being enshrined in the Texas constitution. Numbers of slaves in the republic grew exponentially, doubling every few years in the period from 1836 to 1850ⓒ. By 1860 slaves made up nearly one-third of the state’s population. As James Russell noted, rather than being “martyrs to the cause of freedom” as claimed, the defenders of the Alamo could more truthfully be tagged “martyrs to the cause of freedom of slaveholders”(‘Slavery and the myth of the Alamo’, James W. Russell, History News, 28-May-2012, www.historynewsnetwork.org)ⓓ.

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Slavery, mythology and the Civil War
When I went to school in the 1960s I learned that slavery was the cause of the American Civil War, clear and simple, the Southern states wanted to retain the practice and the Northern states wanted to end it. But in the US itself there has been no such consensus. As early as 1866 the defeated South had cobbled together its own, alternate narrative for America’s most costly war.

⊳ The post-bellum myth portrayed a society of happy, docile slaves and benevolent masters as conveyed in the classic film Gone With The Wind

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“Lost Cause of the Confederacy”
Southerners depicted the Civil War as a noble “lost cause”, romanticised its soldiers (Robert E Lee the chivalrous Christian gentleman) and constructed a pseudo-historical myth that the war was all about states rights, not slavery, the South was just protecting its agrarian economy against Northern aggression, trying to defend its way of life against the threat posed by the powerful industrial North. In reality, when South Carolina, the first of the Southern states to secede, did so in 1860, it complained that the national government had refused to suppress the civil liberties of northern citizens (ie, its failure to halt Northern interference in the South’s slave industry) (Finkelman, Paul (2012) “States’ Rights, Southern Hypocrisy, and the Crisis of the Union,” Akron Law Review: Vol. 45: Iss. 2, Article 5.
Available at: https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/akronlawreview/vol45/iss2/5).

Confederacy based on the principle of white supremacy
The Confederacy’s (CSA) philosophical underpinnings rested on an unquestioned sense of white supremacy and black subservience, bolstered by pseudo-scientific ideas of race gaining traction at the time. Suffrage was a right afforded only to CSA’s white males. The South fought to safeguard its “right to hold property in persons”, and to do so in perpetuity (‘The Confederacy Was an Antidemocratic, Centralized State’, Stephanie McCurry, The Atlantic, 21-Jun-2020, www.theatlantic.com).

⊳ Slaves in the cotton field (Artist: John W Jones)

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ⓐ it didn’t go without notice that this development is occurring at a time that Tejanos (Texas Latinos) are poised to become the majority in the Lone Star state

ⓑ the government for its part had originally invited American migrants to Méxican Texas to populate the vast province and to counter the indigenous peoples, especially Comanches and Apaches, who freely raided and plundered Méxican settlements and ranches

ⓒ fulfilling the founder of Anglo Texas Stephen F Austen’s prediction that the Texas Republic would become “a slave nation”

ⓓ Burroughs et al dismissed the Texas Revolt as “a sooty veneer of myth and folklore”

Japan’s Pioneering Entry in the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration: Shirase in the Tracks of Scott and Amundsen

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Natural Environment, Regional History

THE race to be first to reach the Geographic South Pole in the early 20th century was, as is well known, a race between two explorers, Amundsen versus Scott, and two expeditions, Norwegian versus British. But not anywhere near as well known is the fact that there was a third country vying at the same time for the honour of being first to Antarctica’s centre – Japan.

The Japanese expedition had its genesis in the aspirations of one individual, an army reservist, Lt Nobu Shirase. His “Boys Own” adventure dreams of being first to reach the North Pole thwarted by news of claims by two separate American explorers Peary and Cook of having reached the Arctic pole, Shirase turned his attention to Antarctica. Notwithstanding a lack of enthusiasm from the Japanese government Shirase mounted an expedition with the patronage of a former prime minister Count Okuma and private donations.

Japanese expedition team (Source: coolantartica.com)

A race from behind
At the outset the Japanese Antarctic expedition was acutely at a disadvantage. The scheduled end of November departure for the expedition (actually didn’t leave Tokyo until 1st December 1910) was too late for the Antarctic. The vessel chosen, the Kainan Maru (meaning “Opener-up of the South” or “Southern Pioneer“) was half the size of Amundsen’s ship and only one-third that of Scott’s one. While the Kainan Maru‘s captain Naokichi Nomura was an experienced seafarer the crew of 27 contained no one with polar experience. The expedition’s dietary provisions for the trip were paltry and questionable, lacking pemmican, a high-energy mix of meat and lard preferred by the European expeditionaries.

After refuelling in Wellington, New Zealand, the expedition ship made its way through wild and stormy conditions to Antarctica where it found itself unable to land. With winter closing in and the ship in danger of being icebound and stranded, the Kainan Maru turned around and headed for Sydney to wait out the winter.

Making camp in Sydney harbour
The Japanese ship underwent repairs at Jubilee Dock in Balmain during its Sydney winter sojourn and the crew members themselves were permitted to quarter at Parsley Bay (photo – right) on the Wentworths’ Vaucluse Estate. The men established a camp there comprising a demountable wooden hut and canvas tents. The Japanese presence caused a bit of disquiet in the “Harbour City”…the Sydney press raised suspicions about their “real”motives, suggesting that it may be a cover for a spy mission, especially given that the encampment was not far from the South Head military establishment⦑a⦒ . Feelings antipathetical to the visitors subsided however after eminent Sydney scientist Prof Edgeworth David praised the Japanese men and formed a strong friendship with expedition leader Shirase.

The following season, reinforced by new provisions and resources including new personnel and a new team of Siberian sled dogs, the expedition returned to Antarctica with the stated aim of surveying and scientific discovery. This time a landing on the southernmost continent was successful. Shirase sent the the majority of his team off to explore King Edward VII Land, while he led a five-man “dash patrol” towards the Pole itself. Shirase’s party battled blizzards and reached the point 80° 5′ S before running low on supplies and abandoning the attempt in late January 1912. The expedition finally completed their return journey to Japan, in June 1912, a trek of 13,000-plus km.

Endnote: 15 minutes of fame and no fortune

Lt Shirase (centre) (Source: coolantartica.com)

Although Shirase briefly received a hero’s reception on return, the fame was ephemeral. The expedition was noteworthy in being the very first polar exploration by non-Europeans and in its managing to avoid any loss of life or serious injury to its personnel. It didn’t however come close to achieving its objective of reaching the South Pole, nor did it contribute much to polar science. The experience did not yield fortune for Lt Shirase, on the contrary he found himself burdened for the rest of his life with having to pay off the expedition’s outstanding debts.

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⦑a⦒ against a backdrop of growing western concerns that Japan was entering a phase of military expansionism following earlier foreign policy aggressions (wars with China and Russia)

Works consulted:

‘Scott, Amundsen… and Nobu Shirase’, Stephanie Pain, New Scientist, 20-Dec-2011, www.newscientist.com )

Hanna, Kim, Japanese Antarctic expedition camp at Parsley Bay 1911, Dictionary of Sydney, 2021, http://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/japanese_antarctic_expedition_camp_at_parsley_bay_1911, viewed 29 Mar 2023

Woollahra Library Local History Centre ‘Japanese Antarctic Expedition’, https://www.woollahra.nsw.gov.au/