Abstract
The context that shaped my frame of reference for this work started in a small southern town in the late 60s and early 70s, where the options to become upwardly mobile for young Black males were extremely limited and routinely restricted. Racial segregation was the prevailing social condition that regulated Black life and determined our mobility. The legal roads most traveled by my predecessors and peer consisted of the following: as manual laborers in the local factory or as seasonal laborers (tobacco or peach fields, etc.)—a byproduct of the sharecropping systems that my grandparents endured; we could join the armed forces, where the majority were assigned to infantry divisions; or an athletic scholarship in the sports of basketball, football, and sometimes baseball (however, vary rare in baseball).
Birthed into a world,
Socialized into a system of beliefs;
Shaped my behavior, my attitude—
Told me what to think, what to want, what to do, who to be….
Herein begins the unlea rning,
My undoing.
—Sadiki, My Pen, My Pain, My Healing
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Notes
H. G. Bissinger, Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 1990). This ethnographical account of the Permian Panthers of Odessa, Texas captures the power of high school football captivating the lives of many individuals across racial, ethnic, economic, etc., lines in this small community.
There were degrees of academic success where certain subjects we were expected to excel in physical education, vocational technical classes, math, etc., but home economics, art, and other “non-masculine” classes we were expected to perform poorly.
Black athlete will be used instead of Black student athletes because the reason Black students with athletic abilities are on at these institutions are primarily because of their athletic abilities. This is not to say that they are not intellectually capable of performing well academically, but to say that the dominant role they perform, especially in revenue generating sports, are as athletes; being a student is a byproduct of their experience at predominantly White NCAA Division I institutions.
I will use fictitious names or first names in some cases to protect the privacy of those individuals.
When speaking of intercollegiate athletics or NCAA Division I institutions, I will be mainly focusing on those institutions that are from the “equity leagues” or are a part of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS), which include the following conferences: the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big East, Big 10, Big 12, Pacific-10, and the Southeastern Conference (SEC). These institutions have the largest operating budgets, the largest expenses, and generate the most revenue among the NCAA Division IA second-tier institutions and the Division IAA and IAAA programs. There are actually 12 conferences that makeup the BCS. The other six include Conference USA, Mid-American Conference, Mountain West Conference, Sun Belt Conference, Western Athletic Conference, and NCAA Division Independent schools.
Some of the structural inequalities that impact the decisions and option for young Black males include some challenges mentioned previously—also educational achievement levels and unemployment rates.
The ideology of Black physical/athletic superiority is a belief system that has it origins in racist propaganda, which was used to justify slavery in the United States, has also been co-opted into the ethos of many Blacks. It is not uncommon to hear Blacks, especially young Black males, express pride in their athletic prowess and speak of their ability to dominate other racial groups in certain sports. The adoption of this belief is a means of racial uplift gone bad.
Dr. Harry Edwards has elaborated on the process of funneling Black youth into the avenue of athletics at the expense of other academic and occupational pursuits. William Rhoden describes this process as a conveyer belt system that young Black males are put on early in life and for some continue on throughout their college athletic careers.
Oliver Cromwell Cox, Race: A Study in Social Dynamics (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000), 43.
See the following reference for more information concerning personal troubles and public issues: C. Wright Mills, Sociological Imagination (New York: Oxford Press, 1959). Although the original intent of the application of these concepts was to be applied to larger sociostructural issues, such as unemployment, divorce rates, etc., applying these concepts to examine structural deficiencies within social institutions can be instructive.
Adam Himmelsbach, “First Impressions Can Create Unrealistic Expectations Basketball Recruits,” http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/10/sports/10recruiting.html (accessed March 10, 2009).
Graduation Rate Rata, http://web1.ncaa.org//app_data/instAggr2008/1_0_OnlinePDF.pdf (accessed March 10, 2009).
2008–2009 NCAA Division I Manual, http://www.ncaapublications.com/Uploads/PDF/Division_1_Manual_2008–09e9e568a1–c269–4423–9ca5–16d6827c16bc_OnlinePDF.pdf (accessed July 27, 2008). For a more in-depth analysis of amateurism and collegiate sports, see Allen L. Sack and Ellen J. Staurowsky, College Athletes for Hire: The Evolution and Legacy of the NCAA’s Amateur Myth (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1998).
Eugene Genovese, Roll, Jordan, Roll: The World the Slaves Made (New York: Random House, 1974). Genovese further expounds on paternalism and its operation within the system of slavery.
Random House, The Random House College Dictionary (Revised Edition) (New York: Random House, 1980).
Mary R. Jackman, The Velvet Glove: Paternalism and Conflict in Gender, Class, and Race Relations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 10.
Brent Kallestad, “NCAA gives Florida State 4 years’ Probation,” http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/news?slug=ap-floridast-cheating&prov=ap&ty (accessed March 10, 2009).
This analogy is borrowed from the following source: Jackman, The Velvet Glove.
Athletic industrial complex is a term used by scholars and sport writers that examines the institution of intercollegiate athletics. See e.g., Earl Smith, Race, Sport and the American Dream (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2007); William C. Rhoden, Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete (New York: Crown Publishers, 2006).
I intend to use the terms, internal colonialism and plantation system, interchangeably.
Robert Staples, “Race and Colonialism: The Domestic Case in Theory and Practice” The Black Scholar 7, no. 9 (1976): 39.
Ibid., 44.
Several researchers have examined the issue of White privilege. Peggy McIntosh has labeled it as an invisible knapsack of unearned assets that Whites can cash in on daily. For example, Whites can go shopping and be assured that they will not be harassed or followed, or they will never be asked to speak for all the people of their racial group. For more see Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack,” Independent School 49, no. 2 (Winter 1990): 5, 31.
Robert M. Sellers, “Black Student-Athletes: Reaping the Benefits or Recovering from the Exploitation,” in D. Brooks and R. Althouse (eds.), Racism in College Athletics: The African-American Athlete’s Experience (Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology 1993), 149.
The following references provide insight into the concept of a class fraction: Annie Phizacklea and Robert Miles, Labour and Racism (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980)
Robert Miles, Racism and Migrant Labour (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1992)
Nicos Ar Poulantzas, Political Power and Social Classes (London: New Left Books, 1973).
Phizacklea and Miles, Labour and Racism, 6.
Ibid.
Gary Sailes, “An Investigation of Campus Stereotypes: The Myth of Black Athletic Superiority and the Dumb Jock Stereotype,” Sociology of Sport Journal 10, no. 1 (1993): 88–97; Robert M. Sellers, Gabriel P. Kuperminc, and Andrea S. Waddell, “Life Experiences of Black Student- Athletes in Revenue Producing Sports: A Descriptive Empirical Analysis,” Academic Athletic Journal (1991): 21–38.
Dean Purdy, D. Stanley Eitzen, and Rick Hufnagel, “Are Athletes also Students? The Educational Attainment of College Athletes,” Social Problems 29, no. 4 (1982): 439–448
Beth J. Shapiro, “Intercollegiate Athletic Participation and Academic Achievement: A Case Study of Michigan State University Student Athletes, 1950–1980.” Sociology of Sport Journal 1, no. 1 (1984): 46–51
Leroy Ervin, Sue A. Saunders, H. Lee Gillis, and Mark C. Hogrebe, “Academic Performance of Student Athletes in Revenue-Producing Sports,” Journal of College Student Personnel 26, no. 2 (1985): 119–124
Robert M. Sellers, “Racial Differences in the Predictors of Academic Achievement of Division I Student Athletes,” Sociology of Sport Journal 9 (1992): 48–59.
Excerpts from the West India Emancipation Speech delivered by Frederick Douglass at Canandaigua, New York, August 4, 1857. Also included in the following source: Philip S. Foner (ed.), “West India Emancipation Speech,” The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, Vol. 2 (New York: International Publishers, 1950), 437.
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© 2010 Billy Hawkins
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Hawkins, B. (2010). Introduction. In: The New Plantation. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230105539_1
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