Book chapter
465"Race and Sports"
The Routledge Handbook of Ethnicity and Race in Communication, pp.465-477
Routledge
2024
DOI: 10.4324/9780367748586-44
Abstract
In keeping with the section theme of "Pushing the Boundaries of Ethnicity and Race" in communication, this chapter on race and sport argues for understanding the history of sport media coverage in the United States as an extended debate about the meaning of race. Over the course of a century and a half, elite mediated sport in the United States has been a means of asserting-through myth-making, exclusion, appeals to moral panic, and other tactics-White supremacy and the denigration of people of color. However, mediated sport also provides opportunities for resistance by people of color by contesting knowledge, asserting political views, or simply by asserting individual and collective dignity. In four roughly chronological sections, this chapter traces these struggles. The first discusses how early 20th-century media coverage of sport became a means to assert and contest scientific ideas about race and gender. The next section examines the struggles over assimilation from the middle until the late 20th century, from Jackie Robinson to Michael Jordan, by way of Tommie Smith, John Carlos, and O. J. Simpson. Next, the chapter examines how racialized and gendered identities were shaped to conform with norms, occasionally resisted, and were sometimes appropriated and commodified. The final section examines the contemporary moment and the insurgent political strategies of WNBA players and the counterinsurgency that has met it via sports talk radio.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- 465"Race and Sports"
- Creators
- Thomas P. Oates
- Contributors
- Bernadette Marie Calafell (Editor)Shinsuke Eguchi (Editor)
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Publication Details
- The Routledge Handbook of Ethnicity and Race in Communication, pp.465-477
- Publisher
- Routledge; New York
- DOI
- 10.4324/9780367748586-44
- Alternative title
- "Race and Sports"
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 2024
- Academic Unit
- American Studies; Journalism and Mass Communication
- Record Identifier
- 9984461960302771
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