C. Richard King

Unsettling Engagements: On the Ends of Rapport in Critical Ethnography

The authors attempt to frame the essays in this issue of Qualitative Inquiry by arguing that an increasing emphasis on forms of “critical ethnography” in a variety of ethnographically informed disciplines has significantly complicated the notion of ethnographic rapport. Rapport, as a methodological trope and relational strategy of the ethnographic habitus, has, in some circles, already been undergoing reconsideration and revision. But too often, it has simply been ignored. This refusal to locate rapport has been particularly problematic for ethnographers informed by technologies of critical theory. Critical ethnographers, including the contributors to this issue, inscribe a range of contrasting perspectives variously regarding the (im)possibility, desirability, ambiguity, and legitimacy of rapport. This issue allows ethnographers of human practice and meaning to seriously ponder the suggestion that they must indeed “forget” rapport.

Of Polls and Race Prejudice: Sports Illustrated’s Errant “Indian Wars”

This article offers a collaborative review of the article “The Indian Wars”from the March 4, 2002, issue of Sports Illustrated that purported to present novel scientific findings regarding the attitudes of sports fans and American Indians toward Native American mascots. Despite the claims of the periodical, the authors argue, the article provides a flawed and biased account of pseudo-Indian mascots that misconstrues their history as well as significance to Native and non-Native peoples. The authors begin with a critical reading of the article, analyzing its arguments, interpretive frames, methodology, and evidence. Then, the authors examine the context omitted from the article. In turn, the authors highlight the place of Indian stereotypes within EuroAmerican and Native American communities, the intersections of race and power animating such mascots, and the prejudice and terror encouraged by mascots and media coverage of them. Finally, the authors discuss the implications of “The Indian Wars.”

This Is Not an Indian Situating Claims about Indianness in Sporting Worlds

This article reviews the history and significance of Native Americanmascots as well as the ongoing controversy over the continued use of pseudo-Indian imagery in athletics. It offers a succinct review of the literature, identifying three key foci: stereotyping, historical structures, and institutional arrangements. Against this background, it underscores the central concerns and core contribution of the special: the examination of the competing and contradictory claims made on, off, about, and through Indianness in the creation and contestation of Native American mascots. It attends to the appropriation of Indianness at the heart of American imperialism as well as recent efforts to reclaimcontrol over Indianness through a decolonization of sporting worlds. A summary of the scope and significance of each of the contributions to the special issue follows.

Fighting Spirits The Racial Politics of Sports Mascots

This article explores the racial politics of sports mascots through a comparative account of the uses of Indianness at Florida State University and the centrality of Confederate symbols at the University of Mississippi. It avoids the temptation of romanticizing resistance as well as easy, if not impulsive, condemnations. Instead, employing a neo-Gramscian and poststructural framework, it seeks to complicate prevailing understandings of sports mascots. It details the contours of imperial Whiteness and the competing efforts to reformulate Euro-American identity emergent in its wake. At the same time, it theorizes the awkward alliances often forged between subalterns and institutions with racially charged sports mascots.

Defacements/effacements: anti-Asian (American) sentiment in sport.

This article experiments with performative and dialogic techniques to trace the contours of anti-Asian American sentiments in sport. It suggests that jokes and joking behaviors are one the key things that binds Asian Americans to sport in the popular imaginary. Moreover, it outlines the ways that sporting humor works to efface and deface Asians and Asian Americans. Well-known utterances by Fuzzy Zoeller, directed at Tiger Woods, and Shaquille O’Neal, directed toward Yao Ming, center much of the discussion.

Toward a Radical Sport Journalism An Interview With Dave Zirin

This interview opens two dialogues with sport journalist Dave Zirin. On one hand, it poses questions to Zirin about his work, its evolution, and its significance. On the other hand, it places his responses in conversation with his writing and initiatives to foster a deeper understanding. Together, these dialogues not only introduce readers to an emerging public intellectual whose work promises to change sport and sport journalism but also highlight the key themes animating his imagination—especially activism, social justice, cultural justice, racism, and sexism.

On being a warrior: Race, gender and American Indian imagery in sport

This essay examines the ways in which racism and sexism have energized the use of American Indian imagery in sport. Specifically, it concentrates on the development and defence of Native American sports mascots, detailing the importance of crises within hegemonic formulations of masculinity and their relationships with the valuation of women, the reinscription of racial privilege and the maintenance of tradition. It begins with a discussion of the history and significance of Native American sports mascots, before considering the importance of gender to their emergence and elaboration. On this foundation, it offers a critical reading of one strand of neo-conservative thought intent on retaining stereotypical renderings of indigenous peoples in association with sports. In particular, it interprets writings of Dave Shiflett, Richard Poe and David Yeagley as emblematic of the uses of racial and gender differences in the unfolding mascot controversy at the start of the twenty-first century. In conclusion, it outlines the implications of placing gender and its articulation with race at discussion of American Indian imagery in sport.

Lack of Black Opps: Kobe Bryant and the difficult path of redemption.

A fundamental contradiction anchors contemporary sport: for many, it exemplifies racial transcendence; yet racism continues to shape play, persona, and possibilities. For Black athletes, in particular, it opens a space of overdetermination, constraining representation and reception, while challenging their humanity. Following Joe Feagin (2009), this article suggests the white racial frame offers a means of accounting for and unpacking the persistent force of race in a society determined to be beyond—or better said, done with—it. Recent panics around Kobe Bryant center the analysis. A close reading of media coverage and fan commentary reveals a troubling discursive pattern of racialization and sexualization. Indeed, especially in online forums, this discourse actively seizes upon the All-Pro forward to rearticulate supposedly antiquated formulations of difference and reanimate the prevailing hierarchies anchored in them. Ultimately, popular reception and representation of Bryant exposes not only the persistent myths of black masculinity at the heart of the white racial frame, but also suggest the ways in which they make it impossible for African Americans (athlete or not) to transcend them, redeem themselves in a white world, or claim dignity and humanity.

Preoccupations and Prejudices: Reflections on the Study of Sports Imagery

This essay examines the predicaments and possi bilities of the anthropological study of sport, arguing that it offers anthropologists unique opportunities to fashion engaged, critical, and public anthropologies. It focusses on sports mascots and how they epitomize the promise of the anthropological study of sports. It begins with a consideration of the disciplinary biases and barriers that have prevented anthropologists from taking the study of sports seriously. Against this background, it reviews a number of ongoing struggles over racialized imagery in sports, highlighting their relevance for the formulation of engaged

Teaching Intolerance: Anti-Indian Imagery, Racial Politics, and (Anti)Racist Pedagogy

In the immediate aftermath of the semiannual University of Illinois Board of Trustees meeting, which witnessed yet another official endorsement of the school’s embattled mascot, Chief Illiniwek, albeit through one more deferred vote, Chris Neubauer (2003), sport columnist for the student newspaper, The Daily Illini, did not call the process obstructionist or the school symbol racist, but instead called for more education. In addition to a preponderance of courses devoted to ‘‘Hindi, Japanese, Bulgarian and many other languages and nationalities’’ and the paucity of offerings on Native Americans, Neubauer lamented the costly, decade-long debate over the use of Indian imagery, blaming it for the collective ignorance of the student body about ‘‘their’’ Indian: ‘‘We are at one of the finest institutions of higher learning in the world, but sadly we aren’t educated about our own symbol.’’ To rectify this cultural illiteracy, he implores the university to teach more courses on American Indians, particularly the indigenous peoples of Illinois, and to develop a Native American Studies program. Importantly, his real commitment lies in the tradition of playing Indian at the university, evidenced by his interest in learning about the naming of the state and school symbol as well as the origins of Chief Illiniwek, rather than the complex history of the native nations of North America, including dispossession, forced removal, assimilation, survival, and sovereignty. As a consequence, Neubauer’s appeal, ‘‘Educate me, please,’’ is not about empowerment or enlightenment, but a self-indulgent defense of the status quo. Neubauer’s commentary reveals something more