Shifting the 'White Gaze' on Black Bodies in Philippine Collegiate Basketball: Toward a Structural Understanding of Covert Racism in the Global South

Abstract

In a postcolonial Global South context, the representation of race seems to persist and is manifested through the media scripting of Black African sporting bodies that in effect extends the deployment of the “White gaze,” the effort to explore the Black body within the context of white supremacy. Through a qualitative content analysis of media texts in the Philippines, the paper illustrates how in a postmodern context racial stereotypes literally play out within Philippine collegiate basketball framed by the “White gaze” that expresses a covert form of racism that supports an essentialist deployment of categories of race. The paper ends with a call for praxis that critiques subtle racialized ideologies and institutionalized racism in a postmodern Global South context.