Colored Hockey League

• While the incident that resulted in the meme may not have been racially motivated, it is still about race and white supremacy.
• The meme challenges viewers to consider the role of white women’s fandom in upholding and normalizing white supremacy in hockey culture.

Defining white supremacy

• Scholars have defined white supremacy as the “institutionalization of Whiteness and White privilege.” Institutionalization occurs when rules, standards or practices are nomalized to the extent that it has become so common we do not question it.
• White privilege describes the unearned advantages white people receive based on the colour of their skin.
• White supremacy is invisibilized and normalized in hockey culture.

White supremacy culture

• As white settler Canadian women, we recognize that “the burdens of dismantling white supremacy and decolonizing the sport of hockey are more justly shouldered by white settler Canadians and the hockey establishment.” Men’s ice hockey upholds white supremacy through erasure, exclusion and mandated conformity.
• The erasure of the history of the Colored Hockey League, as highlighted by sport researchers Alex Mackenzie and Janelle Joesph, is an example of how white supremacy erases those who aren’t considered white.
• A total of 83.6 per cent of the NHL’s workforce is white and over 90 per cent of players and nearly all coaches and officials are white.

Whiteness and surveillance

• Racialized hockey players are often held to a higher moral standard than their white counterparts.
• But the racism Subban endured as a Black athlete in a white sport has not received the same attention.
• White supremacy ensures we are constantly surveilling Black players and holding them to higher moral standards than white players.

Hockey fan culture

• Fans also play a key role in upholding white supremacy in hockey — particularly white women because ice hockey has a predominantly white fan base in North America.
• The exclusionary practices that keep men’s ice hockey elite, heterosexual and white are reflected in its fandom.
• Legal scholar Martine Dennie has written about what it means to be a hockey fan in Calgary.

Combating white supremacy

• Combating white supremacy involves exposing the way it operates as an undercurrent.
• True interrogations of white supremacy don’t focus on individual acts of overt racism — instead, they reveal how normalized and systemic it is.
• The Kane vs. Karen meme challenges white women to consider our role in perpetuating white supremacy.

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