I Am Good Enough to Play, but Am I Good Enough to Be Here?

• In Event: Thursday Roundtable Session 4:20 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Examination of the Gendered and Racialized Experiences of College Athletes (Table 16)

Abstract

Black student-athletes help to generate most of the revenues for the National Collegiate Athletic Association( NCAA), academic institutions, and athletic departments which results in added pressure for them to perform to keep their scholarship or their spots on their teams (Harper, 2018; Hawkins, 2010). There is a sense of exploitation that occurs on campuses by athletic departments when they recruit Black student-athletes, especially Black men, who make up most athletic teams (Gayles et al., 2018). The exploitation of Black student-athletes for profit reinforces the stereotype that they are physically superior and intellectually inferior (Hawkins, 2010). This study uses oral history to explore the racialized experiences of Black student-athletes in the Southeastern conference (SEC).

Author

• Laetitia Adelson, University of Georgia