Redefining How the Game is Played: Black Male Athletes and the Politics of Officiating Literacy and Literacy Practices

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 9:45 am - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Expanding Definitions of Literacies Through Embodied Practices

Abstract

This study explores how formerly incarcerated Black male athletes developed and practiced complex literacies within athletic and carceral institutions. Using critical race methodology, it examines how five domains of literacy—visual, auditory, verbal, emotional, and spiritual—were constructed and transferred across contexts, especially as school environments failed to affirm them. Literacy is understood here not as a fixed academic measure, but as a cultural, social, and embodied process (Street, 2003; Kinloch et al., 2017). Findings reveal that both sports and prison offered spaces for literacy development that schools largely restricted. This study calls for reimagining educational research and literacy instruction to honor these practices and resist the systemic antiblackness embedded in current school structures (Goff et al., 2014; Ulen, 2016).

Author

• Mario Worlds, California State University - Fullerton