The Transracial Ideal
Written By Jocelyn Hockaday
Roberta Newman introduced the “transracial ideal”, with using Derek Jeter’s career as a basis of discussion. Throughout this essay I will be discussing and analyzing the transracial ideal through critical thinking using realizable sources.
The “transracial ideal” is not attainable in 21st century American Sports because although there are many icons in the 21st century American sports scene, race is still a defining characteristic of these icons. Unconsciously, a viewer will notice an athlete's race before his or her performance, or rather use their race to describe their performance. These examples listed previously are one of many examples of biased, which takes different forms from racial bias or gender bias. This will be shown through the analysis of Dererk Jeter’s athletic career, examples of racial framing, racial and gender bias, and analysis of the lack of representation in modern American sports.
According to Newman, “transracial ideal” is defined as someone who does not identify as one race or in Newmans words, classified as “indeterminate race”. Jeter described it as he is for “everyone” as in he is not identifying as black or white. The term is defined clearly; nothing too complicated or too simplified. I believe this is a good effort to develop a non-biased community in the sports industry. However, this term has put the reality of racial discrimination and biased under the rug. For instance, Jackie Robinson's career was built around racial adversity. “Although prior to 1947 when Jackie Robinson crossed the color line, product endorsements by African American ballplayers were few and far between, even in the black weeklies, once the line had been breached, Robinson’s image was everywhere, pitching products ranging from Old Gold Cigarettes to Bond bread and Borden dairy products,” according to Newman. This piece of evidence suggests that due to Jackie Robinson's racial identity, he was marketed everywhere in sports advertisements. Though this a positive change in sports advertisements and other advertisements as well as a huge step for black athletes career, it doesn’t take away the fact that his racial identity was the reason for his fame. Secondly, Derek Jeter, as mentioned in Newman’s analysis, presents him as breaking racial barriers since he doesn’t identify as neither black or white. When describing Jeter in a Movado Ad, Newman said, “In neither does Jeter appear to be passing for white; in neither is he truly black.” This is significant to digest as his racial identity, being both black and white, his unique racial identity, has gotten him more attention in the adverial and social world. Additionally, this could be alarming as it introduces racial framing and colorism in the sports media industry. Therefore, through these examples of these men's professional career demonstrate that the transracial ideal isn;t attainable as that very ideal didn’t shape those men's career-there race did.
Racial Bias is very prominent in sports commentary, as proven in history. For example, “The report, conducted by shoe and sport research firm RunRepeat in partnership with the Professional Footballers’ Association, found that some commentary relating to players with darker skin tones was more likely to focus on physical abilities such as pace and power. But when commentators talk about intelligence the majority of praise was aimed at players with lighter skin, and colleagues with darker skin tones took most of the criticism.” When observing sports commentary, for example, you will find subtle (sometimes unconscious behavior), racial bias and discrinimation. When comparing a black athlete to a white altere in regards to performance, you will find some commary will focus on a black athlete stereotypical attributes such as being tall, the ability to jump high, etc., while giving these reasons for his great performance. Not only in sports commentary, but as well as in sports advertisement as seen throughout Newman’s analysis. Jeter’s blackness was hidden which can suggest to racial biased in a way that the creators were trying to hide his blackness from the world, rather than openly expressing it. Seeing racial bias isn’t always the easiest thing to see, as racial bias is more subtle than it used to be. Instead of yelling discriminatory comments to a person of color, the way one talks about a person of color is where racial biases can be detected. This can be seen by tone of voice, attitude change, and how they speak on the player compared to the other. A commentator can appear unbiased, but their true intentions lie by their behavior, tone, and word choice.
Many times racial bias is seen in sports commentary where a black or brown player is being compared to a non-black or brown player, regarding their performance or intelligence. The way they shape these players to the public is significant to how the public perceive these players in relife, apart from their athletic lifestyle. This perception feeds into the modern day racial discrimination seen in not only sports, but sports commentary, sports media, and in regular everyday life. These social implications of such can term quickly from short term, not long term issues for current and up-coming black and brown athletes. Additionally, something to note regarding lack of representation racially, which will be analyzed later in this paper, is that most commentators who are a person of color are a retired or current player of the sport that is being commented on. Not often will you notice a person of color as a commentator, who hasn’t professionally played the sport, for example, Stephan Smith.
The racial framing theory is defined by Chong and Druckman (2007) “refers to the process by which people develop a particular conceptualization of an issue or orient their thinking about an issue (p.104). When analyzing the short sports commentary, “Are the Warriors still the team to beat despite recent skid?”, no racial framing devices were seen. Jay Williams describes Stephan Curry and the Warriors in terms of performance, but also mentioned the type of energy and contitunity. This is important to recognize, as although in sports commentary, discussion of performance is usually prioritized, it's important to recognize energy and cognitive ability creates a balance of a players total performance. Monica McNutt does a great job comparing the compatibility of energies as Clay Tompson comes back to the team, then questions how the energies mixing along with the unbalance will affect the overall performance of the team. The commentators are biased, but not racial biased. Williams takes the favoring stance in the conversation, predicting a positive outcome from the Warriors as their dynamics change. However, McNutt remains questionable about how the Warriors will perform. This kind of relationship and exchange between two commentators is a common find when comparing two players, their teams, and performance.
The consequences of racial bias are lack of black representation and racial framing in the sports industry. Little black girls and boys won’t grow up looking at various people of color in high positions such as Jeter, but rather the athletes on the field or court. Growing up black in American society, he or she is expected to be an athlete, due to his or her racial identity. This can cause an identity crisis for this individual, especially a biracial individual. Black boys and girls are allowed to be intelligent and break this systematic corruption of stereotypes, such as Jeter had done. He took his skill and racial advantage in sports media to gain a higher position in his field. Today you see more black women and men in high positions in sports media, commentary, and other positions of power. However, although some of the readings and accounts of racial discrinimantion is seen to be outdated, it is just subtle and modernized in a way that it is hidden from today's society through the glamorization of black athletes, leaving out what they deal with behind the scenes.
Just as racial biases, gender bias is very prevalent in American sports and sports commentary. Recognizing gender bias is the same concept as recognizing any bias; look for signs of favoritism and extreme dislike of another party. For example when analyzing a women basketball player the commentary focuses on her gender (e.g., commenting on a women’s physique relating to her performance rather than analyzing her performance from a sports analyst perspective). The consequences of gender bias is that it develops an unfair balance between womens and mens sports. In today's sports and sports advertisement you can see the social implications of this bias. You will see men take over our screens more than women. Women's sports are underfunded and have to keep the organization together through sponsors, resulting in a lower pay wage than men's sports, thus creating a large gender pay gap. Additionally, women commentators are not seen in men's sports as often as women sports and vice versa. Though this can be argued that women know a “women's sport” more than a man, I disagree. A sports analyst knows a sport or not, whether a woman is playing or not; a sport is a sport and a good athlete is a good athlete.
To take a further look into gender bias in sports, I viewed and analyzed the sports commentary video “Stephen A. gives props to women's NCAA basketball tournament”. No gender framing was going on in this video among any of the commentators. Actually, this is a good example of how to analyze a women's sport. All commentators are neutral and mention the players' performance as if they were speaking about men. Modernly, gender bias has made a lot of progress since Kathy Delaney Smith, according to Harvard Magazine, where she faced gender bias where it was very apparent. Today, gender bias is more transparent or subtle, and still has progress to be made, for example the NCAA Women’s Basketball tournament. A TikTok went viral of an Oregon player showing the world how small their weight room training facility was compared to the men’s extensive weight room. This is an example of modern gender bias in sports. This could suggest a lot of stereotypes, however simply, the resources offered to men should be offered to women as well. Another example would be a statement from The Sport Digest - ISSN: 1558-6448, “Gill (2000) uses the term “gender marking,” which refers to the use of Women’s Final Four in NCAA Division I basketball as opposed to the Men’s Division I Tournament, which is simply called the Final Four.” There should not be a label to distinguish a Women’s sport apart from a men’s sport, as in they all should coexist within one another.
American sports and American sports commentary has come a long way from the racial and gender bias and discrinimation that has been rooted in America’s history. Though, this systematic issue is difficult to break, hence the examples proven in this essay of bias being modernized and translucent. The solution to stray away from a biased state of mind and biased actions is education and policy changes. American sports consume a large population of our country's entertainment, and it's only right to make the sports media atmosphere an accepting environment for all, with one step being diminishing racial and gender bias.
Bibliography
Coogan, Dan. “Race and Crime in Sports Media: Content Analysis on the Michael Vick and Ben Roethlisberger Cases.” Journal of Sports Media, vol. 7, 2012, pp. 121–151., http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jsm/summary/v007/7.2.coogan.html. Accessed 16 Jan. 2022.
“Stephen A. Gives Props to Women's NCAA Basketball Tournament.” ESPN, ESPN Internet Ventures, https://www.espn.com/video/clip/_/id/31198377. Accessed 31 Jan. 2022.
Tannenwald, David L. “An Authentic Act.” Harvard Magazine, 6 Feb. 2019, https://www.harvardmagazine.com/2019/02/kathy-delaney-smith-confronts-gender-issues-in-womens-basketball. “United States Sports Academy America's Sports University®.” Gender Bias in Sport | The Sport Digest, http://thesportdigest.com/archive/article/gender-bias-sport.
“Women at NCAA Tournament Allege Weight Room Disparities.” NBCNews.com, NBCUniversal News Group, 19 Mar. 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/sports/women-ncaa-tournament-allege-weight-room-disparities-n1261600.
Written by Charlotte Edmond, Senior Writer. “Football Commentary Has a Racial Bias Problem, a New Study Says.” World Economic Forum, World Economic Forum, 2020, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/07/racial-bias-football-commentary/.
