Theoretical Framework
Omi and Winant describe race as a tool for social construction. They do this by saying, “We assert that in the United States, race is a master category- a fundamental concept that has profoundly shaped, and continues to shape, the history, polity, economic structure, and culture of the United States” (Omi & Winant 2014: 106). What they mean when they say this is that race serves as a divider in the United States when it comes to the people who live in the country, and it has major effects on the history of our country, such as the slave trade, the politics of the country, such as the war against drugs, the economy of the country, such as the unequal wealth distribution in the country, and the cultures of the people in the country, such as the religions and languages that make the country a “melting pot.” The issue is that categorization of people by race does harmful things to people who are minorities because it is assumed it is inherent, but is it a social construction create by a group of people to establish a form of discourse, as Omi and Winant explain, “We are critical of both positions; race as essence and race as an illusion. Race is not something rooted in nature, something that reflects clear and discrete variations in human identity. But race is also not an illusion. While it may not be “real: in a biological sense, race is indeed real as a social category with definite social consequences.” (Omi & Winant 2014: 110). What this means is that while race does not inherently make one a certain way due to the biology of humans, it brings real and inherent consequences to a person based upon the social construction of race and the people who fit within the minority. Omi and Winant summarize this idea by saying, “race is a concept, a representation of signification of identity that refers to different types of human bodies, to the perceived corporeal and phenotypic markers of difference and the meanings and social practices that are ascribed to these differences” (Omi & Winant 2014: 111). What they are saying is that race is a way of determining what a person’s identity will look based upon what is assumed to be biological features that make one look or act a certain way.
What this means for establishes for my research is that racial identity plays a role in the way one’s views people based upon what their race says about them. The media’s racial construction of the Black quarterback could be playing a factor in the way they represent quarterbacks who are either white or Black, which is what we will be determining as we conduct our content analysis. The ways that this could happen would be based upon the way the media may perceive differences between white and Black quarterbacks as inherent differences, such as athletic ability or intelligence that a quarterback possesses depending on what racial identity they possess. This could also be understood by the media based upon the historical, cultural, economic, and politics of the United States that have been used to shape people of different races. Examples of this would be to perceive races by the slave trade, which would develop ideas of physicality of Blackness. It could also be understood by the war on drugs and the economic differences between races, which could lead to ideas of negative attitudes about those of different races. These issues could lead to the social consequences the Omi and Winant were speaking about, such as stereotypes about the Black quarterbacks, and this could lead to unfair representations between the two racial identities by the media, which we will look to see how ESPN has been affected by race as a social construction.