Wacky Wrestling Theory 10.23.08: Just How Racist is Pro-Wrestling?

Is Barack Obama black? The man who is in line to be the next President of the United States has a black father and a white mother, so therefore he should be considered just as much white as he is black. Due to (arguably) long standing prejudice, America uses a racial classification system, and it becomes almost forced for someone to be associated with the subjugated side of their racial mix. The truth is, Obama is very light skinned, and whether people want to talk about it or not, that may be one of the factors that has led a majority white populace of the USA, often considered unable to elect a black man as President, on the verge of doing just that. The man has very little political experience on the national level compared to his contemporaries, and amazingly he is still the favorite to win regardless of his experience or skin color, but if he was a dark skinned black man with the same credentials would he still be popular? In pro-wrestling terms, if Obama was R Truth instead of The Rock, would he still appeal to the American people?

People often wondered, ‘when will a black man win the WWF Championship?’ The number of non-white wrestlers who even challenged for the title was rare, but there had always been an underlying legacy of ethnically themed wrestlers being effective champions, from Bruno Sammartino to Pedro Morales, the Iron Sheik, and Yokozuna, until The Rock finally became the first black man to officially reign as WWF champion. This seems weird considering the success of African American athletes and actors in America during the second half of the 20th century, yet there were very few stand out, main event level black wrestlers, until The Rock. But is The Rock black? Regardless of Rocky Miavia’s initially promoted connection to Rocky Johnson, I don’t even think many WWF fans realized The Rock was black until he made his return to wrestling as a member of the ‘blacker’ version of the Nation of Domination. Once The Rock gained mainstream popularity, he was quickly distanced from any political message that may have accompanied the Nation. No longer was he an outspoken member of a black separatist faction, he soon became the smiling, joking, sexually charged, happy face that Vince McMahon backed as his corporate champion. Would this have been possible with Ahmed Johnson? Even years later when Rikishi revealed that he had tried to rundown Stone Cold Steve Austin with a car in order to help his ‘samoan family member,’ the storyline that connected The Rock to the other half of his minority heritage was quickly dropped as well. Is this because the audience was not interested in racially themed storylines and characters or because the WWE does not want to put the main spotlight on minority issues? The Rock is the perfect case of the WWE taking a technically ‘black’ wrestler and packaging him as a racially neutral (ne white) character. Seeing as how the core audience for the WWE is white and the infrastructure inside the company is also mainly white, you could definitely make the argument that some form of racism was at work here.

Will we ever see a dark skinned black man, like R Truth, as the top champion in the WWE? Recently, Bobby Lashley was promoted as a top tier WWE title challenger and was even given the C-brand ECW Championship. The dark skinned, and racially generic, Lashely was put in a high profile Wrestlemania feud as Donald Trump’s surrogate fighter against Vince McMahon’s Umaga, but strangely it was ultimately the near-octogenarian McMahon himself who symbolically defeated Lashely for the ECW title and abruptly halting any momentum the visually powerful Lashely had been building. Lashely would then go onto to feud with the much more black culturally specific character, the white John Cena, and lose at the main event level before quitting over unspecified reasons. Was racism at all involved in these booking decisions? There was another, even more suspicious example of suspect decision making involving Bobby Lashely when he was one half of the only main event level feud between two dark skinned black wrestlers, in the middle of 2006 when he regularly challenged King Booker for the World Championship on the decidedly second tier brand Smackdown. They were even scheduled to main event a pay-per-view against one another, at No Mercy 2006, but oddly at the last minute the WWE inserted Batista and Finaly into the match making it a Four Way. This is a very good example of the potential shy racism that may exist in the WWE hierarchy. Why exactly was this match changed? Did the WWE really feel that having Batista in the main event was going to boost the projected weak buyrates? If so, was it truly effective to change the match with only one week left to promote the show, and even more so, why would more people order the show because Batista is in a Four Way match rather than just a singles match with Finlay? Seems like the Batista fans would have already planned on buying the event to me.

The WWE must have been very nervous with the King Booker title reign, even though the darkest skinned man to ever have a World Title and main event status had been given him the whitest possible gimmick, British Royalty, they still pulled the plug on a headlining and groundbreaking main event match due to buyrates. Something is definitely suspicious in that whole scenario. Although they are willing to use the black wrestlers on TV to appeal to a certain segment of the audience, it could be very possible that they didn’t want to start to set the groundwork for truly dark skinned black wrestlers to populate the WWE. Possibly the WWE doesn’t want to turn off what they see as a lucrative white, potentially racist, audience, or maybe the WWE doesn’t trust two black wrestlers to perform at the standard developed and honed by white wrestlers and agents. This is not a cultural bias that is specific to pro-wrestling, but exists in executive boardrooms and has often been the reason cited for criticism of the reliance on white quarterbacks in NFL football. The dominant white power has created the structures that they feel judge intelligence, and the CEOs and QBs (and more symbolically the pro-wrestling champions) must be white in order to effectively run the show. Historically, you could make the argument that powerful whites have not trusted powerless blacks to be anything more than workers and entertainers, and of course, this is racism. Obviously the WWE is a place that employs many black wrestlers, dark skinned and light skinned, but could they be victims of this subconscious racism that holds dark skinned black men back because of unsubstantiated, bigoted fears of inferiority?

This all may seem silly to you if you are about to celebrate the presidential victory of the first ever black president, but ask yourself if you think Barack Obama would be in the position he is now if his skin were as dark as Wesley Snipes. Would we be cherishing our memories of the classic years of The Rock in the WWF if his skin was as dark as R Truth? Unlike R Truth who uses his connection to the relevant political themes of the black experience, such as low income, trouble with the law, and racism, The Rock never acknowledged a cultural connection to the African American urban narrative. Of course, this is fine if The Rock’s character is authentic, but if the lighter skinned Rock’s struggles with discrimination as a black man/minority were hidden in order to appeal to a majority of a subconsciously (or even consciously) racist audience, then how can that be considered a good thing? Possibly, it could be considered positive to make characters racially generic in order to erase racism for the next generation, but arguably that could also be covering up institutionalized racism. Barack Obama may be weeks away from the one of the greatest social victories against racial discrimination in American history, and hopefully he helps to make America a much more color blind place, and talented wrestlers like R Truth, Kofi Kingston and Shelton Benjamin will not have to worry about being the token dark skinned wrestlers that cannot simultaneously hold championships or compete together at the main event level.