University of Texas professor decries ‘white sports media complex’

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Special to WorldTribune.com

By Joe Schaeffer

A University of Texas professor who formally advised the school on the January hiring of its first black head football coach gave a speech on campus in 2013 stating that a “white sports media complex” works to further “white privilege” even as it claims to be “post-racial.”

Ben Carrington at UT – The Global White Sports/Media Complex and the Politics of Sport from Moody College of Communication on Vimeo.

Ben Carrington, an associate professor of sociology at the university who co-wrote a book titled “Marxism, Cultural Studies and Sport,” gave a speech in February, 2013 titled “The Global White Sports/Media Complex and the Politics of Sport: Towards a Critical Communications of Sport” as part of the university’s Texas Program in Sports and Media “Summit on Communication and Sport” in which he asserted that “racialized regimes of power are intimately connected to the representational politics of what I want to more specifically term ‘the white sports media complex.’

“I mean by this, the ways in which whiteness is grounded, accepted and established as a normative disposition both within the institutions of sports and the media. And further how the sports media complex works to embed and make invisible the operations of white privilege even as it claims to be non- or even post-racial.”

In a speech that frequently referenced Marxist and “neo-Marxist” sources, Carrington also argued in his university-sponsored speech that “you might think of the sports media complex then as having an important role, a role arguably more powerful than any other social institution, in the ideological transmission of ideas about race and, essentially, of normative whiteness.

“In short, the sports media complex has become the modality through which popular ideas about race are lived.”

USA Today reports Carrington is on the university’s Men’s Athletic Council, which according to the school’s website, “shall advise the President, through the Vice President for Administration, on all matters of policy, personnel, and programs for intercollegiate athletics for men.”

Carrington was being “forward-looking” when he told the Daily Texan, the UT student newspaper, in 2012 that the only way for the university to escape its segregationist past was to hire a highly-paid black head football coach, Susan Elizabeth Shepard, a “fourth-generation University of Texas graduate” wrote in an article on the Sports on Earth website.

“If you want to talk about a symbolic moment, I think UT’s football team being headed by a well-paid, well-qualified black head coach is the day we can really say we’ve changed,” Shepard quotes Carrington as saying.

Shepard asked Carrington “about how much has actually changed, and why white football fans would insist that race is a topic that should be set aside.” He dismissed that notion, saying:

“[Charlie Strong’s hiring] reminds them that the institution was a historically white institution. It reminds us of the facts of racial segregation and discrimination that took place at UT and its legacy into the present.”

Carrington then bluntly stated that the whole point of Strong’s hiring was in fact to emphasize race.

“It’s not surprising that [for] some white fans, even mentioning the fact that Charlie Strong is African-American is itself, they’ll argue, a form of racism,” Carrington said.

“That’s to get things backwards. It’s really to acknowledge the existence of race.”

Carrington called for the removal of major university booster Red McCombs’ name from a part of Darrell K. Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium after McCombs expressed unhappiness with the choice of Strong over a bigger name, such as ex-NFL coach John Gruden. [Click here for His tweet]

In a more recent lecture on another prominent football school campus, the British-born Carrington detailed how he sees college and professional football as an instrument meant to bolster white racial projections.

On April 4, Carrington gave a guest lecture for the Michigan State University African American & African Studies Department titled, “Love and Fear: Thugs, Sports and the Great White Hope.” In an abstract of his speech printed beforehand, Carrington outlined his talking points:

“Taking the so-called ‘epic rant’ of NFL player Richard Sherman as a starting point, I show how the framing of his actions as ‘thuggish’ needs to be located within a longer history of white societal attempts to discipline and control black expressive behavior.

“The invention of the idea of ‘the black athlete’ at the start of the 20th century produces black athletes as both objects for homosocial desire and figures of hate and loathing.

“I further suggest that the longing for sporting Great White Hopes can be seen in the current adulation and veneration of white quarterbacks as a way to deal with the crisis of white masculine hegemony that the black athlete produces.”

Carrington has an extremely active Twitter account on which white people have been the subject of criticism

and even mockery.

That Carrington’s influence found fertile ground in Austin can be seen by the comments made by the university’s administration when the decision to bring in Strong was announced.

UT made no effort whatsoever to hide the fact that the hiring of a black man to coach what Forbes magazine in 2012 labeled “college football’s most valuable team” was deliberate.

“It’s important we reflect the diversity of our state and our country so I think this is a very important moment for our university,” university president Bill Powers said in January, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports.

“It won’t be the last. We’ve made tremendous strides in diversity over the last decade. A lot of people have worked very hard on that and this is another very important moment for our university.”

As for Coach Strong himself, he says he would like to be judged solely by his squad’s performance on the football field.

“I don’t ever want to look at it as being the first. I want to look at it as I’m a coach and that’s the way I want to be treated,” Strong said after his hiring.

The people who have put him in the position do not agree with his sentiments.

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