Constructing Racial/Ethnic Difference in and Through Dutch Televised Soccer Commentary

The purpose of this study was to expand on current research about ways in which race and ethnicity are socially constructed through popular media culture. In this article we explore to what extent broadcast commentary of televised soccer in the Netherlands reproduces and challenges hegemonic discourses about race/ethnicity and is congruent with findings of similar research in other contexts. We used a layered approach toward race/ethnicity instead of the frequently used Black/White dichotomy in research on sports commentary. Our findings suggest that current Dutch soccer commentary displays a number of dominant racialized/ethnicized themes that at times resonate with colonial discourses, are in part congruent with racialized/ethnicized sport media representations found in other contexts and also challenge popular Dutch discourses about ethnicity. We place these findings in a broader historical and internationally comparative perspective.

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