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In the article “Lunch Pails and Thugs: The Richard Sherman Saga, Sport Literature, and the Racial Discourse of American Sports”,\u00a0found in Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature<\/i>\u00a0XXXI: 1& 2, <\/em>Matthew S. Tettleton writes about the categories and stereotypes of black and white athletes based on outbursts in interviews and their play on the field. The topic of race it seems has always been\u00a0brought up\u00a0in pro sports in America, going back to 1947 when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier by playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers. In the immediate aftermath of the 2014 NFC Championship\u00a0Game, Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard\u00a0Sherman\u00a0interview with Erin Andrews created headlines after he\u00a0yelled into the camera and called out San Francisco 49er receiver Michael Crabtree. Sherman who in the interview called himself ‘the best corner in the game’ is not the first athlete, black or white to show arrogance. Boxer\u00a0Muhammad\u00a0Ali famously\u00a0said he was the greatest of all time as did golfer Phil Mickelson but what was shocking in this case was\u00a0the\u00a0 level of intensity\u00a0that\u00a0Sherman displayed. It was something that I don’t think America had ever seen before in a post game interview. In the days following and the lead up to the\u00a0Super\u00a0Bowl,\u00a0“the ensuing public reaction on Twitter was sadly predictable” (47)with the majority of\u00a0the criticism being directed towards Sherman. There were some online who called Sherman- who is black- a thug.<\/p>\n Sherman’s very public outburst brought the topic of race and sports back to mainstream media.\u00a0Race itself is\u00a0a social construct and something America deals with. And when it comes to sports, there are different narratives and stereotypes associated with each athlete based their skin color and\u00a0background. At times, according to Tettleton there is no escaping these stereotypes. For example “we hear about\u00a0black players\u00a0being categorized according to the traits that mark their blackness” (60) while there are\u00a0stories\u00a0of “white athletes lauded for their work\u00a0ethic, intelligence, teamwork” (60)\u00a0and\u00a0this is something that\u00a0has been brought up over time. However by writing and understanding about\u00a0where every athlete comes from, it allows us to get a better understanding of where they\u00a0come from and in response we learn about ourselves as well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the article “Lunch Pails and Thugs: The Richard Sherman Saga, Sport Literature, and the Racial Discourse of American Sports”,\u00a0found in Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature\u00a0XXXI: 1& 2, Matthew S. Tettleton writes about the categories and stereotypes of black and white athletes based on outbursts in interviews and their play on the field. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1236"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1271,"href":"https:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions\/1271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/evst399.mcguire-spickard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}