{"id":5159,"date":"2024-09-28T12:10:37","date_gmt":"2024-09-28T12:10:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/how-arsenal-became-synonymous-with-black-identity-and-culture-2\/"},"modified":"2024-09-28T12:10:37","modified_gmt":"2024-09-28T12:10:37","slug":"how-arsenal-became-synonymous-with-black-identity-and-culture-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/how-arsenal-became-synonymous-with-black-identity-and-culture-2\/","title":{"rendered":"How Arsenal became synonymous with black identity and culture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">This season Arsenal have celebrated their African heritage and connection with the continent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/videos\/ceq5rv0j591o\" class=\"ssrcss-k8mrr8-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">with their away kit,<\/a> with its colour scheme matching the pan-African flag.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sierra Leone-born Foday Dumbuya designed the jersey and its official trailer was filmed in the country&#8217;s capital Freetown.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">\u201cIt was nice to take it back to where I\u2019m from, to look at the way kids connect with football, the way people look at football back in Africa, because football is life,\u201d Dumbuya said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As someone who was brought up in London, Dr Nwonka describes an Arsenal shirt as \u201cthe uniform\u201d of the city.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He feels a similar trend is mirrored on the African continent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Saka, born in London to Nigerian parents, is worshipped by Arsenal fans as a &#8216;starboy&#8217; &#8211; a slang term for a young male celebrity &#8211; and was a big part of the launch of the new away kit and its associated clothing collection.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 23-year-old has clocked up over 230 appearances for the Gunners and has been vocal about fighting racism and cultural insensitivity in the game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">\u201cHe transcends his race in many ways. He has a cross-cultural appeal being British and Nigerian,&#8221; said Dr Nwonka.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As such, the baby-faced winger has cemented himself as a Premier League and international regular, and is an inspiration for the next generation of footballers and supporters regardless of their background.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He is the latest in Arsenal&#8217;s growing history of black icons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/sport\/football\/articles\/c3wpdz2nzdvo\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This season Arsenal have celebrated their African heritage and connection with the continent with their away kit, with its colour scheme matching the pan-African flag. Sierra Leone-born Foday Dumbuya designed the jersey and its official trailer was filmed in the country&#8217;s capital Freetown. \u201cIt was nice to take it back to where I\u2019m from, to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport-africa","category-world-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5159"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5159\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5161,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5159\/revisions\/5161"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/sport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}