The Ray Rice Domestic Violence Case: Constructing Black Masculinity Through Newspaper Reports

This case study used concepts associated with Black masculinity to critically analyze newspaper depictions of the Ray Rice Domestic Violence Case (RRDVC). The pattern matching and content analysis revealed the following themes: color blindness, binary depictions, and commodification. This article used the RRDVC to establish a persistent pattern of public discourse that situates Black male athletes accused of committing crimes within a series of controlling images depicted by the media that serve to maintain White supremacist patriarchal understandings of Black masculinity. The results of the analysis reveal how hegemonic depictions of Ray Rice serve the White supremacist patriarchy in maintaining the containment and commodification of Black men and perpetuate the acceptability of violence against Black women.