Christmas is a popular world-wide holiday that is celebrated by 160 countries. In the United States, 90% of citizens (95% of Christians) celebrate Christmas. I can think of dozens of traditions my family did growing up: putting up the Christmas tree and setting up a miniature winter village, baking Christmas…

Colin Kaepernick is a professional football player most known for his very public protests of police brutality. Originally, his protests started with him sitting during the national anthem. A former Green-Beret-Turned-NFL-player told him that instead he should kneel as a sign of respect. Kneeling (typically a…

With the promise of the future comes progress and the hope “to distance outselves from the religio-racial ideologies that reigned in the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries for the dispossession of First Nations people, African Americans, and later Asians, Arabs, and Latinos in America”. It is without a doubt that racism…

The narrative of western expansion and Manifest Destiny tell a split story. One story is that settlers moved west in an unpopulated, untamed land and brought civilization to it. The other story is how the “west was won”. In this story, native populations existed, but they were uncivilized, which is…

When European settlers colonized North America, they had no clue that they would impact the role of women and reproduction pertaining to race. They could not have foreseen that contemporary understandings of what it means to be American would be shaped by their racialized reproductive nation building, all under the…

Sports are political. Anyone who says otherwise has ignored the history and circumstances around the evolution of both sports and culture. The portrayals of sports and race in modern media allows a glimpse into a different society. These media representations can either perpetuate or challenge dominant norms. Gatekeepers within the…

Media and sports reporting are what allows sports to make profit and allow people to have civic pride. That being said, sports reporting can do a lot to influence a society. The media has responsibilities both within and outside of the realm of sports. Sports are political which is exactly…

Understanding gender and sexuality through the lens of sports representation, either within the sports themselves or through the sports media, reveals a faint evolution of discriminatory practices that “others” an entire class of people. Gatekeepers (people with statute who can invite people into a group or leave people out) serve…

In their book, The Outrage Industry, Berry and Sobieraj argue that a new incivility is arising in American political media. They find their assumptions and evidence in traditional sources of media (print, TV networks and talk radio), but also look towards nontraditional routes for support (like blogs and personality centered…