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Abstract
This article utilizes Walter Benjamin’s concept of the dialectical image to contextualize racial narratives in the contemporary United States. It examines techniques employed by the National Basketball Association (NBA) in the racial packaging of its product, which includes the selection of commentators, the content of commentary, the NBA’s dress code and the NBA’s minimum age requirement. Following this packaging, the NBA then projects the resulting commodification of black masculinity to its fans as phantasmagoria. Moving beyond a critique of these phantasmagorical racial narratives, this article incorporates the NBA’s commodification of black masculinity within a dialectical image that also includes written and visual texts found within the reactions to the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin. This dialectical image is used to illuminate tensions that carefully packaged racial narratives such as those found in the NBA attempt to keep hidden.