American Indian Culture and Research Journal

INTRODUCTION This study assumes that its subjects have multiple identities: as men, football players, members of distinct racial and socio-economic groups, Americans, sons, fathers, and husbands. It attempts to analyze only some of these roles in relation to the subjects' sporting experiences, which generated meanings that were interpreted by themselves and others. Furthermore, such meanings changed over time, and proved negotiable through human agency, Racial identity, a problematic construct, assumed physiological differences during the period of this study, which extends from 1890 to the 1960s. The practices of the dominant white culture defined the boundaries of racial interaction, and attempted to define the meanings of a collective racial identity. To that extent, non-white groups such as Native Americans and African Americans underwent similar experiences in their exclusion, then limited inclusion in the dominant society and in white construction of alternative groups' identity.