End of Blackness in Sports? Ask the Media...

Posted on behalf of Kyle deManincor:

When Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy were on opposing sidelines in Super Bowl XLI, monumental steps were taken in the effort to end "blackness" in sports. It was a historic moment not only for African-Americans, but for sports as a whole. It was captured throughout the media as one of the finest moments in all of sports. In recent years though, the media has taken on almost a political role when it comes to blackness in sports.

According to Chapter 27 in The Handbook of Sports and Media, "...the spectacle of the Black athletic body has 'simultaneously diminished the space for progressive politics itself...it appears that we have moved from a position of black athletes embodying a politics of social transformation to politics itself being reduced to the bodies of individual athletes" (461). The media has lost sight of the black culture as a whole and re-focused on the talents of certain black individuals.The media has catered to the white-population through the use of black athletes who seem to influence the lives of so many through their charisma and wonder. "Michael Jordan's carefully engineered charismatic appeal...is a case of complicitious racial avoidance. Jordan's image was coveted by the media primarily because of its reassuring affinity with the affective investments associated with America's white-dominated national popular culture" (Raney and Bryant, 477). The media used Jordan as a way to market sports to the white-dominated culture. "...Michael Jordan self-consciously allowed himself to be whitened" (477). The same thing is going on with Tiger Woods and Golf.

In an article on yahoo sports, http://sports.yahoo.com/top/blog/roy_s_johnson/post/Mike-Tomlin-The-end-of-blackness-?urn=top,138325, "most of America looked at a black man and saw a coach, not a black coach. They saw a man." This is referring to Mike Tomlin after the Steelers won the Super Bowl. It's a great line, and it has to make one wonder, is blackness finally coming to an end in sports? Does the media avoid racial issues by spotlighting these great black athletes, such as Lebron James and Tiger Woods? Are there still these stereotypes about black athletes that the media just cant avoid? Either way, blackness in sports will only come to an end as long as the media allows it to.