The Secondary Diaspora: Black Women in NCAA Division I Basketball (Poster 21)

• In Event: AERA Poster Session Friday 11:45am
  In Invited Poster Session: AERA Promising Scholarship in Education Research: Dissertation Fellows and Their Research Poster Session

Abstract

This Black feminist qualitative case study examines how the NCAA shapes the Division I educational pathway as a secondary diasporic conduit for Black women’s basketball players amid the growing popularity of women’s college basketball. I argue that the NCAA’s neoliberal sports model engages, exploits, and disposes Black female athletes to sustain institutional profit and prestige, often routing descendants of the African Diaspora to predominantly white institutions. Drawing on Black feminist and queer diasporic frameworks, the study analyzes how athletes, coaches, and parents navigate these structures. Using semi-structured interviews, archival analysis, and NCAA Instagram content, this research advances scholarship on race, gender, sport, and higher education by reframing athletic mobility as institutionalized displacement.

Author

• Iman Lathan, University at Buffalo - SUNY