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Friday, July 6, 2007

Tattooed Athletes: Thuggery and Poor Role Models?

We are all familiar with the stereotype: A young Negro athlete arms covered in tattoos. Labelled a thug. Presented by the media as an affront to the ideals of white society.

The image has been carefully formulated and meticulously groomed as a means to ensure keeping the Negro athlete at the cusp of acceptability. A purposeful and formulaic method of relegating the young, rich Negro to being seen as "street", "ghetto", "gully"....unacceptable to the "media" (read: white society).

Interestingly enough, when the "media" reports on a white athlete getting some ink, it's reported as a wonderful and emotional experience.

Jim Edmonds has a new tattoo on the inside of his left wrist. Joining the "DK 57" he had stenciled there for teammate Darryl Kile, who died in 2002, is a "JH 32" in black ink. The initials stand for Josh Hancock, the Cardinals pitcher who was killed in an automobile accident earlier this season.

So, while the young Negro basketball player is characterised as a thuggish gangster with socially unacceptable and repugnant etchings on his dark skin; in contrast, the white athlete is presented as a sentimental and soulful man forever memorializing the memory of his friends/team mates by delicately engraving a tribute in the light canvas that is his skin.

We leave it for you to decide the motives behind the "media's" attempt to direct social acceptability.

5 comments:

Dave the Wave said...

yea, edmunds is thug.

he and elijah dukes should be euthanized.

censored said...

So, while the young Negro basketball player is characterised as a thuggish gangster with socially unacceptable and repugnant etchings on his dark skin

The characterization of the negro basketball player probably has more to do with the drug arrests, assaults, production of rap music with lyrics degrading to other blacks and women, and having bastard children then it does with any ink they may have on their skin. You are sad and misguided in your feeble attempts to make up conspiracy theories. Shouldnt you be off somewhere smoking weed with Zach Randolph?

nation_of_islam_sportsblog said...

"Shouldnt you be off somewhere smoking weed with Zach Randolph?"

Sir, you mean the "weed" that the government allows to be marketed in this country to support clandestine CIA efforts? That weed?

How dare you appear hear casting your baseless accusations and barely readable counter-blathering to our factual posts.

Dispute what we say, not what you would have liked us to say.

This isn't a matter of arrests or drugs or beating wives. It is a matter appearance being a driving factor in the media's portrayal of the better athletes.

Contest the points we make.

Not the one on your head.

Dismissed, ill-thinker.

lost said...

"allows to be marketed" ?

Sir, no need for the passive voice in this instance.

nation_of_islam_sportsblog said...

"Sir, no need for the passive voice in this instance."

Sir, true enough.

But, we have no interest into further inciting "censored".

Clearly, the incoherent ramblings he profers and the lack of any logic system to anchor his opining is the sign of someone that argues strictly with emotion.

Some say, racism is rooted in one's emotional response...which explains much of the seepage which oozes from his comments.