This is a blog created to help disseminate information to my advisees, but really all prospective, current, and maybe even former college students out there that need a little push, advise, perspective, and/or support. I am excited to be here for you.
Showing posts with label Philosophy & ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philosophy & ethics. Show all posts
Knight, H. R., Hartman, K. L., & Bennett, A. (2020). Gun violence, eSports, and global crises: A proposed model for sport crisis communication practitioners. Journal of Global Sport Management: Reputational Management in Sport, 5(2), 223-241. https://doi.org/10.1080/24704067.2019.1576144
In a brilliantly written essay, the author takes us through years of activism by Black athletes. Starting with Carlos and Smith's raised fists in the 1968 Mexico City Olympic Games through the more recent kneeling by Kaepernick. Most importantly, the author deconstructs the rhetoric around the reactions to these public protests and critiques the frequently alluded unifying attribute of sport.
The essay frames sport as an optimal space for legitimizing rivalry without romanticizing it. Most notorious is the call for sport as a space to preserve contest, not unity. Although the author acknowledges sports' ability to unify, it cautions against using it unquestioningly as a unifying agent at the expense of healthy democratic dissent and the pluralism that defines the United States. Finally, it makes a case for activism in sport, such as disrupting the national anthem, not as a threat to unity, but its illusion. An illusion that is more threatening to democratic health than the activism itself.
The author mentions the "inside these lines" NFL commercial within the article and commented that an NFL spokesperson stated, “We think this is the single best response to demonstrate what we are about. It stands in stark contrast to someone who practices the politics of division” (Stetler, 2017, as cited in Butterworth, 2020, p. 465). However, later comments this could have been directed either at President Trump or Kaepernick. Who do you think this was directed at? and why? Also, share your thoughts after reading the article. Does unity in sport undermine the pluralistic values necessary for a democratic society? Have the claims for unity attenuated the purposes of the protest/activism?
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Butterworth, M. L. (2020). Sport and the Quest for Unity: How the Logic of Consensus Undermines Democratic Culture. Communication & Sport, 8(4-5), 452-472. 2167479519900160.
