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Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies


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All's Fair in Love and Sport: Black Masculinity and Domestic Violence in the News
Suzanne Marie Enck-Wanzer

Online Publication Date: 01 March 2009

To cite this Article Enck-Wanzer, Suzanne Marie(2009)'All's Fair in Love and Sport: Black Masculinity and Domestic Violence in the

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Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies Vol. 6, No. 1, March 2009, pp. 118

Alls Fair in Love and Sport: Black Masculinity and Domestic Violence in the News
Suzanne Marie Enck-Wanzer

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This essay examines how tensions between race and gender are negotiated when these two identifications intersect in news stories about black male athletes accused of domestic violence. Specifically, by analyzing news coverage of abusive black athletes from 1990 to 2005, I demonstrate how these accounts employ narratives that pathologize black men as naturally aggressive due to their sporting background and black rage. These rhetorical strategies, I argue, reflect broader social efforts to negotiate a tension between performing sensitivity to both the harms of domestic violence and of perpetuating racism against African Americans. Ultimately, I conclude, by using sport as the venue for talking about domestic violence and black male bodies as the site of criminal rage, gendered violence is allowed to flourish and hegemonic (white) masculinity is both exonerated and (re)secured. Keywords: Domestic Violence; Race; Gender; Sport; News Media
In American culture, the black athlete, powerful and seemingly of superhuman strength, has always been a double-sided social/political figure, both celebrated and feared because of his remarkable skills.1

For many, US fears of black athletes were confirmed in 1994 when the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson cast suspicion on the football hero, O. J. Simpson. While most commentators point to the morality tales of race embedded in the Trial of the Century, George Lipsitz insists that we also understand this event as revolving around narratives of family closure and rupture.2 The murder of his white wife,
Suzanne Enck-Wanzer is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies and Womens Studies at Eastern Illinois University. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the 2007 meeting of the National Communication Association. The author wishes to thank Phaedra Pezzullo, Darrel Enck-Wanzer, Jeff Bennett, Joan Hawkins, Jonathan Nichols-Pethick, Shane Miller, and Angela Aguayo, as well as John Sloop and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments, engagement, and feedback on this project. Correspondence to: Suzanne Enck-Wanzer, Communication Studies, 600 Lincoln Avenue, Charleston, IL 61920, USA. E-mail: senckwanzer@gmail.com.
ISSN 1479-1420 (print)/ISSN 1479-4233 (online) # 2009 National Communication Association DOI: 10.1080/14791420802632087

S. M. Enck-Wanzer

Nicole Brown Simpson, was a tragedy in its own right; however, it was not simply the death of a woman purportedly at the hands of an intimate partner that elicited such public outcry. The involvement of a heroic superstar*importantly, a racially marked athlete, yet one who had achieved honorary whiteness*set this case apart from other (read: normal) slain and abused women.3 Amidst the subsequent firestorm of social unrest in the wake of O. J.s arrest, news articles flooded the media, highlighting the lethality of partner abuse and urging women to escape violent partners before meeting a fate similar to Nicole Brown Simpsons. In 1995, for example, 21 of the 38 magazine articles about intimate violence were either entirely about O. J. Simpsons abuse of his wife or an extension of this case to examine the prevalence of partner abuse in America.4 In addition to increased news coverage, publicity of this case influenced Congress during the final stages of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) with VAWA testimony citing frequently the death of Brown Simpson as a likely outcome of intimate abuse gone unchecked.5 While much scholarly and popular ink has been devoted to the O. J. case, no attention has been afforded to the similarities between this case and other news accounts of abusive black athletes. This essay explores some of the themes that the O. J. case shares with other coverage of black athletes accused of domestic violence. In so doing, it becomes apparent that this landmark case is indicative of a larger national discourse about domestic violence. Though violence against women is all too commonplace in US public culture, news reports of domestic offenders rely frequently on familiar narratives of who engages in abuse. Specifically, news accounts of offenders focus largely on instances of black male sports figures who physically abuse their female (and often white) partners. Rachel Hall, echoing the calls of various mens movement groups, insists that part of the answer to ending violence against women is to shift our optic from analyzing woman-as-victim to questioning the cultural factors at work that make violence against women thinkable and doable by some men.6 In short, Hall asks us to focus our attention on abusers rather than victims. Marian Meyers adds to this call to action a critique of how news journalism typically frames violence against women. Identifying journalistic quests for balance and use of the passive voice as two powerful strategies for reinforcing victim blame, Meyers states, The news codes of . . . getting both sides of the story . . . negate the seriousness of the crime and represent [the victim] as at least partly at fault.7 Such news accounting ought to be challenged in such a way so as to place blame for violence squarely on perpetrators of violence. Both Hall and Meyers point to the problematic ways in which narratives of domestic abuse circulate so as to exonerate men and find women as both culpable for their own abuse and responsible for redress. To be sure, I am in full agreement with demands for holding accountable men who are abusive. We need to be ever vigilant, though, in questioning the stakes involved in spotlighting violent men, especially when representations of offenders are so often condensed to palatable caricatures such as the black male athlete. If, as Sut Jhally and others have suggested, sport plays

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a significant role in the construction and maintenance of American cultural values, then the cultural values supported and challenged by representations of domestic ` violence vis-a-vis black athletes warrants closer attention.8 Specifically, when black men and male athletes are cast repeatedly in the media as naturally more aggressive, a particular cultural production of knowledge about domestic violence is generated at the nexus of racism and sport as they are circumscribed onto the convenient villain of the black male athlete. This troubling intersection of race and gender is certainly not new to critical/cultural scholarship. This essay examines how tensions between race and gender are negotiated when these identifications intersect by critiquing the rhetorical strategies of mainstream news coverage of abusive black male athletes. Echoing the conclusions of Greg Dickinson and Karrin Vasby Anderson, I acknowledge that the figure of the fallen black male athlete/aggressor functions to re-center white patriarchy at a time when whiteness and masculinity supposedly are in crisis.9 Making this point more explicit, Ronald L. Jackson, II, describing corporeal inscriptions as the impositional writings of others on bodies that are not their own, insists that black corporeal inscriptions are infused iterations of whiteness ideology embodied as black corporeal objects.10 Specific to the concerns of this essay are the ways in which corporeal inscriptions on black male athletes as domestic abusers function to pathologize abusers more generally and naturalize domestic violence within the realm of black masculinity. These rhetorical strategies, I argue, reflect broader social efforts to negotiate a tension between attempts at performing sensitivity to the victims of domestic violence and protecting hegemonic (white) masculinity. Shifting blame from masculinity writ large to black athletes more specifically functions to distance the accountability for domestic violence away from (white) masculinity and, thus, maintains broader investments in masculinity and whiteness as interlocking systems of control. These systems, in turn, hurt both women and black men. Ultimately, news accounts of abusive black athletes tend to employ narratives that naturalize black masculinity as aggressive and efface deeper cultural connections (e.g., patriarchy, hegemonic white masculinity) that make possible rampant gendered violence. To identify these narrative trends, I begin by situating this analysis in a growing body of communication scholarship that examines critically news representations of gendered violence. Second, I demonstrate how news accounts of abusive athletes naturalize black male aggressiveness both within the arena of sport broadly and within US public culture generally. Next, I think through the connections between domestic violence and a particular US history of associating rage with black masculinity. By way of conclusion, I argue that the pitting of race against gender, so common to the US sociopolitical culture, works doubly to make invisible the prevalence of domestic violence generally, while pathologizing black male athletes as the likely culprits of abuse; this sleight of hand, in turn, functions to (re)secure the hegemonic center of white masculinity.

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Reading Representations of Gendered Violence Kathleen B. Jones observes that in the 1970s, the battered womens movement inaugurated shifts of key in the register of how we define and work against intimate violence.11 With the introduction of domestic violence shelters in pockets throughout the US, social awareness of violence in the home increased slowly. In addition to the ardent labor of feminist and victims rights activists, part of this shift of social awareness can be attributed to the news medias discovery of domestic violence in 1973.12 Since the 1970s, journalistic accounts of domestic violence have surfaced in news sections spanning from human interest to the crime beat. Most often, such articles frame gendered violence so as to obfuscate the embedded institutional nature of abuse by focusing, instead, on individual cases of physical assaults (typically emphasizing a woman who triumphed over abuse) and treating these cases as discrete acts of one person against another.13 Until 1994, news coverage of domestic violence was still quite sporadic. The motivation for the relative boom of articles in the mid-1990s would rightly be attributed to a combination of the 1993 sensationalized case of Lorena Bobbitt severing the penis of her husband, revelations of O. J.s abuse of Nicole Brown Simpson, and news coverage of the reanimated VAWA. In the past decade, while the numbers of articles have fluctuated largely depending upon high profile cases (e.g., Scott Petersons murder of his pregnant wife and subsequent Congressional passage of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act), how the news engages domestic violence has remained constant in two ways: first, the reporting reflects a broader social investment in sensational instances of assaults (usually gruesome murders and/or high-profile individuals);14 and second, news accounts typically minimize any focus on hegemonic masculine entitlement and thus, deny a demand of wider cultural urgency. Such juxtaposition between high-profile sensationalism and downplaying the commonality of domestic violence is quite informative in understanding the American experience of interpreting violence and justice.15 In other words, what counts as abuse and is admonished socially (e.g., physical assaults) and what does not count (e.g., emotional control, use of male privilege, financial control), who is held accountable (e.g., racially marked men and/ or men of lower economic standing), and who is not (e.g., white upper-class men and high-profile men more broadly) reflects continued efforts to deflect attention away from the influence of hegemonic centers of power and control. Understood as a medium for negotiating conflicting cultural values involved with gendered, classed, and raced expectations, the news media is equipped uniquely for opportunities to both negotiate such tensions and, in many cases, rigidify identity divisions. Not surprisingly, the ways in which the news covers abuse*what is warranted as worthy of coverage, who is deemed a good victim, and who abuses*is embedded deeply within other cultural hierarchies. Although most news coverage of domestic violence focuses on exceptional physical violence with little mention of abusers, this rhetorical blueprint deviates where celebrities are concerned. The importance of studying news coverage of gendered violence lies not in the details

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of specific cases, but in recognizing how disparate news outlets coalesce around specific thematics and morality lessons, illuminating how much change and what specific elements of change are acceptable at a given time and on a particular issue.16 Kieran McEvoy stresses the importance of studying crime news in the US context because it plays a major role in the construction, articulation, reassurance and ultimately reassertion of a sense of public morality.17 Following in the vein of the Frankfurt School and more recent interrogations of the supposed transparent neutrality of news journalism, the ideological potency of domestic violence news accounts upholds hegemonic power structures by placing blame on women and making culpable a select subset of men.18 By offering the veneer of social critique by simply acknowledging the problem of abuse, the constitutive function of mainstream news accounts offers particularly troublesome ways of understanding what domestic violence entails and what it does not.19 Extending this argument, Wendy Kozol insists, These realistic forms and ideals of objectivity legitimize media representations of domestic violence as truthful in ways that powerfully regulate public knowledge about this topic for audience members with limited access to alternative sources of information.20 Creating not just what we ` think about, but how we think, news representations wield great power vis-a-vis this otherwise private issue. As Lisa McLaughlin insists, we can understand domestic violence as a matter of both too much and not enough privacy, as a problem at the intersections of relationships between privacy and publicity.21 In other words, this is not to suggest that increased news coverage of domestic violence ought to be avoided*certainly, a starting-point of recognition is, as always, part of any attempt to ameliorate the harms of abuse*however, we must question broader social investments by tracing how accounts of the problem intersect to foreground particular aspects while marginalizing others. In approaching this analysis, I surveyed the Readers Guide to Periodic Literature for articles dealing with domestic violence from 1990 to 2005. I started research of each year with the term domestic violence and then followed the Readers Guide indexes to indicate other subject terms used in news articles during that year (e.g., family abuse, wife battery, battered women, spousal abuse, marital rape). Every article listed in the Guide was collected and, with very few exceptions, the articles that focused on abusive men (rather than victims) concentrated on sports figures, movie/ music stars, or military personnel. The preponderance of these stories about abusers was comprised of sports figures as accused and/or admitted batterers. Once initial magazine stories about abusive athletes were amassed, I augmented the field of analysis to include more articles detailing cases of abuse as found in the LexisNexis and InfoTrac databases. Even a cursory examination of these news reports reveals a common picture: the black athlete out of control.22 Some might question whether my focus on black athletes allows news coverage of white athletes to escape notice. The answer is quite simple: images of (and stories about) abusive white male athletes are, on the whole, lacking in the mainstream press. The vast majority of articles about abusers located in this study offer stories of black male athletes as abusive. This is certainly not to say

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that white athletes are not equally abusive; but, if you follow mainstream print media, you will not locate significant coverage of this violence. Thus, as I argue below, the naturalization of black aggression works to efface connections to broader structures of patriarchal dominance by relying on well-rehearsed tropes of black male aggression while exonerating hegemonic (white) masculinity. Sport Culture and Violence Against Women After decades of ignoring intimate abuse in general and overlooking the crimes committed by sports stars in particular, news accounts of abusive athletes now surface in a wide array of mediated outlets. Usually without critical reflection on the wider cycles of domestic violence that might include (among others) economic and sexual control, abuse of male privilege, and use of children, reports of physical assaults at the hands of professional athletes tend to conflate (hyper)masculinity, stardom, blackness, and violence. As such, mass-mediated reports frequently excuse intimate abuse as an aberration of masculinity-under-pressure coupled with predictable (although fallen) black rage. In particular, I want to suggest that one way that domestic violence is effaced from connections to broader structures of patriarchal dominance is by naturalizing black male aggressiveness, especially as embedded within sports culture, and leaving virtually unquestioned the status of white masculinity. From the boxing ring to the schoolyard, masculine aggression is accepted as the norm and a cultural desire to purge violence through controlled environments is an important starting-point for interpreting abusive athletes. Performances of masculinity predicated on patterns of domination and subordination are thought to be contained within the sporting arena; however, when such domination spills over into the presumably distinct arena of the home, it is cast as an excess of natural violence, but not something fundamentally problematic and/or reflective of broader cultural mores and norms. Standing in for what is both curiously significant and notably beyond the scope of articulated meaning for fans, sport provides an environment wherein its spectacular nature allows for a particular form of aggressive masculinity that is at once celebrated and naturalized, yet understood to be beyond the realm of average men. The high-profile sports figure is acknowledged widely as a likely domestic abuser due to his (often black) (hyper)masculinized form and simultaneously exonerated from complicated (and complicating) public scrutiny due to his stardom and intense cultural pressures to be aggressive. Performances of (hyper)masculinity involve more than athletes; spectators, coaches, and commentators alike are prone to accept misogynist comments and actions as natural aspects of sports. For example, after commenting to the press on losing a 1990 football game that he was going to go home and beat [his] wife, football coach, Joe Paterno, apologized publicly. In his defense, he explained that it was just part of sports culture, locker room talk, harmless, a joke that did not mean anything.23 Similarly, in a 1997 column in US News and World Report, in responding to increased reports of abusive athletes, the frequently featured columnist, John Leo, starts by lamenting the high tolerance of

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sports fans for awful behavior. Leos admonishment is quickly blunted by a parenthetical statement at the end of the articles first paragraph: The wife-beating accusations brought a bitter joke: Darryl Strawberrys wife must be right-handed, because Darryl cant hit left-handers.24 Both supposed jokes by Paterno and Leo, they explained later, were part and parcel of a sports culture; thus, these comments offer a fitting conduit into thinking more fully about connections between sport and domestic violence more generally. As Margaret Carlisle Duncan and Michael A. Messner affirm, sport provides opportunities for men to assert their dominance at a time when male hegemony is continually challenged and opposed in everyday life.25 Offering a place where boys will be boys, sport offers both escape from social pressures of inclusiveness and reinforcement of dominant social orders; or, as Susan Faludi concludes in her study of football fans, for male spectators especially, supporting [their] team was . . . a way of fighting against marginalization, a way of clinging to the idea that national destiny was still something played out by common men on a muddy field.26 Messner, Michele Dunbar, and Darnell Hunt bolster this assessment in an analysis of televised sports shows (e.g., SportsCenter) where they find that the episodes and accompanying commercials are marked by fights, near-fights, threats of fights, or other violent actions [which are] overemphasized in sports coverage and often verbally framed in sarcastic language that [suggest] that this kind of action, though reprehensible, is to be expected.27 In an effort to contextualize domestic violence for sports enthusiasts, a Sports Illustrated special report notes, For years battering was perceived not as a criminal matter, like mugging and armed robbery, but as a phenomenon that belonged in the intimate realm of the hearth, like making love or Christmas cookies.28 Though this article indicates that readers should judge partner abuse as unacceptable, it also implies that sports figures are abusive because they work in an atmosphere that rewards aggression, competition, and (hyper)masculinity. The Sports Illustrated article paints a subworld of the American athlete where the ancient virtues of manhood*of the brave, cool, tough, dominating and aggressive male*are celebrated.29 In this world, to be a man is not to be a woman. Women are not to be respected. Women are despised.30 In such a universe, according to Sports Illustrated, men are abusive toward women because they are specially conditioned to view women as inferior and weak, as a threat.31 Susan Bordo suggests that sport culture supports the idea that men are passionate beasts by nature, that they cannot be expected to control themselves*particularly when provoked by a woman*and that such lack of control is in fact a sign of their masculinity.32 This social expectation of aggression links mass-mediated representations of violence against women to eager consumption by fans. The naturalized and excused realm of sport where men expectedly despise that which is feminine helps to explain the framing of many news articles about domestic violence. Glamorizing male athletes, aligned with their on-field prowess, many articles juxtapose their abusive actions off-field with their successes in the game. For example, Glenn Robinson was arrested in 2000 for domestic battery and unlawful possession of a gun; Jet comforted readers by noting that Robinson

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didnt let this incident impede the opening of his eighth annual summer basketball camp days later.33 In almost all of the articles examined, the many successes (whether displayed in yards rushed, RBIs, baskets made, or awards given) of sports heroes couch discussions of the athletes abusive moments in the home. Further separating abusive athletes from normal men (presumably non-abusive men), the blurring of roles (between athlete and man) reinforces the normalcy of certain exceptional aberrations as those who will abuse women. Throughout the Sports Illustrated report, for example, there is a series of photos of the various black athletes discussed: basketball player Robert Parish aside his former wife, Nancy Saad; O. J. Simpson and Mike Tyson pictured next to their victims Nicole Brown Simpson and Robin Givens respectively; basketball star Scottie Pippen bounding gleefully from a courthouse after his charges of partner abuse were dropped; admitted batterer and Denver Bronco Vance Johnson shouting from behind his football helmet; and baseball pitcher Marcus Moore next to picture of his ex-girlfriend, Markel Nield. In most of these photographs, the athletes are shown in uniforms while the abused partners are all in feminine street clothing (e.g., skirts, blouses, flowing dresses). Such images magnify the physical and gendered differences and, through facial expressions and postures, presumably the differences in psychological disposition. The men all seem confident and, generally, happy; the women, in most pictures, crestfallen and small. This disjuncture is found, similarly, in the news coverage of Warren Moons abuse of his wife, Felicia. Houston Oilers quarterback Moon was NFLs Man of the Year in 1989; in 1995, he was arrested for assaulting his wife of fourteen years. Articles discussing Moons assaults displayed pictures of (a comparatively larger) Moon seated next to his acquiescent wife and crying children. Sports Illustrateds report of this case begins with a photo of Warren and Felicia Moon sitting on a couch flanked by their four children. Portraying a ruptured, yet healing family, Sports Illustrated recounts the assaults that prompted their seven-year-old son to call 911. In an increasingly violent encounter, relays Sports Illustrated, Warren struck his wife on the head with an open hand and choked her to the point of nearly passing out.34 In the explanatory press conference from which these photos were taken, Moon insisted that the media was blowing his arrest out of proportion as a consequence of O. J. Simpsons muchpublicized history of domestic violence.35 Moons lawyer and agent, Leigh Steinberg, questioned the press indignantly: I dont understand what the governmental interest is. . . . He has faced his own conduct. He has admitted it privately and publicly. . . . What societal value is protected by arresting Warren Moon?36 Contrasting his stature as a role model for the black community with his responsibilities to his wife and family, it is suggested that Moon still be affirmed as a model citizen, as a fallen sports hero, but still a hero who just made a mistake. USA Today takes a similar approach in its coverage of domestic violence and athletes more generally. Sports stars, the article begins, juggle strategies to sidestep off-the-field pitfalls. Some of these pitfalls, according to the article, might include: a criminal charge, be it sexual assault, mayhem outside a bar, drug use or domestic violence [which] can put an athletes image and livelihood

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at risk. Framed as just another personal pitfall, USA Todays Gary Mihoces reinforces the notion that, for athletes especially, domestic abuse is just a natural byproduct of aggressive play, but not one that should interrupt their careers. Whether donned in official uniforms, depicted as physically dominant, and/or described in ways that excuse their behaviors and aim to keep in tact their livelihoods, the power of this construct lies both in reinforcing the desirability for on-the-field bravado and challenging anyone who might threaten the appeal of this aura*in this case, viewing women as that threat. Such characterizations simultaneously forward the social truism that regular men do not work in such high-stress, masculinist environments and therefore, are not carrying aggressive attitudes (and actions) from their (public) jobs to their (private) homes. Jane Caputi suggests that turning abusers into extraordinary figures is a common practice in which the male rush to disassociate (especially after the fact) is characteristic of a patriarchal culture in which awareness of institutionalized male supremacy is repressed.38 These men do not, in short, represent the norm. This triangulation of domestic violence in the context of sport gets especially problematic when we add the factor of race into the equation. Black Bodies Enraged It is a common saying in the ghettos of Brooklyn, notes Rick Telander, that if a boy is bad he joins a gang; if he is good he plays basketball.39 While material circumstances in the US have improved for African Americans since Telander penned this cynical conclusion, the American experience continues to be marked by a reality wherein even when the black man is good, he is still likely to be viewed as bad by association. Mass-mediated representations of black athletes serve as one of the few domains where African Americans are shown to be superior to whites; such depictions simultaneously serve to preserve (white) cultural hegemony by legitimizing the racist notion that blacks are naturally superior physically (and whites, superior mentally).40 Others have argued quite persuasively that narratives of race have been instrumental in informing broader US understandings of sport, naturalizing the athletic prowess of black athletes while seeing white athletes as inherently more intellectual.41 Given such assumptions about black athletes, coupled with expectations that sports pushes men toward violence against women, we are left with the naturalized conclusion that black men are the most likely to respond with physical violence when provoked, thus bringing full circle expectations about the natural brutishness of black men. As Sujata Moorti notes in her analysis of mass-media accounts of Mike Tysons many acts of gendered abuse, for white America in particular, the boxer, because of his violent behavior, became the site where a range of cultural anxieties about black male sexuality and criminality coalesced.42 Widely publicized for ongoing reports of battering his ex-wife, Robin Givens, Tyson was quoted by his biographer as boasting, Robin flew backward, hitting every fucking wall in the apartment. Elsewhere, Tyson bragged, I like to hurt women when I make love to them. . . . I like to hear them scream with pain, to see them bleed. . . . It gives me pleasure.43 Tysons excessive

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physical aggression in the boxing ring (e.g., biting off the ear of an opponent) combined with his boisterous performances of gendered violence (and imprisonment for rape), fuel prototypical American anxieties of black masculinity being full of rage.44 Demonstrating a misogyny that extends beyond just his wife and onto all women, the image of Tyson is illustrative of the dark side of the American dream as theorized by John Fiske and Ed Guerrero in their explorations of US fears of black men.45 Capable of harnessing his strength as a finely trained boxer, Tyson functions too as an ominous warning about the feared potency of the black male body more generally. To be sure, Tysons position as a boxer stands at one end of a very short spectrum available to black male athletes*from the baseball star to the football player, all of these figures stand apart from average men due to their physical strength, stamina, and competitiveness, all of which are contained in (and constrained by) racially marked bodies. Messner bolsters the assessment of the black body out of control by arguing, Even when our eyes clearly show us a scene of young white men misbehaving, the media still tend to portray the black male as villain.46 For sports stars, because a disproportionate number are black, there are even more opportunities to scrutinize individuals who have risen through otherwise rigid social classes. As a stunning example of the emphasis on black corporeal inscriptions, on 9 January 2000, the Indianapolis Star offered a photo exhibit of Indianapolis Colts players charged with various gendered crimes. The accompanying photographs showed five different African American team members. Laid out like a rap sheet detailing the various offenses of each man, the images reinforce what we are told over and again in US popular/public culture: black men are criminals and are to be feared. In the accompanying article, the Star quotes Kathy Redmond, founder of the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes who encapsulated a common sentiment: They have proven that theyre out of control and they dont care if theyre out of control.47 Combining the corporeality of these athletes with a reported inability to maintain control of their bodies (or even know enough to want to maintain control), the Star paints a vivid picture of black men beyond the scope of normal (white) masculinity. Mirroring the figure of the out-of-control criminal, People Weeklys cover story of Nicole Brown Simpsons death was entitled Facing the Rage.48 Outlining Nicoles numerous reports of being physically abused and psychologically tormented, People describes one instance of stalking where O. J. reportedly stood in the bushes . . . peering through the window as [Nicole] made love to her new boyfriend.49 O. J.s stalking and abuse are cast, not simply as criminal, but as socially deviant and dark. In another People article, Alex Tresniowski reviews Vincent Bugliosis book entitled Outrage: The Five Reasons why O. J. Simpson got Away with Murder.50 Although the word rage is tossed around rather casually in these examples, when paired with Simpsons (often enhanced) blackness and inter-racial relationship, the word carries a history of significance.51 Rage becomes synonymous with O. J. Simpsons eyes as a picture of Nicoles bruised face is juxtaposed with a photo of the interracial couple looking happy

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together at [a] 1981 party. Jet magazine buttresses this image with their article, O. J. Simpsons Trial Reveals Role of Sex, Race, and Rage in Nations Hottest Court Room Drama. Jet opens its story with this concise (yet telling) description of the couple: Simpson is a black sports legend and his ex-wife an attractive blonde.53 Contrasting O. J.s blackness with Nicoles whiteness (read: purity) reinforces the deeply rooted racial binaries underlying this case. Of particular significance, when articles (about O. J. and other athletes) reinforce the rage of abusive black men, little attention is afforded to the gendered aspects of these actions; rather, violence is interpreted almost solely by their subject position as (hyper)masculine and (hyper)visible. In other descriptions and visual representations of assaults at the hands of athletes, the corporeal dominance and potential for uncontrolled rage rises to the surface of the narratives. With Tyson and Simpson standing at one end of a spectrum, football player Jim Browns violence against his wife offers an instructive counterpoint. On 12 March 2002, Brown began a 180-day jail sentence for misdemeanor vandalism associated with charges of domestic violence. Brown, who had been charged five times in cases of intimate abuse in the past, was arrested in 1999 when he smashed the windows of his wifes car with a shovel and purportedly threatened to kill her. In the end, Brown was fined, directed to perform community service, and ordered into a year of domestic violence counseling. Refusing to submit to counseling or acknowledge that his actions were part of a larger cycle of abuse, Brown instead opted for imprisonment. In an interview with Sports Illustrated, Brown was asked if he has a problem with women. Brown responded:
I can definitely get angry, and I have taken that anger out inappropriately in the past. But I have done so with both men and women. So do I have a problem with women? No. I have had anger, and Ill probably continue to have anger. I just have to not strike out at anyone ever again. I have to be smarter than that, smarter than I was. What I would say is that with wisdom, I will only use my mentality or my spirit aggressively. I will never use my hands [that way] again.54

Framed in an article entitled Prisoner of Consciousness, Sports Illustrated reinforces the wider belief that athletes who are accused of, prosecuted for, and sentenced for gendered violence are often prosecuted more harshly due to their stardom and misunderstood as misogynist when really they are simply aggressive by design. Coupled with their highlighted racial identities, this formula becomes quite seductive: Natural Aggression'History of Racism0Unfair Persecution. This is not to deny that African American men are mistreated in the US legal system; however, in the case of abusive athletes, this realization seems to be so heightened so as to allay the responsibility of particular mens actions. And, more importantly, given a system of law and order that systemically prosecutes black men at a rate disproportionate to that of white men, not only does this system lead to a heightened scrutiny of African Americans, but also (re)secures white masculinity as the center of safety. While not all instances of sports star abuse are interracial, Moorti insists rightly that when interracial violence is in question, racial difference becomes the primary

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explanatory framework for the crime.55 Racial difference, combined with (hyper)masculinity, reinforce an image of the black man as being inherently more dangerous than average (read: white) men. As John Fiske argues, the [b]lack male body out of control, whether on the streets of Los Angeles or in the bedrooms of the suburbs, incarnates the white fear that this sharpened sense of difference might cause the body of black America to break out of control and erupt.56 Sarah Banet-Weiser extends Fiskes read of the dangerous black body with her analysis of the NBA; specifically, she agues that the threat posed by black players is understood culturally as one of a lack of respect, an unwillingness*and implicitly, an incapability*of accepting authority.57 Mediated through a wide variety of discourses, this inscribed body holds a great deal of social salience in US public culture. Combining two realms wherein the spectacle of aggression is accepted as fact*sport and blackness*offers an ideological shorthand that is left virtually unquestioned when magnified through the lens of masculinity. In the end, hegemonic (white) masculinity is left utterly unchecked when viewed through this ocular. Conclusions Without doubt, violence against women is pervasive in the US and is far too complex for the sports industry to explain or solve. We might be encouraged that the typically masculine realm of sport is making efforts to acknowledge the destructiveness of gendered violence by raising awareness of the problem and seeking solutions at the level of team management. However, such gratification must necessarily be shortlived in light of the broader cultural production of knowledge. When the knowledge being (re)produced is that domestic violence is of little consequence when compared with the perceived (yet expected) failures of black athletes, we must question the stakes involved with such logic. When domestic violence is constructed as a problem limited to a particular realm (sport) and particular men (hyper-masculine men and black men, specifically), we evade larger connections between gendered violence and the relations of power made possible by systems of patriarchal racism. Meyers notes that the pathologizing of abusive men is part and parcel of a media system that relies on demands for unusualness as the predominant rationale for determining what counts as crime news.58 It is, states Meyers, a common view that men who commit acts of violence against women [are] sick or in some way pathological [which] ignores the social roots of this violence.59 Mia Consalvo extends this conclusion, arguing that such representations of male violence perpetuate the belief that the batterer is acting on his own rather than as part of a patriarchal society where men are allowed/encouraged to control their women.60 Stories of brutally maimed and murdered women fit this narrative mold of constructing abusive men as monstrous; but, what of assault instances that do not end in such obviously dire consequences? What of broader cycles of power and control perpetuated by deep financial inequities, psychological torture, and legal disparities? Casting abusive men as the Other functions quite successfully to disassociate this common cycle of power and control from so-called normal

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masculinity and patriarchal privilege. In short, certain men fit the mold of pathologized monster much more readily than others. And those who are left beyond suspicion in this model are those who embody hegemonic (white) masculinity. Inquiries into the societal value of ruining the lives or threatening the privacy of talented sports stars serve to instantiate the broader problem of domestic violence firmly in the realm of private success or failure. Either black men are able to escape their race and walk among the hegemonic patriarchal culture as honorary white men or they fall back into the tragic (yet natural) pitfalls of their racial makeup. Building upon the naturalized cultural connections between black masculinity and violence, such responses to abusive athletes demonstrate an exceptionally forgiving read of violence, questioning, instead, the failures of black men to assimilate appropriately. In these high-pressure occupations, it seems expected that men would make mistakes from time to time; and, like dutiful children, when mistakes are made, apologies are expected. What these narratives reinforce, suggests Kozol, is that successful black men can be viewed as a literal embodiment of the American dream of individual success and societal triumph over racism; any distraction from this dream by women crying foul is viewed as yet another strike against black men. At the same time, though, the logic of these narratives reinforces the underlying cultural racism; for when the safe or tamed [athletes] . . . explode in violence [they] also [bring] to the surface white fears about the threatening black male.61 What is left out of reports of abusive athletes is as important as what is included. As D. Marvin Jones argues, Many black athletes are in fact guilty of what they were alleged to do. However, there is a human context in all of these cases. Where whites are involved, the context is in the background. Where black male athletes are involved there is often little or no human context: the background of the story seems to be pure suspicion.62 Thus, imagining how, for example, domestic violence affects (or is affected by) the body politic, always already presumes white masculinity at its base.63 Jackson argues quite poignantly, black corporeal inscriptions are infused iterations of whiteness ideology embodied as black corporeal objects, but complicated by the irregularities subsumed in a profound matrix of desire and control.64 Attributing the perils of domestic violence to the black mans body (a body historically owned by white men) functions to alleviate white masculinity of suspicion and guilt and ground further hegemonic white patriarchy. If we are considering how such violence has an impact upon the body politic, we are also questioning how the abuse of womens bodies (already available for public consumption) affects white masculinitys abilities to govern, rule, and maintain control of the nation. As Moorti observed in the case of Tyson, offenders become poster child[ren] to indict a racist law and order system. This indictment comes at a price, though; as Moorti continues, constructions of black male victimhood is derived at the expense of black women.65 Indeed, given statistics that suggest that most intimate violence occurs within racially homogenous couplings, it is likely that black women suffer most when discussions of domestic violence emphasize racist systems of prosecution at the systematic expense of gender. Ultimately then, such narratives rely not only on

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an ability to simultaneously make culpable and exonerate black men, but by scapegoating victims of violence (especially black women) as well. The implications for African American women, in particular, ought not be overlooked in this analysis. In contexts of black male athletes, it is African American women who are most often expected to step forward in defense of their men. Always in the position of defending black men in a US context, black women (who experience domestic violence in their own relationships at rates similar to white women) are kept doubly quiet: not only can they not speak out about their own abuse due to pervasive sexist expectations of supporting men, but they cannot out black men for patterns of abuse for fear of perpetuating racist expectations of black masculinity.66 As Joy James points out, communities of color often label African American women (and other women of color) who accuse men of color of abuse race traitors.67 Of course, such oversights are hardly new to African American women; as Angela Y. Davis insists with regard to rape, for example, black women in the US context have historically been deeply suspicious that the anti-rape movement was largely oblivious to their special concerns.68 Daviss analysis of racist presumptions about black men and women since the days of slavery are detailed well in her analysis of the myth of the black rapist and is not something I have room to reproduce here. What is telling, in terms of this analysis of black male athletes and domestic violence, is that reactions to accusations of abuse often stand in for larger critiques of male violence generally and ignore the harms experienced by black women in particular. Relying on mythical investments in black male violence, articles detailing abuse at the hands of black men (especially athletes) perpetuate myths of savage black men and, on the flipside, fail to scrutinize white masculinity. Before closing, it is important to note that I do not mean, in my own argument, to scapegoat the dominant mass mediated outlets or sport culture as the chief perpetuators of racist (mis)characterizations and understandings of gendered abuse. Instead, I view these arenas as specific arms of a larger misogynist (and racist and classist) structure that serve to undermine womens abilities to escape abuse on a variety of levels. This structure, and those for whom it serves, has an enormous stake in maintaining current hierarchies of race, class, and gender. What this suggests is a need for greater efforts to interrogate the intersections of race and gender as they function to categorically justify and normalize each other. In the final analysis, news depictions of black athletes are used to address gendered violence in an ancillary fashion. As such, domestic violence becomes yet another popularized social issue that might be (over)exposed in efforts to scrutinize black masculinity. By using the prism of the sports industry, the issue of domestic violence offers a narrative wherein abusive men are simultaneously targeted for their black masculinity and relieved of guilt due to their naturalized brutishness. In a sense, the identities of the individual sports figures cease to exist in the minds of the American public as they are viewed primarily in terms of their black (hyper)masculinity. Who is hurt in such narratives are certainly black men, male athletes, and women*especially black women. Rather than viewing domestic violence as the widespread social

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endemic that it is, this narrowcasting of abuse functions to isolate and contain moments of abuse and make the stories instead fundamentally about race. Such policing of black men, rather than of domestic violence, serves ultimately to buttress the societal ills of gendered violence, racism, and racist sexism. Notes
[1] [2] Donald Bogle, Toms, Coons, Mammies and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (New York: Continuum Publishing, 1989), 243. George Lipsitz, The Greatest Story Ever Sold: Marketing and the O. J. Simpson Trial, in Birth of a Nationhood: Gaze, Script, and Spectacle in the O. J. Simpson Case, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997), 16. In their analysis of Simpsons enhanced blackness on Times infamous cover of 27 June 1994, Dickinson and Anderson offer a compelling read of his honorary whiteness by arguing that Simpson was able to parlay his stardom into a position of All American and thus hide from his racial markings rather than transcending or negating racial categorization. Greg Dickinson and Karrin Vasby Anderson, Fallen: O. J. Simpson, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the Re-centering of White Patriarchy, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 3 (2004): 278. Based on a search of the Readers Guide to Periodic Literature. Rachelle Brooks, Feminists Negotiate the Legislative Branch: The Violence Against Women Act, in Feminists Negotiate the State: The Politics of Domestic Violence, ed. Cynthia R. Daniels (New York: University Press of America, 1997), 78. Rachel Hall, It Can Happen to You: Rape Prevention in the Age of Risk Management, Hypatia 19 (2004): 13. Marian Meyers, News of Battering, Journal of Communication 44 (1994): 45. Sut Jhally, The Spectacle of Accumulation: Material and Cultural Factors in the Evolution of the Sports/Media Complex, The Insurgent Sociologist 12 (1984): 4157. See also George Harvey Sage, Power and Ideology in American Sport: A Critical Perspective (Champaign, IL: Human Kinetics, 1998); Nick Trujillo, Machines, Missiles, and Men: Images of the Male Body on ABCs Monday Night Football, Sociology of Sport Journal 12 (1995): 40323; and David Q. Voight, American Sporting Rituals, in Rituals and Ceremonies in Popular Culture, ed. Ray B. Browne (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1980), 12540. Dickinson and Anderson, 272. Ronald L. Jackson, II, Scripting the Black Masculine Body: Identity, Discourse, and Racial Politics in Popular Media (New York: State University of New York Press, 2006), 7, 12. Kathleen B. Jones, Living Between Danger and Love: The Limits of Choice (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 174. Elizabeth Pleck, Domestic Tyranny: The Making of Social Policy Against Family Violence from Colonial Times to the Present (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), 4. The rst article to appear in a nationally circulated periodical was: Battered Wives: Chiswick Womans Aid, Newsweek, 9 July 1973, 39. See, for example, Kimberly A. Maxwell, John Huxford, Catherine Borum, and Robert Hornik, Covering Domestic Violence: How the O. J. Case Shaped Reporting of Domestic Violence in the News Media, Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 77 (2000): 270; Meyers, 1994, 48. Karen Boyle, Media and Violence: Gendering the Debates (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 2005), 86.

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Greg Barak, Media, Process, and the Social Construction of Crime: Studies in Newsmaking Criminology (New York: Garland, 1994), 3. Lisa M. Cuklanz, Rape on Trial: How the Mass Media Construct Legal Reform and Social Change (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), 39. Kieran McEvoy, Newspapers and Crime: Narrative and the Construction of Identity, in Tall Stories? Reading Law and Literature, ed. John Morison and Christine Bell (Aldershot: Dartmouth, 1996), 181. See John Fiske, Media Matters: Everyday Culture and Political Change. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994); William A. Gamson, On a Sociology of the Media, Political Communication 21 (2004): 3057; Herbert J. Gans, Deciding Whats News (New York: Vintage, 1979); Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); Stuart Hall, Culture, Media, and the Ideological Effect, in Mass Communications and Society, ed. J. Curran, M. Gurevitch and J. Woollacott (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1977), 31548; Stuart Hall, ed., The Work of Representation, in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices (London: Sage, 1997), 1374; John Hartley, Understanding News (London: Methuen, 1982); Peter Lunt, Liveness in Reality Television and Factual Broadcasting, Communication Review 7 (2004): 32935; Radhika E. Parameswaran, Spectacles of Gender and Globalization: Mapping Miss Worlds Media Event Space in the News, Communication Review 7 (2004): 371406; Sarah R. Stein, Legitimating TV Journalism in 60 Minutes: The Ramications of Subordinating the Visual to the Primacy of the Word, Critical Studies in Media Communication 18 (2001): 24969. Maurice Charland argues rhetoric constitutes or generates the conditions of possibility that can structure the identity of those to whom it is addressed. Maurice Charland, Constitutive be Rhetoric: The Case of Peuple Que cois, Quarterly Journal of Speech 73 (1987): 13350. Wendy Kozol, Fracturing Domesticity: Media, Nationalism, and the Question of Feminist Inuence, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 20 (1995): 649. Lisa McLaughlin, Gender, Privacy and Publicity in Media Event Space, in News, Gender and Power, ed. Cynthia Carter, Gill Branston, and Allan Stuart (London: Routledge, 1998), 77. Jeff Benedict reveals that between 1986 and 1996, over 425 professional and college athletes were documented publicly for committing violent crimes against women. Jeff Benedict, Public Heroes: Private Felons (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1997). W. O. Johnson, A National Scourge, Time, 27 June 1994, 92. John Leo, Unfair to Thugs, US News and World Report, 22 December 1997, 22. Messner, 1988, 197. Susan Faludi, Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc, 1999), 158. Michael A. Messner, Michele Dunbar, and Darnell Hunt, The Televised Sports Manhood Formula, Journal of Sport & Social Issues 24 (2000): 387. William Nack and Lester Munson, Sports Dirty Little Secret, Sports Illustrated, 31 July 1995, 74. Nack and Munson, 64. Nack and Munson, 64. Lyndsey Mean, Identity and Discourse Practice: Doing Gender on the Football Pitch, Discourse & Society 12 (2001): 790. see also Lois Bryson, Sport and the Maintenance of Masculine Hegemony, Womens Studies International Forum 10 (1987): 34960; Pamela J. Creedon, Women, Sport, and Media Institutions: Issues in Sports Journalism and Marketing, in Mediasport, ed. Lawrence A. Wenner (London: Routledge, 1998), 8899; Michael A. Messner, Sports and Male Domination: The Female Athletes as Contested Ideological Terrain, Sociology of Sport Journal 5 (1988): 197211; Toby Miller, Sportsex (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001).

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Susan Bordo, Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O. J. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 104. See also, Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987). Italics added. Glenn Robinson Arrested, Released on Domestic Battery and Weapons Charges, Jet, 12 August 2000, 48. Nack and Munson, 6465. Patrick Rogers, Personal Foul, People Weekly, 7 August 1995, 60. Nack and Munson, 65. Gary Mihoces, Sports Stars Juggle Strategies to Sidestep Off-the-eld Pitfalls, USA Today, 9 October 2003, 01c. Jane Caputi, The Age of Sex Crime (Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1987), 12. Rick Telander, Heaven is a Playground (New York: St. Martins Press, 1976), 12. Marie Hardin, Julie E. Dodd, Jean Chance, and Kristie Walsdorf, Sporting Images in Black and White: Race in Newspaper Coverage of the 2000 Olympic Games, Howard Journal of Communications 15 (2004): 21128. See, for example, Michael Eric Dyson, Reecting Black: African American Cultural Criticism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); John Hoberman, Darwins Athletes: How Sport has Damaged Black America and Preserved the Myth of Race (Boson, NY: Mariner Books, 1997); bell hooks, Feminism Inside: Toward a Black Body Politic, in Black Male Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary American Art, ed. Thelma Golden (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994), 12740. Sujata Moorti, Color of Rape: Gender and Race in Televisions Public Spheres (New York: State University of New York Press, 2001), 192. See also, Neil A. Wynn, Deconstructing Tyson: The Black Boxer as American Icon, The International Journal of the History of Sport 20 (2003): 99114. Nack and Munson, 66. In arguing against this stereotype of black men enraged, I do not mean to suggest that there is not great reason for black men and women both to experience rage at a US system that continues to oppress their existence. bell hooks makes the point that black rage, does in fact exist; however, this collective rage is against a sustained, systemic racism affecting black folks in the US context. She argues, Mass medias trivialization of black rage reinforces white denial that white supremacy exists, that it is institutionalized, perpetuated by a system that condones the dehumanization of black people, by encouraging everyone to dismiss rage against racism as in no way a response to concrete reality since the black folks they see complaining are afuent. bell hooks, Killing Rage: Ending Racism (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1995), 29. John Fiske, Media Matters: Race and Gender in US Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Ed Guerrero, Framing Blackness: The African American Image in Film (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993). See also, Sarah Banet-Weiser, Hoop Dreams: Professional Basketball and the Politics of Race and Gender, Journal of Sport and Social Issues 23 (1999): 40320; Bart Landry, The New Black Middle Class (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992). Michael A. Messner, White Men Misbehaving: Feminism, Afrocentrism, and the Promise of a Critical Standpoint, in Sex, Violence and Power in Sports: Rethinking Masculinity, ed. Michaeal A. Messner and Donald F. Sabo (Freedom, CA: Crossing, 1994), 138. Phil Richards, NFL, Colts Try to Address Off-Field Abuse, The Indianapolis Star, 9 January 2000, A1. Steven D. Levitt, Facing the Rage, People Weekly, 20 February 1995, 5660'. Levitt, 57. Alex Tresniowski, Outrage-ous, People Weekly, 16 September 1996, 2034.

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It is worthwhile to remember that Time magazine literally enhanced O. J.s blackness through photo editing in their cover story after his initial arrest. See Dickinson and Anderson for further analysis of this darkening. Levitt, 56. O. J. Simpsons Trial Reveals Role of Sex, Race and Rage in Nations Hottest Courtroom Drama, Jet, 13 February 1995, 54. Don Yaeger, Prisoner of Conscience, Sports Illustrated, 15 April 2002, 54. Moorti, 73. Fiske, 1996, 80. Banet-Weiser, 409. Marian Meyers, News Coverage of Violence Against Women: Engendering Blame (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1997), 98. See also, Maria Bevacqua, Rape on the Public Agenda: Feminism and the Politics of Sexual Assault (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000); Jane Caputi, The Sexual Politics of Murder, in Violence Against Women: The Bloody Footprints, ed. Pauline B. Bart and Eileen Geil Moran (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1993), 525; William E. Cote and Roger Simpson, Covering Violence: A Guide to Ethical Reporting About Victims and Trauma (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000); Kozol, 1995. Meyers, 1997, 10. Mia Consalvo, 3 Shot Dead in Courthouse: Examining News Coverage of Domestic Violence and Mail-order Brides, Womens Studies in Communication 21 (1998): 190. Kozol, 659. D. Marvin Jones, Race, Sex, and Suspicion: The Myth of the Black Male (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005), 134. George P. Cunningham, Body Politics: Race, Gender, and the Captive Body, in Representing Black Men, ed. Marcellis Blount and George P. Cunningham (New York: Routledge, 1996), 142. Jackson, 12. Moorti, 195. Callie Marie Rennison, Intimate Partner Violence and Age of Victim, 19931999, (Washington, DC: US Department of Justice, 2001). Joy James, Resisting State Violence: Radicalism, Gender, and Race in US Culture. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 143. See also, bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992); Audre Lorde, Black Ladies, Welfare Queens, and State Minstrels: Ideological War by Narrative Means, in Birth of a Nationhood: Gaze, Script, and Spectacle in the O. J. Simpson Case, ed. Toni Morrison (New York: Pantheon Books, 1997), 32363; Marian Meyers, African American Women and Violence: Gender, Race, and Class in the News, Critical Studies in Media Communication 21 (2004): 95118. Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race, and Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 175.

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