The Rutgers Women’s Basketball and Don Imus Controversy (RUIMUS): White Privilege, New Racism, and the Implications for College Sport Management

Abstract

The following is a narrative and critique of the Rutgers University Women’s Basketball Team/Don Imus Morning Show (RUIMUS) controversy. Using a convenience sample of regional and national media accounts and observations this piece summarizes the confirmed events of the RUIMUS controversy. The first objective of the manuscript is to provide a synopsis of the RUIMUS controversy. The second purpose is to explore how White privilege (McIntosh, 2003), new racism (Littlefield, 2008), sexism and their intersection operated during the lifespan of the RUIMUS controversy. The analyses illustrated the presence of the core elements of White privilege, new racism, sexism and double jeopardy, along with accounts of alienation, racial ambiguity, masculine characterizations and becoming visible through a prolonged controversy. The practical implications of these findings for sport managers are presented, and include postcontroversy student-athlete counseling, social and corrective justice, and proactive communications.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 13 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.