With March Madness just around the corner the NCAA has decided to clamp down on prolific blogging. Last month the group issued a new policy limiting the number of blog posts during 23 different championship college events. Here’s a sampling of the restrictions: Baseball and softball, one each inning; lacrosse, three per quarter, one at halftime; football, three per quarter, one at halftime; basketball, five times per half, one at halftime, two times per overtime period. The policy also says that bloggers must link to ncaasports.com.
The new rules are being roundly criticized in the blogosphere. CNET’s Ina Fried said they remind her of the “music industry trying to hold on desperately to old business models in a fundamentally new era.” David Scott of Boston Sports Media Watch said the rules “are begging to be made fun of.” Ars Technica seems ambivalent, calling the rules both silly and reasonable.
In June a Courier Journal writer was kicked out of an NCAA baseball game in Louisville, KY for blogging live updates of the game. —Andrea L. Foster
16 Responses to NCAA Tells Bloggers Copious Posting is Out
dank48 - May 9, 2012 at 8:31 am
It seems to me that the increasing use of “racist” as an adjective to describe whatever someone else has said or–”proactively,” as we say–might say simply amounts to attempting to seize the moral high ground with minimal effort. It’s a handy rhetorical device, and it tends to work fairly well, if you have the right audience. And as cheap tricks go, it’s proved remarkably durable.
I wonder how long it will take for someone to call this comment racist. . . .
manoflamancha - May 9, 2012 at 8:50 am
Like Generals and coaches, we are always fighting the last war or ballgame. Many words used in WWII are banned in Germany, as if that will stop the rise of another Hitler. Ridicule is the better all-purpose weapon!
markhigbee - May 9, 2012 at 10:05 am
This post seems to ignore the possibility that the word racist is more widely used in our society today than say 20 years ago because there are more widely recognized instances of racist acts now than there were. Clearly, more Americans now are more willing to call out racist conduct for being racist than in the past, when being anti-racist quite often brought severe retaliation.
The chart from Google doesn’t explain much of anything, since it does not account for earlier terms used to describe what’s now called racist: terms like “Negro prejudice” (what meant prejudice against Blacks) or “white chauvinism” or segregationist. Newer words take time to become widely used, and often that time is measured in generations: so that the recognition since the 1960s that America is a society with strong, persistent features of racial disparities has perhaps only recently come to be widely termed “racist.”
rick1952 - May 9, 2012 at 10:30 am
It is difficult to avoid the emotional power of the word “racist” in our society given the historical baggage which it carries. Its overuse and over-extension tend to muddle our ability to understand the fact that, as human beings, we discriminate. It is part of human history, all human cultures have clearly demonstrated patterns of discrimination, determining who is a member of the in-group and who belongs in the out-group. In the USA, we use as our primary basis for discrimination, skin color rather then religion, language or other markers of social identity.
Years ago I concluded that I needed to pay more attention to what a person does over time and how well or poorly that aligns with what a person says, than to worry about labeling the person, one way or the other based on a single statement or behavior. That is the most accurate way (recognizing the fallibility of human judgement) of determining whether a person is racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-Semitic or prejudiced against any particular group of people.
The flaw in our current practice of labeling each other is that we do it too quickly with too little knowledge or understanding of the person and context. We cause the term to lose its meaning and, too often, try to use it engender guilt. And we do so without really thinking about why racism matters – not because it is offensive or insulting but because too often racial prejudice is used to justify societal practices that privilege some with resources and opportunities while simultaneously denying others those same resources and opportunities. That is not remedied by labeling each other or acting insulted or offended by statements or actions viewed in isolation.
darccity - May 9, 2012 at 10:44 am
Just the reverse may be true as well. “Racism” can be an extremely low bar, too! Zimmerman of Sanford, FL, was defended by relatives and friends as “not a racist.” What is the standard and how can they know and be so certain? Is the standard that he doesn’t confide his bigotry constantly or hasn’t been observed acting out his prejudices by harrassing or attacking minorities?
Alternatively, racism is often excused as “ignorance” and insensitivity, hence the inappropriate punishment prescribed of sensitivity training at a diversity workshop. When will people realize that racism manifests itself as simply bullying? Thus, acts against minorities and gay are not ”hate crimes.” Easy and defenseless targets become crimes of opportunity, even for the police (i.e., driving while black). Bullies know they can get away with that behavior without repercussions (I didn’t mention sexism because a large share of men actually do “hate” women). Peer pressure is often enough to create not-so-innocent bystanders.
Ironically, acting black can be viewed as cool, whereas being accused of acting girlie or gay can subject men and boys to bullying or defensive macho behavior (including bullying guys with any effeminate trait). NOBODY in the press ever mentions this issue as the primary cause of bullying. Remember, only about 10% of guys are gay, but half of straight guys get bullied for not acting male enough. Blacks and Hispanic cultures may foster even higher rates of macho stoicism. And teenage racists and other bullies often grow up to abuse their spouse and kids — more crimes of opportunity.
rgvonhorn - May 9, 2012 at 10:59 am
When and how, I am reminded here, did “issue” replace “problem”? “Problem” seems to hand on only in the common (and idiotic sounding) “No problem”.
senecan - May 9, 2012 at 11:04 am
“…the Jezebel piece aboutHunger Games fans, many of whom were outraged that their beloved characters from the books were played in the film by black actors.” Missing from this post is the fact that the “beloved characters” were described as black in the books.
garypego - May 9, 2012 at 1:25 pm
I have been experimenting with “racialized” and “racialized thought.” This avoids a lot of loaded terms and establishes, at least for now. an intellectual distance from all those other terms.
11182967 - May 9, 2012 at 2:49 pm
Our discourse suffers from the conflation of two senses of the term “racist” in our current usage. As is suggested, there is a distinction between using the term as a noun–”X is a racist”–and using it as an adjective–”that’s a racist action/statement.” The first is essentialist, implying that the person described is essentially or fundamentally a racist through and through, ie, bad as distinct from good. The latter usage adheres the term to a particular action/statement, but separates the action/statement from the essence of the individual. Hence, in the latter case, a good, basically “non-racist” person might well make a racist statement (and a “racist” could well perform a non-racist action on occasion).
This distinction between a person’s essence and his or her individual actions or statements marks a critical difference, and to use the same term for both deprives us of the language needed to make this distinction. But what term(s) would substitute for one or the other? In olden days we often used “prejudiced” or “bigoted” as the adjectival form. But in an effort to intensify the implications of our descriptions these terms seem now to be disregarded in favor of the nastier word. And the nastier word as noun has, in turn, lost some of its intensity as it is broadly applied by persons of all political persuasions to anyone with whom their disagreements can be even marginally couched in race-related language.
This is a tough problem to resolve. It would be useful to return to the earlier preference of “bigoted” and “prejudiced” for the adjectival usage of “racist” and reserve a newly and genuinely strong sense for persons clearly deserving the term as a noun. But language, especially political language, doesn’t work that way–once corrupted, a term cannot regain an earlier, clearer, more specific sense. Orwell would understand.
frankiesull - May 9, 2012 at 3:51 pm
Interesting article about which I have mixed feelings. Here’s one concern: with all due respect to brave apartheid-martyr Steve Biko, I see NO serious value, theoretical or otherwise, to the claim that racism requires the power to subjugate; what I see is a politically motivated distortion of a concept with a common-sense meaning that applies to all people of all races whose attitudes and behavior meet certain conditions well described in (e.g.,) Kwame Anthony Appiah’s analyis of the concept (In My Father’s House, Ch. 1; see also his 8/4/02 New York Times review of George M. Frederickson’s “Racism: A Short History”).
5768 - May 9, 2012 at 3:55 pm
Irrespective of the label used or whether done face-to-face or behind someone’s back, name-calling is generally recognized to be a propaganda technique, a rhetorical device used to influence and convince. The more unreflective the name-caller or name-receiver, the more effective the device. Tolerance requires real dialogue. Who has time for that?
11144703 - May 9, 2012 at 4:25 pm
“One cannot be a racist unless he has the power to subjugate,” and that under any even theoretically valuable definition of racist, a black person prejudiced against whites is not a racist, but merely a black person prejudiced against whites.)”
Agreed to Benny’s wisdom derived from Stevey. Commander-in-Chief Obama (for whom I voted) has no power to subjugate since he’s black, and therefore if he were to make a statement disparaging the white people, it would be a prejudicial statement, not a racist statement, because the supreme military commander in the world has no power.
However, if supreme military chief Obama made a disparaging statement against another people of color, say Asians, could that be a racist statement since the percentage of blacks is higher than Asians in the U.S.? And if in the future if the percentage of Asians somehow rose slightly over the percentage of blacks, would a similar statement at that future time by a black commander-in-chief instantly become merely a prejudicial statement?
I surely hope so.
Cynthia Bazinet - May 9, 2012 at 6:10 pm
Years ago, a black college professor (in a course on diversity in the classroom) once emphatically instructing our class that the word “racist” was to be reserved for organizations, governments, corporations, i.e., organized institutional policies and practices whereas “bigoted” was appropriate for describing an individual’s or groups of individuals’ personal attitudes or behavior. Is this actually true or accurate? I’ve been carrying that little chestnut around for about 15 years now, and dutifully using the words as she instructed. Now I wonder if that’s actually the case (anymore)?
jffoster - May 10, 2012 at 8:16 am
He was prescribing what he wanted you to say. In general usage, bigot is more general than racist and subsumes the latter within it. I.e. a person may be bigoted but the prejudicial pejorative group identification pertain to something other than race, say religion, or dialect, or accent, ….. I think your professor largely made it up.
jffoster - May 10, 2012 at 8:24 am
The notion that one can only be “racist” if one has power to subjugate leads to absurdities. If we adopt this charactization, we shall have to say that Japanese who believed other “races” were inferior were racists until the moment the Son of Heaven ordered the surrender in the year 2605 (1945) but at that moment ceased to be racists even though continuing to believe it.
dank48 - May 15, 2012 at 1:08 pm
A friend of mine told me recently he had come in to work but found a message from the IT department informing everyone that the “computer network has issues.”
Argh.