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All’s Fair in Love and Sport: Black Masculinity and Domestic Violence in the News Suzanne Marie Enck-Wanzer

This essay examines how tensions between race and gender are negotiated when these two

identifications intersect in news stories about black male athletes accused of domestic

violence. Specifically, by analyzing news coverage of abusive black athletes from 1990 to

2005, I demonstrate how these accounts employ narratives that pathologize black men as

naturally aggressive due to their sporting background and black rage. These rhetorical

strategies, I argue, reflect broader social efforts to negotiate a tension between performing

sensitivity to both the harms of domestic violence and of perpetuating racism against

African Americans. Ultimately, I conclude, by using sport as the venue for talking about

domestic violence and black male bodies as the site of criminal rage, gendered violence is

allowed to flourish and hegemonic (white) masculinity is both exonerated and

(re)secured.

Keywords: Domestic Violence; Race; Gender; Sport; News Media

In American culture, the black athlete, powerful and seemingly of superhuman

strength, has always been a double-sided social/political figure, both celebrated and

feared because of his remarkable skills. 1

For many, US fears of black athletes were confirmed in 1994 when the murder of

Nicole Brown Simpson cast suspicion on the football hero, O. J. Simpson. While most

commentators point to the morality tales of race embedded in the ‘‘Trial of the

Century,’’ George Lipsitz insists that we also understand this event as revolving

‘‘around narratives of family closure and rupture.’’ 2

The murder of his white wife,

Suzanne Enck-Wanzer is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies and Women’s Studies at Eastern

Illinois University. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the 2007 meeting of the National

Communication Association. The author wishes to thank Phaedra Pezzullo, Darrel Enck-Wanzer, Jeff Bennett,

Joan Hawkins, Jonathan Nichols-Pethick, Shane Miller, and Angela Aguayo, as well as John Sloop and two

anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments, engagement, and feedback on this project.

Correspondence to: Suzanne Enck-Wanzer, Communication Studies, 600 Lincoln Avenue, Charleston, IL

61920, USA. E-mail: [email protected].

ISSN 1479-1420 (print)/ISSN 1479-4233 (online) # 2009 National Communication Association

DOI: 10.1080/14791420802632087

Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies

Vol. 6, No. 1, March 2009, pp. 1�18

Nicole Brown Simpson, was a tragedy in its own right; however, it was not simply the

death of a woman purportedly at the hands of an intimate partner that elicited such

public outcry. The involvement of a heroic superstar*importantly, a racially marked athlete, yet one who had achieved ‘‘honorary whiteness’’*set this case apart from other (read: normal) slain and abused women.

3

Amidst the subsequent firestorm of social unrest in the wake of O. J.’s arrest, news

articles flooded the media, highlighting the lethality of partner abuse and urging

women to escape violent partners before meeting a fate similar to Nicole Brown

Simpson’s. In 1995, for example, 21 of the 38 magazine articles about intimate

violence were either entirely about O. J. Simpson’s abuse of his wife or an extension of

this case to examine the prevalence of partner abuse in America. 4

In addition to

increased news coverage, publicity of this case influenced Congress during the final

stages of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) with VAWA testimony citing

frequently the death of Brown Simpson as a likely outcome of intimate abuse gone

unchecked. 5

While much scholarly and popular ink has been devoted to the O. J. case, no

attention has been afforded to the similarities between this case and other news

accounts of abusive black athletes. This essay explores some of the themes that the

O. J. case shares with other coverage of black athletes accused of domestic violence. In

so doing, it becomes apparent that this landmark case is indicative of a larger national

discourse about domestic violence. Though violence against women is all too

commonplace in US public culture, news reports of domestic offenders rely

frequently on familiar narratives of who engages in abuse. Specifically, news accounts

of offenders focus largely on instances of black male sports figures who physically

abuse their female (and often white) partners.

Rachel Hall, echoing the calls of various men’s movement groups, insists that part

of the answer to ending violence against women is to shift our optic from analyzing

woman-as-victim to questioning the cultural factors at work that make violence

against women ‘‘thinkable and doable by some men.’’ 6

In short, Hall asks us to focus

our attention on abusers rather than victims. Marian Meyers adds to this call to

action a critique of how news journalism typically frames violence against women.

Identifying journalistic quests for ‘‘balance’’ and use of the passive voice as two

powerful strategies for reinforcing victim blame, Meyers states, ‘‘The news codes

of . . . ‘getting both sides of the story’ . . . negate the seriousness of the crime and represent [the victim] as at least partly at fault.’’

7 Such news accounting ought to be

challenged in such a way so as to place blame for violence squarely on perpetrators of

violence.

Both Hall and Meyers point to the problematic ways in which narratives of

domestic abuse circulate so as to exonerate men and find women as both culpable for

their own abuse and responsible for redress. To be sure, I am in full agreement with

demands for holding accountable men who are abusive. We need to be ever vigilant,

though, in questioning the stakes involved in spotlighting violent men, especially

when representations of offenders are so often condensed to palatable caricatures

such as the black male athlete. If, as Sut Jhally and others have suggested, sport plays

2 S. M. Enck-Wanzer

a significant role in the construction and maintenance of American cultural values,

then the cultural values supported and challenged by representations of domestic

violence vis-à-vis black athletes warrants closer attention. 8

Specifically, when black

men and male athletes are cast repeatedly in the media as naturally more aggressive,

a particular cultural production of knowledge about domestic violence is generated at

the nexus of racism and sport as they are circumscribed onto the convenient villain of

the black male athlete. This troubling intersection of race and gender is certainly not

new to critical/cultural scholarship.

This essay examines how tensions between race and gender are negotiated when

these identifications intersect by critiquing the rhetorical strategies of mainstream

news coverage of abusive black male athletes. Echoing the conclusions of Greg

Dickinson and Karrin Vasby Anderson, I acknowledge that the figure of the fallen

black male athlete/aggressor functions to ‘‘re-center white patriarchy at a time when

whiteness and masculinity supposedly are ‘in crisis.’’’ 9

Making this point

more explicit, Ronald L. Jackson, II, describing corporeal inscriptions as ‘‘the

impositional writings of others on bodies that are not their own,’’ insists that ‘‘black

corporeal inscriptions are infused iterations of whiteness ideology embodied as black

corporeal objects.’’ 10

Specific to the concerns of this essay are the ways in which

corporeal inscriptions on black male athletes as domestic abusers function to

pathologize abusers more generally and naturalize domestic violence within the realm

of black masculinity. These rhetorical strategies, I argue, reflect broader social efforts

to negotiate a tension between attempts at performing sensitivity to the victims of

domestic violence and protecting hegemonic (white) masculinity. Shifting blame

from masculinity writ large to black athletes more specifically functions to distance

the accountability for domestic violence away from (white) masculinity and, thus,

maintains broader investments in masculinity and whiteness as interlocking systems

of control. These systems, in turn, hurt both women and black men.

Ultimately, news accounts of abusive black athletes tend to employ narratives that

naturalize black masculinity as aggressive and efface deeper cultural connections (e.g.,

patriarchy, hegemonic white masculinity) that make possible rampant gendered

violence. To identify these narrative trends, I begin by situating this analysis in a

growing body of communication scholarship that examines critically news repre-

sentations of gendered violence. Second, I demonstrate how news accounts of abusive

athletes naturalize black male aggressiveness both within the arena of sport broadly

and within US public culture generally. Next, I think through the connections

between domestic violence and a particular US history of associating ‘‘rage’’ with

black masculinity. By way of conclusion, I argue that the pitting of race against

gender, so common to the US sociopolitical culture, works doubly to make invisible

the prevalence of domestic violence generally, while pathologizing black male athletes

as the likely culprits of abuse; this sleight of hand, in turn, functions to (re)secure the

hegemonic center of white masculinity.

All’s Fair in Love and Sport 3

Reading Representations of Gendered Violence

Kathleen B. Jones observes that in the 1970s, ‘‘the battered women’s movement

inaugurated shifts of key in the register of how we define and work against intimate

violence.’’ 11

With the introduction of domestic violence shelters in pockets

throughout the US, social awareness of violence in the home increased slowly. In

addition to the ardent labor of feminist and victims’ rights activists, part of this shift

of social awareness can be attributed to the news media’s ‘‘discovery’’ of domestic

violence in 1973. 12

Since the 1970s, journalistic accounts of domestic violence have

surfaced in news sections spanning from ‘‘human interest’’ to the ‘‘crime beat.’’ Most

often, such articles frame gendered violence so as to obfuscate the embedded

institutional nature of abuse by focusing, instead, on individual cases of physical

assaults (typically emphasizing a woman who triumphed over abuse) and treating

these cases as discrete acts of one person against another. 13

Until 1994, news coverage

of domestic violence was still quite sporadic. The motivation for the relative boom of

articles in the mid-1990s would rightly be attributed to a combination of the 1993

sensationalized case of Lorena Bobbitt severing the penis of her husband, revelations

of O. J.’s abuse of Nicole Brown Simpson, and news coverage of the reanimated

VAWA.

In the past decade, while the numbers of articles have fluctuated largely depending

upon high profile cases (e.g., Scott Peterson’s murder of his pregnant wife and

subsequent Congressional passage of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act), how the

news engages domestic violence has remained constant in two ways: first, the

reporting reflects a broader social investment in sensational instances of assaults

(usually gruesome murders and/or high-profile individuals); 14

and second, news

accounts typically minimize any focus on hegemonic masculine entitlement and thus,

deny a demand of wider cultural urgency. Such juxtaposition between high-profile

sensationalism and downplaying the commonality of domestic violence is quite

informative in understanding the American experience of interpreting violence and

justice. 15

In other words, what ‘‘counts’’ as abuse and is admonished socially (e.g.,

physical assaults) and what does not ‘‘count’’ (e.g., emotional control, use of male

privilege, financial control), who is held accountable (e.g., racially marked men and/

or men of lower economic standing), and who is not (e.g., white upper-class men and

high-profile men more broadly) reflects continued efforts to deflect attention away

from the influence of hegemonic centers of power and control.

Understood as a medium for negotiating conflicting cultural values involved with

gendered, classed, and raced expectations, the news media is equipped uniquely for

opportunities to both negotiate such tensions and, in many cases, rigidify identity

divisions. Not surprisingly, the ways in which the news covers abuse*what is warranted as ‘‘worthy’’ of coverage, who is deemed a ‘‘good victim,’’ and who

abuses*is embedded deeply within other cultural hierarchies. Although most news coverage of domestic violence focuses on exceptional physical violence with little

mention of abusers, this rhetorical blueprint deviates where celebrities are concerned.

The importance of studying news coverage of gendered violence lies not in the details

4 S. M. Enck-Wanzer

of specific cases, but in recognizing how disparate news outlets coalesce around

specific thematics and morality lessons, illuminating ‘‘how much change and what

specific elements of change are acceptable at a given time and on a particular issue.’’ 16

Kieran McEvoy stresses the importance of studying crime news in the US context

because it plays a major role in the ‘‘construction, articulation, reassurance and

ultimately reassertion of a sense of public morality.’’ 17

Following in the vein of the

Frankfurt School and more recent interrogations of the supposed ‘‘transparent

neutrality’’ of news journalism, the ideological potency of domestic violence news

accounts upholds hegemonic power structures by placing blame on women and

making culpable a select subset of men. 18

By offering the veneer of social critique by

simply acknowledging the problem of abuse, the constitutive function of mainstream

news accounts offers particularly troublesome ways of understanding what domestic

violence entails and what it does not. 19

Extending this argument, Wendy Kozol insists, ‘‘These realistic forms and ideals of

objectivity legitimize media representations of domestic violence as truthful in ways

that powerfully regulate public knowledge about this topic for audience members

with limited access to alternative sources of information.’’ 20

Creating not just what we

think about, but how we think, news representations wield great power vis-à-vis this

otherwise ‘‘private’’ issue. As Lisa McLaughlin insists, we can ‘‘understand domestic

violence as a matter of both too much and not enough privacy, as a problem at the

intersections of relationships between privacy and publicity.’’ 21

In other words, this is

not to suggest that increased news coverage of domestic violence ought to be

avoided*certainly, a starting-point of recognition is, as always, part of any attempt to ameliorate the harms of abuse*however, we must question broader social investments by tracing how accounts of the problem intersect to foreground

particular aspects while marginalizing others.

In approaching this analysis, I surveyed the Reader’s Guide to Periodic Literature for

articles dealing with domestic violence from 1990 to 2005. I started research of each

year with the term ‘‘domestic violence’’ and then followed the Reader’s Guide indexes

to indicate other subject terms used in news articles during that year (e.g., ‘‘family

abuse,’’ ‘‘wife battery,’’ ‘‘battered women,’’ ‘‘spousal abuse,’’ ‘‘marital rape’’). Every

article listed in the Guide was collected and, with very few exceptions, the articles that

focused on abusive men (rather than victims) concentrated on sports figures, movie/

music stars, or military personnel. The preponderance of these stories about abusers

was comprised of sports figures as accused and/or admitted batterers. Once initial

magazine stories about abusive athletes were amassed, I augmented the field of

analysis to include more articles detailing cases of abuse as found in the LexisNexis

and InfoTrac databases.

Even a cursory examination of these news reports reveals a common picture: the

black athlete out of control. 22

Some might question whether my focus on black

athletes allows news coverage of white athletes to escape notice. The answer is quite

simple: images of (and stories about) abusive white male athletes are, on the whole,

lacking in the mainstream press. The vast majority of articles about abusers located in

this study offer stories of black male athletes as abusive. This is certainly not to say

All’s Fair in Love and Sport 5

that white athletes are not equally abusive; but, if you follow mainstream print media,

you will not locate significant coverage of this violence. Thus, as I argue below, the

naturalization of black aggression works to efface connections to broader structures

of patriarchal dominance by relying on well-rehearsed tropes of black male aggression

while exonerating hegemonic (white) masculinity.

Sport Culture and Violence Against Women

After decades of ignoring intimate abuse in general and ‘‘overlooking’’ the crimes

committed by sports stars in particular, news accounts of abusive athletes now surface

in a wide array of mediated outlets. Usually without critical reflection on the wider

cycles of domestic violence that might include (among others) economic and sexual

control, abuse of male privilege, and use of children, reports of physical assaults at the

hands of professional athletes tend to conflate (hyper)masculinity, stardom, black-

ness, and violence. As such, mass-mediated reports frequently excuse intimate abuse

as an aberration of masculinity-under-pressure coupled with predictable (although

fallen) black rage. In particular, I want to suggest that one way that domestic violence

is effaced from connections to broader structures of patriarchal dominance is by

naturalizing black male aggressiveness, especially as embedded within sports culture,

and leaving virtually unquestioned the status of white masculinity.

From the boxing ring to the schoolyard, masculine aggression is accepted as the

norm and a cultural desire to purge violence through ‘‘controlled’’ environments is an

important starting-point for interpreting abusive athletes. Performances of mascu-

linity predicated on patterns of domination and subordination are thought to be

contained within the sporting arena; however, when such domination ‘‘spills over’’

into the presumably distinct arena of the home, it is cast as an excess of natural

violence, but not something fundamentally problematic and/or reflective of broader

cultural mores and norms. Standing in for what is both curiously significant and

notably beyond the scope of articulated meaning for fans, sport provides an

environment wherein its spectacular nature allows for a particular form of aggressive

masculinity that is at once celebrated and naturalized, yet understood to be beyond

the realm of ‘‘average’’ men.

The high-profile sports figure is acknowledged widely as a likely domestic abuser

due to his (often black) (hyper)masculinized form and simultaneously exonerated

from complicated (and complicating) public scrutiny due to his stardom and intense

cultural pressures to be aggressive. Performances of (hyper)masculinity involve more

than athletes; spectators, coaches, and commentators alike are prone to accept

misogynist comments and actions as natural aspects of sports. For example, after

commenting to the press on losing a 1990 football game that he was ‘‘‘going to go

home and beat [his] wife,’’’ football coach, Joe Paterno, apologized publicly. In his

defense, he explained that it ‘‘‘was just part of sports culture, locker room talk,

harmless, a joke that did not mean anything.’’’ 23

Similarly, in a 1997 column in US

News and World Report, in responding to increased reports of abusive athletes, the

frequently featured columnist, John Leo, starts by lamenting the high tolerance of

6 S. M. Enck-Wanzer

sports fans for ‘‘awful behavior.’’ Leo’s admonishment is quickly blunted by a

parenthetical statement at the end of the article’s first paragraph: ‘‘The wife-beating

accusations brought a bitter joke: Darryl Strawberry’s wife must be right-handed,

because Darryl can’t hit left-handers.’’ 24

Both supposed ‘‘jokes’’ by Paterno and Leo,

they explained later, were part and parcel of a sports culture; thus, these comments

offer a fitting conduit into thinking more fully about connections between sport and

domestic violence more generally.

As Margaret Carlisle Duncan and Michael A. Messner affirm, sport ‘‘provides

opportunities for men to assert their dominance at a time when male hegemony is

continually challenged and opposed in everyday life.’’ 25

Offering a place where ‘‘boys

will be boys,’’ sport offers both escape from social pressures of inclusiveness and

reinforcement of dominant social orders; or, as Susan Faludi concludes in her study

of football fans, for male spectators especially, ‘‘‘supporting’ [their] team was . . . a way of fighting against marginalization, a way of clinging to the idea that national

destiny was still something played out by common men on a muddy field.’’ 26

Messner, Michele Dunbar, and Darnell Hunt bolster this assessment in an analysis of

televised sports shows (e.g., SportsCenter) where they find that the episodes and

accompanying commercials are marked by ‘‘fights, near-fights, threats of fights, or

other violent actions [which are] overemphasized in sports coverage and often

verbally framed in sarcastic language that [suggest] that this kind of action, though

reprehensible, is to be expected.’’ 27

In an effort to contextualize domestic violence for

sports enthusiasts, a Sports Illustrated special report notes, ‘‘For years battering was

perceived not as a criminal matter, like mugging and armed robbery, but as a

phenomenon that belonged in the intimate realm of the hearth, like making love or

Christmas cookies.’’ 28

Though this article indicates that readers should judge partner

abuse as unacceptable, it also implies that sports figures are abusive because they work

in an atmosphere that rewards aggression, competition, and (hyper)masculinity. The

Sports Illustrated article paints a ‘‘subworld of the American athlete’’ where the

‘‘ancient virtues of manhood*of the brave, cool, tough, dominating and aggressive male*are celebrated.’’29

In this world, ‘‘to be a man is not to be a woman. Women are not to be respected.

Women are despised.’’ 30

In such a universe, according to Sports Illustrated, men are

abusive toward women because they are specially conditioned to view women as

inferior and weak, as a threat. 31

Susan Bordo suggests that sport culture supports the

‘‘idea that men are passionate beasts by nature, that they cannot be expected to

control themselves*particularly when provoked by a woman*and that such lack of control is in fact a sign of their masculinity.’’

32 This social expectation of aggression

links mass-mediated representations of violence against women to eager consump-

tion by fans. The naturalized and excused realm of sport where men expectedly

despise that which is feminine helps to explain the framing of many news articles

about domestic violence. Glamorizing male athletes, aligned with their on-field

prowess, many articles juxtapose their abusive actions off-field with their successes in

the game. For example, Glenn Robinson was arrested in 2000 for domestic battery

and unlawful possession of a gun; Jet comforted readers by noting that ‘‘Robinson

All’s Fair in Love and Sport 7

didn’t let this incident impede the opening of his eighth annual summer basketball

camp days later.’’ 33

In almost all of the articles examined, the many successes

(whether displayed in yards rushed, RBIs, baskets made, or awards given) of sports

heroes couch discussions of the athlete’s abusive moments in the home.

Further separating abusive athletes from ‘‘normal’’ men (presumably non-abusive

men), the blurring of roles (between athlete and man) reinforces the normalcy of

certain exceptional aberrations as those who will abuse women. Throughout the

Sports Illustrated report, for example, there is a series of photos of the various black

athletes discussed: basketball player Robert Parish aside his former wife, Nancy Saad;

O. J. Simpson and Mike Tyson pictured next to their victims Nicole Brown Simpson

and Robin Givens respectively; basketball star Scottie Pippen ‘‘bounding gleefully’’

from a courthouse after his charges of partner abuse were dropped; ‘‘admitted

batterer’’ and Denver Bronco Vance Johnson shouting from behind his football

helmet; and baseball pitcher Marcus Moore next to picture of his ex-girlfriend,

Markel Nield. In most of these photographs, the athletes are shown in uniforms while

the abused partners are all in feminine street clothing (e.g., skirts, blouses, flowing

dresses). Such images magnify the physical and gendered differences and, through

facial expressions and postures, presumably the differences in psychological

disposition. The men all seem confident and, generally, happy; the women, in

most pictures, crestfallen and small.

This disjuncture is found, similarly, in the news coverage of Warren Moon’s abuse

of his wife, Felicia. Houston Oilers quarterback Moon was NFL’s Man of the Year in

1989; in 1995, he was arrested for assaulting his wife of fourteen years. Articles

discussing Moon’s assaults displayed pictures of (a comparatively larger) Moon seated

next to his acquiescent wife and crying children. Sports Illustrated’s report of this case

begins with a photo of Warren and Felicia Moon sitting on a couch flanked by their

four children. Portraying a ruptured, yet healing family, Sports Illustrated recounts the

assaults that prompted their seven-year-old son to call 911. In an increasingly violent

encounter, relays Sports Illustrated, Warren struck his wife ‘‘on the head with an open

hand and ‘choked her to the point of nearly passing out.’’’ 34

In the explanatory press

conference from which these photos were taken, Moon insisted that the media was

‘‘blowing his arrest out of proportion as a consequence of O. J. Simpson’s much-

publicized history of domestic violence.’’ 35

Moon’s lawyer and agent, Leigh Steinberg, questioned the press indignantly: ‘‘I

don’t understand what the governmental interest is. . . . He has faced his own conduct. He has admitted it privately and publicly. . . . What societal value is protected by arresting Warren Moon?’’

36 Contrasting his stature as a role model for

the black community with his responsibilities to his wife and family, it is suggested

that Moon still be affirmed as a model citizen, as a fallen sports hero, but still a hero

who just made a mistake. USA Today takes a similar approach in its coverage of

domestic violence and athletes more generally. ‘‘Sports stars,’’ the article begins,

‘‘juggle strategies to sidestep off-the-field pitfalls.’’ Some of these ‘‘pitfalls,’’ according

to the article, might include: a ‘‘criminal charge, be it sexual assault, mayhem outside

a bar, drug use or domestic violence [which] can put an athlete’s image and livelihood

8 S. M. Enck-Wanzer

at risk.’’ 37

Framed as just another personal ‘‘pitfall,’’ USA Today’s Gary Mihoces

reinforces the notion that, for athletes especially, domestic abuse is just a natural by-

product of aggressive play, but not one that should interrupt their careers.

Whether donned in official uniforms, depicted as physically dominant, and/or

described in ways that excuse their behaviors and aim to keep in tact their livelihoods,

the power of this construct lies both in reinforcing the desirability for on-the-field

bravado and challenging anyone who might threaten the appeal of this aura*in this case, viewing women as that threat. Such characterizations simultaneously forward

the social truism that ‘‘regular’’ men do not work in such high-stress, masculinist

environments and therefore, are not carrying aggressive attitudes (and actions) from

their (public) jobs to their (private) homes. Jane Caputi suggests that turning abusers

into extraordinary figures ‘‘is a common practice in which the male rush to

disassociate (especially after the fact) is characteristic of a patriarchal culture in which

awareness of institutionalized male supremacy is repressed.’’ 38

These men do not, in

short, represent the ‘‘norm.’’ This triangulation of domestic violence in the context of

sport gets especially problematic when we add the factor of race into the equation.

Black Bodies Enraged

‘‘It is a common saying in the ghettos of Brooklyn,’’ notes Rick Telander, ‘‘that if a boy

is bad he joins a gang; if he is good he plays basketball.’’ 39

While material

circumstances in the US have improved for African Americans since Telander

penned this cynical conclusion, the American experience continues to be marked by a

reality wherein even when the black man is ‘‘good,’’ he is still likely to be viewed as

‘‘bad by association.’’ Mass-mediated representations of black athletes serve as one of

the few domains where African Americans are shown to be superior to whites; such

depictions simultaneously serve to preserve (white) cultural hegemony by legitimiz-

ing the racist notion that blacks are naturally superior physically (and whites,

superior mentally). 40

Others have argued quite persuasively that narratives of race

have been instrumental in informing broader US understandings of sport, naturaliz-

ing the athletic prowess of black athletes while seeing white athletes as inherently

more intellectual. 41

Given such assumptions about black athletes, coupled with

expectations that sports pushes men toward violence against women, we are left with

the naturalized conclusion that black men are the most likely to respond

with physical violence when provoked, thus bringing full circle expectations about

the natural brutishness of black men.

As Sujata Moorti notes in her analysis of mass-media accounts of Mike Tyson’s

many acts of gendered abuse, ‘‘for white America in particular, the boxer, because of

his violent behavior, became the site where a range of cultural anxieties about black

male sexuality and criminality coalesced.’’ 42

Widely publicized for ongoing reports of

battering his ex-wife, Robin Givens, Tyson was quoted by his biographer as boasting,

Robin ‘‘flew backward, hitting every fucking wall in the apartment.’’ Elsewhere, Tyson

bragged, ‘‘I like to hurt women when I make love to them. . . . I like to hear them scream with pain, to see them bleed. . . . It gives me pleasure.’’43 Tyson’s excessive

All’s Fair in Love and Sport 9

physical aggression in the boxing ring (e.g., biting off the ear of an opponent)

combined with his boisterous performances of gendered violence (and imprisonment

for rape), fuel prototypical American anxieties of black masculinity being full of

rage. 44

Demonstrating a misogyny that extends beyond just his wife and onto all women,

the image of Tyson is illustrative of the ‘‘dark side of the American dream’’ as

theorized by John Fiske and Ed Guerrero in their explorations of US fears of black

men. 45

Capable of harnessing his strength as a finely trained boxer, Tyson functions

too as an ominous warning about the feared potency of the black male body more

generally. To be sure, Tyson’s position as a boxer stands at one end of a very short

spectrum available to black male athletes*from the baseball star to the football player, all of these figures stand apart from ‘‘average men’’ due to their physical

strength, stamina, and competitiveness, all of which are contained in (and

constrained by) racially marked bodies.

Messner bolsters the assessment of the black body out of control by arguing, ‘‘Even

when our eyes clearly show us a scene of young white men ‘misbehaving,’ the media

still tend to portray the black male as villain.’’ 46

For sports stars, because a

disproportionate number are black, there are even more opportunities to scrutinize

individuals who have risen through otherwise rigid social classes. As a stunning

example of the emphasis on black corporeal inscriptions, on 9 January 2000, the

Indianapolis Star offered a photo exhibit of Indianapolis Colts players charged with

various gendered crimes. The accompanying photographs showed five different

African American team members. Laid out like a rap sheet detailing the various

offenses of each man, the images reinforce what we are told over and again in US

popular/public culture: black men are criminals and are to be feared. In the

accompanying article, the Star quotes Kathy Redmond, founder of the National

Coalition Against Violent Athletes who encapsulated a common sentiment: ‘‘They

have proven that they’re out of control and they don’t care if they’re out of control.’’ 47

Combining the corporeality of these athletes with a reported inability to maintain

control of their bodies (or even know enough to want to maintain control), the Star

paints a vivid picture of black men beyond the scope of normal (white) masculinity.

Mirroring the figure of the out-of-control criminal, People Weekly’s cover story of

Nicole Brown Simpson’s death was entitled ‘‘Facing the Rage.’’ 48

Outlining Nicole’s

numerous reports of being physically abused and psychologically tormented, People

describes one instance of stalking where O. J. reportedly stood ‘‘in the bushes . . . peering through the window as [Nicole] made love to her new boyfriend.’’

49 O. J.’s

stalking and abuse are cast, not simply as criminal, but as socially deviant and dark.

In another People article, Alex Tresniowski reviews Vincent Bugliosi’s book entitled

Outrage: The Five Reasons why O. J. Simpson got Away with Murder. 50

Although the

word ‘‘rage’’ is tossed around rather casually in these examples, when paired with

Simpson’s (often enhanced) blackness and inter-racial relationship, the word carries a

history of significance. 51

‘‘Rage’’ becomes synonymous with O. J. Simpson’s eyes as a picture of Nicole’s

bruised face is juxtaposed with a photo of the interracial couple looking ‘‘happy

10 S. M. Enck-Wanzer

together at [a] 1981 party.’’ 52

Jet magazine buttresses this image with their article,

‘‘O. J. Simpson’s Trial Reveals Role of Sex, Race, and Rage in Nation’s Hottest Court

Room Drama.’’ Jet opens its story with this concise (yet telling) description of the

couple: ‘‘Simpson is a black sports legend and his ex-wife an attractive blonde.’’ 53

Contrasting O. J.’s blackness with Nicole’s whiteness (read: purity) reinforces the

deeply rooted racial binaries underlying this case. Of particular significance, when

articles (about O. J. and other athletes) reinforce the rage of abusive black men, little

attention is afforded to the gendered aspects of these actions; rather, violence is

interpreted almost solely by their subject position as (hyper)masculine and

(hyper)visible.

In other descriptions and visual representations of assaults at the hands of athletes,

the corporeal dominance and potential for uncontrolled rage rises to the surface of

the narratives. With Tyson and Simpson standing at one end of a spectrum, football

player Jim Brown’s violence against his wife offers an instructive counterpoint. On

12 March 2002, Brown began a 180-day jail sentence for misdemeanor vandalism

associated with charges of domestic violence. Brown, who had been charged five

times in cases of intimate abuse in the past, was arrested in 1999 when he smashed the

windows of his wife’s car with a shovel and purportedly threatened to kill her. In the

end, Brown was fined, directed to perform community service, and ordered into a

year of domestic violence counseling. Refusing to submit to counseling or acknowl-

edge that his actions were part of a larger cycle of abuse, Brown instead opted for

imprisonment.

In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Brown was asked if he has a problem with

women. Brown responded:

I can definitely get angry, and I have taken that anger out inappropriately in the past. But I have done so with both men and women. So do I have a problem with women? No. I have had anger, and I’ll probably continue to have anger. I just have to not strike out at anyone ever again. I have to be smarter than that, smarter than I was. What I would say is that with wisdom, I will only use my mentality or my spirit aggressively. I will never use my hands [that way] again.

54

Framed in an article entitled ‘‘Prisoner of Consciousness,’’ Sports Illustrated reinforces

the wider belief that athletes who are accused of, prosecuted for, and sentenced for

gendered violence are often prosecuted more harshly due to their stardom and

misunderstood as misogynist when really they are simply ‘‘aggressive by design.’’

Coupled with their highlighted racial identities, this formula becomes quite

seductive: Natural Aggression�History of Racism�Unfair Persecution. This is not to deny that African American men are mistreated in the US legal system; however, in

the case of abusive athletes, this realization seems to be so heightened so as to allay

the responsibility of particular men’s actions. And, more importantly, given a system

of law and order that systemically prosecutes black men at a rate disproportionate to

that of white men, not only does this system lead to a heightened scrutiny of African

Americans, but also (re)secures white masculinity as the center of safety.

While not all instances of sports star abuse are interracial, Moorti insists rightly

that when interracial violence is in question, ‘‘racial difference becomes the primary

All’s Fair in Love and Sport 11

explanatory framework for the crime.’’ 55

Racial difference, combined with (hy-

per)masculinity, reinforce an image of the black man as being inherently more

dangerous than ‘‘average’’ (read: white) men. As John Fiske argues, the ‘‘[b]lack male

body out of control, whether on the streets of Los Angeles or in the bedrooms of the

suburbs, incarnates the white fear that this sharpened sense of difference might cause

the body of black America to break out of control and erupt.’’ 56

Sarah Banet-Weiser

extends Fiske’s read of the dangerous black body with her analysis of the NBA;

specifically, she agues that the threat posed by black players is ‘‘understood culturally

as one of a lack of respect, an unwillingness*and implicitly, an incapability*of accepting authority.’’

57 Mediated through a wide variety of discourses, this inscribed

body holds a great deal of social salience in US public culture. Combining two realms

wherein the spectacle of aggression is accepted as fact*sport and blackness*offers an ideological shorthand that is left virtually unquestioned when magnified through

the lens of masculinity. In the end, hegemonic (white) masculinity is left utterly

unchecked when viewed through this ocular.

Conclusions

Without doubt, violence against women is pervasive in the US and is far too complex

for the sports industry to explain or solve. We might be encouraged that the typically

masculine realm of sport is making efforts to acknowledge the destructiveness of

gendered violence by raising awareness of the problem and seeking solutions at the

level of team management. However, such gratification must necessarily be short-

lived in light of the broader cultural production of knowledge. When the knowledge

being (re)produced is that domestic violence is of little consequence when compared

with the perceived (yet expected) failures of black athletes, we must question the

stakes involved with such logic. When domestic violence is constructed as a problem

limited to a particular realm (sport) and particular men (hyper-masculine men and

black men, specifically), we evade larger connections between gendered violence and

the relations of power made possible by systems of patriarchal racism.

Meyers notes that the pathologizing of abusive men is part and parcel of a media

system that relies on demands for ‘‘unusualness’’ as the ‘‘predominant rationale’’ for

determining what counts as crime news. 58

It is, states Meyers, a common view that

men who ‘‘commit acts of violence against women [are] ‘sick’ or in some way

pathological [which] ignores the social roots of this violence.’’ 59

Mia Consalvo

extends this conclusion, arguing that such representations of male violence

perpetuate the belief that the batterer is ‘‘acting ‘on his own’ rather than as part of

a patriarchal society where men are allowed/encouraged to control ‘their’ women.’’ 60

Stories of brutally maimed and murdered women fit this narrative mold of

constructing abusive men as monstrous; but, what of assault instances that do not

end in such obviously dire consequences? What of broader cycles of power and

control perpetuated by deep financial inequities, psychological torture, and legal

disparities? Casting abusive men as the Other functions quite successfully to

disassociate this common cycle of power and control from so-called ‘‘normal’’

12 S. M. Enck-Wanzer

masculinity and patriarchal privilege. In short, certain men fit the mold of

pathologized monster much more readily than others. And those who are left

beyond suspicion in this model are those who embody hegemonic (white)

masculinity.

Inquiries into the societal value of ruining the lives or threatening the privacy of

talented sports stars serve to instantiate the broader problem of domestic violence

firmly in the realm of private success or failure. Either black men are able to escape

their race and walk among the hegemonic patriarchal culture as ‘‘honorary’’ white

men or they fall back into the tragic (yet natural) pitfalls of their racial makeup.

Building upon the naturalized cultural connections between black masculinity and

violence, such responses to abusive athletes demonstrate an exceptionally forgiving

read of violence, questioning, instead, the failures of black men to assimilate

‘‘appropriately.’’ In these high-pressure occupations, it seems expected that men

would make ‘‘mistakes’’ from time to time; and, like dutiful children, when mistakes

are made, apologies are expected. What these narratives reinforce, suggests Kozol, is

that successful black men can be viewed as a literal embodiment of the ‘‘American

dream of individual success’’ and societal triumph over racism; any distraction from

this dream by women crying foul is viewed as yet another strike against black men. At

the same time, though, the logic of these narratives reinforces the underlying cultural

racism; for when the ‘‘safe or ‘tamed’ [athletes] . . . explode in violence [they] also [bring] to the surface white fears about the threatening black male.’’

61

What is left out of reports of abusive athletes is as important as what is included.

As D. Marvin Jones argues, ‘‘Many black athletes are in fact guilty of what they were

alleged to do. However, there is a human context in all of these cases. Where whites

are involved, the context is in the background. Where black male athletes are involved

there is often little or no human context: the background of the story seems to be

pure suspicion.’’ 62

Thus, imagining how, for example, domestic violence affects (or is

affected by) the body politic, always already presumes white masculinity at its base. 63

Jackson argues quite poignantly, ‘‘black corporeal inscriptions are infused iterations

of whiteness ideology embodied as black corporeal objects, but complicated by the

irregularities subsumed in a profound matrix of desire and control.’’ 64

Attributing the

perils of domestic violence to the black man’s body (a body historically owned by

white men) functions to alleviate white masculinity of suspicion and guilt and

ground further hegemonic white patriarchy. If we are considering how such violence

has an impact upon the body politic, we are also questioning how the abuse of

women’s bodies (already available for public consumption) affects white masculinity’s

abilities to govern, rule, and maintain control of the nation.

As Moorti observed in the case of Tyson, offenders become ‘‘poster child[ren] to

indict a racist law and order system.’’ This indictment comes at a price, though; as

Moorti continues, constructions of black male ‘‘victimhood is derived at the expense

of black women.’’ 65

Indeed, given statistics that suggest that most intimate violence

occurs within racially homogenous couplings, it is likely that black women suffer

most when discussions of domestic violence emphasize racist systems of prosecution

at the systematic expense of gender. Ultimately then, such narratives rely not only on

All’s Fair in Love and Sport 13

an ability to simultaneously make culpable and exonerate black men, but by

scapegoating victims of violence (especially black women) as well.

The implications for African American women, in particular, ought not be

overlooked in this analysis. In contexts of black male athletes, it is African American

women who are most often expected to step forward in defense of ‘‘their men.’’

Always in the position of defending black men in a US context, black women (who

experience domestic violence in their own relationships at rates similar to white

women) are kept doubly quiet: not only can they not speak out about their own abuse

due to pervasive sexist expectations of supporting men, but they cannot ‘‘out’’ black

men for patterns of abuse for fear of perpetuating racist expectations of black

masculinity. 66

As Joy James points out, communities of color often label African

American women (and other women of color) who accuse men of color of abuse

‘‘race traitors.’’ 67

Of course, such ‘‘oversights’’ are hardly new to African American women; as Angela

Y. Davis insists with regard to rape, for example, black women in the US context have

historically been deeply suspicious that the ‘‘anti-rape movement was largely

oblivious to their special concerns.’’ 68

Davis’s analysis of racist presumptions about

black men and women since the days of slavery are detailed well in her analysis of the

myth of the black rapist and is not something I have room to reproduce here. What is

telling, in terms of this analysis of black male athletes and domestic violence, is that

reactions to accusations of abuse often stand in for larger critiques of male violence

generally and ignore the harms experienced by black women in particular. Relying on

mythical investments in black male violence, articles detailing abuse at the hands of

black men (especially athletes) perpetuate myths of savage black men and, on the flip-

side, fail to scrutinize white masculinity.

Before closing, it is important to note that I do not mean, in my own argument, to

scapegoat the dominant mass mediated outlets or sport culture as the chief

perpetuators of racist (mis)characterizations and understandings of gendered abuse.

Instead, I view these arenas as specific arms of a larger misogynist (and racist and

classist) structure that serve to undermine women’s abilities to escape abuse on a

variety of levels. This structure, and those for whom it serves, has an enormous stake

in maintaining current hierarchies of race, class, and gender. What this suggests is a

need for greater efforts to interrogate the intersections of race and gender as they

function to categorically justify and normalize each other.

In the final analysis, news depictions of black athletes are used to address gendered

violence in an ancillary fashion. As such, domestic violence becomes yet another

popularized social issue that might be (over)exposed in efforts to scrutinize black

masculinity. By using the prism of the sports industry, the issue of domestic violence

offers a narrative wherein abusive men are simultaneously targeted for their black

masculinity and relieved of guilt due to their naturalized brutishness. In a sense, the

identities of the individual sports figures cease to exist in the minds of the American

public as they are viewed primarily in terms of their black (hyper)masculinity. Who is

hurt in such narratives are certainly black men, male athletes, and women*especially black women. Rather than viewing domestic violence as the widespread social

14 S. M. Enck-Wanzer

endemic that it is, this narrowcasting of abuse functions to isolate and contain

moments of abuse and make the stories instead fundamentally about race. Such

policing of black men, rather than of domestic violence, serves ultimately to buttress

the societal ills of gendered violence, racism, and racist sexism.

Notes

[1] Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in

American Films (New York: Continuum Publishing, 1989), 243.

[2] George Lipsitz, ‘‘The Greatest Story Ever Sold: Marketing and the O. J. Simpson Trial,’’ in

Birth of a Nation’hood: Gaze, Script, and Spectacle in the O. J. Simpson Case, ed. Toni

Morrison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997), 16.

[3] In their analysis of Simpson’s enhanced blackness on Time’s infamous cover of 27 June 1994,

Dickinson and Anderson offer a compelling read of his ‘‘honorary whiteness’’ by arguing that

Simpson was able to parlay his stardom into a position of ‘‘All American’’ and thus hide from

his racial markings rather than ‘‘transcending’’ or negating racial categorization. Greg

Dickinson and Karrin Vasby Anderson, ‘‘Fallen: O. J. Simpson, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and

the Re-centering of White Patriarchy,’’ Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 3 (2004):

278.

[4] Based on a search of the Reader’s Guide to Periodic Literature.

[5] Rachelle Brooks, ‘‘Feminists Negotiate the Legislative Branch: The Violence Against Women

Act,’’ in Feminists Negotiate the State: The Politics of Domestic Violence, ed. Cynthia R. Daniels

(New York: University Press of America, 1997), 78.

[6] Rachel Hall, ‘‘‘It Can Happen to You’: Rape Prevention in the Age of Risk Management,’’

Hypatia 19 (2004): 13.

[7] Marian Meyers, ‘‘News of Battering,’’ Journal of Communication 44 (1994): 45.

[8] Sut Jhally, ‘‘The Spectacle of Accumulation: Material and Cultural Factors in the Evolution of

the Sports/Media Complex,’’ The Insurgent Sociologist 12 (1984): 41�57. See also George Harvey Sage, Power and Ideology in American Sport: A Critical Perspective (Champaign, IL:

Human Kinetics, 1998); Nick Trujillo, ‘‘Machines, Missiles, and Men: Images of the Male

Body on ABC’s Monday Night Football,’’ Sociology of Sport Journal 12 (1995): 403�23; and David Q. Voight, ‘‘American Sporting Rituals,’’ in Rituals and Ceremonies in Popular Culture,

ed. Ray B. Browne (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1980),

125�40. [9] Dickinson and Anderson, 272.

[10] Ronald L. Jackson, II, Scripting the Black Masculine Body: Identity, Discourse, and Racial

Politics in Popular Media (New York: State University of New York Press, 2006), 7, 12.

[11] Kathleen B. Jones, Living Between Danger and Love: The Limits of Choice (New Brunswick,

NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 174.

[12] Elizabeth Pleck, Domestic Tyranny: The Making of Social Policy Against Family Violence from

Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 4. The first article to

appear in a nationally circulated periodical was: ‘‘Battered Wives: Chiswick Woman’s Aid,’’

Newsweek, 9 July 1973, 39.

[13] See, for example, Kimberly A. Maxwell, John Huxford, Catherine Borum, and Robert

Hornik, ‘‘Covering Domestic Violence: How the O. J. Case Shaped Reporting of Domestic

Violence in the News Media,’’ Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 77 (2000): 270;

Meyers, 1994, 48.

[14] Karen Boyle, Media and Violence: Gendering the Debates (Glasgow: University of Glasgow

Press, 2005), 86.

All’s Fair in Love and Sport 15

[15] Greg Barak, Media, Process, and the Social Construction of Crime: Studies in Newsmaking

Criminology (New York: Garland, 1994), 3.

[16] Lisa M. Cuklanz, Rape on Trial: How the Mass Media Construct Legal Reform and Social

Change (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 39.

[17] Kieran McEvoy, ‘‘Newspapers and Crime: Narrative and the Construction of Identity,’’ in Tall

Stories? Reading Law and Literature, ed. John Morison and Christine Bell (Aldershot:

Dartmouth, 1996), 181.

[18] See John Fiske, Media Matters: Everyday Culture and Political Change. (Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1994); William A. Gamson, ‘‘On a Sociology of the Media,’’

Political Communication 21 (2004): 305�7; Herbert J. Gans, Deciding What’s News (New York: Vintage, 1979); Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making

and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); Stuart Hall,

‘‘Culture, Media, and the Ideological Effect,’’ in Mass Communications and Society, ed.

J. Curran, M. Gurevitch and J. Woollacott (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1977), 315�48; Stuart Hall, ed., ‘‘The Work of Representation,’’ in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying

Practices (London: Sage, 1997), 13�74; John Hartley, Understanding News (London: Methuen, 1982); Peter Lunt, ‘‘Liveness in Reality Television and Factual Broadcasting,’’

Communication Review 7 (2004): 329�35; Radhika E. Parameswaran, ‘‘Spectacles of Gender and Globalization: Mapping Miss World’s Media Event Space in the News,’’ Communication

Review 7 (2004): 371�406; Sarah R. Stein, ‘‘Legitimating TV Journalism in 60 Minutes: The Ramifications of Subordinating the Visual to the Primacy of the Word,’’ Critical Studies in

Media Communication 18 (2001): 249�69. [19] Maurice Charland argues rhetoric constitutes or generates the conditions of possibility that

can structure the identity of those to whom it is addressed. Maurice Charland, ‘‘Constitutive

Rhetoric: The Case of Peuple Québécois,’’ Quarterly Journal of Speech 73 (1987): 133�50. [20] Wendy Kozol, ‘‘Fracturing Domesticity: Media, Nationalism, and the Question of Feminist

Influence,’’ Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 20 (1995): 649.

[21] Lisa McLaughlin, ‘‘Gender, Privacy and Publicity in ‘Media Event Space,’’’ in News, Gender

and Power, ed. Cynthia Carter, Gill Branston, and Allan Stuart (London: Routledge, 1998),

77.

[22] Jeff Benedict reveals that between 1986 and 1996, over 425 professional and college athletes

were documented publicly for committing violent crimes against women. Jeff Benedict,

Public Heroes: Private Felons (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997).

[23] W. O. Johnson, ‘‘A National Scourge,’’ Time, 27 June 1994, 92.

[24] John Leo, ‘‘Unfair to Thugs,’’ US News and World Report, 22 December 1997, 22.

[25] Messner, 1988, 197.

[26] Susan Faludi, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (New York: William Morrow and

Company, Inc, 1999), 158.

[27] Michael A. Messner, Michele Dunbar, and Darnell Hunt, ‘‘The Televised Sports Manhood

Formula,’’ Journal of Sport & Social Issues 24 (2000): 387.

[28] William Nack and Lester Munson, ‘‘Sports’ Dirty Little Secret,’’ Sports Illustrated, 31 July

1995, 74.

[29] Nack and Munson, 64.

[30] Nack and Munson, 64.

[31] Lyndsey Meân, ‘‘Identity and Discourse Practice: Doing Gender on the Football Pitch,’’

Discourse & Society 12 (2001): 790. see also Lois Bryson, ‘‘Sport and the Maintenance of

Masculine Hegemony,’’ Women’s Studies International Forum 10 (1987): 349�60; Pamela J. Creedon, ‘‘Women, Sport, and Media Institutions: Issues in Sports Journalism and

Marketing,’’ in Mediasport, ed. Lawrence A. Wenner (London: Routledge, 1998), 88�99; Michael A. Messner, ‘‘Sports and Male Domination: The Female Athletes as Contested

Ideological Terrain,’’ Sociology of Sport Journal 5 (1988): 197�211; Toby Miller, Sportsex (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001).

16 S. M. Enck-Wanzer

[32] Susan Bordo, Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O. J. (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1997), 104. See also, Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The

Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).

[33] Italics added. ‘‘Glenn Robinson Arrested, Released on Domestic Battery and Weapons

Charges,’’ Jet, 12 August 2000, 48.

[34] Nack and Munson, 64�65. [35] Patrick Rogers, ‘‘Personal Foul,’’ People Weekly, 7 August 1995, 60.

[36] Nack and Munson, 65.

[37] Gary Mihoces, ‘‘Sports Stars Juggle Strategies to Sidestep Off-the-field Pitfalls,’’ USA Today,

9 October 2003, 01c.

[38] Jane Caputi, The Age of Sex Crime (Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular

Press, 1987), 12.

[39] Rick Telander, Heaven is a Playground (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1976), 12.

[40] Marie Hardin, Julie E. Dodd, Jean Chance, and Kristie Walsdorf, ‘‘Sporting Images in Black

and White: Race in Newspaper Coverage of the 2000 Olympic Games,’’ Howard Journal of

Communications 15 (2004): 211�28. [41] See, for example, Michael Eric Dyson, Reflecting Black: African American Cultural Criticism

(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); John Hoberman, Darwin’s Athletes: How

Sport has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race (Boson, NY: Mariner

Books, 1997); bell hooks, ‘‘Feminism Inside: Toward a Black Body Politic,’’ in Black Male

Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art, ed. Thelma Golden (New York:

Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994), 127�40. [42] Sujata Moorti, Color of Rape: Gender and Race in Television’s Public Spheres (New York: State

University of New York Press, 2001), 192. See also, Neil A. Wynn, ‘‘Deconstructing Tyson:

The Black Boxer as American Icon,’’ The International Journal of the History of Sport 20

(2003): 99�114. [43] Nack and Munson, 66.

[44] In arguing against this stereotype of black men enraged, I do not mean to suggest that there

is not great reason for black men and women both to experience rage at a US system that

continues to oppress their existence. bell hooks makes the point that black rage, does in fact

exist; however, this collective rage is against a sustained, systemic racism affecting black folks

in the US context. She argues, ‘‘Mass media’s trivialization of black rage reinforces white

denial that white supremacy exists, that it is institutionalized, perpetuated by a system that

condones the dehumanization of black people, by encouraging everyone to dismiss rage

against racism as in no way a response to concrete reality since the black folks they see

complaining are affluent.’’ bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism (New York: Henry Holt

and Company, 1995), 29.

[45] John Fiske, Media Matters: Race and Gender in US Politics (Minneapolis: University of

Minnesota Press, 1996); Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film

(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993). See also, Sarah Banet-Weiser, ‘‘Hoop Dreams:

Professional Basketball and the Politics of Race and Gender,’’ Journal of Sport and Social Issues

23 (1999): 403�20; Bart Landry, The New Black Middle Class (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992).

[46] Michael A. Messner, ‘‘White Men Misbehaving: Feminism, Afrocentrism, and the Promise of

a Critical Standpoint,’’ in Sex, Violence and Power in Sports: Rethinking Masculinity, ed.

Michaeal A. Messner and Donald F. Sabo (Freedom, CA: Crossing, 1994), 138.

[47] Phil Richards, ‘‘NFL, Colts Try to Address Off-Field Abuse,’’ The Indianapolis Star, 9 January

2000, A1.

[48] Steven D. Levitt, ‘‘Facing the Rage,’’ People Weekly, 20 February 1995, 56�60�. [49] Levitt, 57.

[50] Alex Tresniowski, ‘‘Outrage-ous,’’ People Weekly, 16 September 1996, 203�4.

All’s Fair in Love and Sport 17

[51] It is worthwhile to remember that Time magazine literally enhanced O. J.’s blackness through

photo editing in their cover story after his initial arrest. See Dickinson and Anderson for

further analysis of this darkening.

[52] Levitt, 56.

[53] ‘‘O. J. Simpson’s Trial Reveals Role of Sex, Race and Rage in Nation’s Hottest Courtroom

Drama,’’ Jet, 13 February 1995, 54.

[54] Don Yaeger, ‘‘Prisoner of Conscience,’’ Sports Illustrated, 15 April 2002, 54.

[55] Moorti, 73.

[56] Fiske, 1996, 80.

[57] Banet-Weiser, 409.

[58] Marian Meyers, News Coverage of Violence Against Women: Engendering Blame (Thousand

Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), 98. See also, Maria Bevacqua, Rape on the Public Agenda: Feminism

and the Politics of Sexual Assault (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000); Jane Caputi,

‘‘The Sexual Politics of Murder,’’ in Violence Against Women: The Bloody Footprints, ed.

Pauline B. Bart and Eileen Geil Moran (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1993), 5�25; William E. Cote and Roger Simpson, Covering Violence: A Guide to Ethical Reporting About Victims and

Trauma (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Kozol, 1995.

[59] Meyers, 1997, 10.

[60] Mia Consalvo, ‘‘‘3 Shot Dead in Courthouse’: Examining News Coverage of Domestic

Violence and Mail-order Brides,’’ Women’s Studies in Communication 21 (1998): 190.

[61] Kozol, 659.

[62] D. Marvin Jones, Race, Sex, and Suspicion: The Myth of the Black Male (Westport, CT:

Praeger, 2005), 134.

[63] George P. Cunningham, ‘‘Body Politics: Race, Gender, and the Captive Body,’’ in Representing

Black Men, ed. Marcellis Blount and George P. Cunningham (New York: Routledge, 1996),

142.

[64] Jackson, 12.

[65] Moorti, 195.

[66] Callie Marie Rennison, Intimate Partner Violence and Age of Victim, 1993�1999, (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, 2001).

[67] Joy James, Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender, and Race in US Culture.

(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 143. See also, bell hooks, Black

Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992); Audre Lorde, ‘‘Black Ladies,

Welfare Queens, and State Minstrels: Ideological War by Narrative Means,’’ in Birth of a

Nation’hood: Gaze, Script, and Spectacle in the O. J. Simpson Case, ed. Toni Morrison (New

York: Pantheon Books, 1997), 323�63; Marian Meyers, ‘‘African American Women and Violence: Gender, Race, and Class in the News,’’ Critical Studies in Media Communication 21

(2004): 95�118. [68] Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race, and Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 175.

18 S. M. Enck-Wanzer