Control, Discipline, and Punish
Control, Discipline, and Punish
Black Masculinity and (In)visible Whiteness in the NBA
This chapter critiques the “allegorical power of sport” in relation to historical and contemporary manifestations of white supremacy. In particular, it argues that media discourse about the NBA commissioner David Stern as well as his public statements demonstrate white paternalism. From the onset of his career as commissioner, Stern normalized whiteness as a nonracialized space by repeating discourse that marked the racialized “other” as criminal. Moreover, in a popular sport in which seventy five percent of the players are black but virtually all of the corporate owners and commissioner are white, Stern's enforcement of extreme penalties and policies affecting primarily black players visibly reproduces a spectacle of the white father figure and black slave child relationship found on plantations during the antebellum South.
Keywords: white supremacy, NBA, David Stern, white paternalism, white father figure, sport
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