Ethnic Studies

CU ��Ĵ�ý scholar tracks Hindu nationalism’s global disguise

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 22:15:45 +0000

CU ��Ĵ�ý scholar tracks Hindu nationalism’s global disguise Rachel Sauer Thu, 06/11/2026 - 16:15

Cody DeBos

Ethnic studies Professor Nishant Upadhyay delves into the gap between image and reality in Hinduism

Hinduism, like most religions, has a reputation.

According to Nishant Upadhyay, a ��Ĵ�ý associate professor of ethnic studies, it is tied to a deep and ancient reverence for the natural world and offers a peaceful, colorful alternative to the spiritual traditions many Westerners grew up with.

For Upadhyay (they/them), that reputation poses a problem.

Nishant Upadhyay, a CU ��Ĵ�ý associate professor of ethnic studies, notes that Hinduism, like most religions, has a reputation.

“Hinduism has this reputation, especially in a place like ��Ĵ�ý, where it’s seen as this religion that’s environmentally friendly, animal friendly, cares about women and queer folks, cares about peace and non-violence,” they say.

“But it has always been deeply caste-ist and patriarchal,” Upadhyay adds.

That gap between image and reality is at the heart of Upadhyay’s new paper, published in the Amerasia Journal, which traces a pattern of right-wing Hindu diaspora organizations forging “solidarities” with Indigenous peoples across the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

They argue these gestures are not acts of genuine allyship, but more calculated moves in service of Hindu nationalism, a political ideology with a far different agenda than the one being advertised.

“We have to be very careful when Hindu nationalists use this framework of indigeneity because this is deeply fraught and violent. We can’t come here and say Hindus are in solidarity when Hindus are actually oppressing indigenous, caste-oppressed and Muslim communities in India,” Upadhyay says.

Indians on Indian lands

Upadhyay, associate chair of Graduate Studies in CU ��Ĵ�ý’s Department of Ethnic Studies, is also the author of Indians on Indian Lands: Intersections of Race, Caste, and Indigeneity. The book was recently awarded “Outstanding Contribution in Social Sciences” by the Association of Asian American Studies. Their recent work is a continuation of the book that closely examines the proliferation of the Hindu nationalist movement in the diaspora.

To understand Upadhyay’s argument, it helps to understand the landscape in which their work is taking place.

“I’m looking at more recent formations of the diaspora in the last 100 years to North America, which is a very different form of migration than indentured labor migrations of South Asians to the different colonies under the British empire,” Upadhyay says.

“My focus is more on folks who are willingly moving with caste, class and religious privileges, capital and mobility. A lot more ‘skilled’ workers have moved more willingly in the past several decades, mostly to North America, Western Europe and Australia,” they add.

Upadhyay argues that dominant-caste Hindu immigrants in the U.S. and elsewhere aren't simply racialized minorities navigating racism in white settler states. Rather, in the way these communities relate to the lands they now inhabit, Upadhyay likens them to settlers rather than allies of indigenous peoples.

“Because India was able to become independent in 1947, when we move here, we are racialized, but we don’t really understand the realities of violence that indigenous communities continue to face,” they say.

Hindu nationalism further complicates the picture.

“The Hindu nationalist ideology is about a century old. The project claims that India should only belong to Hindus, specifically dominant caste Hindus, and anyone who’s not a Hindu should not be part of it,” Upadhyay explains. “So the violence is targeted primarily at Muslim and Christian communities in India.”

“Saffronwashing is a way to talk about how Hindu nationalists normalize and make invisible the violences perpetuated against caste-oppressed, indigenous and religious-minority communities in India. They portray Hinduism as environmentally friendly, peace-loving, non-violent, yoga-loving, colorful festivals and spicy food,” explains CU ��Ĵ�ý scholar Nishant Upadhyay.

Under Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, now in his third term, that ideology has become deeply entrenched in Indian political and social life. Upadhyay says it has also traveled with the diaspora.

A familiar playbook

The attempts at allying with indigenous communities Upadhyay examines follow a similar script.

In 2016, during the Standing Rock protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline, Hindu American organizations issued statements claiming kinship with the Standing Rock Sioux.

“Hindu nationalist groups started coming out with these statements saying, ‘We are indigenous to India, and we were colonized by the British. You are indigenous, and you’ve been colonized by the Europeans and the American state. So, we understand your struggles, and we want to be in alliance with you,’” Upadhyay recounts.

The pattern repeated when unmarked graves of Indigenous children were discovered at former residential school sites in Canada, and again when Native Hawaiian protectors rallied against the construction of a massive telescope on the sacred summit of Mauna Kea. In Australia, Hindu organizations point to DNA studies suggesting genetic links between Indian and Aborigine populations as evidence of ancient kinship.

Each gesture, Upadhyay argues, is a form of what they and other scholars call “saffronwashing”—a term borrowed from the similar logics of greenwashing and pinkwashing.

“Caste is very important to think about and name. … This is a longer genealogy of violence that dominant caste Indians have imported with themselves when they’ve come here. So, it’s a conversation we need to be having much more proactively and keep fighting against,” says Nishant Upadhyay. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

“They project these cultural things about Hinduism but erase the violences that hide beneath those cultural practices.”

For Western audiences unfamiliar with caste, the danger in these solidarity gestures may be hard to see. That disguise is the problem.

Caste is among the oldest systems of structural oppression in human history. It predates European colonialism by thousands of years and extends well beyond the borders of India and Hinduism.

For Hindu nationalists in the diaspora, the goal, Upadhyay says, is to normalize and mainstream themselves. Within progressive spaces, interfaith coalitions and anti-racist organizing, Hindu nationalist messaging can be normalized, and any criticism of India’s treatment of its own minorities can be suppressed. In the last decade, there have been cases of diasporic Hindu nationalist groups going after scholars, writers and activists critical of the Hindu nationalist regime in India, caste violence, Islamophobia and the occupation of Kashmir.

Already, Upadhyay points out, Hindu nationalist influence has shaped K-12 textbook battles, hiring cultures in Silicon Valley and the political landscape at the highest levels of American government across both parties.

“This impacts all of us,” they say.

What real solidarity looks like

Upadhyay is careful to distinguish the solidarities they critique from others that they see as genuine and decolonial. Kashmiri, Tamil, Punjabi, Dalit and Tibetan diaspora communities, they argue, have modeled a fundamentally different approach rooted in an honest acknowledgment of their own position, histories and complicities.

“We left our homelands because our people are oppressed and now we are refugees or immigrants here, but we have also become settlers,” they say, describing the framework these communities embrace. “That’s a very different articulation and practice of solidarity.”

At its core, the question is whether a community treats its own suffering as unique and self-contained or accepts its connection to a broader web of struggle and liberation.

For Upadhyay, only one of those orientations can sustain real solidarity.

“We can learn from these decolonial frameworks where interlinking of oppression and liberation is at the forefront,” they say.

That work, Upadhyay says, begins at home. The task they set for themselves, and for others in dominant-caste diaspora communities, is to look inward first.

“We have to examine how caste, race and indigeneity have shaped our own privilege before presuming to stand beside those whose lands and lives remain on the line,” Upadhyay says. “We have to fight together because our liberation is interconnected.”

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Ethnic studies Professor Nishant Upadhyay delves into the gap between image and reality in Hinduism.

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Top photo: Flags of the Party flags of India's conservative Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP) and Shiv Sena. (Photo: Al Jazeera English/Wikimedia Commons)

What began in ancient Greece is headed for the White House lawn

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 11 Jun 2026 19:10:10 +0000

What began in ancient Greece is headed for the White House lawn Rachel Sauer Thu, 06/11/2026 - 13:10

Jared Bahir Browsh

UFC Freedom 250, the MMA event planned for the White House lawn June 14, represents a decades-long relationship between President Donald Trump and UFC

The White House has been a construction site since late October, when the East Wing was suddenly demolished to build a controversial ballroom. In the shadows of cranes, another temporary structure is being built on the South Lawn of the White House: a 5,000-seat outdoor stadium that will host UFC Freedom 250, a special mixed martial arts (MMA) event that will occur on June 14, President Trump’s 80th birthday, as part of the lead-up to the 250th birthday of the United States.

The unique competition has faced criticism—seen as desecrating the lawn of the President’s residence and what many people see as the people’s house. A deeper examination of the history of MMA and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) reveals why this event is not merely a sporting event, but representative of an ideological connection between the brutal combat sport and the current state of MAGA conservatism.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the CU ��Ĵ�ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

What is now considered MMA dates back to the ancient Olympics and an event called pankration, a combat sport that combined boxing and wrestling. Although it did not feature the mix of martial art disciplines we see today, it did function very similarly to modern MMA. Like many ancient Olympic sports, pankration was tied to military service, allowing soldiers who were the most prepared for battle. Although formal competitions banned eye-gouging and biting, training often included these since a similar fight on the battlefield would have no rules. The fight would continue until one competitor gave up, lost consciousness or died. Ancient China also had a similar sport, Lei Tai, which was formally competed on a stage, with challengers fighting until one competitor was declared champion.

Fighting competitions continued in the succeeding centuries throughout the world, including in colonial America, where the sport rough and tumble was often used to settle disputes in the rural backcountry, especially in the South. Also known as gouging, the brutal and disfiguring sport fell out of favor with the growing popularity of the Bowie knife and revolver in the 19th century, which led to more lethal methods of solving disputes on the frontier.

Other forms of fighting and martial arts continued to emerge in the 19th century, including the French sport of savate, similar to kickboxing, and Lancashire, or catch wrestling, a less-restrictive version of the sport that emerged from Britain and was included in several Olympic Games between 1904 and 1936.

The globalization of sport in the 20th century through cultural exchange events like the Olympics led to further competitions in forms of combat including jiu-jitsu from Brazil and judo from Japan. Judo was introduced as an Olympic sport at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo, the first martial art from Asia in the Games.

In Brazil, Vale Tudo, a no-holds-barred martial art, grew in popularity throughout the 20th century after early matches pitted local forms of martial arts against fighting styles from other continents. The Gracie Challenge, which was an open invitation from the Gracie family—a Brazilian family considered the first family of jiu-jitsu—to prove their version of jiu-jitsu was superior, helped expand the popularity of Vale Tudo. This martial art, along with Japanese shoot wrestling, a hybrid sport that mixed wrestling and combat sports like kickboxing and emerged in the 1970s, provided the framework for what would become modern MMA.

Interest in martial arts grew through popular culture, including the movies of Bruce Lee, in the 1970s. Though boxing was still the dominant combat sport, curiosity grew regarding the effectiveness of each form of combat. Muhammad Ali issued a million-dollar open challenge to the president of Japanese Amateur Wrestling for a fighter to take him on. Antonio Inoki accepted the challenge and on June 26, 1976, Ali and Inoki fought in Tokyo; although it ended in a draw, many see the match as a precursor to the popularity of MMA.

Renzo Gracie (white trunks) kicks Eugenio Tadeu (black trunks) during the "Pentagon Combat" Vale Tudo event in 1997. (Photo: Marcelo Alonso/Wikimedia Commons)

UFC 1

The seeds of the MMA were further planted when businessman Art Davie, filmmaker John Milius and Rorion Gracie of the Gracie Challenge collaborated to organize an eight-competitor tournament originally named War of the Worlds. Later renamed the Ultimate Fighting Championship, what is now known as UFC 1 took place in Denver on November 12, 1993. Gracie won the first tournament, and the organizers soon planned a second Denver event—what is now known as UFC 2—four months after the first. In 1994, two more UFC events followed in North Carolina and Oklahoma, as the no-holds-barred style of fighting grew in popularity.

UFC 5 in 1995 featured the first singles match. Billed as a Superfight, it was meant to declare a champion, but the match ended in a draw after 36 minutes. The fight represented a move away from the tournament format and into a card of single matches similar to a boxing event. The UFC also earned a reputation for its extreme violence and the absurdity of some of the matches, one of which—between a mixed martial artist and a sumo wrestler—featured nine-inch height and a 400-pound weight difference.

Living up to its early tagline “there are no rules,” UFC promotion gained a reputation for being especially violent and was still known as “no-holds-barred fighting” in many states through the late 1990s. In 1996, Arizona Senator John McCain called the sport “human cockfighting” and sent letters to every state urging them to ban it. Thirty-six states did so, largely relegating the UFC’s events to the southeast United States and other countries. The president of the National Cable Television Association also warned cable companies that airing UFC fights could lead to scrutiny from the federal government, and a number of top cable providers blacked out the promotion on TV.

For several years in the late 1990s, the UFC languished as a regional niche sport until it was thrown a lifeline by Donald Trump. In September 2000, the New Jersey State Athletic Control Board (NJSACB) established a probationary period allowing MMA events to take place in the state so the board could create a unified set of rules to regulate the sport. In November, Trump Plaza hosted UFC 28 in Atlantic City, the first UFC event in New Jersey.

Atlantic City had become a hub for boxing after casino gambling was legalized in New Jersey in 1977 and regularly hosted boxing matches; however, most big prize fights still occurred in larger cities like New York or in Las Vegas. Looking to grow the profile of his casinos—and in turn Atlantic City—Trump began bringing major events to the beachside resort. In 1988, Trump outbid several Las Vegas casinos to bring Mike Tyson’s heavyweight title bouts to Atlantic City. Tyson took on Larry Holmes in January that year and Michael Spinks in June. Trump looked to sports to expand his profile even after pushing the United States Football League out of business in 1985 by convincing other owners to move to a fall schedule while he was suing the NFL.

In between the two Tyson title fights, Trump Plaza hosted Wrestlemania IV, forging a relationship between Trump and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), which is now a sister company to the UFC under TKO Holdings after a 2023 merger. Trump grew his partnership with WWE, hosting Wrestlemania V in 1989 and was later included in storylines for the professional wrestling promotion; he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013. Linda McMahon, the current U.S. secretary of education, previously served as president and CEO of WWE.

Fighters Clay Guida and Marcus Aurelio compete in UFC 74: Respect in Las Vegas in 2007. (Photo: Lee Brimelow/Wikimedia Commons)

After UFC 29 took place in Japan in December 2000, U.S. businessman Dana White worked with casino executives Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta to create Zuffa, LLC and buy the UFC for $2 million. At the time, White had been working as a promoter for fighters in Las Vegas and saw an opportunity to grow the combat sport. A month after the sale was finalized in January 2001, UFC 30 returned to Atlantic City with Trump Plaza hosting the first event under Zufa ownership, followed by UFC 31 five months later, forging a relationship between White and Trump.

At the same time, boxing was undergoing significant changes following passage of the Muhammad Ali Boxing Reform Act in 2000, which increased regulations that protected fighters from being exploited. However, MMA is not covered in the Act, and White and his partners saw an opportunity to control the entire sport—and its fighters. Unlike in boxing, the UFC signs fighters to exclusive contracts and they are considered independent contractors, excusing the company from providing fighters with employee benefits, while also barring them from negotiating or fighting for other promotions. Over time, UFC pushed out or bought competitors, allowing UFC to essentially monopolize MMA in the US.

A true turning point was the premiere of the reality show The Ultimate Fighter, which debuted after WWE Raw in January 2005, exactly a year after another reality show, The Apprentice, boosted the business of Donald Trump. As The Apprentice did for Trump, The Ultimate Fighter significantly boosted visibility for White and the UFC.

Misogyny and politics

As the UFC grew, it faced a number of controversies that both invited criticism while fortifying its mostly male, conservative fanbase. Women have largely been ignored, if not unwelcome, in combat sports, with women’s judo not debuting as an official Olympic sport until 1992; women’s boxing followed 20 years later. Dana White famously said in 2011 that women would never fight in the UFC, but two months later UFC parent company Zuffa bought competing MMA promotion Strikeforce, which did have a women’s division. Two years later, when Strikeforce was fully merged with UFC, the first women’s fight occurred, pitting Ronda Rousey against Liz Carmouche.

Even with the introduction of women’s divisions, the locker room culture in the UFC and many training gyms continues to be toxic and misogynistic, with male fighters regularly making sexist comments, including some directed at fellow fighters. There is also significantly less coverage of and support for women fighters, with only three fighting divisions for women compared to eight for men.

UFC’s controversies extend beyond sexism. Like Trump, Dana White has had a contentious relationship with much of the media. He pulled credentials from several MMA reporters after they broke the story that fighter Brock Lesnar was returning to the UFC before the official announcement. White also recently called media members and journalists “nobodies,” bristling at what he considers critical coverage of the UFC regarding its response to sexism in the sport and treatment of fighters.

President Donald Trump (seated) with UFC fighters in the Oval Office on Wednesday, May 6, 2026. (Photo: Molly Riley/White House)

White strengthened his relationship with Trump by endorsing him for president in 2016. At that time, more political content was included in UFC broadcasts, deepening the connection between UFC promotion and conservative media and leveraging that connection to increase Trump’s appeal with young men through the UFC and podcast environment known as the “manosphere.” Top podcaster Joe Rogan has been a commentator for the UFC since 1997, and its fighters often appear on podcasts and conservative media, with several also endorsing Trump.

White and Trump maintained their relationship through his first presidency and the legal issues that followed his loss to Joe Biden in 2020. The UFC was integral in helping Trump revitalize his public image after the January 6 riots and the legal controversies that followed him in between his presidential terms. Trump’s attendance at UFC events were among his first public appearances after the tumultuous end to his first term and were often celebrated on UFC broadcasts. This relationship continued through his 2024 campaign, during which Dana White introduced Trump as the 2024 Republican nominee for president at the Republican National Convention.

Fewer than two weeks after the 2024 election, Trump attended UFC 309 at Madison Square Garden, where he allegedly broached the topic of a White House UFC event to Dana White. Trump announced the event on July 3, 2025, and White officially confirmed it would take place.

Combat sports have historically been leveraged for political gain, so the relationship between UFC and Trump is not unusual, even if the upcoming White House event is a dramatic break from convention. Matches between rival ethnic or racial groups continue to be a huge draw in combat sports, a trend that dates back centuries and includes fights between Joe Louis and Nazi-backed Max Schmeling and later the Rumble in the Jungle and Thrilla in Manila, which dictators in Zaire and the Phillipines, respectively, leveraged to sportwash their authoritarian regimes.

White has leveraged his relationship with Trump both economically and politically as he looks to expand his empire. In 2025, with the backing of the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund’s subsidiary Sola, White launched Zuffa Boxing to bring the UFC exclusivity model to boxing. White is currently lobbying congress to pass the Muhammad Ali American Boxing Revival Act, which does guarantee minimum pay and health insurance for boxers, but would eliminate other protections against organizations acting as promoters, organizers and ranking entities—a move that could ultimately lead to similar exploitation and monopolistic practices that have been claimed by UFC fighters.

The Saudis’ involvement in sports, which includes WWE events, LIV Golf, and the 2034 World Cup, is seen as an effort by the Saudi monarchy to sportwash the country’s image. The Public Investment Fund is providing financing for Paramount’s bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, as Paramount aggressively pursues WBD under David Ellison’s ownership.

About a month before Paramount began its pursuit of WBD, and a few days after the Ellisons’ purchase of Paramount was finalized, UFC signed a lucrative media rights deal with Paramount for 7 years, $7.7 billion with UFC Freedom 250, preceded by the Friday night weigh-in at the Lincoln Memorial, streaming on Paramount+.

For the casual observer, a UFC fight on the White House lawn might seem random, if not ridiculous, but for those familiar with Trump’s relationships and his love of spectacles, it is clear why the event was organized. Rather than an isolated event, it is the culmination of relationships Trump has formed with supporters, including White, whom he has known for more than a quarter century.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the CU ��Ĵ�ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

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UFC Freedom 250, the MMA event planned for the White House lawn June 14, represents a decades-long relationship between President Donald Trump and UFC.

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Top image: Fighting cage being built on the White House lawn for UFC Freedom 250 on June 14. (Photo: G. Edward Johnson/Wikimedia Commons)

¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 16:10:13 +0000

¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba! Rachel Sauer Tue, 04/07/2026 - 10:10

Jared Bahir Browsh

With Speedy Gonzales set to make his triumphant return to the silver screen, the character’s redemption arc appears complete

“¡Ándale! ¡Ándale! ¡Arriba! ¡Arriba!”

Meaning “hurry up, let’s go,” the trademark slogan of Speedy Gonzales was, for generations of children, the first Spanish words they learned.

But by the 1980s, ABC had pulled his cartoons due to concerns that his dress, accent and characters like his cousin, Slowpoke Rodriguez, were insensitive toward Mexicans and Mexican Americans. The Cartoon Network followed suit in 1999.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the CU ��Ĵ�ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

I’ve studied and written about the history of animation, including how characters have been received around the world. Though rooted in a well-intentioned effort at cultural sensitivity, taking Speedy Gonzales off the air was a step too far for many viewers. He was one of the few cartoon characters rooted in Mexican identity, and he’d become a cultural icon across all of Latin America. The ensuing uproar in the wake of his cancellation prompted the Cartoon Network to reinstate the cartoon mouse in 2002.

With Warner Bros. greenlighting a new Speedy Gonzales movie in January 2026, the character’s redemption arc appears complete.

A speedy rise to stardom

“The fastest mouse in all of Mexico” first appeared in the 1953 animated short “Cat-Tails for Two.”

He was redesigned with his iconic yellow sombrero and red kerchief when he starred in his eponymous 1955 film, which won the Oscar for Best Animated Short.

The short film features the general framework for future plots: Speedy helps members of his border community – a place inspired by Ciudad Juarez, just south of El Paso, Texas – evade the conniving Sylvester the Cat.

It opens with a town of starving mice looking longingly at the AJAX cheese factory through a fence establishing an “international border.” They try to determine who will try to outrun Sylvester, the factory’s guard. One of the mice says that his sister is friends with Speedy Gonzales. (Another pipes in that Speedy is friends with everybody’s sister, signaling Speedy as something of a Don Juan.) After they call on Speedy, he uses his speed and smarts to outrun and outwit Sylvester.

The basic premise also appears in a number of cartoons, from Tom and Jerry to Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote: An antagonist is consistently thwarted by a clever protagonist who avoids increasingly complicated traps and attempts at capture.

Speedy Gonzales is unique, though, in that he was the first cartoon star to be from a Latin American country.

In the 1940s, with the European and Asian markets cut off due to World War II, Disney had turned to the Latin American market. The studio produced “Saludos Amigos” in 1942 and “The Three Caballeros” in 1944 to abide by President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, which aimed to leverage diplomacy, trade and cultural exchange to improve relations with Latin America.

Speedy ended up appearing in 45 theatrical shorts. In 1969, Warner Bros. shut down its animation studio, but the character lived on in Saturday morning cartoon anthologies like “The Bugs Bunny Show,” which repackaged older cartoons for younger audiences.

Animation’s racial reckoning

The Cartoon Network pulled Speedy Gonzales from the air at a time when networks and studios were starting to reassess animated characters from earlier eras.

Many early cartoon characters, including Mickey Mouse, had been modeled after blackface minstrel characters. Warner Bros.‘ first star, Bosko, was originally patented as “Negro Boy.”

With Warner Bros. greenlighting a new Speedy Gonzales movie in January 2026, the character’s redemption arc appears complete. (Illustration: Warner Bros.)

Since racist tropes were ubiquitous in early-20th-century animation, films and shorts like Disney’s “Dumbo,” “Mickey’s Mellerdrammer” or Warner Bros.’ “All This and Rabbit Stew” were either pulled, edited or updated to feature a content warning.

But after The Cartoon Network pulled Speedy Gonzales from the air in 1999, there was unexpected pushback from the Hispanic American community and the character’s Latin American fans. Groups like League of United Latin American Citizens, the oldest Hispanic civil rights organization in the United States, declared Speedy a cultural icon and requested that his cartoons return to the air.

Back when Speedy Gonzales was first introduced to audiences, Hollywood had been filming more movies in Mexico and at the U.S.-Mexico border. However, most of these films depicted Latinos as either incompetent or villains.

In this regard, Speedy represented something different. Though the character’s English speech and accent reflected stereotypes – and he was voiced by a white actor, Mel Blanc – the character was ultimately a clever, quick-witted and good-natured protagonist. And the Spanish dubbing of his cartoons in Latin America had removed the stereotypical accent altogether.

Let the people decide

The trajectory of Speedy Gonzales resembles that of another controversial cartoon character: Apu Nahasapeemapetilon from “The Simpsons.”

An Indian immigrant who earned his Ph.D. in computer science in his home country, Apu becomes the manager of a convenience store in the U.S.

Some critics viewed Apu’s depiction as problematic; voiced by a white actor, Hank Azaria, Apu’s exaggerated Indian-American accent and catchphrase – “Thank you, come again” – was routinely mimicked and mocked by viewers of the show. Others, however, saw Apu as the embodiment of the American Dream: He was intelligent, hardworking and morally grounded.

Cultural theorists like Jacques Derrida and Stuart Hall have written about the complexities of how audiences understand – and either resist or embrace – what they read and watch. They ultimately argue that viewers and readers often interpret media however they see fit, regardless of the creators’ intent. For example, many minority groups who are underrepresented or misrepresented in popular culture will nonetheless find their own meaning and inspiration in characters, even if those characters weren’t supposed to represent those groups in the first place.

This happened with “The Goofy Movie.” Some audiences went on to describe the 1995 film as Disney’s first “Black” animated feature, despite the fact that the characters’ race is never mentioned. There were hints, of course: Black R&B singer Tevin Campbell played the movie’s fictional pop star, Powerline, and the themes of fatherhood and generational tensions eerily echo those in the play “Fences,” written by Black playwright August Wilson.

Of course, in the case of a character like Speedy Gonzales, depictions can become more nuanced as cultural norms and sensitivities change. Jorge R. Gutiérrez is set to direct the animated feature. If his work on films like “The Book of Life” is any indication, he’ll be well-equipped to bring cultural awareness to the animated feature – even if Speedy continues to sport his big, floppy sombrero.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the CU ��Ĵ�ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article

With Speedy Gonzales set to make his triumphant return to the silver screen, the character’s redemption arc appears complete.

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Exploring what it means to take up space

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 17:26:03 +0000

Exploring what it means to take up space Rachel Sauer Thu, 02/19/2026 - 10:26

Rachel Sauer

Multimedia Takin’ Up Space performance Feb. 21 at Fiske Planetarium will highlight historical, cultural, environmental and social justice narratives as an act of reclaiming Black spaces

There are a lot of ways to take up space. The most basic is simply a function of being born—existing on this planet, possessing mass, moving across its horizontal surfaces.

There’s also taking up space in the cosmological sense: pondering the farthest reaches of the universe, soaring through this spiral galaxy and beyond, transcending gravity as an act of belonging in time and in space.

And then there’s taking up space as an act of taking back. This is a reclamation of spaces previously occupied, of being in them, of filling them as an act of defiance and homecoming.

CU ��Ĵ�ý professors Shawn O'Neal (left) and Kalonji Nzinga (right) envisioned Takin' Up Space, in part, to "revisit our past in order to have a better evaluation of the present and build better futures," O'Neal explains.

Considering these possibilities and more is Takin’ Up Space III: Holding Space, the third iteration of an event envisioned by Shawn Trenell O’Neal, a ��Ĵ�ý assistant teaching professor of ethnic studies and associate faculty director of the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS), and Kalonji Nzinga, an assistant professor in the School of Education.

The free event, which will be from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21, at Fiske Planetarium, is a multi-act, multimedia performance produced, arranged and performed by O’Neal and Nzinga, with special performances by Denver singer-songwriter Kayla Marque and wellness guide-somatic artist Soraya Latiff.

The title Takin’ Up Space acts, on one level, to “reintroduce us to spaces we’ve been systematically removed from over decades,” O’Neal explains, adding that themes of space and time are intrinsic to African culture.

“Harriet Tubman, when she was leading folks from enslavement on the Underground Railroad, read the stars and nature. So, another aspect of this is realizing we are one with nature, though we’ve been systematically removed from it for decades. I’ve never thought it was a coincidence that 1964 was the year of the Civil Rights Act and the Wilderness Act. In a way, it was opening the door to Black people’s human rights and closing our access to nature and space.”

If you go

What: Takin' Up Space III: Holding Space, a multi-media performance produced, arranged and performed by Shawn Trenell O'Neal and Kalonji Nzinga, with special guests including Denver singer-songwriter Kayla Marque and wellness guide-somatic artist Soraya Latiff

Where: Fiske Planetarium, 2414 Regent Drive

When: 6-9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21

The event is free but tickets are required.

Learn more

Takin’ Up Space will include O’Neal’s all-vinyl live scoring of the 1926 silent film The Flying Ace, whose cast members are all Black, followed by an immersive somatic meditation led by Latiff, during which she will guide reflection on the meaning of “holding space.” Nzinga will perform selections from his hip-hop soul catalog, synced with film visualizations aligned with his storytelling, and then Marque will bring “emotive vocals, electronic textures and cinematic storytelling,” inviting the audience “into a shared cosmic dream,” according to event organizers.

Occupying spaces of Blackness

For O’Neal, performing a live score to an almost-forgotten film represents the confluence of art, history and culture that has long motivated his scholarship and creative life. He first scored a silent film in 1998, when he was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and realized he had a gift for DJing.

“My friend had this idea that, ‘Hey, we should score a silent film,’” he recalls. They took on the challenge of scoring the 1925 The Phantom of the Opera starring Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin, and each night of the performance was different.

“I realized, ‘Wow, this is a really creative way to mix records and use my record collection in a different way than just dancing,” he says. “It was my way to push against how we collapse all these art forms into very limited, narrow views of what they can be.”

His goal evolved from literal-minded soundtracking to close consideration of subtext, mood and feeling—scoring as an artistic act of composition that embraces what the film shows both on and beneath the surface. So, on a recent Saturday in his home studio in his Denver basement, The Flying Ace is cued on his laptop, and he is a blur between two turntables and a soundboard.

Shawn O'Neal experiments with sound as he composes a score for the silent film The Flying Ace. (Photo: Rachel Sauer)

The scene playing is a joyous moment of flight, when pilot Finley Tucker takes to the air with Ruth Sawtelle, the woman he hopes to marry.

“When the plane is in the air, I want a big, bright blast of sound, probably something Sun Ra-ish,” O’Neal explains, bent over a milk crate of LPs that represent a winnowing from the many hundreds in his collection. “Then from that moment I want a very feminine sound—Mahalia Jackson to Alice Coltrane.”

If the choices are unexpected—leagues from the calliope plinks traditionally associated with silent movies—it’s partly because “something that’s always interested me about public performativity is the opportunity to capture feelings and emotions that are flowing through the audience, maybe even things people didn’t think they were ready to deal with.”

O’Neal says he wants to give people what they’re not expecting, pursuing a goal of introduction and reintroduction: “We’ve allowed Black music and Black art to be sold so short, so as we’re reintroducing ourselves to spaces of Blackness, that includes a musical heritage that is so broad and so deep.”

In fact, the scaffolding of Takin’ Up Space is built from the Africana aesthetics regarding the five pillars of hip hop studies: DJing, MCing, dance, graffiti/visual art and knowledge. O’Neal, Nzinga and their co-organizers also draw deeply from the symbols and stories in African cultures, including Sankofa of the Akan people of Ghana, represented as a bird with its head turned backward and an egg in its mouth, symbolizing the idea of looking back at the past to learn from it and move forward.

“We’re not doing this to say, ‘This is better than anything else,’ but to revisit our past in order to have a better evaluation of the present and build better futures,” O’Neal says. “We intend to take up space.”

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Multimedia Takin’ Up Space performance Feb. 21 at Fiske Planetarium will highlight historical, cultural, environmental and social justice narratives as an act of reclaiming Black spaces.

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Incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans holds lessons now

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:37:00 +0000

Incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans holds lessons now Rachel Sauer Thu, 02/19/2026 - 07:37

Daryl Maeda

The Day of Remembrance, Feb. 19, should focus our attention on how a constitutional republic can shun its first principles

Today is the Day of Remembrance, marking the date that the United States officially marshalled the full force and power of the federal government against Americans whose only offense was being of Japanese descent. This day, which now lives in infamy, holds lessons for us now.

On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to one of the most notable mass violations of civil liberties in U.S. history: the imprisonment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent without due process. Each year, the Japanese American community commemorates this Day of Remembrance to reflect on the lessons of that episode and resolve to advocate for justice for all.

Dressed in his U.S. Navy uniform, World War I veteran Hikotaro Yamada enters the Santa Anita assembly center after being forced to leave his Torrance, California, home. (Photo: Clem Albers/U.S. Department of the Interior)

The attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 exacerbated decades of anti-Japanese racism. Japanese immigrants were disparaged from the 1890s onward as an invading “yellow peril” that brought crime and sexual deviance, stole jobs and threatened to impose a foreign culture.

Before 1941, the federal government barred them from becoming naturalized citizens and eventually prevented their migration. Many states prohibited them from marrying white people and buying land, a serious impediment for an ethnic group whose economy relied heavily on agriculture. Despite these barriers, the Japanese American community grew to include Nisei, children born in the United States who possessed natural-born citizenship.

After Dec. 7, government and military officials portrayed Japanese Americans as a monolithic threat to national security, alleging that they could not be differentiated individually and were thus all potential spies or saboteurs.

As the historian Jacobus vanBroek reported, Mississippi Congressman John Rankin told the House of Representatives: “I'm for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps and shipping them back to Asia as soon as possible ... This is a race war, as far as the Pacific side of the conflict is concerned ... The White man's civilization has come into conflict with Japanese barbarism ... One of them must be destroyed ... Damn them! Let's get rid of them now!”

New Deal liberals like Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson declared, “Their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or trust even the citizen Japanese.”

General John L. DeWitt, military commander of the West Coast, said, “In the war in which we are now engaged, racial affinities are not severed by migration. The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second and third generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become ‘Americanized,’ the racial strains are undiluted ... It therefore follows that along the vital Pacific Coast over 112,000 potential enemies of Japanese extraction are at large today.”

California Attorney General and future Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren called for the mass expulsion and incarceration of Japanese Americans just one decade before issuing the landmark decision barring school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education.

Members of the Mochida family, with government-issued identification tags on their clothes, await a bus that will take them from their California home to an internment camp. Mr. Mochida (back row, left) operated a nursery and five greenhouses on a two-acre site in Eden Township, California. (Photo: Dorothea Lange/U.S. Department of the Interior)

Newspapers added cruelty to the message. The San Francisco Examiner opined, “Herd 'em up, pack 'em off and give 'em the inside room in the badlands. Let 'em be pinched, hurt, hungry, and dead up against it... Let us have no patience with the enemy or with anyone whose vein carry his blood…”[1]

EO 9066 authorized the Secretary of War to remove civilians from areas deemed to be militarily sensitive. It named no class of civilians or ethnic groups and defined no geographic boundaries or criteria for designating sensitive areas.

The vaguely defined yet overwhelming power conveyed by the order resulted in Japanese Americans—accused of no crimes as individuals and receiving no due process—being removed from the West Coast and incarcerated in barbed-wire enclosed prison camps hastily constructed in interior states including Colorado. My uncle and aunt were imprisoned at the Amache camp near Granada, Colorado.

Barracks at the Amache internment camp near Granada, Colorado. (Photo: Tom Parker/U.S. Department of the Interior)

Three legal challenges by Gordon Hirabayashi, Min Yasui, and Fred Korematsu to the removal and incarceration made their way to Supreme Court, which ruled repeatedly that EO 9066 and its implementation were constitutional.

In what has come to be a widely admired dissent from the majority opinion in the Korematsu case, Justice Frank Murphy declared, “I dissent, therefore, from this legalization of racism. Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States.”

Here at the ��Ĵ�ý, the U.S. Navy established the Japanese Language School, which recruited some Nisei instructors out of the camps to train military translators and interpreters. President Robert L. Stearns supported the establishment of the school and urged the ��Ĵ�ý community to welcome the instructors and their families.

In response to the Denver Post’s propaganda campaign demonizing Japanese Americans, CU students voiced their outrage, writing in the school’s Silver and Gold newspaper, “Now that the Denver Post has embraced Hitler’s doctrines of race and Aryan superiority, now that the Post has converted this war from a battle of principles or even of nations into a battle of peoples, now that the Post has declared war on the Japanese Americans in our cities and internment camps, it’s about time we college students registered our protests against such fascist techniques in our midst.”

Posterity has condemned the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which offered an official government apology for the “fundamental injustice” done to citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry and providing monetary compensation to those still alive over four decades later.

In signing the bill, Reagan said, “[M]y fellow Americans, we gather here today to right a grave wrong. More than 40 years ago, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living in the United States were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in makeshift internment camps. This action was taken without trial, without jury. It was based solely on race, for these 120,000 were Americans of Japanese descent.”

What lessons can be drawn from this sordid episode that occurred eight decades ago?

Justice is not a partisan issue. After all, the incarceration was perpetrated by the administration of FDR, perhaps the most consequential liberal president of the 20^th century.
Unchecked federal executive power can lead to abuses of fundamental civil and human rights, especially when militarized forces are unleashed on civilians.
Compliant courts and legislatures cannot be relied upon to provide the checks and balances necessary to ensure that constitutional rights are protected.
Mass incarceration camps can be built in the United States and filled with both U.S. citizens and aliens alike without due process. Indeed, they have been.
History will remember the words and deeds of those who support justice and due process.

So today, and indeed every day, we are obliged to remember and to learn.

Daryl J. Maeda, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, has been a faculty member at CU ��Ĵ�ý since 2005. He holds a PhD in American culture from the University of Michigan, MA in ethnic studies from San Francisco State University and BS in mathematics from Harvey Mudd College.

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Top image: Boys imprisoned at Manzanar Camp in California (Photo: Toyo Miyatake)

Colorado has the mountains … but not the Olympics

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:38:57 +0000

Colorado has the mountains … but not the Olympics Rachel Sauer Wed, 02/04/2026 - 10:38

Jared Bahir Browsh

Fifty years ago, Denver was supposed to host the Winter Olympics, but fiscal and environmental concerns halted plans and highlighted difficult truths about hosting

With its infrastructure, mountains and the presence of the Colorado Springs Olympic and Paralympic Training Center, Colorado seems like the ideal Olympics host—and many wonder why the state has never hosted a Games.

Fifty years ago, Denver was scheduled to host the XII Olympic Winter Games during the state’s 1976 centennial celebration and the United States’ bicentennial. Denver’s bid was accepted by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1970, but in November 1972—after a statewide referendum rejected funding for the games—the IOC was left scrambling to find another host city. Although Salt Lake City, Utah, and Lake Placid, New York, offered to host, the IOC, frustrated by the rebuff by Colorado voters, elected to move the games back to Europe in Innsbruck, Austria, just eight years after the city hosted in 1964.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the CU ��Ĵ�ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

The Denver episode taught both the IOC and event organizers as a whole to secure funding, infrastructure and the support of stakeholders before granting any city or country the rights to host major events—although Olympic host cities continue to navigate imperfect planning, as the 2026 host, Milana-Cortina, Italy, races to complete the hockey arena in time for the Games.

From underdog to host

Denver was seen as a dark horse when the bid process began, competing against Sion, Switzerland; Tampere, Finland; and Vancouver, Canada, for the rights to host the Olympics. Denver won the first round of votes but came in second to Sion in the second round (Vancouver and Tampere were eliminated in the first and second rounds, respectively). Most of the IOC voters for the Finnish town ultimately shifted to support Denver’s bid, which was granted in May 1970.

After significant cost overruns and losses during the previous two Games in Grenoble, France, in 1968 and Sapporo, Japan, in 1972, Denver was promoted as the economical Olympics. The Grenoble Games posed a loss of more than $250 million, so when Denver submitted a budget of $14 million, the IOC voters may have seen Denver ushering in a new strategy for a more affordable Winter Games.

However, as the planning moved forward, it was clear the $14 million budget fell far short of what would be needed. By 1972, some estimates surpassed $100 million with a number of unanswered questions regarding the venues and facilities. The University of Denver was floated as a potential location for the Olympic Village, but university officials were never informed of this plan, which would have occurred during the school year.

The original plans also called for the alpine events to be held at Loveland Basin and Mount Sniktau, which did not receive reliable snowfall and were airbrushed with “snow” to cover bald spots in the promotional materials. Many of the plans for events like cross-country skiing had routes that ran through residential neighborhoods in Jefferson County, and plans for the biathlon—a mix of cross-country skiing and rifle shooting—included ranges near Evergreen High School.

Planning goes off course as the election nears

Because the IOC preferred bids that allowed for the vast majority of events to occur close to the host city, the original Denver Olympics plans promoted Loveland Basin and Mount Sniktau as being only 45 minutes away from the city—which may have been possible if I-70 was shut down. Officials then decided to move the ski events to Aspen and Steamboat Springs, both more than 100 miles from the originally proposed Olympic Village. They floated plans to have multiple villages and even discussed having a helicopter usher athletes between sites.

Along with having cross-country skiing events in Evergreen, planners wanted to have the ski jump there as well, which would have required demolishing a hill, rerouting a residential road and pouring concrete over Bear Creek. Maybe Evergreen residents would have enjoyed watching events out their windows—and through their yards—even if it meant dodging bullets and finding new roads to get to work or school, but it is doubtful.

Then-state legislator—and future governor—Dick Lamm, political organizer Sam Brown and environmentalist Eileen Brown (unrelated to Sam) formed Citizens for Colorado’s Future (CCF), which campaigned against the Games. The group collected signatures and ran an information campaign in the lead-up to the 1972 election that included a ballot initiative for the $5 million promised by the state hoping to convince voters to not approve the funding.

A bumper sticker produced before Colorado residents voted on a 1972 referendum to fund the 1976 Olympic Games, which voters rejected. (Photo: History Colorado)

The CCF looked to secure a meeting with the IOC, and when group leaders were rebuffed, they traveled to the Sapporo Olympics, where the IOC executive committee was meeting. CCF members ultimately crashed the meeting, to the consternation of the committee, and presented their findings regarding the true cost and environmental impact to the IOC. This caused Avery Brundage, who was attending his last Winter Games as IOC president, to threaten to pull the Games from the Denver Organizing Committee, which quickly put together a presentation to reassure the IOC.

The cost overruns at the 1972 Sapporo Winter Games and the summer games in Munich further reinforced the cost concerns in Denver. Munich also faced one of the worst terrorist events in sports history, which cast a cloud over the Olympics just months before the 1972 election. Groups like Protect Our Mountain Environment (POME) also held well-publicized protests in places that would be impacted by the Games, including Evergreen.

On Nov. 7, 1972, these myriad problems led Colorado voters to reject the $5 million Olympics contribution from the state, with 60% of voters choosing to say no to the state spending the money on the Games. The following week, Denver officially withdrew from the Games and then-Governor John Love, who championed the bid, resigned the following year to serve as “Energy Czar” under President Richard Nixon. In 1974, Lamm was elected governor, eventually serving three terms and running on a campaign focused on environmentalism and limited development.

Ultimately, Colorado voters were proven right. The 1976 Innsbruck Games cost an estimated $58 million, even with the use of existing facilities from 1964. The Montreal Summer Games the same year were one of the worst financial disasters in Olympic history, with the city, its province, Quebec, and Canada shouldering a debt of more than $1 billion, which was not paid off until 2006.

The early ‘70s bid was not the last time that Denver tried for the Olympics. Federico Peña, mayor of Denver from 1983-1991, pushed to bid for the Olympics even as the city faced financial difficulties. Denver also bid to be the United States Olympic Committee pick for the 2002 Winter Games, with plans that had the ��Ĵ�ý campus serving as the Olympic Village. Denver was beat out by Salt Lake City for the 2002 Games, which faced a bribery controversy over its winning bid.

Ultimately, the politics of Colorado, which include ballot initiatives and the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), create a difficult path for Denver to host an Olympic Games. The concerns of 1976, including rising costs and environmental concerns, have only gotten stronger as some have questioned the long-term impact of hosting. Also, with the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles and the 2034 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, it may be decades until another Olympics makes it back to the United States—and odds are Colorado voters would not approve of the exponentially higher cost of the Olympics in the future.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the CU ��Ĵ�ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

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Fifty years ago, Denver was supposed to host the Winter Olympics, but fiscal and environmental concerns halted plans and highlighted difficult truths about hosting.

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Faster, higher, stronger (at any cost)

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 21:49:55 +0000

Faster, higher, stronger (at any cost) Rachel Sauer Fri, 01/30/2026 - 14:49

Jared Bahir Browsh

Cheating scandals throughout the Olympics’ 130-year history highlight how the pursuit of victory can often conflict with Olympic values

"Faster, Higher, Stronger." The Olympic motto, chosen by the father of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin, expresses the aspirations of the Games in competition and in morality. However, as the many cheating scandals throughout the 130-year history of the Games have shown, the pursuit of victory can often conflict with the effort to maintain the perceived values of the Olympic Movement.

On Jan. 15, after an 11-month investigation, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation announced an 18-month suspensions for two coaches and an equipment manager from Norway’s ski jump team after they were caught on video manipulating the suits of jumpers following inspection at the Nordic World Ski Championships. Although the two skiers whose suits were manipulated—reigning Olympic champion Marius Lindvik and 2018 silver medalist Johann André Forfang—will still compete, it has cast a cloud over the event just weeks before the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies in Italy on Feb. 6.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the CU ��Ĵ�ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

Cheating is as old as sport, and much like at the ancient games, athletes and their coaches have been willing to bend—or break—the rules to gain an advantage for the sake of Olympic glory. The biggest scandals are often followed by rule changes and more intense oversight by the International Olympic Committee and sport officials.

Hitchhiking and strychnine at the 1904 marathon

The 1904 Games in St. Louis is rightfully considered one of the worst Olympics in history. Though Chicago unanimously won the bid to become the first U.S. host of the Olympics, politicking by the Amateur Athletic Union, the postponement of the World’s Fair to 1904 and opposition to an Olympic Stadium in Chicago led to the Games being transferred to St. Louis.

At the time, St. Louis was about a third the size of Chicago and offered fewer transportation options, leading to decreased participation compared to the 1900 Games in Paris. Also, the associated World’s Fair focused heavily on white supremacy and imperialism, which was reflected in the disorganized Games.

One of the most famous examples of the poorly executed Games was the marathon, which was filled with cheating, scientific misinformation and the same racism that was associated with the World’s Fair. The length and difficulty of the marathon has tempted cheating since the first games, but the marathon in St. Louis was especially controversial.

The 1904 event, which began in the middle of the afternoon as temperatures soared past 90, saw only 14 of the 32 two runners finish the race, including Len Taunyane (ninth) and Jan Mashiani (12th), two members of South Africa’s Tswana tribe who were included in the race to prove white superiority, coming to St. Louis as a part of the Boer War Exhibition. They were the only Black South Africans to represent their country until 1992.

James E. Sullivan, who organized much of the 1904 Olympics, also wanted to prove that dehydration improved performance and had only one water station on the entire route. American runner Frederick Lorz began to cramp and dropped out of the race, soliciting a ride from a local driver. When the car broke down, Lorz finished the route and walked into the stadium, celebrating as the winner before a spectator revealed he had hitched a ride. Another American runner, Thomas Hicks, crossed the finish line more than 20 minutes later, boosted by strychnine sulfate and brandy after his own brush with dehydration. The chaotic race almost led to the elimination of the marathon from the Olympic program.

The straight dope

Thomas Hicks (center) crossed the finish line of the 1904 Olympic marathon with the help of strychnine sulfate and brandy, after a brush with dehydration. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

As the 1904 marathon debacle shows, some athletes will risk their health if a substance, including poison or liquor, can give them an edge. Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson may be the most famous individual example of performance-enhancing drug use at the Olympics—disqualified after testing positive for steroids at the 1988 Seoul Games following a world record-setting performance in the 100-meter dash. Carl Lewis, who placed second, was awarded the gold medal after Johnson was disqualified. Johnson had also tested positive for stimulants at the U.S. Olympic Trials, but was still allowed to compete.

The United States was again embroiled in a doping scandal in 2007 when sprinter Marion Jones admitted to steroid use as a part of the larger BALCO banned substance scandal and was stripped of her medals from the 2000 Sydney Games. Cyclist Lance Armstrong was stripped of his bronze from the 2000 Games as well.

However, the largest doping scandal spans more than 74 years, after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) joined the Olympic Movement in 1952. The Soviet Union's promotion of communism put the nation at odds with capitalist nations—specifically with fellow superpower the United States—making the Olympics a proxy battle in the Cold War. The USSR was at odds with many Western countries as the Soviet Union’s athletes were given nominal jobs within the Soviet government, allowing them to train and compete full time through their athletic primes. This often led to competitions between older Soviet and much younger amateur athletes.

It was later revealed many of these athletes were also involved in state-sponsored doping programs, with Soviet labs working to stay a step ahead of testing, especially after testing for steroids began in 1976. In spite of this, East Germany, which had its own doping program, placed second in gold medals at the 1976 games in Montreal, motivating the Soviets to accelerate their own doping program for the 1980 Moscow Games and the 1984 Los Angeles Games, although they boycotted the latter.

The same doctor who signed off on the Soviet doping program for the 1984 Games, Dr. Sergei Portugalov, was instrumental in renewing the state-sponsored doping program through at least 2008, when seven runners from Russia were banned from competing at the 2008 Beijing Games. In 2017, Portugalov was permanently banned from working with athletes by the Court of Arbitration for Sport while Russia was banned from the Olympics for doping from 2019-2023. Russian athletes were allowed to compete under the Olympic Flag—as they did in 2024 and will in 2026, the result of a separate ban related to the invasion of Ukraine.

For many years, Soviet athletes (here entering the opening ceremony of the 1964 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo) fought proxy Cold War battles with western nations in the Olympics. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Conspiring for glory

As enforcement has intensified, efforts to cheat have become more complex, with multinational conspiracies behind more recent controversies. The most famous of these efforts occurred during the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, which was already clouded in controversy after it was revealed in 1998 that the Salt Lake Organizing Committee had bribed Olympic officials to obtain the bid. Although other bid processes have faced claims of bribery, this was considered the largest corruption scandal in IOC history, prompting an overhaul of the bid process.

During the pairs figure skating competition, Canadians Jamie Salé and David Pelletier performed a near-flawless routine but were awarded silver due to a 5-4 split among judges that favored Russian competitors Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze. Judge Marie Reine Le Gougne alleged soon after the event that she was pressured by the head of the French skating federation, Didier Gailhaguet, to give the Russian pair favorable marks in exchange for Russian support for French ice dancers Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat, who were scheduled to compete later in the Games and ultimately won gold.

Judged sports like gymnastics and figure skating have long faced criticism over their judges, especially during the Cold War, when there were frequent claims of bias for either Eastern and Western bloc nations. Le Gougne eventually recanted her story, but the damage was already done and Salé and Pelletier were eventually named gold medalists alongside Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze, who kept their gold. The incident led the International Skating Union to implement a new system to score performances in an effort to limit impropriety in judging.

Typically, when Olympians cheat, they cheat to win, but the 2012 London Games saw several badminton teams take a different approach. After securing a place in the knockout stage in women’s badminton doubles, two South Korean pairs, along with a pair from China and one from Indonesia, attempted to lose on purpose in their last group stage match to obtain a preferred matchup in the next round. All four teams were disqualified for uncompetitive behavior and future tournaments included another draw for runners-up from each group. Some countered that even though they tried to lose matches on purpose, their intent was to win the tournament.

As the common saying goes, “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying,” which is often quoted after a cheating scandal. However, as the incidents involving the Russian Olympic Committee and others have shown, many of these incidents go beyond mere rule breaking and risk the health and well-being of the athletes involved. The IOC tries to remain free of controversy, but as we have seen across the 130 years of the modern Olympics, the organization is not immune to politics, socioeconomics or human nature. Athletes and even entire federations are so tempted by Olympic glory that they are willing to bend sporting ethics for the sake of winning.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the CU ��Ĵ�ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

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Cheating scandals throughout the Olympics’ 130-year history highlight how the pursuit of victory can often conflict with Olympic values.

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Top photo: Vegar S. Hansen/Wikimedia Commons

Exhibit celebrates Black Panther Party in stories and portraits

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 22:52:38 +0000

Exhibit celebrates Black Panther Party in stories and portraits Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/22/2026 - 15:52

The documentary exhibit “Revolutionary Grain,” open now through March 15 in the Macky Gallery, highlights the stories of former Black Panther Party members and ongoing struggles for racial justice

This spring, the ��Ĵ�ý Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS) and the Department of History, together with the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History, present the traveling exhibition “Revolutionary Grain: Celebrating the Spirit of the Black Panther Party in Portraits and Stories” in the Macky Gallery.

The exhibition, open now through March 15, was created by California-based artist and photographer Suzun Lucia Lamaina and honors the legacy of one of the most influential movements in Black American history.

As part of Black History Month programming, the exhibition will be accompanied by a panel discussion with former Black Panther Party members Gayle Dickson, Aaron Dixon, Ericka Huggins and Billy X Jennings, alongside Lamaina and CAAAS Director Reiland Rabaka, on Thursday, Feb. 12, at 7 p.m. in the Norlin Library Center for Global British and Irish Studies Room (M549). The discussion will focus on the history and legacy of the Black Panther Party and its relevance in today’s political climate.

Living history

Hear firsthand accounts of the history of the Black Panther Party and the 1960s Black Freedom Struggle—along with their legacies in Trump's America. The program is part of the accompanying events for the traveling exhibit "Revolutionary Grain: Celebrating the Spirit of the Black Panther Party in Portraits and Stories" that is on display through March 15 in the Macky Gallery.

What: A panel discussion with former Black Panther Party members Gayle Dickson, Aaron Dixon, Ericka Huggins and Billy X Jennings, alongside CAAAS Director Reiland Rabaka and photographer Suzun Lucia Lamaina.

When: 7 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 12

Where: Norlin Library Center for Global British and Irish Studies Room (M549)

Learn more

Additional programs featuring former Panthers will take place throughout that week on campus.

The “Revolutionary Grain” exhibition features a social-documentary photographic essay of portraits and personal narratives from more than 50 former members of the Black Panther Party. Lamaina spent five years traveling across the United States to interview and photograph participants, offering them the opportunity to tell their own stories.

“This work is meant to spark conversation,” Lamaina explained of the project, noting that the exhibition coincides with the 60th anniversary of the Black Panther Party’s founding and ongoing struggles for racial justice in the United States. The exhibition situates the movement’s history in what Lamaina describes as a new phase of the Black Freedom Struggle in contemporary America.

Founded in October 1966 in Oakland, California, by Bobby Seale and the late Huey P. Newton, the Black Panther Party initially focused on addressing police violence in Black communities. By the late 1960s, the party had become a national and international symbol of resistance, establishing nearly 50 chapters across the United States and an international presence in Algiers, North Africa.

“Putting on the Black Panther uniform and committing our lives to the liberation struggle changed the purpose and meaning of our entire identities,” Dixon wrote in his 2012 memoir My People Are Rising: Memoir of a Black Panther Party Captain. “It was a liberating experience. Societal restriction and conformities dropped by the wayside, leaving a fearless, defiant, powerful human being. We no longer looked at ourselves in the same way, nor did we look at the system and its representatives in the same manner. We were the freest of the free.”

In addition to its revolutionary political stance against capitalism, imperialism and fascism, the party launched “survival programs” that provided free breakfasts, medical services and other essential resources to thousands of Black Americans. Despite its community-based activism, the Panthers were frequently targeted by federal authorities, with the Nixon administration labeling the party “the greatest danger to the internal security” of the United States. A number of its members, among them Fred Hampton in Chicago, died at the hands of police officers.

The exhibition seeks to counter decades of misrepresentation by bringing first-person accounts from former members to the foreground, connecting their experiences to present-day debates over racism, police violence and political organizing.

“At a time during which the Trump administration and its supporters are rewriting history and representing versions of the past that downplay or even erase the critical significance of the Black Liberation Struggle of the 1960s and 1970s—of which the Panthers were an integral part—it is all the more important to shed light on the movement’s complexities and give our students, faculty and the community one more opportunity to engage with aging Panther members in meaningful ways," says Thomas Pegelow Kaplan, a professor of history and the Louis P. Singer Endowed Chair in Jewish History. "This is a university campus, and it is a celebration, but also a reappraisal, with the help of key actors, of a complex struggle that has also problematic chapters. History is messy, but our students deserve better than what many in Washington have in store for them.”

The exhibition is co-sponsored by the departments of English, Ethnic Studies and Women and Gender Studies and the Center for Humanities and the Arts.

All events are free and open to the public. No tickets are required. For more information, contact Thomas Pegelow Kaplan at thomas.pegelow-kaplan@colorado.edu.

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The documentary exhibit “Revolutionary Grain,” open now through March 15 in the Macky Gallery, highlights the stories of former Black Panther Party members and ongoing struggles for racial justice.

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Top image: Former Black Panther Party members Emory Douglas (left), Kathleen Cleaver (center) and Barbara Easley Cox (right). (Photos: Suzun Lucia Lamaina)

Streaming killed the video star

Kylie Clarke — Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:12:02 +0000

Streaming killed the video star Kylie Clarke Tue, 12/02/2025 - 17:12

Jared Bahir Browsh

Once a cultural phenomenon, MTV ends five music channels in the UK; viewership in the U.S. continues its downward slide

When MTV announced earlier this year that it would be shutting down music channels at the end of 2025, the reaction was nearly unanimous: MTV still plays music?

The digital networks—MTV Music, MTV 80s, MTV 90s, Club MTV and MTV Live— will shut down in the United Kingdom, Ireland and several other countries in Europe. In the United States, MTV’s secondary networks—MTV2, MTV Live, MTV Classic and MTVU—will continue operating for now despite declining viewership and being carried through cable.

The changes are evidence of both the global reach MTV had at its peak and the significant changes that have occurred in television, especially over the last decade as the rise of streaming and cord cutting has led to a dramatic decline in cable and linear viewing.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the CU ��Ĵ�ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

Music programming has been a part of television since the 1930s, when radio broadcasters transitioned to the visual medium and many of the early experimental broadcasts in the United States and Europe featured live musical performances. As television matured following World War II, music continued to be an integral part of its growth with variety programs like The Ed Sullivan Show, which debuted as Toast of the Town in 1948, and American Bandstand, which debuted as a local program in Philadelphia in 1952 featuring top musical acts.

These shows not only brought musical acts into people’s homes but were one of the few opportunities for African Americans to be seen on the quickly growing medium. The Ethel Waters Show, a variety special that aired on NBC in New York City in 1939, was the first television show to be hosted by an African American. Later, as television spread, Nat “King” Cole hosted his own show, which aired nationally beginning in 1956, but struggled to gain a permanent sponsor in its 13 months on air, causing Cole to comment “Madison Avenue is afraid of the dark.” In spite of this type of prejudice, Ed Sullivan and American Bandstand regularly featured Black artists in the 1940s and 1950s before Brown v. Board of Education overturned segregation in schools.

Musicals before videos

Short musical movies are as old as sound films, with series like Silly Symphonies debuting in 1929 and featuring animation produced around classical music. Warner Bros. followed Disney’s lead with Looney Tunes in 1930 and Merrie Melodies in 1931, featuring music from the Warner Bros. catalog. In 1929, RCA produced the short film Black and Tanwith Duke Ellington and His Orchestra, set in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance. In the 1930s, Paramount produced a series of short films featuring Cab Calloway and His Orchestra, offering visuals as a companion to his music.

In 1964, Top of the Pops debuted on the BBC, airing interviews, live performances and music news based on weekly record charts. The program also featured pre-taped music videos, then known as promotional films, when artists could not perform in the studio live. The Beatles’ film A Hard Day’s Night was also released in 1964, accompanied by the album of the same name and functioning as a promotional vehicle for the band and its music. Inspired by the Beatles’ film, “The Monkees” TV show debuted on NBC in 1966 with a made-for-TV band and their music at the center of the series. In animation, Saturday morning producers took a cue from the popularity of The Monkees with young viewers and made series like “The Archie Show” and “Josie and the Pussycats” following the same model. The fictional band The Archies even scored a No. 1 hit with “Sugar, Sugar.”

In the United States, Ed Sullivan ended his run on television in 1971 and the following year NBC’s “The Midnight Special” and ABC’s “In Concert" debuted, featuring filmed live performances and the occasional music video.

Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody is often recognized as a turning point in music videos. Released on “Top of the Pops” in 1975, the video’s production value and popularity led to a new age of music video production and to music videos becoming a vital tool to promote singles.

Throughout the 1970s, dedicated music video programs, including Australia’s “Countdown” and “Sounds,” aired more frequently. In the United States, cable television was quickly expanding and USA Network/Showtime’s Video Concert Hall, which debuted in 1978, featured music videos. In 1980, Pop Clips aired as a weekly show on Nickelodeon, produced by former Monkees member and music video pioneer Michael Nesmith.

Nickelodeon, the first children’s cable network, had been launched the previous year, in April 1979, by Warner Cable Communications; American Express purchased 50% of Warner Cable Corp. in September of that year. Soon after, Warner-Amex began to develop a network to attract the underserved teenage audience. Seeing music as a way to connect with the demographic, the company was originally going to purchase and expand Pop Clips, but instead developed its own Music Television network.

MTV launched on Aug. 1, 1981, and fittingly, The Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star” was the first video played on the new network. The new network’s impact on the music industry was nearly immediate, as bands with little radio play like The Human League and Men at Work saw a significant uptick in record sales. It also kicked off the Second British Invasion, as the music video format was featured for years on British television. As U.S. acts scrambled to leverage the format, music videos imported from Britain by bands like The Police filled the MTV schedule.

In spite of the demonstrable cultural impact of MTV, the network still faced challenges from the limited proliferation of cable and the unwillingness of cable companies to carry the station due to concerns over the long-term viability of the network. After negotiations with cable operators resulted in little progress, MTV decided to go directly to the consumer. The “I want my MTV” campaign featured famous musical stars like Mick Jagger and David Bowie to promote the network and persuade television viewers to call their cable providers and pressure them to pick up MTV.

Controversial MTV

MTV’s rise in the early 1980s was not without controversy. Black artists were rarely seen on the channel, a fact Bowie raised in a 1983 interview on the network. Programmers for MTV said that the channel’s rock focus and fears of alienating fans in middle America prevented Black artists from being placed in heavy rotation. When Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean” was rejected by MTV, the president of his label, CBS Records, threatened to pull all of the label’s artists from the network. MTV relented and the video debuted on March 10, 1983. Boosted by the music videos for “Billie Jean,” “Beat It,” and especially the title track “Thriller,” the album went on to become the highest selling record of all time. The popularity of Jackson’s videos helped him to become the “King of Pop.” The music video for the title track of Jackson’s next album, “Bad” premiered in primetime on CBS, and the premiere for the video for “Remember the Time” was simulcast on multiple networks including ABC, NBC and MTV.

The following year was a turning point for the network. On the business side, Warner spun off Nickelodeon and MTV into their own company, MTV Networks, later buying Amex’s stake in the company and then turning around and selling all of MTV Networks to Viacom, completing the deal in 1986. Several new programs and special events also debuted on the network in 1984, including the MTV Music Video Awards, the Top 20 Countdown and the WWE event The Brawl to End It All, the first live wrestling event on cable. Cyndi Lauper featured wrestler Captain Lou Albano in her 1983 video for “Girls Just Want to Have Fun,” leading to a WWE storyline featuring the pop star and cross-marketing that benefitted both MTV and the WWE.

MTV’s influence spread quickly throughout the 1980s, influencing other media while earning criticism for its effect on the music industry. Shows like Miami Vice introduced the aesthetics and music of MTV into scripted television. On the other hand, MTV was also criticized for leading the music industry to focus more on the visual appeal of artists than their music.

The Cable Communications Policy Act of 1984 helped remove regulations that were slowing cable’s growth, leading to further expansion of MTV and other cable networks into new markets. Throughout the 1980s, the network continued to expand its original programming, moving away from the radio-style format hosted by its video jockeys, or VJs. This included more genre-specific shows like Headbangers Ball, which featured heavy metal, and the alternative rock-focused 120 Minutes, along with Dial MTV, which allowed viewers to call in and vote for their favorite videos.

Even with the expansion of music played on MTV, there were still genres the network overlooked. With MTV playing very little country music, in 1983 both Country Music Television and The Nashville Network launched. The same year, Black Entertainment Television also grew from a programming block on the USA Network into an independent network, airing music videos from Black artists. In 1985, MTV’s sister network VH1 premiered, focused on an older audience with adult contemporary music. All of these networks are now owned by Paramount.

MTV also expanded beyond the United States when MTV Europe launched in 1987. One of the new network’s early shows, Yo!, featured hip-hop artists and became one of its most popular programs, Yo! MTV Raps, which debuted in the United States in 1988 and helped expand hip-hop’s visibility. The genre had been limited on the network to a few artists like Run-DMC and the Beastie Boys, both of which heavily sampled rock music. Also in 1987, This Week in Rock launched MTV News, which originally focused on music and pop culture news but expanded into politics during the 1992 election, focusing on issues impacting its younger audience.

MTV continued to expand their programming in the late 1980s and early 1990s, airing the game show Remote Control and giving young comedians Ben Stiller and Jon Stewart their own shows. In 1992, MTV Sports debuted focusing on extreme sports, helping to bring skateboarding, BMX, and other alternative sports to the mainstream leading to the X Games in 1995. The same year modern reality TV was launched with The Real World. This also marked the beginning of the shift away from music videos as more reality shows and docuseries, like Road Rules and True Life, filled more of the schedule throughout the 1990s.

The last gasp for the music in Music Television was Total Request Live (TRL), which debuted in 1998. Driven by the popularity of boy bands, “pop princesses,” hip-hop, and pop rock, the show aired in the afternoon as teenagers were getting home from school. The program revitalized the role of the VJ and launched the careers of Carson Daly, Hilarie Burton, La La Anthony, and Vanessa Lachey. By the time TRL ended its original 10 year run, most of the music videos on the network were airing in late night.

As MTV moved into other programming, the internet became the primary platform for music videos. The non-linear format offered by early MTV with a playlist of very different videos played back to back forecasted our relationship with YouTube, TikTok, and other social media sites. MTV motivated the evolution of the music industry and the explosion of music videos that continue today, even as Paramount moves away from the M in MTV.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the CU ��Ĵ�ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

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Once a cultural phenomenon, MTV ends five music channels in the UK; viewership in the U.S. continues its downward slide.

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On Thanksgiving, pass the gravy and a tight spiral

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 19:10:19 +0000

On Thanksgiving, pass the gravy and a tight spiral Rachel Sauer Mon, 11/17/2025 - 12:10

Jared Bahir Browsh

The tradition of football on the fourth Thursday in November is almost as old as the holiday itself, bringing families together in an important cultural touchpoint

As families unite for the Thanksgiving holiday, it is likely the gathering will include watching football before and after the traditional dinner. Thanksgiving football is almost as old as the holiday itself, with more than a century and a half of history on the holiday

Most historians recognize the Nov. 6, 1869, matchup between Princeton University (then The College of New Jersey) and Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, as the first official American football game. “Foot-ball” was played much differently then, looking more like a hybrid of soccer and rugby. Rutgers won by a score of 6-4 with about 100 spectators looking on.

Just 11 days later, an advertisement appeared in The Evening Telegraph, a Philadelphia newspaper, announcing a “foot-ball match" between Young America Cricket Club and the Germantown Cricket Club to be played in the Germantown section of the city on Thanksgiving. There are no reports of the game, but considering it took place just 70 miles southwest of New Brunswick, it was likely played under the same rules as the college game.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the CU ��Ĵ�ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

Abraham Lincoln, influenced by a series of essays written by editor and activist Sarah Josepha Hale, had established Thanksgiving in 1863, proclaiming the last Thursday of November a holiday. Subsequent presidents continued this traditional proclamation until 1939, when Franklin D. Roosevelt named the second-to-last Thursday in November as Thanksgiving to provide an extra week for holiday shopping. This created a political rift with Republicans, who declared that day “Franksgiving” and encouraged Americans to celebrate the holiday the following week.

Congress solidified the date of Thanksgiving in 1941, with Roosevelt signing the bill on Dec. 26, 1942, officially making the fourth Thursday of November the Thanksgiving holiday. By this time, football on Thanksgiving had become a tradition, with some high schools establishing rivalries as early as 1875 and annual intercollegiate games beginning in 1876.

Princeton and Yale played a yearly game on Thanksgiving between 1876 and 1881 before the Intercollegiate Football Association declared its championship would take place on the holiday beginning in 1882. The University of Michigan played annually on Thanksgiving between 1885 and 1905, including a series of games against the University of Chicago that helped firmly establish football’s presence on the holiday. Many New England high schools play their rivalry game, or Turkey Bowl, on the holiday, allowing alumni to come back to root on their alma mater, a tradition that celebrates its 150th anniversary in 2025.

The third edition of the “Border War” between the University of Kansas and University of Missouri in 1893 took place on Thanksgiving in Kansas City, Missouri, a tradition that continued through 1910, when the conference began requiring all games to be played on college campuses. Like many rivalry games, it is now played in late November, typically the weekend after Thanksgiving.

As old as pro football

Thanksgiving games are also as old as professional football itself—the first recognized professional team, the Allegheny Athletic Association in Western Pennsylvania, regularly played on Thanksgiving. Regional professional leagues in Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania scheduled marquee late-season matchups and championships on Thanksgiving. The Ohio League and other professional and semi-professional football organizations did stop holding Thanksgiving games for a short time, given that many of their players were high school coaches whose teams played that day.

From its inception in 1920 as the American Professional Football Association, the NFL began playing games on Thanksgiving. The Detroit Panthers played their first Thanksgiving game in 1925, a tradition carried by several Detroit franchises including the Detroit Lions. In the Lions’ first season in 1934, owner George A. Richards saw a Thanksgiving Day game as a way to market the new team. Richards also owned NBC radio affiliate WJR, and he negotiated that the matchup against the Chicago Bears be broadcast nationally.

The NFL’s hold on Thanksgiving was disrupted in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The Franksgiving controversy led to a political-party split over when states would recognize the holiday, making it difficult for football teams to schedule games across state lines. The one exception in the NFL was the case of the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Philadelphia Eagles; being in the same state, they were able to play the game when Pennsylvania chose to recognize Franksgiving.

Yale and Princeton, here playing at Yale Field on Nov. 20, 1897, had an annual match-up on Thanksgiving between 1876-1881 before the Intercollegiate Football Association declared its championship would take place on the holiday beginning in 1882. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

World War II disrupted all sports, with the NFL hit especially hard by the loss of personnel, causing some teams to suspend operations. In one notable case, it led the Eagles and Steelers to combine teams to play as the Steagles for a season in 1943.

When NFL Thanksgiving games resumed in 1945, only the Lions continued the tradition. The All-America Football Conference (AAFC) played on Thanksgiving when the league launched in 1946. Both the AAFC’s Cleveland Browns and the San Francisco 49ers played on Thanksgiving in 1947 before joining the NFL after the AAFC folded in 1949.

The Lions and their rival Green Bay Packers, which play each other on Thanksgiving this year, battled on the holiday every year between 1951 and 1963. During this time, the two franchises’ fortunes seemingly switched, with Vince Lombardi taking over the Packers and leading the team to six NFL championships in the 1960s, of which they won five, including the first two Super Bowls. The Lions were the only NFL team to play on Thanksgiving during this period, except in 1952, when the Dallas Texans, in their only season, were scheduled to play the Chicago Bears. The Texans-Bears game had to be moved to Akron, Ohio, due to a scheduling conflict in Dallas. The Bears, underestimating the expansion team, sent their second unit to Akron and were upset by the Texans in the team’s only win of their sole season.

Not on Friday or Saturday

The Sports Broadcasting Act of 1961 allowed the NFL to negotiate media rights on behalf of the entire league, with the league agreeing to not broadcast on Fridays and Saturdays—a concession made to protect traditional scheduling of high school on Friday and college football on Saturday. Thursdays were an exception, so it did not affect the broadcasting of football games on Thanksgiving, although it would be another four decades until Thursday night games became a weekly fixture for the NFL.

Dallas returned to Thanksgiving in 1966, when Cowboys’ President Tex Schramm saw a holiday game as a way to publicize the team that was founded in 1960. Schramm also felt there would be an advantage for the team, given that the visiting team would have one less day of practice due to travel. The Cowboys joined the Lions as a permanent fixture on Thanksgiving, hosting a game on the holiday every year since 1966, except for 1975 and 1977. In those two years, the St. Louis Cardinals hosted over the much more popular Cowboys, who had become consistent Super Bowl contenders. The Cowboys’ success in the period and their appearance in the nationally televised Thanksgiving game led to their becoming “America’s Team.”

St. Louis also had a long-running tradition of the “Turkey Bowl Game” between high school powerhouses Kirkwood Pioneers and Webster Groves Statesmen. The matchup, which started in 1928, is an example of Thanksgiving’s presence in high school football. Separately, Norwich Free Academy and New London High School in Connecticut have been playing the “Ye Olde Ball Game” since 1875.

The Detroit Lions and the Atlanta Falcons play on Thanksgiving Day in 2005. (Photo: Dave Hogg/Wikimedia Commons)

Historically, many high school sports associations ended their seasons around Thanksgiving, allowing for championship games and rivalry matchups to be held on the holiday. State tournaments and shifts in sports seasons have disrupted this tradition in some places, but Thanksgiving continues to be a major day for high school football, especially in New England and the northeastern United States where these traditions began.

Football fans typically have very few obligations on Thanksgiving, given its status as a holiday. The holiday’s intersection with the end of the high school and college football seasons has meant playing on Thanksgiving quickly became a tradition for football. This has only intensified with the advent of television, as families use sports to come together or even escape tensions, which is why the NFL’s Thanksgiving games are among the league’s highest-rated regular-season contests. This popularity led to a third primetime game being added to the schedule to complement the early afternoon Lions game and midafternoon Cowboys game.

The third primetime game was partially motivated by the limited opportunity for American Football League teams to play in the game. When the AFL launched in 1960, it scheduled Thanksgiving Day games; however, when the league merged with the NFL in 1970, the Lions and Cowboys, two NFC teams, continued to be the sole hosts of Thanksgiving Day games. This meant that fewer AFC teams played on Thanksgiving and could only be the away team.

Playing in primetime

The first primetime Thanksgiving matchup, played in 2006, featured the Denver Broncos and Kansas City Chiefs and marked the premiere of Thursday Night Football. NBC obtained the rights to the primetime Thanksgiving game in 2012, which continued in spite of Amazon gaining exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football in 2022. The following year, the first Black Friday game aired on Amazon, further leveraging the holiday and shopping season. The game is played in the afternoon to avoid conflicts with the Sports Broadcasting Act, which bans the NFL from Friday night broadcasts during the high school season.

While a national audience watched, there have been several memorable games and traditions during the holiday game. The first overtime game on Thanksgiving was in 1980, with the Bears returning the opening kickoff for a touchdown—the shortest overtime in NFL history. The Bounty Bowl in 1989 intensified the rivalry between the Eagles and Cowboys after Philadelphia was accused of offering a reward for injuring the Cowboys kicker. In 2012, the infamous Butt Fumble occurred on Thanksgiving, when New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez ran into the backside of his own teammate. The fumble was picked up by the New England Patriots and returned for a touchdown.

Teams often wear their alternative jerseys on Thanksgiving to mark the holiday game, including throwback jerseys and the NFL’s monochromatic “Color Rush” uniforms. Halftime has also become a spectacle during Thanksgiving games, and since 1997 the Salvation Army has kicked off its Red Kettle Campaign during halftime of the Dallas game. A halftime concert has also been added to the games over time, with Shaboozey, Lainey Wilson and Lindsey Stirling performing at the three 2024 games.

Considering football on Thanksgiving is almost as old as the federal declaration of the holiday itself, it is no surprise it has become synonymous with the holiday. With fewer shared cultural experiences in this oversaturated media environment, the NFL remains one of the few forms of popular culture that crosses age, gender and political affiliation, helping to ease possible tensions and, along with food, bring families together during the holidays.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the CU ��Ĵ�ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

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The tradition of football on the fourth Thursday in November is almost as old as the holiday itself, bringing families together in an important cultural touchpoint

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Top image: iStock

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