Mixed Race Studies

In its focus on genetics and race, global newspaper coverage of athletics is far from “post-racial”

The LSE’s daily blog on American Politics and Policy
The London School of Economics and Political Science
London, United Kingdom
2015-09-10

Matthew W. Hughey, Associate Professor of Sociology
University of Connecticut

Devon R. Goss, Ph.D. Candidate in Sociology
University of Connecticut

With the years of racially segregated sports now long behind us, many would consider that sports coverage is color-blind and post-racial. In new research which examines newspaper coverage of race, sport and genetics from 2003 to 2014, Matthew W. Hughey and Devon R. Goss find that this is not the case. They write that the media persistently reinforces the notions that African American’s athletic success is based on biology, while whites’ comes from hard work and intelligence. They also debunk the ideas often seen in the media that race has a biological reality which can be defined by genes, and that the historic process of slavery somehow eliminated ‘weaker genes’ from the African American population, making them a more athletic race.

For many, sport represents the ultimate color-blind space, affording a level playing field where only one’s training and skills are the hallmarks of competition. Hence, racist and prejudicial beliefs and phenomena are both literally and figuratively, out-of-bounds. Moreover, sport has been understood as an activity that promotes racial harmony amongst both participants and observers. But such a claim is a bit simplistic.

To make sense of the correlation between different racial groups’ success and failures amidst different athletic events, many draw from the deep well of scientific racism to quench their thirst for explanatory knowledge. For instance, some research has found that many athletes believe that white sporting success is attributable to intelligence, while nonwhite success is accredited to genetically predisposed bodies—a longstanding cultural trope known as “white brains versus black brawn”—that has been around for at least a century. After African American boxer Jack Johnson became the heavyweight champion of the world in 1908, he precipitated a slow reconsideration of the assumption of nonwhites’ physical inferiority—a central tenet of early 20th century racial science and eugenics. Fast forward to our contemporary moment and the banal ubiquity of this trope among sports commentators is well known, and was even recently panned by the comic duo Key & Peele…

Read the entire article here.

‘Key & Peele’ Ends While Nation Could Still Use a Laugh

The New York Times
2015-08-15

Dave Itzkoff, Culture Reporter

Jordan Peele, left, and Keegan-Michael Key in a scene from the final season of “Key & Peele.” Credit Comedy Central

The scene is a hauntingly familiar one: A white police officer stalks an unarmed black man in a dark alley and slams the man’s head into the open door of his patrol car.

But then, rather than being taken into police custody, the man is led through a magical door to the sunlit, upbeat streets of a utopia called Negrotown, whose black populace serenades the visitor about its city, where “you can walk the street without getting stopped, harassed or beat” and “you can wear your hoodie and not get shot.”

This comic sketch is one of many that have made “Key & Peele,” the Comedy Central series created by and starring Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, a television program that is uniquely calibrated to the current American moment, when real-life examples of racial polarization and conflict are ubiquitous, but opportunities in pop culture to process these divisions are rare.

It will be a bittersweet moment when this sketch comedy series concludes its final season on Sept. 9, after three years of fixing its satirical lens on stereotypes and social injustices. In its absence, there may be no alternative that so frankly addresses these enduring prejudices and disparities, especially at a moment when America’s racial divide has taken center stage in the national discourse…

…Mr. Key, 44, and Mr. Peele, 36, who are biracial, say they are ending the show by mutual agreement for the least complicated of reasons: They want to pursue other projects…

…“When Obama was elected, there was this mythology that, O.K., we’re over the racist thing — this is a postracial world,” Mr. Peele said. “And now, obviously, we’ve uncovered why that’s not true.”…

Read the entire article here.

‘Key & Peele’ to End After Its Fifth Season

The New York Times
2015-07-25

Jonah Bromwich

The Comedy Central show “Key & Peele,” an absurdist sketch comedy that has become known for recurring skits like one in which an “anger translator” expresses emotions on President Obama’s behalf, will end after its current season.

Speaking to the online entertainment journal TheWrap, one of the show’s stars Keegan-Michael Key said that it was time for him and his co-star, Jordan Peele, “to explore other things, together and apart.”

“It’s not because of Comedy Central, it’s us,” Mr. Key said.

“Key & Peele” premiered on the network in 2012 and won a Peabody Award in 2013 for its “inspired satirical riffs on our racially divided and racially conjoined culture.” The show, currently in its fifth season, received seven Emmy nominations this year, including a nod for Outstanding Variety Sketch Series…

…Both comedians are biracial and much of their comedy is given to exploring, mocking and confounding racial stereotypes. In accepting the show’s Peabody Award, Mr. Key expressly thanked the network for allowing “Key & Peele” to tell a diverse set of stories.

“We’d like to thank Comedy Central for giving us the opportunity to show the African-American experience as not a monolith, because it’s not,” he said. “It’s so many different stories and the danger of the world sometimes is trying to assign a single story to an entire group of people.”…

Read the entire article here.

For Key And Peele, Biracial Roots Bestow Special Comedic ‘Power’

Fresh Air
National Public Radio
2013-11-20

Terry Gross, Host

Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele are the duo behind the Comedy Central sketch comedy show Key & Peele. Each has a white mother and black father, and a lot of their comedy is about race: Perhaps because they’re biracial, they’re perfectly comfortable satirizing white people and African-Americans — as well as everybody else. The New Yorker’s TV critic Emily Nussbaum describes their biracialism as a “Golden Ticket to themes rarely explored on television.”

Peele tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross, “I think the reason both of us became actors is because we did a fair amount of code switching growing up, and still do.”

Key and Peele met in Chicago, where they were part of the improv scene, and later worked together on the sketch comedy series MADtv. Their current show on Comedy Central wraps up its third season on Dec. 18, and has been renewed for a fourth.

Key and Peele tell Gross the stories behind some of their sketches, and their feelings about Saturday Night Live’s lack of female African-American cast members…

Read the entire article here. Listen to the story here. Download the audio here. Read the transcript here.