Umer Hussain presents paper at annual conference of North American Society for the Sociology of Sport

Umer Hussain, assistant professor of business and sports management, presented a research paper at the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport (NASSS) annual conference Nov. 9-12 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

In the paper, Hussain examines how “researchers have claimed that the popular media portray Muslim men athletes as bizarre, conservative and masculine hegemonic objects. Nevertheless, the question remains how a Muslim men athlete’s identity with intersecting racial, religious and nationality backgrounds would be constructed by the popular media if he speaks against the institutional racism within a Western sporting organization,” Hussain says in the abstract.

He says that in 2020, Azeem Rafiq, a Pakistani-born English cricketer, spoke against the racial discrimination he experienced at the Yorkshire cricket club. Hussain explores how Rafiq’s identity was constructed within the British media.

“The study results unearth that British media focused on depicting Rafiq as an outsider, a strange emotional character having family issues, and a morally compromised individual,” Hussain says. “This study contributes to the limited knowledge concerning how an Indian sub-continent immigrant athlete from Islamic background is portrayed in Western media.”