Task 6

To what extent is there a distinction between ethnic minorities and the majoirty of other athletes in sport media today?

In our post-colonialist society ethnic minorities have had a larger role in sports today than they had done before. They are represented more from the 70s and 80s, where only a handful of ethnic minorities (from O.J. Simpson to Walton Payne) and now there are a lot of ethnic athletes (from Didier Drogba to Tiger Woods) however there is still a distinction between how they are portrayed to the media compared to the majority of athletes born in England and not from ethnic decent. Ferguson, for example, argues that during World Cup games we tend to become nationalist. It's this ideology of colonialism still existing in our post-colonialist society. This essay will balance the argument and judge to what extent the media distinguished a difference between ethnic minorities and the majority of other athletes.

The media has a big influence in sports. They play a big part in if a big sporting event is going to happen. Althusser argued that sport played a big role in the cultural apparatus through chauvinism. The cultural apparatus is an ideological state apparatus where Althusser argues the bourgeoisie use it to control the working class. The media, owned by the bourgeoisie, use chauvinism in big sporting event, for example the world cup. Another example of this is in North America, where the government have been criticised by having colonialist views. Sport teams in America use Native Americans as mascots for their teams. It could be argued that this would then keep representations of Native Americans low, and justify taking their land. This was then shown through the New York Post, where a game between New York and Cleveland baseball, had "Take the Tribe and Scalp 'Em." as its headline. This connoted the media still having racist attitudes towards ethnic minorities.

Bibliography:

Ferguson, Robert- 1998- Representing "Race" -London-Arnold

Probert, David and Graham, Andrew (2008): Advance Media Studies. Oxfordshire; Phillipalan retailers

MacKinnan, Kenneth (2003) Representing Men. London; Arnold

Casey, Bernadette; Casey, Neil; Calvert, Ben; French, Liam and Lewis, Justin. (2002). Television studies: they key concepts. London; Routledge (227-228)

Creeber, Glen (2004). Fifty Key television programmes. London; Arnold. (85-88)