Constructing theDigitalized SportingBody Black and White.docx

Constructing the
Digitalized Sporting
Body: Black and White
Masculinity in NBA/
NHL Internet Memes
Nikolas Dickerson1
Abstract
In this article, I examine the ways sport fans construct and
circulate discourses of
race and masculinity in cyberspace. I do this through an
examination of a set of
Internet memes that juxtapose the bodies of National Hockey
League players with
National Basketball Association players in one single image. I
argue these memes
celebrate White masculinity, while at the same time
constructing African American
athletes as individualistic, selfish, and unwilling to sacrifice
their bodies for the
greater good of the team. More so, I argue that these memes
construct a form of
racial ideology that is representative of White backlash politics.
Keywords
race, Internet memes, masculinity, communication, hockey
On March 10, 2014, Dallas Stars forward Rich Peverley
collapsed on the bench
during a game from a heart complication. In the aftermath, both

the Dallas Stars and
Columbus Blue Jackets agreed to postpone the hockey game
based on the emotional
stress of watching a player collapse on the bench. In the
following days, reports cir-
culated that Peverley asked to reenter the game after he
regained consciousness (see
Arthur, 2014; O’Brien, 2014). This purported act led to a series
of memes that pitted
1 University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA
Corresponding Author:
Nikolas Dickerson, University of Iowa, 114 Wright St. Apt 1,
Iowa City, IA 52240, USA.
Email: [email protected]
Communication & Sport
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the toughness of Richard Peverley against other professional
athletes most notably,
Lebron James (see Figures 1 and 2).
Two days after Peverley collapsed, Barry Petchesky, a writer
for the website
Deadspin, wrote an article responding to these memes.
Petchesky (2014) uses these
memes and others like them to make the argument that the
marginalization of
hockey among the major sports in the United States has
perpetuated a sense of inse-
curity within hockey fans. Petchesky argues these images are
meant to address the
insecurity of hockey fans by attempting to legitimize their sport
as superior to bas-
ketball, football, and baseball via notions of hypermasculinity.
While I agree with Petchesky’s (2014) reading, I want to take
this argument fur-
ther and discuss the ways these images construct more specific
forms of White mas-
culinity and Black masculinity in 2014. In this article, I
interrogate the previously

mentioned Peverley Internet memes and a series of memes that
Photoshop a player
from the National Hockey League (NHL) and the National
Basketball Association
(NBA) into one image. I argue these memes celebrate White
masculinity, while at
the same time constructing African American athletes as
individualistic, selfish, and
unwilling to sacrifice their bodies for the greater good of the
team. More so, I argue
that these memes construct a form of racial ideology that is
representative of White
backlash politics.
Internet memes are visual texts such as still images, videos, or
animated GIFs
that are intertextual. These texts are created and circulated by
everyday citizens
in order to construct and communicate understandings of the
social world (Hun-
tington, 2013). Thus, memes can be thought of as a form of
participatory media
culture. More specifically, in relation to sport, social media
(blogs, twitter, memes,
Figure 1. Richard Peverley Meme 1.

2 Communication & Sport
and YouTube) has allowed fans to have an influence on how
sport media is con-
structed and presented (Sanderson & Kassing, 2011). The
examination of the
memes in this article traces the construction of racial ideology
within sport fan cul-
ture to gather an understanding of one way sport fans are
constructing and sharing
discourses of race, masculinity, and sport.
These memes use the bodies of Black and White male athletes
to produce and
reproduce ideologies of race and gender, and examining the
ways these bodies are
represented gives insight into how individuals are interpolated
into racialized,
gendered, and classed identities (Carrington, 2001). What is
unique about these
memes is their ability to make commentary about race without

any overt refer-
ences to race. Therefore, I situate these memes within a
framework that Eduardo
Bonilla-Silva (2010) refers to as ‘‘color-blind racism.’’ This
form of ideology
‘‘explains contemporary racial inequality as the result of non-
racial dynamics’’
(p. 2). Thus, it is not the long histories of racial discrimination
or contemporary
racist practices that place racial minorities at the margins of our
society, but racia-
lized beliefs—Latino/Latina’s are lazy, or African Americans do
not value educa-
tion instead that are used as explanations for existing inequity.
This type of
ideology of course works to obscure the structural and cultural
racism that still
exists, and this form of thinking is central to the understanding
of the memes
in question.
Figure 2. Richard Peverley/Lebron James meme.
Dickerson 3

Color-Blind Racism
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2010) argues, ‘‘the central component of
any dominant
racial ideology is its frames or set paths for interpreting
information’’ (p. 26).
Color-blind racism relies on the fundamental belief that race no
longer shapes an
individual’s experience or life chances. Any racial inequality
that still exists between
different groups is explained away through cultural differences
such as the belief
that Black people are prone to violence, prefer to live on
welfare as opposed to work-
ing, or don’t want to take responsibility for their own actions
(Ferber, 2007). There-
fore, this ideology places the onus on the individual to work
through any barriers
they may face, as systematic racism is not seen as a constraint.
Yet racism is perpe-
tuated through this process, as racial inequity is divorced from
history, and the reluc-

tance to acknowledge that racism still exists pushes the
systematic inequities racial
minorities face to the margins of society (Bonilla-Silva, 2010).
This type of rhetoric
also makes it increasingly difficult to have conversations about
race.
This form of thinking about race has roots in 1960’s America,
where many
Whites believed that after the legislation put in place by the
civil rights movement
the only way to eradicate racism would be to adopt color-blind
politics (Brown et al.,
2003). In other words, within the context of the post-civil rights
movement, the way
to end racism is by not acknowledging race. Yet, what this
rhetoric fails to address is
that policies such as universal health care, access to educational
funding, or job cre-
ation that do not address how structural inequities put racial
minorities at different
starting points than their White counterparts, negates the impact
of universal legis-
lation (Wise, 2010). The space of sport is a central place where
this type of ideology

is reproduced.
Sport is believed to be a space of meritocracy, where athletes
who rise to star-
dom are thought to do so based solely on their own talent and
dedication
(Andrews & Jackson, 2001). The belief that sport is a space of
meritocracy is then
used to perpetuate the idea that race does not impact
opportunity. In both sport
and general society, the disavowal of racism not only works to
obscure the exis-
tence of systematic racial inequality, but this ideology also
helps to maintain the
power of whiteness.
Whiteness is a reference to the social constructed nature of
White identity, and
the study of whiteness interrogates how understandings of
whiteness shape societal
norms and social institutions (Doane, 2003). Since the
formation of the United
States, society has been structured to privilege the White male
body. Joe Feagin’s
(2010, p. 3) uses the term ‘‘the white racial frame’’ to refer to

the manner in which
our social world is interpreted through the perspective of White
bodies. In other
words, understanding of whiteness structures our cultural
norms, but also demon-
strates how social institutions are stratified to privilege White
bodies. In this manner,
whiteness can be understood to function as an invisible social
norm. Thus, a central
component of studies that examine how whiteness is constructed
seek to expose how
whiteness operates as the dominant lens of interpretation by
making it visible
through analysis (Giroux, 1997; King, 2005; Long &
Hylton,2010; McDonald,
2005). Yet, color-blind ideology helps to perpetuate the White
racial frame through
a refusal to engage with issues of race.

Color-blind ideology and racism are not unique to the United
States. Stacy
Lorenz and Rod Murray (2014) in their discussion of the NBA
dress code and
Canadian hockey player Ray Emery argue that while both the
United States and
Canada have different histories regarding race, both countries
adhere to aspects of
color-blind ideology that denies the existence of racism (also
see Abdel-Shehid,
2005; Joseph, Darnell, & Nakamura, 2012; Lorenz & Murray,
2011, 2014). Thus,
similar to Lorenz and Murray, this project deals with color-
blind ideology and its
effects in both the United States and Canada in the material and
digital world.
Race and the Digital Age
In the early days of the Internet, many marketers of Internet
services constructed
cyberspace as a utopian form of communication where gender,
age, and race did not
matter (Nakamura, 2008). In other words, the Internet was
marketed as a space unin-
fluenced by the outside world where you were free to be

whoever you wanted. How-
ever, that optimism is misplaced. Scholars have examined the
role of race in the
creation of online forums (Byrne 2008; McPherson, 2000),
access to the Internet
(Nakamura, 2002), the algorithms of Google search engines
(Noble, 2013), and the
use of social media for antiracist work (Senft & Noble, 2013).
Despite scholarship
that has demonstrated the importance of race in cyberspace, it
remains an underde-
veloped area in Internet scholarship.
One of the challenges to examining issues of racial identity in
cyberspace is the
way participatory media such as blogs, discussion forums, and
social media work to
obscure ‘‘the racialized protocols that circumscribe our online
interactions’’
(Sharma, 2013, p. 47). In other words, the ability for users to
create their own content
and identity helps to obscure the ways racial identity matters in
cyberspace. More so,
race matters within the space of the Internet, because race
matters in the material

world (Nakamura, 2008). In other words, the Internet is not a
space that is unin-
fluenced by the material social world. Participatory media
culture is a product of
what Henry Jenkins (2006) has called ‘‘convergence culture’’ or
‘‘the flow of content
across multiple media platforms’’ (p. 2). Moreover, new media
such as Internet
memes provide consumers an opportunity to create content as
opposed to simply
consuming it (Jenkins, 2006). The ability for traditional media
consumers to not only
consume mediated projects but also create their own has the
potential to reproduce,
transform, or resist dominant discourses.
The participatory culture of social media has had a profound
impact on sport
media and fandom. Traditionally, sport fans have not had the
ability to influence
how sport media is constructed and presented (Sanderson &
Kassing, 2011). How-
ever, social media has significantly altered how fans engage
with sport media. NHL

fans can still access news through traditional outlets such as a
newspaper or
Dickerson 5
magazine, but they can also stream games and access news
through their cell phones,
laptops, social media, and video game systems.
In a 2009 special edition of the Sociology of Sport Journal,
David Leonard
argued that sport scholars were behind in examining new media
(blogs, video
games, and social networking), while new media scholars were
ignoring global
sporting culture. In that issue and beyond sport, scholars have
addressed how
social media is changing sport through fan construction of
sporting blogs (Dart,
2009; MacKay & Dallaire, 2013), Twitter (Norman, 2012;
Sanderson, 2011;
Smith, 2011), and as an avenue to connect to other fans through
sport fan groups

(Norman, 2014). Despite the growing literature, the specific
area of Internet
memes, and even more so, the connections between social media
and understand-
ings of race still need to be developed.
What makes memes unique to other forms of participatory
media is that their live-
lihood relies on their circulation and recirculation by a range of
producers and con-
sumers. Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins originally
created the term meme
in 1976 to refer to small cultural units such as fashion, songs,
and forms of language
that spread from person to person by copying or imitation
(Shifman, 2014, p. 9). An
Internet meme follows the same logic, as Limor Shifman (2013)
describes Internet
memes as user-created content that is intertextual, edited, and
circulated numerous
times among different users via social media.
Although memes usually require some inside knowledge in
order to decode them,
the actual creation of a meme is quite simple. There are

websites that will guide you
through the process, like memegenerator.net. Additionally,
having access to the
photo editing software Adobe Photoshop gives an individual all
the tools needed
to create a meme. Once a meme is created, the structure of the
Internet allows the
possible quick and widespread circulation of these images
through social network
sites (Facebook and Twitter) and e-mail.
One of the more popular sporting memes is based on the
phenomenon of
‘‘Tebowing’’ (see Figure 3). This meme mimics a well-known
posture of former
NFL quarterback Tim Tebow getting down on one knee and
placing one’s elbow
on their knee and fist on the forehead (Sutera, 2013). This
meme is based on a photo-
graph of Tebow dropping to one knee after a comeback victory
against the Miami
Dolphins in the 2011 season.
A real estate agent named Jared Kleinstein was the first to
appropriate this

image by taking a photo of friends Tebowing outside a bar in
New York City.
He then posted the image to Facebook and the popularity of the
image led him
to create a Tumblr site devoted to the image, named
Tebowing.com (Sutera,
2013). This website allows users to post images of themselves
copying the Tebow
pose in a wide variety of different locations. Kleinstein’s
original image obtained
more than 175,000 views within 2 days of the construction of
Tebowing.com
(Sutera, 2013). In the Tebowing craze, the meme is based on an
existing photo. The
images I examine in this essay rely on combining images and
written text to make
social commentary.
http://Tebowing.com
http://Tebowing.com

Method
To find memes for this project, I searched Google images,
knowyourmeme.com, and
memebase.com. I used knowyourmeme.com and memebase.com,
as they are two of
the largest websites attempting to compile a database of the
large amount of Internet
memes (Börzsei, 2013). Additionally, I used Google images, as
it is a search tool that
allows one to search the web for various images. I searched
each website with key
words such as Lebron James, the NHL, the NBA, Richard
Peverley, NHL vs. NBA,
and P. K. Subban. Overall, I found 23 different memes. Twenty
of these memes
either compared the NBA to the NHL or featured racialized
discourse of Monteral
Canadiens player, P. K. Subban.
Although these images are limited, I argue that the intent of
memes to be circu-
lated and reproduced (Bauckhage, 2011) makes this small
number of images a
Figure 3. Tebowing Retrieved from
http://blogs.denverpost.com/videogames/2012/05/23/

tebowing-included-ea-sports-madden-nfl-13/3603/tim-tebow-
tebowing.
Dickerson 7
http://knowyourmeme.com
http://memebase.com
http://knowyourmeme.com
http://memebase.com
http://blogs.denverpost.com/videogames/2012/05/23/tebowing-
included-ea-sports-madden-nfl-13/3603/tim-tebow-tebowing
http://blogs.denverpost.com/videogames/2012/05/23/tebowing-
included-ea-sports-madden-nfl-13/3603/tim-tebow-tebowing
significant cultural artifact to examine. More so, in all of the
memes that compared
NBA players to NHL players none of the NBA players used to
make this juxtaposi-
tion were White. In fact, all of the players used to make this
comparison were Afri-
can American. Additionally, no Black NHL players were used to
make comparisons
to injured White NBA players, which I believe points to the
racial significance of the
aforementioned memes. I do not believe these memes are
representative of all sport

fans. However, the very selective use of NBA and NHL players
and the text that is
used within these memes provides an important space to see
how some fans are con-
structing and circulating discourses of race and gender.
In my analysis, I pay specific attention to what Patrick Davison
(2012) calls the
ideal of a meme, or the ‘‘concept or idea conveyed’’ (p. 123). I
draw on critical race
and sport studies scholarship to interrogate how these memes
construct understand-
ings of race and masculinity within sport. The focus on both
race and gender allows
for a more complex understanding of how these forms of power
work together not in
isolation (Birrell & McDonald, 2000). The analysis of these
memes thus focuses on
how race and gender inform each other and how these narratives
are connected to
understandings of color-blind racism.
Whiteness, Morality, and the NHL
I begin with the Internet memes that compare the toughness of
Richard Peverley to

Lebron James (see Figure 1) and to the entire NBA (see Figure
4). These two memes
make explicit commentary about the supposed superior
toughness found in hockey
players. However, these memes also make subtle interpretations
of race as well.
Figure 4. Richard Peverley Meme 2.
Kusz (2007) argues that post–9/11 media discourses about sport
figures were able to
express and garner support for a form of White cultural
nationalism without expli-
citly discussing race. More so, Kusz argues that mediated
framing of White male
athletes such as Pat Tillman as embodiments of average
everyday citizens and lack-
ing economic privilege, produced a discourse was that re-
centered White masculi-
nity without seeming to be discussing race at all.

The previous memes are able to achieve the same goals through
a focus on tra-
ditional sporting ethos. For example, the valorization of
physicality and toughness
has long been a cultural component of men’s hockey (Allain,
2008; Gee, 2009; Gru-
neau & Whitson, 1993; Robidoux, 2001, 2012; Theberge, 2000).
Additionally, the
sacrifice of one’s body for the good of the team has been a
central cultural under-
standing of male sport in general. As Mike Messner (2002)
argues, male bodies that
play through the pain are performing a celebrated form of
masculinity, while male
bodies that refuse to put their bodies on the line risk alienating
their teammates and
being labeled feminine or homosexual.
The previously mentioned memes thus suggest a failure of NBA
players, and
specifically Lebron James, to live up to the masculine code of
sport. While the
culture and institution of sport has routinely discriminated
against girls and

women in order to secure sport both culturally and structurally
as a place for
men’s bodies (Birrell & Theberge, 1994), the space of sport has
also played a role
in the making and remaking of understandings of racial
difference (Carrington,
2010). Given that these memes use the sport of basketball, a
sport that has a strong
symbolic association with blackness (Leonard, 2006), to make
their point these
images specifically suggest the failure of the Black male body
to live up to tradi-
tional sporting norms.
This message takes on greater prominence given the history of
construction of
Black male bodies as having a natural inclination to athletics
(see Andrews, 1996;
Cahn, 1994; Carrington, 2010), and criminality (Leonard, 2006).
The belief that
African Americans are natural athletes is just a part of a larger
history of reducing
Black men and women to their bodies. For example, the
construction of Black men
as unintelligent, strong, violent, and hypersexual was used as

justification for the
physical labor of slavery, while the construction of African
American women as pri-
mitive and hypersexual was used to justify the rape of these
women by White men
(Collins, 2005). Thus, these beliefs about the Black body have
been used to justify
racial oppression.
However, these images convey the message that the Black
bodies of Lebron
James and the rest of the NBA have failed in their ability to be
physically productive.
This is a significant point, as historically successful Black male
athletic bodies such
as boxer Jack Johnson have consistently posed a threat to White
hegemonic mascu-
linity (Carrington, 2001). Within these memes, the failure of
Black bodies such as
Lebron James allow for the centering of White masculinity.
Not only do these images construct White male hockey players
as more mascu-
line they also position White hockey players as self-less. Kyle
Kusz (2007) argues

Dickerson 9
that in order for White male athletes such as Pat Tillman to be
understood as moral
and unselfish, they have to be constantly juxtaposed with
constructions of the selfish,
attention-seeking Black male athlete. Through these images, the
physicality of
James’s body is disavowed, while his selfishness is reimagined.
James’s muscle
cramp is dismissed as trivial compared to the heart failure of
Peverley, and James’s
action is coded as selfish while Peverley is willing to put his
body on the line for his
teammates. Therefore, not only does this construction of the two
athletes allow for
Peverley to be understood as performing a valorized form of
masculinity (Messner,
2002), but it also reinforces the notion that Black athletes like
James care only about
themselves, hence his unwillingness to stay out on the court

despite what is con-
structed as a minor injury. This understanding is also reinforced
through the follow-
ing two memes (see Figures 5 and 6).
I believe these memes represent a form of White backlash
politics. The notion of
White backlash politics has consistently been linked to the
cultural climate of the
1980s and 1990s. Anxiety about job security due to global
outsourcing, affirmative
Figure 5. Lebron James/National Hockey League (NHL) Meme
1.
action programs, and the States’ role in protecting minority
rights, all created a mis-
conception that Whites would soon be the minority (Doane,
2003). This perceived
crisis created what could be thought of as a White revolt. One
of the ways this revolt

was manifested was through popular culture.
For example, Kusz (2001) argues that Sports Illustrated’s
‘‘Whatever happened
to the white athlete?’’ article constructs a narrative of the
disappearance of the
White male athlete that helps generate anxiety ‘‘about the
supposed declining posi-
tion of white males within American society and culture’’ (p.
406). While these
perceived threats are often linked to the overrepresentation of
African Americans
in basketball, football, and track and field, the majority of
American sports parti-
cipants remain mostly White (Harrison, 2013; Kusz, 2001).
Even though White
men and women make up the majority of sport participants in
the United States,
the popularity of basketball and football is important to note.
The Harris Poll has
been asking adults over 18 their favorite sport since 1985, and
in 2014, the poll
found that the sport of hockey still lagged behind both the NBA
and the National
Football League (NFL), and Major League Baseball (MLB;

Rovell, 2014). Given
that both the NBA and NFL have an overrepresentation of
African American men,
this poll would suggest that the Black male sporting body is at
the center of the
national sport imaginary.
2.
Dickerson 11
These memes allow White male hockey players to take over this
central posi-
tion through ridiculing the masculinity and apparent lack of
dedication to the team
of the Black male athlete. The focus on masculinity and
commitment to a team
allows for the communication of racial ideology without
mentioning race, which
is a key component of how racial discourse functions within the
color-blind era

(Bonilla-Silva, 2010). The nature of Internet memes allows
users to promote
stereotypical understandings of the Black male athlete through
images and text
that do not appear to be racially charged. In particular, the
negative connotations
of the selfish Black male athlete are again symbolically
conjured by focusing on
the dedication of the White male hockey players to their team
despite their more
serious injury (also see Figures 7–12).
The use of Lebron James as the central figure in these memes is
a critical com-
ponent in the larger symbolic connotations of these images.
James is not only argu-
ably the best player in the league, but he may also be the most
well known. It is
Figure 7. National Basketball Association (NBA)/National
Hockey League (NHL) Meme 1.

because of his position as one of the best players in the league
and his widespread
familiarity that he is able to stand in for the NBA and the
blackness of the league.
Moreover, since July 8, 2010, when James decided to conduct a
live broadcast to
announce that he was going to sign with the Miami Heat via free
agency, he has
become a villain. The public announcement of him leaving his
hometown Cleveland
Cavaliers has led to characterizations of James as selfish, a
traitor, and arrogant
(Hawkins, Cooper, & Baker, 2014). Although James’s recent
return to his hometown
Cleveland Cavaliers has most likely softened this negative
construction, I still con-
tend that his widespread notoriety allows him to stand in for the
NBA; thus, his self-
ishness stands in for the league’s selfishness. This narrative is
emphasized in the
following meme (see Figure 13).
3.

Dickerson 13
The image again positions Lebron James as self-centered and
arrogant, while
positioning U.S. Olympic representative TJ Oshie (member of
the NHL’s St. Louis
Blues) as the selfless athlete by refusing the label of hero.
While the image of Lebron
James could stand in for any post-game interview the image of
TJ Oshie is recogniz-
able as the immediate aftermath of his four-goal performance in
a shoot-out that cat-
apulted the United States to victory over Russia, in the opening
game of the 2014
Winter Olympics. The specific context of the image of Oshie is
important, because
of the significance of his achievement, while the inability to
pinpoint the specific
Eastern Conference Final game of the James interview is also
very important,
because the failure to tie James’s statements to any specific

moment helps to rein-
force this characterization as part of James’ regular personality.
On the other hand, the supposed refusal of Oshie to accept that
label of hero at the
very moment when he is constructed as a national hero through
the mediated press
heightens his apparent selflessness. This same idea can be seen
in Figure 14. Again,
this meme contrasts a speech made by Lebron James with
hockey player Jonathan
Towes. Through this image, Lebron James becomes the stand in
for individualism,
while the White hockey player comes to represent the moral
aspects of sport.
The previous images used individual players to make subtle
commentary about

race and masculinity between the NBA and NHL. The following
image directly
addresses perceived differences between the two leagues (see
Figure 15). The meme
above constructs Black athletes as overpaid benchwarmers with
a questionable work
ethic. It is worth noting that the fourth line on any NHL team is
the least talented, and
the amount of ice time these individuals get varies from night to
night. Additionally,
it is very common in basketball for players to come in and out
of the game, while at
times spending numerous minutes on the bench. Still, what this
meme does is deva-
lue the Black basketball player, while constructing White
hockey players as harder
working and thus more deserving of financial compensation.
Thus, these memes use
Dickerson 15

nonracial rhetoric to normalize White masculinity by demeaning
the Black male
sporting body.
The Case of P. K. Subban
I turn now to a discussion of one of the NHL’s top Black
players P. K. Subban,
because his story parallels the arguments in the previous
section, while highlighting
how Black masculinity is negotiated within the space of the
NHL. Subban is a defen-
seman who was drafted by the Montreal Canadiens 43rd overall
in the 2007 NHL
Entry Draft. He grew up in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and was
raised by his mother
and father, both of Caribbean descent (Montserrat, Jamaica). In
2012, P. K. Subban
became the first Black player to win the James Norris Memorial
Trophy (given to the
leagues’ best defensemen as voted on by the hockey writers
association), and he was
named to the 2014 Canadian Olympic team. Despite these
accomplishments Subban

is continuously positioned as both an insider and outsider within
the sport of hockey.
For example, in game one of the Montreal Canadiens versus
Boston Bruins 2014
playoff series, after P. K. Subban had scored the game-winning
goal for the Cana-
diens, he was the subject of about 17,000 tweets featuring the n-
word following this
goal (Gorman, 2014). This led to Bruins President Cam Neely
releasing the follow-
ing statement ‘‘The racist, classless views expressed by an
ignorant group of individ-
uals following Thursday’s game via digital media are in no way
a reflection of
anyone associated with the Bruins organization’’ (Wilbur,
2014). Additionally,
many ‘‘nonracist’’ Bruins fans took to twitter to condemn other

Bruins fans for their
remarks and to distance the bigots from the larger Bruins fan
base (Dujay, 2014).
The one thing that ties all these responses together is the
attempt to distance the
Bruins organization from these racist remarks and to emphasize
that these comments
were an isolated incident brought forth by a small segment of
bigoted fans.
However, this is not the first time Subban has experienced
instances of racism in
the NHL. In 2012, Florida Panthers forward Krys Barch was
suspended after asking
Subban if he slipped on a banana peel during a game (Allen,
2012). Barch insisted
his comment had no racial connotations. In 2010, Darren Pang
was discussing P. K.
Subban, who was then in his rookie year. During this Total
Sports Network
Dickerson 17

4.
5.
Broadcast (TSN), Pang described Subban as outgoing and full of
life, and stated that
the more that persona continues to grow the more people want
him to settle down.
He went on to compare Subban to St. Louis Blues defenseman
Alex Pietrangelo,
who Pang argued, ‘‘does everything, on the ice, off the ice, the
white way’’ (Couto,
2010). Darren Pang of course immediately apologized and
characterized this state-
ment as a slip of the tongue.
Even if all the previous incidents were to be viewed as rare

occurrences, or unin-
tentional racial remarks, there is no denying the power of the
following memes (see
Figures 16 to 20) featuring Subban, as the following images
draw on explicit racial
slurs and stereotypical understandings of Black bodies such as a
love of fried
chicken and the inability to swim.
Conclusion
All of these images require interrogation and contemplation. I
share them to point
to the necessity for more scholarship that interrogates the
construction of race and
masculinity within hockey. These memes of P. K. Subban also
help to understand
the significance of the memes that compare White hockey
players to Black NBA
players. While the memes that compare the NHL to the NBA
work to re-center
White masculinity within sport, they also symbolically imagine
the sport of hockey
as a space for White masculinity. The practice of culturally
coding hockey as a

space for White male bodies is not a phenomenon unique to
memes.
For as Mary Louise Adams (2006) argues, ‘‘if hockey is life in
Canada, then
life in Canada remains decidedly masculine and white’’ (p. 71).
Through an
examination of Canadian media coverage of the women and
men’s 2002 Olympic
Dickerson 19
Figure 16. P. K. Subban Meme 1.

Dickerson 21
performance, access to ice time for females and males, and
narratives of the
game of shinny (pick-up hockey), Adams (2006) demonstrates
the ways both
symbolically and structurally the game privileges the White,
male body. This
is also done through the mythology of the birth of Canada
(Clarke, 1997),
the creation story of hockey (Gruneau & Whitson, 1993), the
trophy cases
of Canadian ice rinks (Robinson, 1998), and official histories of
the game
(Pitter, 2006).

The erasure of women and people of color from the histories of
hockey makes it
seem that they don’t play the game and makes it difficult to
comprehend the racism
and sexism that has been central to the sport. It also reinforces
understandings of the
game of hockey as White and masculine at both the cultural and
institutional level. I
believe the previous memes of P. K. Subban draw on such vile
stereotypes of Black
bodies demonstrate that he is a body that is out of place (for a
discussion of this
regarding Aboriginal Canadians, see Robidoux, 2012;
Valentine, 2012). Through the
images that ask Subban why he doesn’t pick cotton, and the
meme that suggests Sub-
ban should be thrown into the Pacific Ocean (because
presumably he can’t swim), it
is implied that his body is in the wrong place and that it should
be removed. Even
more so, these are clear demonstrations of how race matters in

both the sport of
hockey and within North America in general.
David Leonard (2009) argues that a key area social media
scholarship must
address is the development of original mediated content by
sports fans. In this arti-
cle, I have detailed how Internet memes have produced and
reproduced stereotypical
understandings of White and Black male athletic bodies. By
constructing the Black
male basketball body as selfish and as failures of hegemonic
masculinity, the White
male athletic body is repositioned as morally superior. In
addition, these memes con-
struct the sporting space of the NHL as more honorable athletic
league in compar-
ison to the NBA.
Thus, the analysis of these memes not only reveals the fallacy
of a post-racial
society but also illustrates how some fans are constructing
mediated images of Black
and White athletes. While the memes throughout this essay have
reinforced domi-

nant narratives of racial identity, the dynamics of social media
opens up a space for
users to resist, or transgress dominant perceptions of race and
gender. While the
above memes depict P. K. Subban in a racist manner, there are
also images that resist
such messages (see Figures 21 and 22).
Dickerson 23
The previous images offer a very mild form of resistance, but
they are important
to point out and explore. Social media has indeed given sport
fans the opportunity to
shape and construct narratives about sport and its participants
(Sanderson, 2011). It
is critical to continue to examine social media, because of its
ability to conform,
transform, or resist dominant discourses. Social media also
allows for new under-

standings of how ideas of race, gender, nation, and so on, are
constructed and recon-
structed within the digital world.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Susan Birrell and Travis Vogan
for the many helpful conver-
sations and their helpful feedback on the numerous drafts of this
article.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with
respect to the research, author-
ship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research,
authorship, and/or publication of
this article.
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Sport in Society: Cultures, Commerce,
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Dressed for success? The NBA's dress
code, the workings of whiteness and
corporate culture

Mary G. McDonald a & Jessica Toglia a
a Department of Kinesiology and Health , Miami University ,
Oxford, Ohio, USA
Published online: 27 Jul 2010.
To cite this article: Mary G. McDonald & Jessica Toglia (2010)
Dressed for success? The NBA's dress
code, the workings of whiteness and corporate culture, Sport in
Society: Cultures, Commerce,
Media, Politics, 13:6, 970-983, DOI:
10.1080/17430437.2010.491267
To link to this article:
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Dressed for success? The NBA’s dress code, the workings of
whiteness
and corporate culture
Mary G. McDonald* and Jessica Toglia
Department of Kinesiology and Health, Miami University,
Oxford, Ohio, USA
This paper explores the constitutive power relations and
representational politics
produced through the advent of a dress-code policy instituted by
the National
Basketball Association (NBA) in 2005. Using the methodology

of contextual cultural
studies this analysis suggests that far from a simple policy that
requires a particular
style of dress, narratives and practices surrounding the policy
are embedded in an
economic rationale frequently embraced in corporate cultures
that also reproduce
whiteness. In recontextualizing the dress code this paper maps
out and makes visible
the complex processes which both venerate and demonize the
athleticism and
entertainment value of the league’s black masculine bodies, and
simultaneously deny
the salience of political, social and economic processes that
produce discourses of a
commercialized white normativity. The ultimate aim of this
analysis is to generate
broader public pedagogical interest in these contexts in order to
promote new
understandings of the dress code in the quest for social justice.
In October 2005, National Basketball Association (NBA)
commissioner, David Stern
announced a new dress policy for the league’s players. This
policy requires players to wear
‘business casual attire’ when ‘engaging in team or league
business’. Players not in uniform
at games must also wear a sport coat, dress shoes and socks.

Once leaving the arena after
a game, players may wear ‘neat warm-up suits issued by their
team’. Items explicitly
prohibited ‘at any time while on team or league business’
include:
Sleeveless shirts, shorts, t-shirts, jerseys, or sports apparel
(unless appropriate for the event
(e.g., a basketball clinic), team-identified, and approved by the
team), headgear of any kind
while a player is sitting on the bench or in the stands at a game,
during media interviews, or
during a team or league event or appearance (unless appropriate
for the event or appearance,
team-identified, and approved by the team), chains, pendants, or
medallions worn over the
player’s clothes, sunglasses while indoors and headphones
(other than on the team bus or
plane, or in the team locker room).
1
In making this decree, the league released a statement
presumably to NBA fans that read:
We know that you share our desire that NBA players be
appreciated not only for their
extraordinary talent and hard work, but also for their
accessibility to fans, their community
service, and their professionalism – both on and off the court.
To that end, we will be

instituting, effective with the start of the regular season, a
league-wide ‘minimum’ dress code.
Many teams have previously issued their own dress codes,
designed to demonstrate the
seriousness with which their players take the representation of
their teams, their cities, and our
ISSN 1743-0437 print/ISSN 1743-0445 online
q 2010 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17430437.2010.491267
http://www.informaworld.com
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Sport in Society
Vol. 13, No. 6, August 2010, 970–983
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5
league; our new dress code is not intended to affect any of those
that are more formal than
what is set forth below in the new NBA dress code.
2
Initial public and player responses to the NBA mandate were
decidedly mixed. Some
saw the policy as the inevitable and indeed long-overdue right
of an employer, in this case
the NBA, to dictate appropriate modes of dress and behaviour
within the workplace. Still,
other commentators suggested that the predominately white
administrators of the largely
black playing force were attempting to appease white, middle-
class crowds especially
nervous in light of several highly publicized incidents from the
previous season.
3
The most
publicized of these incidents was dubbed the ‘malice in the
palace’, a fight in the Detroit
Pistons’ arena, The Palace of Auburn Hills, during a game with

the Indiana Pacers. This
fight included an incident where a fan threw a cup of ice at the
Pacer’s Ron Artest who then
jumped into the seats to constrain a fan and eventually punched
another fan who was
verbally taunting him. Teammate Stephen Jackson also entered
the fray. The incident
resulted in a season-ending suspension for Artest. Eight other
players – four Pacers,
including Jackson, and four Pistons were suspended by the
league for between one and
30 games. A small number of fans were barred from attending
events at the Palace for life,
due to their participation in the fight.
Some popular and academic commentators suggest a broader
awareness of the racist
history through which the Pacers-Pistons-fans fight was
construed by the white-dominated
media.
4
Still others have insinuated that the largely negative public
reaction to the fight
helped to provide the impetus which brought about the NBA
dress-code policy.

5
Cultural
critics McCann and Bandsuch suggest that the dress-code policy
reflects racism in
targeting the ‘hip-hop generation’ whose styles and mode of
expression are frequently
both exoticized and vilified by the white-dominated ownership
of the NBA, its
multinational corporate sponsors, and many white and middle-
class fans.
6
Read from this
perspective the NBA dress policy in essence banned a particular
mode and style of black
masculine hip-hop expression. That is, this policy banned
‘throwback jerseys, baggy jeans,
crooked baseball caps, knee length t-shirts, large items of
jewelry and Timberland boots’
as stated by Ken Beck in a comment posted to the
CBSSports.com community blog.
Los Angeles Lakers coach Phil Jackson makes clear that the
issue is partially about
social class and consumption in identifying the league’s
idealized audience:

To a majority of these young men, the rap stars, hip hop guys
are really kind of like heroes or
colleagues . . . We even have some that are owners in the
league. And it’s not the same
audience. Our audience is corporate businessmen and
businesswomen and kids. So it’s a
different audience that you’re dealing with and these players
should be aware of that.
7
While coach Phil Jackson suggests the need to appease middle-
class and corporate
sensibilities, Indiana’s Stephen Jackson was quick to point out
the racial politics and
attempts toward appeasement fuelling the policy:
I have no problem dressing up . . . But as far as chains, I
definitely feel that’s a racial statement.
Almost 100% of the guys in the league who are young and black
wear big chains. So I
definitely don’t agree with that at all.
8
While we have yet to find a specific example of any violations
that have resulted in
sanctions, initial pronouncements suggested that violators
would be subject to fines and
possible suspensions. However the focus of this paper is not on
documenting the fines and

suspensions that the players received, but rather on the broader
pedagogical functions at
work through the introduction of this policy, that is – to explore
the dominant meanings
the initiation of this policy conveys and attempts to teach.
Indeed critical theorists and
cultural studies scholars argue for expanding definitions of
pedagogy beyond a focus on
Sport in Society 971
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teaching and learning in school settings to instead situate
understandings of pedagogy in

relationship to broader matters of social concern. This more
expansive understanding of
pedagogy acknowledges that learning takes place outside of the
classroom, suggesting the
need to hone focus on ‘what it means to assess the political
significance of understanding
the broader educational force of culture in the new age of media
technology, multimedia,
and computer-based information and communication networks’.
9
Much of the material
originally circulating about this issue is still available via the
World Wide Web – the
policy even has its own Wikipedia page – suggesting both the
continuing pedagogical
salience of the NBA dress code and the ways in which the
virtual world is embedded in
nonlinear conceptions of time and space.
In this paper, we build upon this more expansive understanding
of pedagogy as an
entry into the constitutive power relations and representational
politics produced through
the NBA dress code and the attendant media narratives, which

continue to circulate via the
Internet. Far from a simple policy that requires a particular
style of dress we read the NBA
dress code critically, demonstrating its relationship to
racialized, classed and gendered
meanings and attempts at capital accumulation. That is, the
initiation of the policy is
related to similar practices which demonstrate ‘the simultaneous
commodification and
demonization of hip hop and its Black male signifiers within the
NBA . . . illustrating the
complex and contradictory place of aesthetics, cultural values,
and bodies that are
constructed as both fashionable (desirable and cool) and suspect
(dangerous)’.
10
This
article builds upon critiques of the white-dominated
ownership’s policing of black bodies
offered by Andrews, Hughes, Leonard and McCann to
emphasize the particular role of
racist discourses and whiteness in shaping both the NBA policy
itself as well as the
dominant discourses and economic rationale seeking to

legitimate the dress code’s
inception.
11
Our analysis of racism and the deployment of whiteness as a
conceptual and analytic
lens is predicated upon the understanding that race is neither
biologically meaningful nor
an apolitical essence of identity. Rather racialized categories
such as ‘black’ and ‘white’
are hierarchical and relational constructs whose meanings are
unstable and vary depending
upon time and space. Furthermore the social construction of
race legitimates a system of
privileges that accrue to bodies racialized as white. Using the
concept of whiteness thus
necessitates an epistemological shift away from an exclusive
focus on the effects of racism
on people of colour to an investigation of the knowledge and
structures, which produce
racialized subjectivities as well as white economic advantages
and social power. It is
important to emphasize with John Hartigan that ‘whiteness
asserts the obvious and
overlooked fact that whites are racially interested and

motivated. Whiteness both names
and critiques hegemonic beliefs and practices that designate
white people as “normal”
and racially “unmarked”’.
12
This perspective additionally acknowledges whiteness both
within and beyond the case of the dress code, not as some static
ideology, identity or
worldview but rather, as always in process as ‘a constantly
shifting’ performance
embedded within ‘complex maps of social, economic, and
political power’.
13
An examination of the discourses surrounding the dress-code
policy not only allows
for an examination of the complex workings of whiteness within
the NBA and logics of
late capitalism, but also serves to engage education in its
broadest form. Toward this end,
this paper uses contextual cultural studies as a method devoted
to reconstructing the dress
code’s ‘conjunctural relations, identity, and effects to produce a
contextually specific map
of’ a particular racialized and economic ‘social formation’.

14
This use of contextual
cultural studies serves a progressive pedagogical aim – to
educate readers via counter
narratives, which offer alternative interpretations linking an
everyday cultural practice
972 M.G. McDonald and J. Toglia
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such as the dress code to normalizing strategies within
contemporary neo-liberal capitalist
mandates. Stated differently, in recontextualizing the dress code
this paper maps out and

makes visible the complex processes which both venerate and
demonize the athleticism
and entertainment value of black masculine bodies, and
simultaneously deny the salience
of political, social and economic processes that produce
discourses of a commercialized
white normativity. The ultimate aim of this analysis is to
generate pedagogical interest in
the contexts, which help to generate meanings and effects of the
dress code in order to
promote new understandings in the quest for social justice.
Telling tales: representing black masculinity and the power of
whiteness
The NBA has long served as a racialized space and, as such, the
dress code represents an
example of the NBA’s continuing attempts at surveillance and
control of its predominately
African-American playing force, in this case by promoting
conventional styles of dress
and expression at the expense of hip-hop styles.
15
And while NBA marketers continue to
promote the larger-than-life personae and skills of the leagues’

players, the promotion of
the league also rests upon an unspoken commitment toward
making the league’s black
masculine bodies both enticing and safe for white consumers.
As is the case within the
NBA, then, the ‘story of race’ related to the dress code ‘is also
a less visibly troubled story
of whiteness – white anxiety and fear and white strategies for
threat management’.
16
These anxieties are part and parcel of broader patterns of white
racist preoccupation
with the allegedly threatening and inferior character of black
masculinity, preoccupations
that can be traced back to slavery and reconstruction, and which
have been frequently used
by whites to legitimate the political status quo in relation to
black cultural and political
inequity. Rooted in social-Darwinist thought, white racist fears
and anxieties infer that
blacks are closer to nature, thus more physically gifted, but in
need of supervision since
they are allegedly less civilized than whites.
17

This dualistic mind-body dichotomy rests
upon the presumption of black intellectual and cultural
inferiority, and the presumption of
white superiority continues to fuel and justify racist treatment
including the contemporary
dismantling of social welfare programs. White supremacist
discourses have merged with
gender ideologies throughout history in constructing black
masculine bodies as violent,
naturally or culturally different, and in need of control. Too
frequently these images rely
upon stereotypical notions of blacks as overly sexualized and
dangerous. The intense
contemporary commodification of such threatening images, seen
most prominently in
sport, music and visual culture has in turn promoted both fear
and also fascination with the
apparently edgy, dangerous and exotic nature of black
masculinity.
18
John Fiske identifies three strategies of white supremacy –
exnomination,
naturalization and universalization – which contribute to similar
representational

processes seeking to bolster white advantage. Exnomination –
the capacity to avoid
being named, thus escaping scrutiny – keeps the interests and
practices of whites off the
agenda for change.
19
In this way focus is not turned inward toward the definers and
white
privilege, but in marking boundaries to create and control
racialized others. Naturalization
represents dominant white interests as the inevitable, common-
sense cultural norm while
universalization additionally suggests that these norms and the
dominant narratives which
sustain them are meant to apply to all of humanity.
The scrutiny of black bodies reached its zenith in the NBA
during the early 1980s
when the league was thought to be on the brink of collapse.
While rarely explicitly named
as such, at that time the NBA was widely mediated, via coded
language, as antithetical to
white middle-class sensibilities due to the large number of
African-American players in the

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league and allegations of widespread drug abuse.
20
Rather than confronting stereotypical
notions of blackness promoted to maintain white cultural and
political advantages, the
league instead instituted a drug policy while promoting the
league and its players as the
embodiment of the American Dream. Paradoxically, while
championing its allegedly
‘raceless’ character, the league also reached financial solvency
via the promotion of the

racialized rivalry and friendly admiration between the white
Boston Celtic’s Larry Bird
and African-American Los Angeles Laker star Magic Johnson.
Dominant narratives of
racial uplift, equality and racial harmony made through the
Bird-Johnson rivalry helped to
reorder white anxieties and fears, although the alleged deviance
of urban blackness was
never replaced and remained a powerful undercurrent within the
league.
21
The elevation of Michael Jordan as the league’s global superstar
and affable celebrity
endorser during the latter portions of the 1980s and beyond
again helped to neutralize
dominant imaginings of stereotypical black masculinity as
dangerous and excessively
sexual. Strategies promoting the always competitive, but
likeable, Jordan and the Jordan-
era league as composed of personalities akin to those found in
Disneyland were marketed
by the NBA and its corporate sponsors in ways designed to
evoke desire rather than
dread.

22
Despite these attempts, white preoccupation with the alleged
deviance of
blackness, although rarely explicitly discussed as a
preoccupation in popular narratives
and media, continues as a powerful undercurrent in the post-
Jordan era. Indeed new
economic arrangements and fresh attempts to brand the NBA in
an era of increasing
globalization have in turn produced a reformulation of racial
codes.
23
One such movement has been the growth of cross-marketing
promotional campaigns
featuring connections between the NBA, popular music and
celebrities. While the league
has drawn upon musical styles from a diversity of musical
genres, the public face of the
NBA has increasingly been associated with styles, images and
sounds of hip-hop.
24
Todd
Boyd has chronicled the connections of the NBA to hip-hop
culture suggesting that Kurtis

Blow’s release of the single ‘Basketball’ in 1984 initiates this
connection. By the 1990s the
hip-hop and basketball link achieved a unique status amongst
other popular forms of
music.
25
For example, NBA star Shaquille O’Neal and other players such
as Kobe Bryant,
Chris Webber and Ron Artest all recorded rap songs while
‘videos on music networks
MTV and BET promote hip-hop artists sporting jerseys and
headbands of their favorite
teams, and often include shots of their favorite players’.
26
Several years ago rapper Master
P engaged in a highly publicized, but failed, attempt to make it
to the NBA, further linking
the NBA to hip-hop.
27
However, Boyd suggests that Allen Iverson’s selection in 1996
as
Philadelphia’s first-round draft choice marks the most important
connection between hip-
hop and professional basketball. That is, ‘Iverson was the living

embodiment of hip hop in
a basketball uniform. His own take on stylish penetration chic
involved wearing his hair in
cornrows and he has more tattoos than a hells angel. He refused
to bend over backwards to
accommodate the tastes of the mainstream’.
28
Within the context of white-dominated
sport and music industries, Iverson’s refusal to follow dominant
cultural norms have
frequently served contradictory ends, both promoting the
edginess of hip-hop masculinity
to seduce a youth market, while also tapping into dominant
white anxieties regarding a
threatening black masculinity. According to one cultural critic,
similar white imaginings
in contemporary times have produced a powerful figure in the
white imaginary in that the
‘athlete, the gangster rapper and the criminal’ have merged
‘into a single black male
persona that the sports industry, the music industry, and the
advertising industry have
made into the predominant image of black masculinity’.
29

Given this history and contemporary imaginings, Hughes
suggests that the NBA
continues to attempt to remain financially vibrant by mitigating
popular racist discourses
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by celebrating ‘urban, politically neutral hip hop and coolness’
against perceived threats of
blackness including ‘indecent rap music, unrestrained tempers’
and the ‘team destroying
narcissism or egos of stars’.
30

The imposition of the dress code can thus be understood as
yet the latest attempt at a peculiar form of ‘diversity
management’ designed to both
manage, but ultimately profit from, stereotypical images of
urban black masculinity as
immature, uncontrollable, greedy and egotistical.
31
Other attempts to control similar
connotations include the imposition of a first year player salary
cap which limits
compensation to rookies and the instigation of an age restriction
limiting the league to
players aged 19 years or older.
32
This fear of a homogenized and demonized black masculinity is
apparent both in
discussions about the dress code and in conservative responses
to the Pacers-Pistons-fans
fight. Radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh’s characterizations
suggest the ways in which
conservative discourse made sense of this fight, specifically
suggesting that the brawl was
‘hip-hop culture on parade’.

33
Asserting that this episode was ‘gang behavior on parade
minus the guns’ and conceding that his remarks would be
‘tagged as racist’ he continued
on stating that the NBA uniforms are now in gang colors. They
are in gang styles’.
34
Rather than a personal expression of bias these views assert
many of the racist codes upon
which white supremacy rests equating black bodies with
incivility, chaos and deviance.
Phil Jackson, head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, also
expressed similar sentiments.
In lending support to the new dress-code policy Jackson noted
that:
The players have been dressing in prison garb the last five or
six years. All the stuff that goes
on, it’s like gangster, thuggery stuff. It’s time. It’s been time to
do that. But one must
remember where one came from, I was wearing bib overalls
when I was a player one time, but
I wasn’t going to the games or events in them.
35
NBA commentator, Jason Whitlock makes a similar observation
linking clothing styles

enjoyed by some NBA players to hip-hop expressions by noting
that:
Too many young, black professional athletes have too closely
aligned themselves with the
hip-hop culture, which in reality is nothing more than prison
culture. Shut up! You know it’s
the truth. Gun-toting, drug-dealing, full-body-tattooed, gang-
repping rappers have overrun
hip-hop music and hip-hop culture and have poisoned just about
the whole scene.
36
Jackson’s discussion of prison attire and Whitlock’s assertions
about prison culture
link to similar sentiments, including those of Limbaugh, in
implicating the alleged
individual pathology of black males. Words such as gangster,
drug dealing and thuggery
allude to historical, powerful images of black masculinity as
dangerous. Jackson’s remarks
reaffirm white normativity while black players who don ‘prison
garb’ are conceived of as
the ‘other’ in need of control. Interestingly, while Jackson
references his own playing
career with his persona as a ‘maverick’, (also the title of his
first book), he also suggests
that to be ‘dressed in overalls’ is a much more rational choice

then the game-day dress of
many players since this was his private attire away from the
game.
In contrast to Jackson’s and Whitlock’s insider status Limbaugh
promotes his own
outsider image by suggesting that in raising the issue, he is
‘fearless when it comes to this,
because the truth will out’.
37
And yet in constructing a demonized vision of black
masculinity Whitlock, Jackson and Limbaugh all mobilize a
long-standing moralizing
rhetoric, which imagines a benevolent, but actually superior,
mode of whiteness in
characterizing the behaviour of the players. Additionally, the
ease with which Limbaugh
and Jackson mobilize such expressions, and slippages between
words such as hip-hop
and gangs, can be partially attributed to contradictory trends
including the increasing
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commodification and wider mainstreaming of hip-hop culture
and continuing
demonization and criminalization of black masculinity.
It is important to note, this conservative response has not gone
unchallenged. In
regards to the NBA’s dress code and against Limbaugh’s
assertions, Allen Iverson notes
that it ‘would not change a person’s character regardless of
what type of clothing they
wore’ and that ‘associating hip-hop styles of dress with violent
crime is racist’. Iverson has
also pointed out the economic interests at play noting that
‘many prominent NBA

sponsors, such as Nike, Reebok, Puma, and Adidas were heavily
influenced by hip hop
culture’(Iverson quoted in Ken Beck’s blog at CBSSports.com).
Golden State guard Jason
Richardson offers a similar response observing that, ‘You still
wear a suit, you still could
be a crook . . . You see all what happened with Enron and
Martha Stewart. Just because you
dress a certain way doesn’t mean you’re that way’.
38
Indeed, Jeffrey Skillings and Ken
Ley regularly wore business suits as they oversaw the
corruption promoted by energy
corporation Enron, while thousands of Enron employees and
shareholders lost thousands
of dollars, life savings and pensions upon Enron’s collapse.
Despite these and other counter narratives attempts at ‘diversity
management’
continue to flourish, sidestepping issues of racism and
inequitable social arrangements to
instead focus on promoting a culture of character via attempts
to manage, discipline and
redeem these racialized subjectivities. This is consistent with
the production of broader

cultural discourses which focus on disciplining the bodies and
actions of people of
colour, racialized as the ‘other’ while white interests and
practices are naturalized
and universalized thus largely escaping comparable
surveillance.
39
The normative power of whiteness to structure social relations
and dominant
understandings of the dress-code policy is also evident in the
justification offered by
Commissioner David Stern in instituting the policy. In one
interview Stern references the
Pacers-Pistons-fans fight as an important reason for the
initiation of the dress code:
The brawl sort of [became] a flashpoint for a lot of feelings that
are out there. With race,
there’s always an issue. And the brawl, unfairly, became the
opportunity for the commentators
to talk about all NBA players, although 450 of them were not
involved in the brawl. ’These
people’. ’These thugs’. ’These punks’. And that was a horrible
sort of libel and slander of the
NBA players. Images that ran were run in the context of a
condemnation of all NBA players,
and that really upset me. That became a critical flashpoint. And
so we’ve got to dig out from
under that.

40
Unlike the conservative reaction to the fight, Stern’s narrative
points to the presence of
racist sentiments that homogenize and demonize the league’s
players. Thus at first glance
Stern’s explanation appears to be progressive in acknowledging
the racism that greeted
popular constructions of the Pacers-Pistons-fans altercation.
And yet, Stern’s rhetoric also
paternalistically shifts the focus away from the racist actions
and reactions of the fans and
instead relies upon liberal and individualistic responses in
offering the dress code as a
strategy for change. Much as with conservative responses,
ultimately this narrative fails to
address structural and ideological inequities.
Thus, while purporting ‘to address negative stereotypes’ the
justification of the dress
code’s prohibition of ‘chains, headgear and throwback jerseys’,
instead ‘stigmatizes those
items and the people that wear them. Furthermore, it reinforces
the unfortunate
associations with such styles, when it should be working,

instead, to broaden society’s
understanding and tolerance’
41
The naturalized and privileged response additionally
directs attention away from the actions and material advantages
of white bodies while
further perpetuating ‘a cycle of stigmatization, assimilation and
subordination’.
42
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Delia Douglas’s analysis of tennis stars Venus and Serena

Williams’ 2001 reception at
the Indian Wells (California) tennis tournament reveals that
similar processes are at work
in many sporting spaces and is thus instructive in further
dissecting the wide-spread racial
implications of practices such as the dress-code policy.
43
Much as with racially charged
incidents involving the Williams sisters on the Women’s Tennis
Association Tour (WTA),
the NBA dress policy ultimately focuses attention on the actions
and alleged behaviours
of black athletes while legitimating the workings of the white-
dominated management
groups, fans and the broader culture. For those not familiar with
this incident, Indian Wells
is where Venus Williams withdrew from the tournament with an
injury and where sister
Serena Williams faced booing, jeering, racial epithets and
virulent hostility from the
predominately white fan base who imagined that Venus’s
withdrawal was orchestrated by
father Richard Williams in a type of ‘match fixing’ episode.

Douglas’s analysis of this episode focuses on the spaces and
atmosphere of women’s
professional tennis, which is historically constitutive of a
normative, indeed, hetero-
normative, white, middle-class sensibility (think of the
normative femininity embodied by
Chris Evert, Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova). And yet,
the very presence of the
African-American sisters challenges the exclusivity of this
space and thus the very hostile
reaction offered by the white fans, particular white players, and
the white-dominated media
is fraught with racial politics. Also instructive is the lacklustre
response by WTA officials
to these hostile reactions. Indeed the WTA response consisted
of power and colour evasive
discourses and appeals to economic rationale (i.e., we must
cater to our paying fan base) in
admonishing the Williams family while appeasing and indeed
absolving the largely white
fan base of any culpability for their hysterical reaction.
44
Much as with the fan reaction that
greeted the Pacers-Pistons-fans fight, reactions to the Williams

serve as a form of white
racial hostility and white backlash. These serve as one
manifestation of longstanding racist
discourses that position whites as superior, at the arbitrators of
moral authority and position
blacks as suspect (e.g., Richard Williams as fixing matches).
Reading this analysis of the Indian Wells incident alongside the
initiation of the dress
code reveals the ways in which the power of whiteness in the
NBA case also relies
upon colour and power evasive discourses, which in turn rely
upon a particular form of
cultural capital. Used here the term ‘cultural capital’ derives
from Pierre Bourdieu’s
conceptualizations, in which it is defined as the attitudes,
beliefs, preferences, formal
knowledge and behaviours that are acquired and in turn position
and equip people
differently within a given culture. Cultural capital, then, also
serves an additional function
in promoting social and cultural exclusion.
45
In the context of the dress code, imagined

norms of civility, respect and appropriate dress are hailed as
necessary for the proper
decorum which is thought to fuel success while urban styles and
dress are devalued. Much
as with schooling, where middle-class children learn the
dominant norms, attitudes and
belief systems necessary to achieve, so too does the NBA dress
code reproduce white and
middle-class norms, promoting the need to ‘dress for success’.
Those not demonstrating
the ‘right stuff’ are hence thought to be culturally deficient thus
ideologically justifying
inequitable social relations. Seemingly innocent, the NBA dress
code actually serves as a
mechanism which combines with other forms of white cultural
capital to safeguard the
political and economic interests of whites and the dominant
social class.
Cross-marketing whiteness and corporate culture
The dress code can thus be understood as a type of whitewash in
the ‘form of impression
management meant to enhance business and to counteract
previous images of Ron Artest

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running into the stands or of a tattooed Allen Iverson standing
on the sidelines adorned
with baseball cap, throwback jersey and gold medallions’.
46
The initiation of the dress
code is particularly duplicitous in that while attempting to limit
the appearance of modes
of hip-hop expression such as throwback jerseys and large
jewellery, the league’s
marketers continue to use music, celebrities and signifiers of
hip-hop culture to promote an

edgy sensibility in attempts to capture a youth market and
financially capitalize on hip-
hop’s global appeal. In this way, the NBA’s symbiotic link with
hip-hop is part and parcel
of late capitalist economic relations where black bodies serve as
hot commodities in the
global marketplace.
47
There are numerous examples of this symbiotic relationship.
One year prior to the
initiation of the dress code, the league used British comedian
Sacha ‘Ali G’ Cohen in
television commercials where he appears accessorized in hip-
hop-inspired wear – a
tracksuit, skullcap and sunglasses with a large chain. ‘The
selection of Ali G is riddled
with racial overtones since Cohen’s character satirizes white
culture’s fascination with
hip-hop culture, even though he is not black himself’.
48
Another example of the merger of
hip-hop with basketball is the videogame ‘NBA Ballers’, or ‘the
exclusive one-on-one

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