"Learning the ropes : coaching and performing race, style, and identity in professional boxing"
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[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI SYSTEM AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] This dissertation is an urban ethnography that utilizes a critical race theory (CRT) approach into analyzing the culture and identity, race and/or ethnicity, and performances and duties of professional boxing coaches in Los Angeles, California. Specifically, this dissertation emphasizes a "community cultural wealth" framework (Yosso, 2015), to outline how professional boxing coaches take pride in their personal and/or collective identities as a way of "doing difference," especially as forms of "accomplishment" within their culture and communities (West and Zimmerman, 1987; Fenstermaker and West, 2002). In many ways, this project analyzes how the sport of boxing shapes identity and how professional boxing coaches influence and shape the identity of professional fighters through symbolic performances of race and/or ethnicity, and teaching fighting styles. Considering that the scholarship of race and ethnicity in boxing is extremely limited, my contribution has been to uphold the spirit of ethnographic research via full immersion participant observation to outline the personal and collective forms of identity that coaches navigate every day. I begin my findings by discussing "old school" and "new school" identities in the boxing world to highlight how professional coaches navigate their personal and collective forms of identity within the sport. How coaches view themselves in their personal identity is a symbolic force in how they train their fighters via cultural markers and expectations of manhood.
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