Civilizing the Child: Violence, Masculinity, and Race in Media Narratives of James Harrison

Abstract

This article critically examines the media coverage surrounding National Football League (NFL) player James Harrison in 2010 and 2011. In 2009, medical research linking hits to the head and the Alzheimer’s-like condition known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy prompted the league to institute rule changes to limit violent tackles. Harrison was repeatedly punished by the league office and criticized by sports media outlets for his violent tackles and recalcitrant attitude. Guiding both the discipline and media coverage of Harrison are narratives rooted in a neoliberal logic situating the existence of and responsibility for football violence within the individual decisions of football players. Intensifying these narratives is the NFL and its media partners’ invocation of discourses of Black criminality to construct the most damaging moments of football violence as unsanctioned acts that operate “outside the game.” This invocation serves to place the authority over the judgment and legitimation of football violence within the White corporate morality of the league’s offices and its media partners, allowing them to preserve the sport’s central place in producing and maintaining dominant American masculinities through football violence while casting off the responsibility for the consequences of that violence to the footballing bodies that administer and receive it.