'How are athletes from ethnic minority groups portrayed by contemporary sports media? Why might this be so?'

Why this question?- The reason for selecting this title for my investigation is because i have always been interested in sports at a young age, also growing up I have seen racism through society in general, however in sports it seemed to be increasing, so i thought it would be a significant question to see how much of an influence the media have on how athletes from ethnic minorities are represented.

The two texts I will be studying are the movies 'Gridiron Gang' which is about a gang of prison inmates where they are selected to play American football against to become good citizens. The connotations of the movie are a mix of post-colonialism and colonialism, in the fact that the majority of the main stars in the movie are ethnic minorities, but the social connotations from the movie are that the prisoners who turn athletes are given a “second chance” through sports. The movie links in with Beulah’s theory on black people and the media, she argued: “For many years black people in society and the media are treated as the ‘problem’ or the ‘victims'. The second text i will be looking at is the 1986 movie ‘Wildcats’ which has a similar narrative, only this time instead of prisoners, it is focused on badly behave pupils. They are also given a “second chance” through sports which does affect how people see ethnic minorities from an outside standpoint. Marxists would argue that the political reason for this is so that the upper-class can maintain their colonialist representation on the ethnic minorities and also keep them oppressed through alienation.

Other issues which I will be covering will include

• Didier Drogba and Tiger woods- how the media blew certain situations out of proportion. 

• Ron Atkinson (former commentator) reffered to former chelsea player Marcel Desailly as a 'fucking nigger'- Does Racism still exist and why?

•  1968 olympic games when Tommie Smith and John Carlos celebrated their win by doing the 'black power salute'.- The media instantly reacted negatively to the atheletes by publishing in- times magazine 'unacceptable and petty'.

Bibliography so far:

1968 Olympics Black Power Salute

http://1968blackpowersalute.blogspot.com/
The Olympics: Black Complaint
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,900397,00.html

40th Anniversary of Olympic ‘Black Power’ Salute
http://www.cpgb-ml.org/index.php?secName=proletarian&subName=display&art=445

TV pundit Ron Atkinson sacked for racist remark
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2004/apr/22/football.raceintheuk
'What I said was racist - but I'm not a racist. I am an idiot' http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/apr/25/race.football