Contesting Race on Sundays: Making Meaning out of the Rise in the Number of Black Quarterbacks

Abstract

This is a study of the process of racial formation; specifically how a rise in the number of Black quarterbacks playing in the National Football League (NFL) was interpreted in print-media articles. Analysis reveals a number of competing and overlapping interpretations, suggesting that sport is “contested racial terrain” (Hartmann, 2000). The contested nature and the tendency for these articles to express language and ideas borrowed from dominant American political ideologies indicate how important sport is as a site for the construction of race. Using Gramscian cultural theory, these interpretations, as well as narrative formations capable of assimilating this demographic shift within preexisting racial configurations, are discussed in light of changes in the articulation of race in the post-civil rights era.