Socializing Sport: How Academic Exclusion and Athletic Inclusion Draw Black Youth to Sport

• In Event: Considering Sport, Activity, and Exercise in Youth Education

Abstract

Research stating Black youth are more likely than white youth to pursue athletics for upward mobility (Beamon, 2010; Edwards, 2000; Harris, 1994) is re-examined. I conducted a thematic, comparative analysis across 47 life-history interviews with non-revenue college athletes (sports beyond men’s football and basketball) to consider how racial ideologies produced in school shape one’s decision to pursue sports. Leonardo’s (2009) framework, critical social theory of race and education (CSTRE) illuminates how Black and white participants alike viewed sports as a route of upward mobility yet Black participants uniquely viewed sports as a refuge from racist schooling systems. Sports offered racial inclusion for Black athletes that simultaneously (re)constructed a racial subjectivity of inherent racial difference that fed white supremacy.

Author

• Kirsten Hextrum, The University of Oklahoma