Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 1087

Rashard Mendenhall Offers Contrast to the Apathetic Black Athlete

Rashard Mendenhall Offers Contrast to the Apathetic Black Athlete by Mark Anthony Neal | The Atlanta Post
Like many Americans, professional football player Rashard Mendenhall was moved by the announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed by US military personnel.  Yet what moved Mendenhall to speak out in the hours after the announcement was his disgust with the celebratory antics of folk who gathered across from the White House and at Ground Zero in New York City.   On his Twitter feed Mendenhall wrote "What kind of person celebrates death? It's amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We've only heard one side…"  Mendenhall, who plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers, also expressed some concern that many who were celebrating in the streets didn't really know the full story.
Reaction to Mendenhall's comments was swift, most notably by Steelers team president Art Rooney II, who quickly distanced the team from Mendenhall's comments. "The entire Steelers organization is very proud of the job our military personnel have done and we can only hope this leads to our troops coming home soon," he announced. And just recently, Mendenhall was dropped as a spokesman for the sports apparel company Champion.
On Sports talk radio—never a bastion of thoughtful commentary—the reactions were to be expected: athletes should keep their opinions about anything other than the game, to themselves.  As Thabiti Lewis observes in his book Ballers of the New School: Race and Sports in America, sports are intended to "divert us from conversations of political, economic, or social criticisms and analysis, while cultivating jingoists—intense patriots." Yet, underlying even those nominal responses is the belief that Black athletes, in particular, should shut-up and, to quote rapper and activist Jasiri X, "just run the ball boy."
Read the Full Essay @ The Atlanta Post

A Strategy to Restore Hope to the City's Public Schools

From Centers of Obedience to Centers of Resistance: A Strategy to Restore Hope to the City's Public Schools by Professor Mark Naison | Fordham University
A tragic series of events is unfolding in working class New York. The lingering effects of the Recession, irresponsible private investments, and federal and state budget cuts, coupled with a failure to raise taxes on the wealthy, have created a toxic brew which is eroding the already fragile living standards of the city's poor and bringing with it higher levels of homelessness, hunger and violence.
Nowhere is this more visible than in the housing market where a combination of foreclosures on private homes, failed investments by private equity companies, the phasing out of federal rent subsidies, the proposed end of Work Advantage Program in New York State, and rising rents in public housing have taken thousands of units of affordable housing out of commission and forced tens of thousands of people to "double" and "triple up" with friends and relatives or move into shelters.
The effects of this are visible throughout the city's public schools where more and more children are arriving at school stressed, hungry, and frightened as their families are displaced and their ability to assure their children of adequate sleep, food and study space is undermined. Once, such wounded children could find safe, protected space in libraries and after school programs, but with upcoming budget cuts to libraries (which will cut public library hours from 40 to 28 a week) and to after school and recreational programs, these youngsters will be increasingly on their own, forced to spend time in public places--streets, subways and shelters--where danger lurks for young people without adult supervision and protection.
In the face of this unfolding tragedy, what are teachers, principals, and school guidance counselors to do?The official policy of the NYC Department of Education is to pretend this isn't happening. Their response is more assessments, more tests, more ratings, more pressure on students and everyone who is working with them.
And the result is predictable. The misery of the students is spreading to the teachers whose spirit is being broken, not only by the violent incidents occurring in schools with increasing frequency, but by the evident pain their students are in, visible not only in their inability to concentrate in class, but their harrowing stories of hunger and homelessness and family catastrophe.
All of this is taking place, I must add, amidst fierce pressure from the Department of Education (DOE) to raise test scores and graduation rates, with the fear of school closings and loss of employment as potential penalties.
It's time to flip the script. Schools must become places, not only where students in trouble are protected and nurtured, but where the adults working there fight for them as if they were their own children.
Every New York City public school should become a center of resistance to budget cuts, not only in schools, but in libraries, after school centers, and programs that provide or protect affordable housing.The culture of compliance and obedience, which has left teachers and students alike demoralized and terrorized, must be replaced by a culture of resistance.
The school must become a place where political education and political organizing takes place uniting teachers, parents and students in strategies which will put pressure on elected officials that haven't been seen since the 1960's. Pressure to restore housing subsidies, expand funding for after school programs, restore library budgets to their 2008 levels, bring more arts and sports programs into the public schools, create more school health centers, end all teacher layoffs and and tax the wealthy to pay for these reforms.
Not only will such actions restore a sense of agency to teachers, who regularly vilified in the press and by public officials, asthe cause of their students "failures," it will give hope and inspiration to tens of thousands of young people, and members of their families, who are losing hope that their lives will involve anything other than hardship and pain.
It's time to transform New York City public schools from centers of fear and intimidation to "liberated zones" where teachers, students and parents can talk freely how to make their schools and neighborhoods places where people who are not wealthy can lead decent lives and provide hope and opportunity to their children.
And if that leads them directly to the steps of City Hall, the State Legislature, and the US Congress, or to the headquarters of Wall Street banks so be it.
On a small scale, this is starting to happen. A group of insurgent teachers and parents have started a program called "Fight Back Fridays" with actions taking place at public schools around the city on May 20.
But this should only be the beginning of a mighty wave of protest that will transform the New York City public schools from centers of obedience into center of resistance to the budget cuts and to government by the rich, for the rich, which seems to be the trend, not only in New York, but around the country.
The Sleeping Giant is starting to awake. Student, teachers and parents, joined together, can be a mighty force for Justice and Democracy.
***
Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham's Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930's to the 1960's.

Sammy Davis, Jr.: 'The Candy Man' (for the Whurl-a-Gurls

By far, the most requested song on the iPod when I'm in the car with the Whurl-a-Gurls.

'Left of Black': Episode #33 featuring Lisa B. Thompson

Left of Black #33 w/ Lisa B. ThompsonMay 9, 2011
Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype by scholar and playwright Lisa B. Thompson. Neal and Thompson discuss the images of Black middle class women, the Tony Award nominated musical The Scottsboro Boys and the role of Black men in the production of Black women's art.
***
—>Lisa B. Thompson is a playwright and associate professor of English at the State University of New York, Albany where she teaches courses in African American literature, drama, theory, and cultural studies. Her book, Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class (2009), explores black middle class female sexuality through works by African American women authors. Her critically acclaimed off-Broadway play, Single Black Female, which was nominated for a 2005 LA Weekly Theatre Award for best comedy, has been produced throughout the US; in 2010 the play received its international debut in Toronto.
***
Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

Mother's Day: Chocolate Genius | "My Mom"

I last saw my mom conscious on Mother's Day 2009 in a Maryland nursing home; "My Mom" by Chocolate Genius (Marc Anthony Thompson) captures many of the emotions I felt that day.--MAN

From Precious II For Colored Girls: The Black Image in the American Mind

From Precious II For Colored Girls: The Black Image in the American Mind
For the past five years, the Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media has partnered with Rap Sessions: Community Dialogues to bring together a distinguished panel of scholars, journalists, and activists for a townhall-style meeting addressing important issues in our communities. Rap Sessions is led by critically acclaimed journalist, activist, political analyst, and Institute Fellow, Bakari Kitwana.
This year's panel explores contemporary moments in popular culture and political debates where race, image, and identity have taken center stage. Recent films like "Precious," "For Colored Girls," and TV shows like "The Wire" and "Treme," as well as current political issues such as immigration, are among the topics addressed by this panel.
Panelists include: Elizabeth Méndez Berry, journalist (The Nation, Washington Post) and author of The Obama Generation, Revisited; John Jennings, professor of visual studies, SUNY Buffalo, and co-author of Black Comix: African American Independent Comix and Culture; Joan Morgan, journalist, cultural critic, and author of When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost; Mark Anthony Neal, professor of Black popular culture at Duke University and author of New Black Man; Vijay Prashad, director of international studies at Trinity College and author of The Darker Nations: A People's History of The Third World.
Listen @ WBEZ

William Jelani Cobb Remembers His Mother

Children Remember Their Mother's Influence by NPR Staff
William Anthony Cobb's friends know him to be outspoken. They think the 42-year-old developed that trait in law school, but he says it's genetic.
Cobb credits his mother, Mary Cobb, because she was "prone to some rather long-winded debates about just about everything" when he and his sister were growing up.
"You should be able to talk to a person in the Bowery as well as to the president of the United States," he remembers her telling him. "Then you can say that you are a well-rounded, well-educated person."
Mary died in February at the age of 67. She had pancreatic cancer — the same kind of cancer that killed her husband, Willie Lee Cobb, in 1992.
Before Mary died, she and her son reminisced. Cobb remembers finishing his doctorate. There were thousands of people at his graduation, and Mary was about 10 rows away from the stage. "And only my son gets up and walks down the middle of the aisle. I didn't know why you got up, and I said, 'Oh my God, I hope he doesn't have to go to the bathroom,' " she said at the time, laughing.
Listen @ NPR

Shut up and Play, or Just Shut Up: Lessons from the Panic over Rashard Mendenhall's Tweets

  Shut up and Play, or Just Shut up:
Lessons from the Panic over Rashard Mendenhall's Tweets by David J. Leonard and C. Richard King | Special to NewBlackMan
It has become almost cliché to condemn and demonize contemporary black athletes for their purported lack of political activity.  Celebrating the courageous stances of athletes like Muhammad Ali, John Carlos, and Curt Flood, it is commonplace to see contemporary praise alongside of the demonization of today's ballers.  Here are but a few examples of the ways in which the modern athlete, defined and represented through the black athlete, are ridicule for political cowardice and apathy. 
Jaymes Powell Jr., in "Severed from the Struggle," argues that, "many athletes of African-American descent haven't embraced activism the way previous generations did.  They say there are no modern-day counterparts to Jim Brown, Tommy [sic] Smith, Arthur Ashe, and former N.C. A & T quarterback Jesse Jackson, athletes who took leading roles in the battle for civil rights" (2007).  Similarly, Greg Mathis in "Where is Today's Muhammad Ali?" concludes that sports no longer generates activism, "fall[ing] victim to the slave mentality of 'take the money and shut up."  He notes further, "From athletic shoes to sports drinks today's major athletes can and do hawk everything under the sun. 
Unfortunately, when it comes to political and social issues, these celebrities are uncharacteristically silent.  It was not always that way" (2004).   Greg Jayne agrees, arguing that today's athletes, unlike Smith and Carlos, Curt Flood, or Ali, have turned their backs on the tradition of athletes taking a stand.  "They're wealthy, they're prominent and they're alternatively revered and reviled for their uneasy position as role models.  Athletes are among the most visible members of society.  Yet along with the riches and the fame and the status as style-makers, there is a wealth of silence" (2003).  Scoop Jackson in an effort to highlight the efforts Etan Thomas to speak truth to power, put it this way:
We live in the era of the soundless athlete. An era in which the highest-profile figures in sports not only say nothing about the condition of the sociopolitical landscape their fan base resides in, but worse -- they have nothing to say. They'll speak of love and hate in Nike commercials, they'll save women falling from buildings in Adidas spots. They'll dunk cantaloupes in carts in grocery store isles, they'll chase Afro'd dolls through parties trying to get a Sprite. They'll put tats on their bodies proclaiming love for loved ones and those they've lost; they'll go on "Oprah" or "Jay Leno" and shed tears about their past and how they were lost; they'll do one-on-ones with chosen sportscasters to promote their CDs; they'll form opinions about dress codes. Saying nothing.
And, bottom line? Ain't none of them wrong. That's what they are supposed to do. Their silence has emancipated them. Taken them places past their American dreams. Made them our heroes. Some our leaders. To them we look for answers; answers we find in their silence. We applaud their performances, make sure our kids always choose them on "NBA Ballers"; Live '06 them, Xbox them, DS them, PSP them. All the while accepting their silence (2006).
While many commentators see the silence as organic, as a reflection of the dysfunction of today's (black) athletes, as their refusal to accept the baton of their forbearers, and even the changing economics of sports, they, like so much in the media, ignore the mechanism that discipline and punish (black) athletes for speaking up, for challenging the status quo.  As Scoop Jackson notes, "And, bottom line? Ain't none of them wrong. That's what they are supposed to do."  Better said, it is what is required of them: "Shut up and play"! 
To grasp the power of this equation, we need look no further than the current frenzy and the denunciation surrounding Pittsburgh Steelers running back Rashard Mendenhall, who in the wake of the announced killing of Osama Bin Laden and national celebrations, took to his twitter page, where he offered the following:
What kind of person celebrates death? It's amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We've only heard one side...
@dkeller23 We'll never know what really happened. I just have a hard time believing a plane could take a skyscraper down demolition style [USA Today reports that this has been subsequently removed]
I believe in God. I believe we're ALL his children. And I believe HE is the ONE and ONLY judge.
Those who judge others, will also be judged themselves.
For those of you who said you want to see Bin Laden burn in hell and piss on his ashes, I ask how would God feel about your heart?
There is not an ignorant bone in my body. I just encourage you to #think
Not surprisingly his remarks have triggered an avalanche of criticism.  Art Rooney II, the Steelers' owner, publicly condemned his comments, seemingly questioning his patriotism, going as far to link his comments to support for the troops.  "I have not spoken with Rashard so it is hard to explain or even comprehend what he meant with his recent Twitter comments. The entire Steelers' organization is very proud of the job our military personnel have done and we can only hope this leads to our troops coming home soon."  Others followed suit focusing on the one conspiracy tweet to depict him as a crazy, ignorant, and otherwise out-of-step with reality.  Described as a "meltdown," "Football's Newest Villain," as someone whose "mouth and tweets are simply disrespectful," as someone who "sounds ridiculous (again)," as irrational and not presently on earth, as sympathetic to Bin Laden,  as a defender of Bin Laden and another "dumb jock."  Much of the discourse focused on his questions that fit with those conspiracy theorists and not on many other tweets about the meaning of and celebration of the assassination.
Rick Chandler seemed to capture the sentiment and animosity best with his column:
Last night I had a very vivid dream. An elite team of Navy SEALs flew two Blackhawk helicopters into Rashard Mendenhall's residence. After encountering token resistance from the dog (neutralized by Snausages), the elite special forces team located the Steelers running back in an upstairs bedroom, where he was in the process of tweeting a friend (not a euphemism). The SEALs confiscated his cell phone — and all others in the house — and then departed as quickly as they had arrived.  So, hopefully, there will be no further retarded tweets such as this.
On Foxnews.com, comments consistently questioned his intelligence, calling him a "moron," an "idiot," "a clown" and "garbage" who couldn't have gone to college.  One poster made clear the power of white racial framing, noting, "Gee, and I thought the NFL only harbored rapists, murderers, and dog killers."   Many who posted on the site called for his release and/or a boycott of the Steelers.  Similarly, on ESPN.com (and on Huffington Post there was more support for Mendenhall especially regarding the condemnation of celebrations of death) which as of Tuesday had elicited over 8,000 comments, he was referred as a "moron," a "terrorist," "an idiot," and someone who just needs "to shut up."
Several commentators also linked his tweets to his past comments about the NFL and slavery.  Responding to comments made by the Vikings' Adrian Peterson, Mendenhall stated, "Anyone with knowledge of the slave trade and the NFL could say that these two parallel each other."  In posts and in comments, his remarks about 9/11 and the killing of Bin Laden are connected to his comments about the NFL not only in an effort to demonize him as a radical but to reduce him to yet another ungrateful black athlete who spits on his profession and country.  Columnist Gene Collier epitomizes this rendering of Mendenhall as he openly mocked him and his intelligence in a recent diatribe, lambasting the running back for his lack of understanding of sport management, structural engineering, and history.
Last I checked, no one was dodging the NFL draft by fleeing to Canada. No one is forced to play football, Rashard. This must have played well in Dublin, where the United States ambassador to Ireland is only the man after which the Rooney Rule is named, only the first-born son of The Chief, one of the first NFL owners to have African-Americans on his roster.
In short, Collier and seemingly countless others find Mendenhall to be ignorant and ungrateful, laughable for his lack of common sense and easily dismissed for not knowing his place. As Collier quipped, "It's better to remain silent and thought a fool than to tweet and remove all doubt."  In other words, shut up and play; don't trouble us with your thoughts, especially when they run counter to conventional wisdom, challenge the white racial frame, and upset management and the fan base.  As Collier concludes, refiguring the star athlete as a terrorist, "As an American, Mendenhall has rights. Because it's a great and confounding country, he has a right to his mouth just as he has a right to an AK-47. How 'bout don't go shootin' 'em off."
Mendenhall is not alone in feeling the public wrath's for not only being politically vocal but for speaking out in away that challenges dominant assumptions and ideologies.  Carlos Delgado, Toni Smith, Josh Howard, Steve Nash, and Etan Thomas (see Dave Zirin for more discussion), among others, have also been targeted for their outspoken challenges to imperialism, war, and systemic violence.  It is not a politically active athlete that is undesirable, but one who challenges the conventional wisdom, especially when said athlete is a young African American.  
Dave Zirin, in "Shut Up and Play? Patriotism, Jock Culture and the Limits of Free Speech," reminds readers about the historic blindness in today's celebration of activist-athlete of year's past: If you look historically at athletes who today are admired for their courageous honesty—people like Muhammad Ali, Billie Jean King, Jim Brown, and Bill Russell—they were all told by the sports columnists of their day that they should button their lips and just play."
This conclusion raises a troubling question: What exactly does the nostalgia for political athletes of the past mean today? Sadly, it may mean that those selected for celebration fall on the right side of history, presumably with "us."  Their once objectionable observations now resonate with common sense assessments of race, justice, and society. In celebrating them exclusively, while remain silent about, or worse attacking, objectionable expressions by athletes today, encourages both a confirmation of the status quo and a demonization of those few who do speak up.  More broadly, the panic around Mendenhall's tweets further underscores the deep entanglements of sporting spectacles and national narratives. 
Few complaints were heard when the NFL (to take but one example) amplified its inculcation of patriotism following 9/11.  In fact, franchises profited; fans felt good; and the war on terror thrived unquestioned. In contrast, the passing comments of one player questioning how the public responded to the killing of Osama bin Laden and accepted accounts of the events he set in motion sparks a firestorm of controversy.  In such a context, one cannot hope for sport to liberate, inspire, or transform.  Indeed, the Mendenhall affair may confirm Noam Chomsky's observation about sport: "it occupies the populations, and it keeps them from trying to get involved with things that really matter" (2002, 99-100).  By extension, nostalgic celebrations paired with contemporary demonization further turns our attention away from what matters in sport and society.
*** C. Richard King is the Chair of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University at Pullman and the author/editor of several books, including Team Spirits: The Native American Mascot Controversy and Postcolonial America.


David J. Leonard is an associate professor in the Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University at Pullman. His next book (SUNY Press) is on the NBA after the November 2004 brawl during a Pacers-Pistons game at the The Palace of Auburn Hills He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums.

Why More And More Students "In the Hood" Are Out of Control

Why More And More Students "In the Hood" Are Out of Control by Mark Naison | Fordham University
During the last year, I have gotten more and more reports from the best teachers I know in Bronx public schools, that their students"are out of control." We are not talking about Ivy League Teach for America types who grew up in wealthy suburbs, but tough, charismatic, physically imposing women graduates of New York City public schools, with formidable classroom management skills and a great sense of humor.
At first, I found these reports hard to believe. The women I am talking about are not only physically strong, they are incredibly innovative in their pedagogy- the best of the best! If they can't control a class of Bronx 11 or 14 year olds, who could?
But then I started thinking about their work in a much larger context than one suggested by discussions of curriculum, class management, or graduation rates. And I came up with a startling conclusion- that students living in America's poor neighborhoods, even by age 10 or 11, already know, intuitively, that the schools they are in are unlikely to get them out of the world of poverty and hardship that surrounds them. As a result, they see what goes on in classrooms--especially all the tests they are bombarded with--as fundamentally irrelevant to their lives!And they are not wrong in their assessment! If they look around their neighborhoods, they see precious few people who have used education to better their lives. For every person in their hood who gets out by pursuing higher education, there are five who leave by going to prison or joining the armed forces. In their world, there is little real life reinforcement of the message schools preach--that the way to success in America is by passing tests, graduating from high school and going on to college. Those who do manage to jump through all those hoops, when they get to college, find the path is long and treacherous, both economically and academically, and if they do manage to get a college degree often can't get jobs at all, or can't get jobs that allow them to pay off their student loans.
The current economic crisis has only made the path of self-denial and academic effort seem more problematical. At a time when even middle class college graduates, from top private colleges, have trouble finding work how are you going to "sell" the proposition that education is the path to success in South Bronx neighborhoods like Morrisania or Hunts Point?
The bottom line is--in a city where the top 1 percent of the population monopolizes 44 percent of the income--you can't. The deck is already so stacked against young people growing up in poverty that no legerdemain or trickery or classroom magic can convince them that the things they are learning and being tested on will have any positive effect on their lives.
So why shouldn't they fool around? Why shouldn't they act out? Why shouldn't they try to enhance their reputation as a thug, a comedian, or a flirt by making the classroom their private theater? After all, those traits represent real life social capital in the world they inhabit, as opposed to the math problems, history lessons, or sentences they are given to construct.
Some people attribute the phenomenon of poor kids acting out to the stress they are under outside of school--reflected in issues ranging from poor diet, to lack of sleep, to gang violence, to physical abuse in their places of residence. All those are undoubtedly contributing factors. But let's not discount the "rational" element in student behavior, reflected in their very real understanding that the schools they are in are simply unable to deliver on the promise of a better life they use to "sell" their pedagogy.
Given that cold reality, there is absolutely no reason why a student in a place like the South Bronx should defer the joy and status of being a class comedian or "thug in training" for the prospect of participating in an endless round of test preparation and taking which for people in their neighborhood is truly "A Race To Nowhere."
*** Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham's Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930's to the 1960's.

Decoding the Curse: The Racial Subtexts of the new Face of Madden Football

Decoding the Curse:  The Racial Subtexts of the New Face of Madden Football by David J. Leonard and C. Richard King
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are pleased to announce this year's cover for Madden 2012: Peyton Hillis. Who? Peyton Hillis. No, not Peyton Manning.  He's a great player, but didn't have his greatest year in 2011. Right, the running back. No, not Walter Payton (RIP).  Not Sweetness; not Gary Payton; Toby Gillis, or any other sport celebrity that might immediately come to mind. 
Peyton Hillis, drafted in the seventh round of the 2008 NFL by the Denver Broncos, had a break out season after being traded to the Cleveland Browns and stepping up to replace the injured rookie Montario Hardesty.  He rushed for 1,177 yards and scored 11 touchdowns in the 2010 NFL season, becoming a cult hero for many fans.
Following in the footsteps of Eddie George, Michael Vick, Ray Lewis, Donovan McNabb, Shaun Alexander, Vince Young, Brett Favre, Larry Fitzgerald, Troy Polamalu and Drew Brees, Hillis will become the latest NFL player to appear on the cover of this flagship game.  Unlike his predecessors, Hillis is neither a perennial star nor a household name.  His selection, however, speaks volumes about sport celebrity, new media, and old racial politics.
In a canny marketing campaign, EA Sports teamed up with ESPN to stage its own "March Madness," a 32-person bracket that allowed fans to select the athlete to be featured on the cover.  This system played to national fantasies about meritocracy and free democracy.  The Bleacher Report described the approach in the following way: "Each player will go against an opposing player to see who gets the most votes. The one who gets the most votes will move on to the next round and face another player. The selection process with go under those terms until a winner is chosen. Be sure to vote each week for your favorites to find out who will be on the Madden 12 cover."  After successive rounds that saw several potential NFL stars, including Adrian Peterson and Drew Brees, lose their bids to appear on the cover, voters were left with two choices, Peyton Hillis and Michael Vick. 
At a certain level, the differences between these two men wrote the narrative itself: Vick, the former first-round pick who has long dazzled fans with his brilliance on the field; Hillis, a relative unknown drafted in the seventh round out of University of Arkansas; Vick, the odds on favorite, against Hillis, the underdog, seeded tenth in the bracket, who had already beaten Matt Ryan, Ray Rice, and Aaron Rodgers; Vick, whose legal troubles made him a media pariah; Hillis, described as "the common man."  Yet, each also fit into the media's narrative obsession with redemption with Madden affording Vick the opportunity to solidify his comeback and Hillis the chance to prove himself. 
In the final vote, Hillis dominated Vick, securing 64% of the vote.  While it may be tempting to see the results a mere popularity contest, they say more about the significance of race today than the appeal of individual athletes.
At a certain level, it is easy to think about Vick's loss in the final (he had won in previous rounds) as confirmation of the difficult path toward redemption for contemporary black athletes.  Like Vick's persistently low-q score, Hillis' annihilation of Vick suggests that he may be branded forever as a convicted felon, thug, dog fighter and gangster.  It demonstrates that whereas whiteness in a sporting context continues to reference the hard-working, cerebral hero, blackness exists as "a problematic sign and ontological position" (Williams 1998, p. 140).  In this regard, Vick is unable to transcend the scripts that limit his public identity.  As such, many fans took to the Internet to confirm that this was a referendum on Vick, underscoring that he did not deserve the cover because of his past behavior.  For example, the following was posted on ESPN.com:

Vick is scum! Vick's dog fighting was the least of it. Vick killed thirteen dogs by various methods including wetting one dog down and electrocuting her, hanging, drowning and shooting others and, in at least one case, by slamming a dog's body to the ground. He forcibly drowned a pit bull! Can you imagine the struggling dog in his hands, drowning?!?! What kind of person does this? A sick, evil person, who is now free in society. Vick also thought it "funny" to put family pet dogs in with pit bulls to see them ripped apart. Is this a man you think should be free to roam in society? He didn't make a mistake. He did this for five years! He is the scum of earth. Think of what's in his brain? He is beyond evil. If a person had done these same things to a human, we would say that they are beyond help, and would never be allowed back into society, but if you do it to a dog, then rehabilitation is fast and easy, and all is forgiven and forgotten very quickly. He's healed? Is he eff !!!!

Many others followed suit, taking this as an opportunity to further punish and discipline Vick for his past.  Yet, to reduce Hillis victory to the disdain for Vick/unredemptive possibilities for transgressive black bodies is to ignore the broader issues at work here. 
At one level, the arrival of Hillis illustrates the celebration of whiteness and nostalgia for a different era in sports.  It represents a moment where sports fans symbolically took the sport back.  He was the underdog who miraculously beat Michael Vick.  This evident in comments like this: "Peyton Hillis is a monster! Who doesn't want a white guy at running back in the NFL, goes back to the old days of football."
In reading website comments and reviewing various commentaries, it becomes clear that many fans find in Hillis an opportunity to reengage the NFL through what Joe Feagin dubs the "white racial frame."  To this constituency, following C.L. Cole and David Andrews (2001, 72) take on the NBA in the closing decades of the 20th century, Hillis offers football fans in the 21st century a "breath of fresh air for an American public 'tired of trash-talking, spit-hurling, head-butting sports millionaires.'"  He provides a racial time machine to an imagined period of sports where (white) male heroes played the right way; he is constructed as a clear alternative to "African American professional basketball players who are routinely depicted in the popular media as selfish, insufferable, and morally reprehensible" (Cole & Andrews, 2001: 72). 
At another level, Hillis' victory can be read as something of a triumph for the backlash against racial justice and for the usefulness of sincere fictions in a society of spectacle.  When asked about whether or not other players used race as part of trash-talking Hillis stated: "Every team did it. They'll say, 'You white boy, you ain't gonna run on us today. This is ridiculous. Why are you giving offensive linemen the ball? All kinds of stuff like that you hear on the field, but I use that to my advantage. I kind of soaked it in, ate it up a little bit, because I enjoyed it."  Despite his focus on racially-based trash-talking, the media discourse pivoted, focusing on reverse racism and systemic racism. 
In "Racism Alive and Swell in NFL," LeCharles Bentley, a former NFL center, argues that Hillis, who isn't the prototypical "chocolate bruiser" is the latest victim of the color bar of the NFL.  "Apparently a white running back who struggled because he was pigeon-holed as a fullback isn't as valued as a black running back with multiple knee injuries. This is eerily similar to the early years in the NFL when black players struggled with typecasting but kept their mouths shut for fear of being labeled a 'troublemaker.'  The argument here is simple: Not only did Hillis face difficulty in securing a job because of prejudice, but compared to backs like Knowshon Moreno and Correll Buckhalter, among others, he received little recognition and media exposure despite his success.  And while Bentley links the positional segregation to a larger history of anti-black racism, the linear narrative offered reinforces that idea that the tables have turned and now it is white players that suffer because of racial stereotypes.  
Similarly, Josiah Schlatter, takes up this question in "Was Peyton Hillis subjected to reverse racism for being a white running back?" He thinks so," gives voice to the problems faced by Hillis because of race.  Focusing on "racist linebackers," and while arguing that the racial epithets directed at Hillis are little more than trash-talking, the premise/title of the argument reinforced the idea behind the discriminated white athlete.  Add to this, many of the comments focused on the double standards and how racism directed at African Americans would never be tolerated.  It was yet another example of how the system was rigged against white men.  In a world that purportedly privileges and benefits black athletes, the recognition afforded to Hillis represents a victory for the white minority in football.  Indeed, many of the online comments celebrating Hillis and his victory underscore Kyle Kusz's findings in his monograph, Revolt of the White Athlete: white masculinity is framed as battered, besieged, and belittled by the media, black athletes, and the masses; this marginal position affords white men an alternative space in which to recapture the center under the cover of victimization as it encourages the formulation of romanticized identities and seemingly revolutionary images that counter progressive reframings of race, gender, and sexuality.
This past season, Derron Synder took up the debate surrounding white guys in the NFL, interrogating the arguments put forth by caste football, a website connected to the white nationalist movement.  He noted the pride white players in the NFL evoke in white fans in oddly empathetic terms:

Nonetheless, I understand why some white folks lament the NFL's lack of white halfbacks, receivers and defensive backs while championing the select few that exist. That's kind of like black folks complaining about the NFL's lack of black quarterbacks while cheering on the handful who make it. I certainly also understand the sense of pride that (white) New England Patriots halfback Danny Woodhead generated with his breakout game against the Miami Dolphins on Monday Night Football. Likewise, I understand why (white) New England Patriots receiver Wes Welker fosters the same feeling. I'm sure that Woodhead and Welker are inspirations to every young (white) football player who is being conditioned to believe that certain positions at the major-college or NFL level are beyond his capabilities.

The problem here is that the history of white and black football players, just as in the larger society, are defined by racial segregation, inequity, and privilege. The instances of primarily white coaches and general managers converting white running backs to fullbacks or tight ends because of stereotypes about black and white physicality is not the same as these same gatekeepers questioning the intellectual readiness of black players to excel at quarterback or middle linebacker.  Likewise, the celebration of Danny Woodhead, Wes Welker, or Peyton Hillis means something different than Warren Moon, Doug Williams, or Donovan McNabb, precisely because such celebrations occur in a social milieu anchored in and animated by white supremacy.  Even conceding certain elements of physical prowess (such as speed) to athletes of African descent only affirms the superiority of EuroAmericans--fans and athletes--whose intellect, culture, and character transcend the banality and vulgarity of the body.  As such, celebrating Woodhead, Welker, and Hillis is to celebrate the core values of white supremacy, while championing Moon, Williams, and McNabb calls into question those values and the regime of racial discrimination that still favors the commodification and criminalization of black bodies to the recognition of shared humanity.

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C. Richard King is the Chair of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University at Pullman and the author/editor of several books, including Team Spirits: The Native American Mascot Controversy and Postcolonial America.
David J. Leonard is an associate professor in the Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University at Pullman. His next book (SUNY Press) is on the NBA after the November 2004 brawl during a Pacers-Pistons game at the The Palace of Auburn Hills He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums.