Private Mark Graham, un/known soldier: not just any body can be a citizen

Abstract

On 4 September 2006, Private Mark Anthony Graham, a 33-year-old black Canadian, was killed in Afghanistan in a so-called friendly fire incident. An elite athlete prior to his military career, Graham, who was born in Jamaica and grew up in Hamilton, Ontario, had also been a member of the Canadian 4 × 400-metre relay team that competed in the 1992 Olympic games. This article examines the mainstream television and print media accounts that emerged following Private Graham's death to explore the connections between race, masculinity and discourses of national belonging. For example, media narratives emphasized Graham's physicality and track and field career, rather than his status as a citizen-soldier who died in the service of his country. I argue that the prominence ascribed to Graham's corporeality signals his racial alterity, a delineation which facilitates his exclusion from white settler society. Moreover, beyond revealing the enduring legacy of Canada's history of anti-black racism, I suggest that the media's treatment of Private Mark Graham is indicative of the reconfiguration of white cultural nationalism in post-9/11 narratives of citizenship and Canadian identity and efforts to reinstate white men as the true embodiment of masculine heroism and patriotism.