Revolt of the White Athlete

Informed by whiteness studies, Kyle Kusz’s groundbreaking book examines the role that sport discourses play in reproducing a central, normative, and superior position for white masculinity in American culture and society at the turn of the twenty-first century. Specifically, Kusz illuminates how the American sports media – through cover stories detailing the so-called disappearance of the white (male) athlete in American sports or the rise of extreme sports – produced a set of contradictory images of white masculinity as victimized and unprivileged, yet superior and squarely centered in American culture, that shaped and were shaped by a broader cultural struggle to re-secure white male privilege.