Is stereotypical coverage of African-American athletes as 'dead as disco'? An analysis of NFL quarterbacks in the pages of 'Sports Illustrated'.

摘要

Racial stereotypes in magazine sports writing appear to be fading. A content analysis of Sports Illustrated coverage of six white and six African-American NFL quarterbacks during the 2002, 2003 and 2004 seasons indicates only slight differences in the way sports writers portray them. Unlike similar research that studied media coverage of African-American athletes in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, this research indicates no difference in the way the athletes' intelligence is described based on race. Sports Illustrated articles did contain slight differences in physical descriptions and references to the quarterbacks' families. The African-American quarterbacks received more physical descriptive passages. The white quarterbacks' families were discussed more. Overall, the coverage was more color-blind than it had been in previous decades.;Even more important than these findings, however, was that Sports Illustrated articles described each athlete as an individual, not simply a member of a racial group. This indicates progress from the last similar study conducted in 1994. However, despite this individualistic approach taken by the sports writers, there was a lack of personalization of the African-American quarterbacks. Where the sports writers portrayed the white athletes as three-dimensional human beings, the African-American athletes appeared less like humans and more like mere athletic machines. By focusing so much on performance, the sports writers did not disseminate classic stereotypes of African-American males as Sambos or brutes. However, sports writers also did not do a good job of portraying these African-American quarterbacks as more than "just football players.".