Phantom Calls: Race and the Globalization of the NBA » (1st Edition)

Grant Farred is associate professor in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is the editor of SAQ and the author of What’s My Name?: Black Vernacular Intellectuals.

In the twenty-first century, the idea of race in sports is rapidly changing. The National Basketball Association, for instance, was recently home to a new kind of racial conflict. After a recent playoff loss, Houston head coach Jeff Van Gundy alleged that Yao Ming, his Chinese star center, was the victim of phantom calls, or refereeing decisions that may have been ethnically biased. Grant Farred here shows how this incident can be seen as a pivotal moment in the globalization of the NBA. With some forty percent of its players coming from foreign nations, the idea of race in the NBA has become increasingly multifaceted. Farred explains how allegations of phantom calls such as Van Gundy’s challenge the fiction that America is a post-racial society and compel us to think in new ways about the nexus of race and racism in America.

Introduction

Son of the "Whore of Asia"

Who Can Speak of Race?

Speaking For

Living with the Outcome:  Effects of the Age of Deng

Anti-Americanism, Sui Generis

"The Dark Side of the Moon"

Acknowledgments