“A Postgame Interview for the Ages”

Abstract

This essay analyzes articulations of race and power as they surfaced in the media uproar surrounding National Football League (NFL) star Richard Sherman's notorious 2014 National Football Conference (NFC) Championship post-game "interview for the ages." It charts two dialectical poles of representation: overtly racist denunciations of Sherman as a classless "thug" and counter-representations of self-enterprising talent. I argue these competing images register "permissible narratives of difference" that underwrite a neoliberal, post-racial project. The article thus explores how Sherman's newfound celebrity authorizes "official antiracisms" of post-racial rhetoric, which foreclose alternatives to the privatization and depoliticization of racial discourse.

The (Black) Struggle That Must Be: Black Masculinity, Black College Athletes, and Black Mental Health Through a Looking Glass

“…No matter how eloquently a Black man (or Black athlete) speaks or carries himself, he is still a Black man that will continually be critiqued by both White and Black onlookers (Fanon, 1952). Tompkins (2015) spoke directly on this in a rhetorical analysis of American football cornerback Richard Sherman, statingIn this sense, post-race is predicated on its opposite—on old school racist tropes of violent, threatening blackness against which post-racial “all stars” like Sherman arise to signify the antidote: An individualized capacity to divest themselves of stereotyped blackness in favor of “positive” portrayals that remain tethered to the same ideologies that fuel overt racism. (p. 294)…”

“…No matter how eloquently a Black man (or Black athlete) speaks or carries himself, he is still a Black man that will continually be critiqued by both White and Black onlookers (Fanon, 1952). Tompkins (2015) spoke directly on this in a rhetorical analysis of American football cornerback Richard Sherman, stating…”