The Intersection of Race, Gender, and Nationality in Sport: Media Representation of the Ogwumike Sisters

Abstract

The diversity of Black America in general, and how it pertains to gender in particular, remains understudied in analyses of sports media. To get a better understanding of the Black female athlete in our society today, this project addresses the intersections of race, gender, and nationality/ethnicity in U.S. media. To do this, we use critical discourse analysis to examine the sports media representations of professional basketball players Nnemkadi and Chinenye Ogwumike. As relatively successful second-generation Black African female athletes, we find that the sisters represent a compelling site of analysis as a nexus of crisscrossing power relations. Our discussion focuses on the manipulations of foreign female Blackness to maintain White supremacy by media in the United States specifically, and the West more broadly.