Conventional wisdom spouts that African-American children do not compete in sports like tennis and golf because of the prohibitive costs. A former anthropology student, I’d like to argue that cultural dimensions are the dark matter that influences why children of certain ethnic groups gravitate toward given sports and not others. And while I am fairly certain the ISU did not intentionally set out to create a culturally biased system with the implementation of COP, what I learned from my studies would lead me to believe that skaters from high-context cultures such as Japan and Korea may find it easier mastering the numerous technical demands now required. I am not claiming that one culture is superior to another. What I am going to try to articulate is that Asian learning cultures, with their emphasis on “correct” form and repetition, may in fact, be conducive to producing the kind of skater the ISU now wants to see.
Very briefly, high-context cultures (Asia, Africa, Latin America) are those that emphasize group harmony over the interests of the individual. Uniformity is prized; “creativity” can be frowned upon. Low-context cultures, which would include most Western cultures, tend to be more individualistic. With this general rule of thumb in hand, it is no surprise that African-American children are drawn to sports with strong group dynamics—basketball, handball, any street sport. Nor is it particularly surprising that Latin American and Southern European countries with strong Latin influences dominate the game of soccer. This is not to say that Americans do not excel at team sports. They do. The group dynamic can be instilled in any given group of children. Pay them each a New York Yankees salary and they will surely coalesce. The group dynamic just doesn’t come as easily or naturally in a country like America where everyone is taught to prize individualism.
So why have Asians come to recently dominate figure skating? Well, having tutored many Korean and Japanese students in English, I have found that they are always looking for the “right” way--grammatically and syntactically correct--to say something even though there may be many correct ways to express a given thought. The “right” way is what the teacher wants to see and this “right” way is what will create a healthy student/teacher dynamic. Asian students will do their grammar lessons over and over and over again until the written sentences are perfect. Ironically, this does not always make for a verbally proficient speaker; in fact, the overemphasis on “technique” makes for students who cannot express their thoughts easily because what they need to say in daily life and what they have practiced in their grammar lessons are usually never the same thing. But if you were to ask me which high school student—American or Korean—has a better mastery of the rules of English grammar, I would say the Korean student, 7 times out of 10.
An expert no less than Dick Button essentially said on national TV that American figure skating students do not pay enough attention to mastering proper technique “in their headlong rush to do another triple jump”. In American culture, with its emphasis on individualism, there is always more than one way to skin a cat. Hence, we see vastly different jumping styles in Sarah Hughes and Caroline Zhang. Under the old system, where pretty much all you had to do was land the jump, Sarah could win a gold medal at the Olympics. (I doubt her performance would have won gold under the new Code of Points.) Now, the ISU insists on fully-rotated jumps, proper edges, flow and speed. In a sense, they are asking that all technique look the same. Is this right? Should Caroline’s mule kick be such a point of debate? We know where the ISU now stands on this issue.
With the future of figure skating staked on technical prowess and perfect forms that require hours and hours of robotic practice, don’t be surprised if children from Western cultures where individualism is prized become discouraged with the sport. And in my humble opinion, the powers that be who want to market skating to children in African-American and Latino communities should do so with pictures and videos of groups of children having fun. We all know that skating at the elite level eventually becomes an individual proposition. But to get minority kids through the door, you don’t entice them with the prospect of a gold medal. You do it with the promise of hours of fun with their friends.
