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| Running Has Always Excluded Black People | Running Has Always Excluded Black People |
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| Free! Easy! Relaxing! That’s how jogging was marketed in the late 1960s, when the idea of heading out on a regular run was unfamiliar to most Americans. Unlike other physical fitness programs that required heavy, expensive gear, jogging was accessible to all, boosters claimed. | Free! Easy! Relaxing! That’s how jogging was marketed in the late 1960s, when the idea of heading out on a regular run was unfamiliar to most Americans. Unlike other physical fitness programs that required heavy, expensive gear, jogging was accessible to all, boosters claimed. |
| But history shows how untrue that is, and how long the sport of running has maintained this fiction. | But history shows how untrue that is, and how long the sport of running has maintained this fiction. |
| When video surfaced of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, the young black jogger gunned down in South Georgia, distance runners became a new voice among the usual chorus of social justice activists who grimly parse such tragedies. But among runners, reactions largely differed by one important factor: race. | When video surfaced of the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, the young black jogger gunned down in South Georgia, distance runners became a new voice among the usual chorus of social justice activists who grimly parse such tragedies. But among runners, reactions largely differed by one important factor: race. |
| Black runners recounted their own routines, intended to deflect the sort of suspicions that turned deadly for Mr. Arbery: steering clear of certain neighborhoods, going out only in daylight, wearing an Ivy League sweatshirt to broadcast respectability. Many white runners, by contrast, were aghast that the sense of peace they feel when hitting the open road reflected their racial privilege. | Black runners recounted their own routines, intended to deflect the sort of suspicions that turned deadly for Mr. Arbery: steering clear of certain neighborhoods, going out only in daylight, wearing an Ivy League sweatshirt to broadcast respectability. Many white runners, by contrast, were aghast that the sense of peace they feel when hitting the open road reflected their racial privilege. |
| This disparity should come as no surprise: Running has been a pastime marketed primarily to white people ever since “the jogging craze” was born in the lily-white Oregon track and field world of the late 1960s. Black people have not only been excluded from the sport — one survey by Running USA found under 10 percent of frequent runners identify as African-American — they’ve also been relentlessly depicted as a threat to legitimate, white joggers. | This disparity should come as no surprise: Running has been a pastime marketed primarily to white people ever since “the jogging craze” was born in the lily-white Oregon track and field world of the late 1960s. Black people have not only been excluded from the sport — one survey by Running USA found under 10 percent of frequent runners identify as African-American — they’ve also been relentlessly depicted as a threat to legitimate, white joggers. |
| The most apparently egalitarian exercise of all, running, is anything but — especially when it comes to race. | The most apparently egalitarian exercise of all, running, is anything but — especially when it comes to race. |
| Let’s start at the beginning, which is 1967: That’s the year a University of Oregon track coach named Bill Bowerman, together with cardiologist Waldo Harris, published a slim volume titled “Jogging,” which became a best seller. | Let’s start at the beginning, which is 1967: That’s the year a University of Oregon track coach named Bill Bowerman, together with cardiologist Waldo Harris, published a slim volume titled “Jogging,” which became a best seller. |
| Most Americans then thought of exercise as weight lifting or military-style calisthenics, but the book made a radical proposition: that a “steady, easy-paced run, alternating with breath-catching periods of walking,” was a suitable exercise for everyone, ages 7 to 70. Best of all, this simple activity required “no special skills,” no ”expensive clothing,” and no “health club membership.” All you needed, these running apostles promised, were rubber-soled shoes, a commitment to your health, and the will to head outdoors a few times a week. | Most Americans then thought of exercise as weight lifting or military-style calisthenics, but the book made a radical proposition: that a “steady, easy-paced run, alternating with breath-catching periods of walking,” was a suitable exercise for everyone, ages 7 to 70. Best of all, this simple activity required “no special skills,” no ”expensive clothing,” and no “health club membership.” All you needed, these running apostles promised, were rubber-soled shoes, a commitment to your health, and the will to head outdoors a few times a week. |
| Celebrity endorsements and new scientific research on “aerobics” made jogging a craze that spread far beyond the “jogging capital of the United States”: 99 percent white Eugene, Ore. | Celebrity endorsements and new scientific research on “aerobics” made jogging a craze that spread far beyond the “jogging capital of the United States”: 99 percent white Eugene, Ore. |
| Yet the new national pastime never delivered on its promises of universalism. Women complained of being harassed by male passers-by. And at a time when a white middle class exodus to the suburbs had sapped big cities of a vital tax base, many black Americans who lived in these cities could not safely “just go outside” to jog in parks or on the street. | Yet the new national pastime never delivered on its promises of universalism. Women complained of being harassed by male passers-by. And at a time when a white middle class exodus to the suburbs had sapped big cities of a vital tax base, many black Americans who lived in these cities could not safely “just go outside” to jog in parks or on the street. |
| Marketing and media didn’t help: From the cover of People magazine to ads for Nike, which Bill Bowerman co-founded, the joggers were almost uniformly depicted as white. Black Americans pushed back, eager to embrace an activity that would combat the heart disease prevalent in their communities. The black press recommended jogging as a free antidote to “the sedentary trap,” and in Ebony, one full-page color ad for a phone company featured a smiling middle-age couple playfully competing over their five-mile pace. Some took on the stereotype of the white jogger head on: in 1979, a headline in Jet magazine proclaimed, “Jogging Not Harmful to Black Women; It’s Dangerous to White Women, Says Expert.” | |
| Black track athletes, by contrast, were familiar and even celebrated in the United States. But to some white Americans, cheering on an Olympic athlete on television was entirely different from embracing black participation in an activity that took place on the streets of their neighborhood. By the 1980s, jogging had become known as a “yuppie” affectation, like eating croissants, owning a fancy juicer, and working on Wall Street. | Black track athletes, by contrast, were familiar and even celebrated in the United States. But to some white Americans, cheering on an Olympic athlete on television was entirely different from embracing black participation in an activity that took place on the streets of their neighborhood. By the 1980s, jogging had become known as a “yuppie” affectation, like eating croissants, owning a fancy juicer, and working on Wall Street. |
| Blacks were constantly defined in contrast to this “legitimate” white jogger. The consequences could be fatal: In 1980, a white supremacist trying to make a point about the danger of “race mixing” fatally shot two black men jogging with two white women in Salt Lake City. | Blacks were constantly defined in contrast to this “legitimate” white jogger. The consequences could be fatal: In 1980, a white supremacist trying to make a point about the danger of “race mixing” fatally shot two black men jogging with two white women in Salt Lake City. |
| The African-American periodical The Crisis wrote in 1985 of how blacks were viewed by white runners: “the homeless and downtrodden are most times a ‘disgusting’ irritation to the jogging, orange-juice drinking yuppie who must step over or past them on his or her way to the office.” Nothing solidified this notion of the black threat to white joggers as viscerally as the case of the “Central Park jogger,” when five men of color were wrongfully convicted of raping and attempting to murder a white runner. | |
| This racist presumption proved durable: In 1994, when a black jogger foiled a rape attempt in Central Park, the survivor celebrated him as a “black Superman.” But the police and the press minimized him as a mere “do-gooder” and didn’t publish his race, a damning oversight given the rabid coverage of black male perpetrators. | This racist presumption proved durable: In 1994, when a black jogger foiled a rape attempt in Central Park, the survivor celebrated him as a “black Superman.” But the police and the press minimized him as a mere “do-gooder” and didn’t publish his race, a damning oversight given the rabid coverage of black male perpetrators. |
| Six years later, when police officers pulled a gun on the Rev. Sheldon Stoudemire while he was running through his Pittsburgh neighborhood with a tape recorder they mistook for a firearm, he lamented, “One wrong move and here we’ve got another dead black man on the street.” | Six years later, when police officers pulled a gun on the Rev. Sheldon Stoudemire while he was running through his Pittsburgh neighborhood with a tape recorder they mistook for a firearm, he lamented, “One wrong move and here we’ve got another dead black man on the street.” |
| But the most enduring legacy of the racialized experience of recreational running is the surveillance and suspicion to which black people have long been subjected. “If you’re driving, walking, or — God forbid — running (jogging), and you simply look like an African-American, you are subject to a stop-and-search,” reflected The Michigan Chronicle in 1997. | But the most enduring legacy of the racialized experience of recreational running is the surveillance and suspicion to which black people have long been subjected. “If you’re driving, walking, or — God forbid — running (jogging), and you simply look like an African-American, you are subject to a stop-and-search,” reflected The Michigan Chronicle in 1997. |
| American distance running is still stubbornly white. The United States is only for the first time sending black female marathoners to the Olympics in 2021, while the competitive amateur and recreational levels of the sport remain overwhelmingly white. | American distance running is still stubbornly white. The United States is only for the first time sending black female marathoners to the Olympics in 2021, while the competitive amateur and recreational levels of the sport remain overwhelmingly white. |
| Mr. Arbery’s death and the ensuing outcry is in some ways the latest data point in the sick mash-up of structural racism, gun violence and vigilantism that’s become a hallmark of American life. But it’s also an example of the glaring whiteness of recreational running — a hobby that 47 million Americans embrace in part because of its enticing illusion of universalism, but that has never been, and still is far from, an equal-opportunity endeavor. | |
| Natalia Mehlman Petrzela is an associate professor of history at the New School and is working on a book on fitness culture in the United States. | |
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