Censorship and Self-Censorship: China and the NBA
Illustration by Ellie Strayer “Tank Man”—the photo of a man defiantly standing in front of four advancing tanks during the Tiananmen Square massacre 30 years ago—is one of the most iconic photographs of the twentieth century. Search for it in the United States and Google returns millions of hits. Search for it on the Chinese […]
Politics and Sports: A Long and Complicated Relationship
In recent years, as the American political sphere has become more polarized, news pundits, online commentators, and politicians have repeatedly declared that professional athletes are “out-of-touch-millionaires” who should “shut up and dribble.” Players such as Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Richard Sherman have pushed back against the ‘whitelash’ to become more politicized. But […]
Black Panther and the Erosion of Our Collective Imagination
In the weeks since I watched Black Panther, the film that, to many, reflects the magnitude of recent gains made in advancing Black representation in U.S. popular culture, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about loss in the African diaspora. About what has been gone, stolen, for centuries—to different degrees and in different ways […]