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Caribbean Journal of Education

Who Da Man? Black Masculinities and Sporting Cultures, by Gamal Abdel-Shehid

Pages: 
252-256
Publication Date: 
May 2007
Issue: 
Abstract: 

Blackness in the context of the politics of identity has been and still is considered a very volatile site for social organizing. Blackness has, largely, been written both by those who fall into the very mobile category “black” and those who fall outside it. In fact, many who have been influential in constructing blackness as a category of identity have been part of the grouping of people who are not constructed and defined as black. As the title suggests, this book interrogates the politics of identity. Gamal Abdel Shehid in Who Da Man explores the connections and disconnections that are embedded in notions of black masculinity, nationalism, sporting cultures, and institutionalized (hetero)sexuality. Heterosexuality within sporting cultures, as often is the case in such sites, is hegemonically produced as (hetero)normativity. Using Canada as the terrain under review, Abdel-Shehid takes the reader on an interesting voyage that highlights social differences that are inscribed within ideologies and practices of nations and sporting cultures. These notions of social difference, he argues, result in the “unethical treatment of those who are so marked.”

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