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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
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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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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
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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
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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
basketball videogame highlighting the bling-bling lifestyle of NBA superstars’. 49
The
game allows participants to embody the identity of current NBA players and the league’s
promotional rhetoric promises the game is a means to acquire ‘[m]ansions, cars, jewelry,
women – if you’ve spotted it on ‘MTV Cribs’, you’re going to see it here’. 50
A third
example is a Nike advertisement,once featured on NBA.com, that offered images of NBA
player and hip-hop aficionado Allen Iverson alongside the famous musician 50 Cent. More
recently the website proclaimed June 2009 as National Basketball and Hip-hop Culture
Month celebrating the 25th anniversary of the fusion of hip-hop with basketball in the
Dunkadelic Era. Rapper Jay-Z (also known as Shawn Carter), who is also part-owner of
the New Jersey Nets, has been featured in a series of commercials championing the NBA
television game coverage on the TNT cable network. In discussing these spots, Turner
Sports Executive Craig Barry notes, ‘Using Jay-Z’s own words and powerhouse persona,
we wanted to showcase his sophisticated style to parallel the tenets of sports and music’. 51
These types of promotions, advertisements and video games once again reveal the
symbiotic and cross-promotional connections between sports and hip-hop. And the NBA
is clearly not alone in seeking to appropriate signifiers of hip-hop including ‘the hood’,
‘authenticity’, ‘street credibility’ as these are ‘contained in commercials for Gap, Sprint
Mobile, Nike, Reebok, Tommy Hilfiger, Sprite, Wintergreen gum, Heineken beer,
Chevrolet, and many more’. 52
Given the dominant and resistant meanings that attach to
representational processes, these promotional strategies produce contradictory ends even
as they are produced within regimes of containment as signified by the dress code. 53
Hip-
hop music that accompanies NBA-produced videos and programming such as the
television show Inside Stuff does allow for the proliferation of hip-hop sensibilities as sites
of identification and resistance against a whitened status quo. That is, the globalization of
the NBA allows for the proliferation of icons of black success via images of such stars as
Michael Jordan, coupled with hip-hop sensibilities which serve as ‘floating signifiers’
across the black Atlantic, to be taken up in complex ways by various black populations. 54
Themes of hip-hop and basketball serve as sites of racial pride, affinity and potentially
could point toward the need to challenge the racial status quo. Of course such readings are
best facilitated by knowledge of broader contexts, particularly the workings of whiteness.
The use of Jay-Z as a promotional tool for the NBA via both his image and his music
additionally reveals dominant class interests. As a figure, Jay-Z is an entrepreneur who
embodies the individualistic mentality of the United States – the ‘rags to riches’ success
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story. Not only is he part of an ownership group of the NBA’s New Jersey Nets (other
artists who share in ownership include Usher, Cleveland Cavaliers and Nelly, Charlotte
Bobcats, respectively), but his Roc-A-Fella Records is a multimillion dollar record
company which also features Memphis Bleek, Young Gunz, Beanie Segal and Teairra
Mari. His empire additionally includes Roc-A-Fella Films and Rocawear attire. The
Reebok S. Carter shoe is the first signature shoe line for a non-athlete. 55
Moreover, Jay-Z’s
music and persona is packaged for US mainstream consumption as a type of racial cross-
over who can sell ‘dress, style, slang, body language and music predilections of the black
ghetto’ as signifiers of black authenticity to a youth market primarily composed of
whites. 56
According to hooks, hip-hop music such as his not only reinforces the racial
status quo via essentialistic imagery but additionally helps promote dominant gender
ideologies. 57
In this way, elements of hip-hop are ideologically aligned with dominant
gender relations and images of hypersexuality which are also remade through elite
professional sport which continues to promote masculine hegemony. 58
The process of commodification supported by the NBA simultaneously serves to
bolster white power as these highly commercialized images, such as those embodied by
Jay-Z, play up the roots of hip-hop as an expressive element of popular culture while
simultaneously severing the fashions, attitudes and aesthetics of hip-hop from some
artist’s radical critique of racial status quo. Indeed historian Robin D.G. Kelley places rap
and hip-hop within a longer trajectory of black vernacular expressions such as the
improvisational language game, ‘the dozens’, where two competitors cleverly and
(frequently) playfully trade insults in a masculinist test of verbal and mental acuity. 59
Over
the course of the 1970s and 1980s some forms of hip-hop merged this skilled use of
language and expression of visceral pleasure with social commentary as a way to ‘describe
and analyse the social, economic and political factors that lead to its emergence and
development’. 60
These politicized forms of rap served as a critique of whiteness and were
also aimed at addressing classism, social neglect and urban pain. Among the many topics
discussed, especially in less commercialized forms, were the consequences of inequitable
power relations between the white middle-class communities and poor blacks whose urban
communities continue to be sites of violence via state-sponsored racial profiling and police
brutality, drug abuse, teen pregnancy and material deprivation. 61
While a diverse array of
political positions and stylistic elements remain, Michael Eric Dyson credits the rap group
Run-DMC with developing and honing rap’s creative integration of social commentary
and diverse musical elements. He further notes the role of the rap concert in creating a
space for the refusal of censored speech and as a site of cultural resistance against the
surveillance and condemnation from mainstream society. 62
And yet, read from within the
context of contemporary capitalist marketing strategies, like those employed by the NBA
and promoted in the corporate media, the aesthetic signifiers of hip-hop are increasingly
celebrated apart from the very material conditions of inequality that some forms of hip-
hop seek to critique. With great gusto and considerable economic clout, corporate
marketers now overly promote artists whose storylines celebrate iconic stereotypes of
‘authentic’ street life as hustlers, gangstas, pimps and ‘hoes’. 63
In this way, these
representational practices remake what Stuart Hall and others have termed the ‘spectacle
of the other.’ 64
Adding to the complexity of this process is that frequently, class-based discourses, also
articulated in relation to the NBA dress code, circulate to suggest that genres like gangsta
rap promote violence, misogyny and homophobia. There is no question that rap and hip-
hop lyrics contain misogynistic and violent overtones, and frequently contribute to the
broader cultural legitimation of these ills. However, the context from which many attacks
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on hip-hop emerge is important to interrogate as these attacks often allow critics to
complain about black youth culture without a sophisticated understanding of the corporate
and political interests involved in promoting one-dimensional images of street life.
Furthermore, many social commentators who have criticized hip-hop culture as violent
have also severed such images from broader cultural concerns, which largely ignore the
structure that creates the very problems critics blame rap for causing. 65
While there is
sexism and homophobia throughout the genre, these are also widely prevalent in almost
every other musical form and also embedded in dominant sporting forms like the NBA.
And thus censorship campaigns such as those in the 1990s lead by Tipper Gore, the wife of
then Vice-President Al Gore, mistakenly focus on the lyrics of micro-level violence while
downplaying attempts to materially counter other forms of violence like police brutality,
material deprivation, unemployment, war and the US prison-industrial complex. 66
These
censorship campaigns form a similar function as the dress code performs in focusing
attention on the behaviour of black bodies while attempting to maintain white, middle-
class sensibilities to secure profits.
This brief mapping of the connections between hip-hop and the NBA suggests that the
NBA dress code links to a broader set of practices and strategies. This information provides
an additional context to support the contention that the NBA serves as a ‘management
spectacle that continually redefines the potentially unruly and unproductive black body as
the problem that it perpetually solves’ 67
Located within a commercialized process that
severs the most radical critiques from the signifiers of urban blackness, the dress code helps
position the white-dominated ownership structure and its white fan base as necessary
arbitrators of ‘appropriate’ moral behaviour. In this way, the constant policing of black
bodies simultaneously allows for the proliferation of a benevolent whiteness.
Concluding thoughts
The NBA continues to use hip-hop to promote the league while the dress code continues to
censor and censure players who adopt this style. Additionally the hip-hop music and
lifestyle promoted by the NBA are highly commodified versions that permeate the airways
largely devoid of its black nationalist roots as a medium for black males, especially from the
poor working class, to speak out against oppression. The highly commercialized rap and
hip-hop music celebrated by the NBA instead reifies simplistic binary racial thinking by
positioning black males as ‘authentic’. Although dominant popular culture continues to
imagine young black inner city youth as authentic embodiments of blackness, the dress code
and corresponding backlash ‘reflects desires to police ‘authentic blackness’ 68
Furthermore,
despite notable forms of resistance, the version of hip-hop promoted by the NBA is
consistent with the broader commercialized hip-hop genre that according to hooks has
minimal transformative potential as it is laced with themes of consumption, capitalism and
misogyny. 69
Indeed lost from many discussions about rap and hip-hop both within the NBA
and beyond are the various movements of global capital. De-industrialization and economic
restructuring coupled with privatized and downsizing of welfare have greatly impacted
urban centres. These economic conditions and racist histories of whiteness are also some of
the very conditions that the originators of hip-hop sought to critique, challenge and change.
The dress code attempts to bolster the image of the NBA while simultaneously
proliferating images of hip-hop in an attempt to seduce a youth market. This works
through the promotion of urban styles and expressions as ‘cool’, exotic and edgy, styles
that are both devoid of social commentary and banished from the game’s sidelines. The
NBA’s mobilization of late capitalist cross-marketing strategies coupled with the advent
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of the dress code both celebrate and demonize aesthetics and styles commonly associated
with urban black masculinity. Read from this perspective the NBA dress-code policy
serves to further shift attention away from the power of whiteness to shape dominant
understandings and the material effects of race and representation. Close inspection of hip-
hop-inspired NBA marketing campaigns further suggests that such representations are
powerful in serving a pedagogical function in potentially teaching the broader public about
what matters, in an attempt to normalize white middle-class ideologies to legitimate the
accumulation of capital. This analysis has instead offered an alternative pedagogy, one
that suggests the need to interrogate and contextualize seemingly trivial practices and
policies such as the NBA dress code.
Notes 1
This and the preceding four quotations are all from NBA.com ‘NBA Player Dress Code’. 2
InsideHoops.com, ‘NBA Dress Code’. 3
McCann, ‘Reckless Pursuit of Dominion’, 827. 4
Leonard, ‘Real Color of Money’, 159. 5
Sheridan, ‘Stern: Dress Code Debate’. 6
McCann, ‘Reckless Pursuit of Dominion’, 828; Bandsuch, ‘NBA Dress Code’, 7. 7
Cited in Siler, ‘Jackson Glad to See’. 8
Cited in Elsworth, ‘Basketball Ban on Bling’. 9
Giroux, ‘Cultural Studies, Public Pedagogy’, 60. 10
Leonard, ‘Real Color of Money’, 161. 11
Andrews, ‘Michael Jordan’s Blackness’; Hughes, ‘Managing Black Guys’; Leonard, ‘Real Color of Money’; McCann, ‘Reckless Pursuit of Dominion’.
12 Hartigan, ‘Old Tribes’, 1.
13 Ellsworth, ‘Double Binds of Whiteness’, 264.
14 Andrews, ‘Coming to Terms’, 114.
15 McCann, ‘Reckless Pursuit of Dominion’, 827; Bandsuch, ‘NBA Dress Code’, 7.
16 Hughes, ‘Managing Black Guys’, 164.
17 West, Race Matters, 120.
18 hooks, Black Looks, 16.
19 Fiske, Media Matters, 42.
20 Cole and Denney, ‘Visualizing Deviance’, 129.
21 Ibid.
22 McDonald, ‘Safe Sex Symbol?’, 349.
23 Leonard, ‘Real Color of Money’, 169.
24 McCann, ‘Reckless Pursuit of Dominion’, 830.
25 Boyd, ‘They’re Playing Bas-ket-ball’.
26 McLeod, ‘We Are the Champions’, 537.
27 Bachelor, ‘Music Industry Keeps its Eye on the Ball’, 50.
28 Boyd, ‘They’re Playing Bas-ket-ball’.
29 Hoberman, Darwin’s Athletes, xviii.
30 Hughes, ‘Managing Black Guys’, 177.
31 Ibid.
32 Leonard, ‘Real Color of Money’, 163; McCann, ‘Reckless Pursuit of Dominion’, 832.
33 Media Matters for America, ‘Limbaugh on NBA Fight’.
34 Ibid.
35 Cited in Siler, ‘Jackson Glad to See’.
36 Whitlock, ‘Black NBA Players’.
37 Media Matters for America, ‘Limbaugh on NBA Fight’.
38 Cited in Associated Press, ‘Pacers’ Jackson’.
39 Garner, ‘Whiteness’, 63 – 67.
40 Cited in Sheridan, ‘Stern: Dress Code Debate’.
41 Bandsuch, ‘NBA Dress Code’, 7.
42 Ibid., 8.
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43 Douglas, ‘Venus, Serena and Women’s Tennis’, 260.
44 Ibid.
45 Clay, ‘Keepin’ it Real’, 1347.
46 Bandsuch, ‘NBA Dress Code’, 16.
47 Collins, ‘New Commodities, New Consumers’, 301.
48 Bandsuch, ‘NBA Dress Code’, 37.
49 Hoopsvibe.com, ‘NBA Ballers’.
50 McCann, ‘Reckless Pursuit of Dominion’, 828 (as quoted in Tom Ham, NBA Ballers, Washington Post, 25 April 2004: F09).
51 Cited in NBA.com, ‘New TNT Spots Promote’.
52 Osumare, The Africanist Aesthetic, 161.
53 Ibid.
54 Carrington et al., ‘The Global Jordanscape’, 182.
55 Osumare, The Africanist Aesthetic, 162.
56 Ibid.
57 hooks, We Real Cool, 151.
58 Squires et al., ‘Evaluating Agency and Responsibility’, 727.
59 Kelley, Yo’ Mama’s Disfunktional, 38.
60 Dyson, Michael Eric Dyson Reader, 402.
61 Ibid., 403.
62 Ibid., 403.
63 Rose, The Hip Hop Wars, 4.
64 Hall, Representation, 223.
65 Ogbar, Hip Hop Revolution, 127.
66 Dyson, Michael Eric Dyson Reader, 403.
67 Hughes, ‘Managing Black Guys’, 180.
68 Leonard, ‘Real Color of Money’, 175.
69 hooks, We Real Cool, 150.
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