Marco Materazzi is a former professional soccer player. In the 2006 World Cup, Zinedine Zidane headbutted him after Materazzi verbally assaulted him. According to lipreaders who have studied the account, Materazzi hurled racist and anti-Muslim insults at Zidane, who is a Muslim man of Algerian descent. Rankine presents readers with a frame-by-frame photographic progression of this altercation and provides accompanying quotes from philosophers and writers about identity and the history of racism.