Читать книгу Black Collegiate Athletes and the Neoliberal State - Albert Y. Bimper Jr. - Страница 9
ОглавлениеThe spectacle of Super Bowl Sunday in the modern age has evolved from its modest beginnings. For many, this spectacle is nothing but normal and to consider anything less spectacular than the most recent production of the Super Bowl is nearly incomprehensible. It now represents a cultural event that rivals the attention of a national holiday. This final scheduled contest showcases the last two surviving teams from opposing divisions in a culminating game to decide the league’s champion; it also is a microcosmic showcase of American culture and society, more broadly. The magnitude of suspense and anticipation for the event is bolstered by the unique storylines used to chronicle each teams’ journey to that very moment in American sport’s history. Additionally, the cultural spectacle of this event, in particular, can offer a lens to view and take stock of the historical journey and sociocultural construction of American society on display through sport.
On February 4, 2007, like all forty Super Bowls prior, Super Bowl XLI offered its own set of unique storylines. The emotional depth of these stories not only elevated the spectacle of the game but underscored a hallmark moment in the history books of sport and American society, alike. On this Sunday evening, the skies seemed determined to open just enough to maintain a mild, yet constant drizzle of rain to cast over the sold-out stadium of fans eager to witness one of the most anticipated Super Bowl contest. One thing for certain about this Super Bowl was that people from all walks of life had an interest in this particular game for one, if not, a myriad of reasons. No matter if you were a die-hard football fan of the Indianapolis Colts or the Chicago Bears, maybe the person that only came to the party to explain why your team screwed up their chances down the playoff stretch, or were the most clueless person in the room because you did not like watching football, there was something about this particular game that gave you a reason to root for a victor.
Often, in the game of football, there is a story surrounding the quarterback that has the potential to significantly impact the outcome of the game. This season’s game was no different. On one sideline stood the long-designated prodigy quarterback, Peyton Manning, who hailed from a family of football royalty. He had finally arrived to the grandest stage of the game that many had once prophesized as his destiny. However, despite constructing a career that showed signs of leading toward a hall-of-fame status, the Super Bowl had alluded him since entering the national football league in 1998. But on this day in 2007, Manning had the opportunity to dispel the burgeoning myth and silence his critics building a case that deemed him incapable of winning it all. His counterpart on the opposite sideline, Rex Grossman, was trying to overcome a completely different type of narrative; one in which questioned his readiness to not only occupy the starting role, but the likelihood of him playing well enough to aid his team in hoisting the Lombardi Trophy after the final seconds of the game ticked away.
The romanticized storylines of each quarterback, underscored by tales of perseverance verse grit and fortune verse calamity, may have certainly been intriguing to the curiosities of many of the millions of fans. Although intriguing, those watching from within the stadium or at a distance from a television screen were witness to a feat far more extraordinary than the clutch of the Lombardi Trophy. The numerous plots, such as that of Manning and Grossman or the intrigue of how each team’s defensive performances would stand up against the proven offensive units of each team, only paled in comparison to the landmark moments that would be forever inscribed into America’s history of race. The most gripping and transcendent storyline was situated by the presence of two African-American head coaches that stood on opposite sidelines for first time ever in a NFL championship game. The American Football Conference was represented by the Indianapolis Colts with coach Tony Dungy at the helm. While the National Football Conference was represented by the Chicago Bears with their coach, Lovie Smith, at the helm. Both the Colts and the Bears organizations claimed a rich and storied past, yet both had their sights on overcoming their individual droughts in appearing in the Super Bowl. Dungy came with a wealth of experience, including having been a mentor to Smith for a number of years. It was ironic, but this inspiring contest was between mentor and protégé.
Smith and his Chicago Bears took an immediate lead as their kick returner, Devin Hester, returned the first kick-off for a touchdown. Despite the protégé’s lead in breath-taking fashion, the mentor would steadily usher his team to overcome the early deficit. As the last seconds of the game disappeared and victory declared, it was the mentor who eventually arose victorious by a score of 29-17 in Super Bowl XLI. Dungy was hoisted in the air with his arms stretched far into the sky and cutting through the stubborn haze of rain that continued to fall. In spite of the weather conditions that evening, the 2007 waterlogged victory of Super Bowl XLI belonged to the Indianapolis Colts and Tony Dungy, becoming the first African-American head coach to hold the title as champion.
I share this historic feat with coach Dungy in a way very few others are. You see, bestowed upon the winners of the Super Bowl since 1967 is perhaps the most coveted possession in the game of football and one of the most illustrious symbols of success in all of sports—the Super Bowl ring. I was on this 2007 championship team and am blessed to own the customized Super Bowl ring that commemorates the Colts victory on that fourth day in February. This Super Bowl ring resembles most designs of the past in the fact that it is engraved with the Colt’s logo, my last name, jersey number, and position on the team. That which is most notable, however, is the petite Lombardi Trophy shaped by diamonds inside the large Safire horseshoe logo resting in a cloud of tiny diamonds on the top of the ring. I have shown my ring to many friends and family. I occasionally will wear the ring to special events, especially when I have the opportunity to be in the presence of a crowd of young kids. Like the particular game for which this ring memorializes, the spectacle-like piece of hardware signifies a much deeper and more complex plot far beyond a celebratory souvenir of a game played and won after sixty minutes.
Embedded into one of the horseshoe logos of this particular ring is something that can be easily missed if close attention is not paid. There rests a small red ruby stone. If you are to ask the members of the team the meaning of this stone, you are likely to get several interpretations. Some would say the one single ruby was meant to embody a drop of blood for all the hard work. You might also hear from a team member that this small ruby is the heart or cornerstone of the entire ring. Others have said that it signifies this particular team’s commitment to a dream. One close teammate of mine would often say that the ruby, seemingly out-of-place, represented the immeasurable intangibles of hard work that may never be celebrated, but will never be forgotten. Each of us that received this Super Bowl ring likely reflects on our personal paths filled with the many loved ones and friends, coaches and teammates, trials and tribulations overcome, all amounting to an embodiment of a collective display of hard work. But the significance of Dungy’s pioneering win suggests that there was even greater meaning and context to make sense of the hard work associated to the ruby stone. Although the ring is mine, a narrowed definition of that red ruby simply explained within the confines of how my personal path led to that fourth day in February seems severely negligent and ignorant of a greater truth.
What truths, then, might be extrapolated from the red ruby stone? What more does it signify that is not explicitly forthright by its presence. From that ruby, what must be realized to make sense of the gravitas of the commemorative ring? These are the questions that constantly fill my thoughts every time I glance at the red stone embedded in the ring. While I am filled with the perplexities of such curious thoughts, I too, experience a sense of comfort as I wonder over the stone. It appears to be perfectly arranged and positioned, yet still a stranger to the spectacle and luster of its diamond encrusted, white gold climate. In parallel, the milestone meeting between two black head coaches and the crowning of the first black head coach in the NFL’s championship game seemed to be perfectly prescribed just days into black history month, yet still a stranger to the spectacle. The presence of these two black coaches in this pinnacle moment of the sport, standing on opposite sidelines, signified progress made in the historic race to capture the essence of the American dream, yet also called the consciousness of people to be evermore aware of a continuous sprint toward justice. The professional ranks of the National Football League and its championship game are not the only places for which the spectacle and stranger coexist. In fact, my own journey through Division I intercollegiate athletics while attending a historically white institution was itself an embodiment of the labors of social progress where I too often felt like a stranger to the spectacle of an industry. It is thus from this historic moment and place of personal familiarity that this book begins for me. As I clutch a piece of history with great pride in the palm of my own black hand and realize that the opportunity to attend and play football for my own alma mater has come at the expense and perseverance of others before me not afforded the same accesses, I cannot help but to wonder how to make sense of being a stranger rightly fitted among today’s spectacle of sport. Considering all that the black athlete and that of black participation in sport has achieved, I still dream for a society to not irresponsibly assign the label of progress based on the black achievements of a few born of a long and sustained history of injustice against black humanity.
The Paradox
The dream is made of the many threads woven between generations of black America. The existential fabric made of these threads shape the garments uniquely shared among those that have and continuously struggle for equal dignity and freedoms. A dream, worn like the traditional clothing passed down through a community, is filled with much meaning. The clothing of the dream is intimately related to the environments for which each generation of black America has lived and a faith in how the next generation might live. The metaphor of the dream, in the black community, has long represented more than a euphemistic symbol of hope for prosperity (Ladson-Billings, 2009). The significance of the dream and the fortitude of black dreamers define the collective backbone of black perseverance and resilience throughout the long and arduous sojourn of a freedom struggle dispensed on the shores of Jamestown to the present. Black dreamers and their faith in the dream have, time and time again, filled the air with their prophetic sermons from behind the pulpit, delivered countless speeches with unmatched oratory gifts to crowds of all sizes, and followed their most personal curiosities with intellectual rigor to unearth the social and material truths that deepen understandings and elevate a widening collective consciousness. Black dreamers and the dream itself have toiled to unshackle the chains of bondage, torn down the twine ropes from strange fruit trees, desegregated the lunch counter, classrooms, and ball fields. Black dreamers and the dream itself have ushered in civil rights policy and delivered the black vote to the ballot box. Black dreamers and the dream itself, in the twenty-first century, have energized a new generation to demand that black lives fundamentally matter—unconditionally and without compromise.
How are you clothed in the dream? What meanings can be found within the fabric of your dream? You might think to first answer such questions with the words uttered by Martin Luther King or to remember the moment that brought many to tears of joy as they witnessed the first black man, Barack Obama, elected as the forty-fourth president of the United States. One might say they know this dream because they were the first in their family to enter and graduate from college. Maybe you might say that you are the first in your family’s history to be born black in the United States with all your rights. Another might say they are familiar with this dream because they are able to provide for their family with means their parents and grandparents simply were not afforded. No matter how you may answer these questions, it is very likely your answer is an indicator of dreams past and the environment for which you live and dream. While all are honest answers, do such answers paint a complete picture?
Realizing the paradox of the dream is not only essential to situating its definition but central to understanding the scope and magnitude of what the dream is capable of. I was often taught to think of the dream as my motivation and the aspiration of that which I did not presently possess. Growing up, I was always made to feel that the dream comes to us in time and, most certainly, only to those that demonstrate patience. Despite such teachings, the dream always seemed to appear to me as a mysterious contradiction between what I was taught, the life for which I lived and how the dream manifested in white lives. As a young black kid, I was constantly being told to take notice of and being reminded of the opportunities that will lead me to the American dream as if it were a sacred ground that I had to earn my way through its lustrous gates. However, others kids, who often shared the similar economic conditions of the neighborhood and schools, but not the badge of my black skin, were told differently of the dream. For them, they were born into the American dream. They were to find honor and privilege to live their life as a beacon of the dream and to find favor in the happiness that the dream would deliver to them. Thus, the dream itself, I argue, is not guaranteed to be understood nor shared equally among us. The dream is known to us through the difference by which our humanity is known to others. Meaning, the dream is taught to us by the way the worth of our humanity has been taught to others.
While we all develop an increasingly intimate relationship with the dream each day of our lives, there has always been a significant cost paid to pursue and defend it. The American dream has never been free. The debts paid for some to realize their imagination of the dream has come at the price of exploiting black labor and dehumanizing black bodies.1 The debts paid to pass the dream from one generation to the next has been spent in efforts and energies to inscribe and normalize black oppression as part of the disguised privileges of whiteness. The material costs of financing white flight and the marginalizing displacement of black bodies from defined and refined white spaces in order to manufacture ideas of happiness and comfort have heralded the dream. The dream has come at the cost of tracking young black youth out of underfunded and under-resourced schools into a dysfunctional and failing criminal justice system. The cost of the dream has been to invest in the subtle transformation of every black body into a likely statistical, market-driven product of their environment. And when one of these statics, formerly known as a black child, finds their way out the climate and conditions for which the dream has created, we audaciously label them, the American dream.
Like Super Bowl XLI, led by two black coaches, the black athlete is a manifestation of the dream. The costs paid to realize the dream of MLK as well as the dream of those that systematically subjugate black generations, past and present, has constructed the black athlete and their experiences frequently labeled as the American Dream. They are a paradoxical figure through which radiates the complex fragility of the dream. But it is this dream that lives on as a perpetual paradox for the black athlete. To make sense of the black athlete in the twenty-first century requires us to recognize the paradox of the dream that continuously bounds that which it liberates.
A Struggle Not Ours Alone
The unrelenting saga of black struggle has been the central source of deep thought for the black intellectual. This saga has, likewise, been ink for the black poet, the sacred scripture of prophetic sermons for the black pastor, and the resolve of the black athlete. This saga is the bookshelf of stimulation for the black educator, the lungs of the black liberator, and the womb of the black mother. It too, even fills the footprints of the black father. And if it takes such a village as this to raise a child, then, as well, the black struggle is the village of black sons and daughters. But we cannot lose sight of the entirety of truth regarding the saga of black struggle; that it is not ours alone.
The brilliant writings of American literary giant, James Baldwin, remind us that “the story of the Negro in America is the story of America—or, more precisely, it is the story of Americans” (Baldwin, 1955/2012, pp. 25). In the last chapter of his book, Notes of a Native Son, Baldwin shares a foretelling story of his visits to a small, remote village in the higher elevations of Switzerland. Despite his multiple stays in this village, his name well-known to the locals and that he is staying with a woman whose son he has befriended, he is forced to grapple with feelings of being a stranger. He uses this metaphor of the stranger to extrapolate a profound analysis of being black in America and the struggle for definition of black identity within the context of our historic saga burdened by race. Nonetheless, Baldwin’s notes as a “stranger in the village” is a story of how black struggle is, moreover, a struggle for how our white counterparts must inescapably wrestle with and negotiate, even if behind the curtains of naiveté, their own humanity, identities, privileges, rationalizations of power, and moral reckoning; it too is their inheritance of the tears sold generations ago in Jamestown.
Black pursuits of social mobility and liberation have been long sought after through pathways of education, as well as sport, to advance our realizations of a life on the mountaintop unacquainted to the black struggle. Education has certainly been the cornerstone of black liberation to yield us from the depths of slavery. To be educated was a treasured privilege that was often forbidden to the enslaved African. It was not by accident that enslaved Africans and their many decedents were categorically excluded from the rights and privileges of reading, writing, and a robust education. Historians have long revealed and offered extensive evidence that, in days of slavery, most white Americans were principally opposed to the education of blacks with sometimes few better reasons than simply believing it unnecessarily (Brown & Davis, 2001). Such opposition was rooted in a belief and perverted fear that educating blacks could undermine not only the American social order, for which whites were supremely beneficiary too, yet also soon dismantle the viability of an economic engine on the backs of black labor (Aptheker, 1969; Ogbu, 1978). Succeeding the American civil war was a kinetic energy by way of constitutional amendments and federal legislation. These policy efforts were set in motion to erect a social contract that might tenably reconcile a nation from hundreds of years of racial tyranny that both institutionally and systematically deprived black persons of their humanity. But the unremitting, systemic efforts of a white antebellum society to categorically preclude and exclude blacks from the benefits of education did not completely vanish with the penning of reconciliatory constitutional amendments (i.e., thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth) and federal legislation (e.g., Emancipation Proclamation) in the aftermath of the American civil war.
While there were a handful of institutions of higher education that existed for black students prior to Emancipation, it was not until exertions of America’s social contract with black Americans that spawned sizeable investments and state headship to promote an educated citizenry, not excluding blacks (Murtadha & Watts, 2005; Ogbu, 1978; Watson, 2001).2 This era of American Reconstruction and ideological shifts regarding race, most particularly out of a post-civil war Congress, kindled a blossoming of black colleges across the nation, including southern states.3 But just as the story of America is that of our black struggle, American Reconstruction, in its brevity, would soon be victim to the deep-seated racism that had a stronghold on the maturation of our nation. The majority of colleges founded out of the funding provided by the First Morrill Act of 1862 enrolled white students exclusively.4 Concurrently, an organized resurgence of white supremacist beliefs and white resistance would eventually transport the nation from an era of Reconstruction to era subjected to Jim Crow laws. Thus, while federal law attempted to substantiate a new social contract, the spread of Jim Crow was not only undermining constitutional amendments, specifically the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments, yet also reinstating, for whites, a more agreeable social arrangement that distinguished the American citizenry along racial lines.
In the year of 1890, a pathway for public higher education for blacks was galvanized by the passage of the Second Morrill Act. This legislation prohibited federal funds to states that denied blacks admission to tax-supported colleges or otherwise refused to provide “separate but equal” facilities for blacks and whites (Redd, 1998; Watson, 2001). In simultaneous fashion, the Second Morrill Act of 1890 produced the promising establishment of black land-grant institutions in seventeen of nineteen southern states in addition to cementing sanctioned segregation of higher education beneath an umbrella principle of separate, but equal. I offer this historic backdrop, not superfluously, but to contextualize the black struggle to access educational privileges while perpetually confronted with systemic forces committed to equating black with being a stranger in the village, otherwise known as the democratic experiment of America. As the country purged its efforts to embolden and enfranchise blacks during Reconstruction, it shriveled beneath the social pressures and artificial race hate of Jim Crow. Evident, as such, was a cruel realism that Jim Crow’s torment manifested in sport alongside black education.
What the black college, the black teacher, and the black student of the nineteenth century have in common with black athlete pioneers, is that they all cannot fully be comprehended without a deep understanding of the obstinate struggle of their day. It is, without question, in the face of their struggle they were audaciously courageous in their response. The presence of the black athlete, from the period of Reconstruction to the late nineteenth century, could be found at the forefront of advances in American culture through sport. While Reconstruction gave rise to the impetus of black enfranchisement across sectors of society, it too, brought forth opportunities for blacks to participate in sports. The earliest of black athletes preceding Emancipation quickly distinguished themselves as formidable competitors in their sport. Their successes were likely not just results of a combination of talent and passion, but one could argue a by-product of survival and necessity to combat the racial temper of a nation attempting to mature after hundreds of years of racial tyranny. The early prominence of the black athlete sat horseback in the successes of black jockeys, such as Isaac Murphy, and raced bicycles with never-before-seen speed and grace, such as the renowned national and international champion, Marshall “Major” Taylor (Wiggins, 1989). Even the game of baseball would showcase black athletes many decades before Jackie dawned a Dodger’s jersey in Brooklyn.
Out of New Castle, Pennsylvania, in 1872, the first known black professional baseball player, Bud Fowler, would debut on an all-white team. Fowler excelled at the top of the diamond as a second baseman. It is been noted that baseball historians have pointed to Fowler or Frank Grant, another black second baseman entering organized baseball behind Fowler, as the catalysts for the invention of shin guards in baseball (Tygiel, 2008). The need for an early edition of wooden shin guards was a manifestation of the racism of their day. Even the baseball diamond was rot with racial hate as displayed by white players frequently brandishing their spikes while sliding into second, most particularly if occupied by Fowler or Grant (Tygiel). Nevertheless, Fowler’s debut gave way to a couple dozen black players that followed his steps into the dugouts of baseball. Among this cadre of black ball players were brothers, Moses Fleetwood Walker and Weldy Walker. Moses Walker would be the first to attain the ranks of major league baseball with Toledo in 1884.
Any of baseball’s, then, propensities and undertakings to be an institution that might escape the sentiments and spite of Jim Crow would quickly fade as a result of the league’s anti-black organizing efforts to form “professional” societies whose membership criteria fundamentally excluded black players.5 By July of 1887, Jim Crow took seize of white baseball’s morality and curtailed any common and decent sensibilities of justice that might have enabled racially integrated baseball to endure in the major leagues. A gentleman’s agreement to omit black ball players did not happen by happenstance. Rather, baseball’s newly established social contract was issued by vote and edict of International League officials. Thus, as the watered-down history books of my own K-12 education suggested, and likely yours as well, the absence of black players was not simply driven by racial sentiments of a few. Anti-black beliefs were met with an institutional structure advancing anti-black policy to functionalize racism and normalized racist beliefs. In its entirety, the 1887 ban on future contracts to black ball players was drawn out of the privileges of whiteness, that on the one hand, enabled whites to author a racist policy through a distorted democratic process, and on the other hand, perpetuated a social contract that corroborated the marginalization, oppression, and devaluing of black humanity via the omission of black ball players. Baseball historian, Jules Tygiel, posited the color line of baseball, with exception of a few brief appearances by black players, was otherwise cemented by 1892. By no means, did black baseball come to an end as a result of the color line chalked in whiteness. Despite the grit of black baseball being relegated to the barnstorming backroads of America’s white privilege and oblivious consciousness, the contradictions of whiteness could be seen across the incipient football gridirons of America.
A handful of black athletes made debuts in the game of football in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. William Henry Lewis was not only one of few, but the first of black athletes to debut on an all-white collegiate team after enrolling at Amherst College in 1888. Upon graduating from Amherst, he then enrolled into Harvard Law School and continued to play football for Harvard. Lewis was selected to Walter Camp’s All-America team in 1892. In the following year, Lewis would be honored, once again, with this national recognition. One should not overlook the significant irony in the successes of Lewis and the few other black football players who helped cement the game of football into American culture through white college campuses throughout the north (see Ashe, 1988). By the 1890s, there were approximately 100 black colleges and universities, many of which spanning much of the South (Allen & Jewell, 2002). The majority of black public education, at this time, happened at the investments of separate and behind the perversion of equal.
At the core of the black freedom struggle, and even more existentially, that of the possibilities of democratic freedom, has been the attainment of truth, knowledge, and justice through education. An important constituent and contributor to black education were the activities of campus life outside the classroom walls (Little, 1980). Widespread segregation, intensified racialized hate, coupled with geographic locations of many rural black colleges often exacerbated feelings of isolation for black collegians. The swell of extra-curricular activities to contribute to black education and the black collegiate experiences under the cloud of racial hate and segregation became essential to offering a robust education for black collegians. Among the earliest of extra-curricular activities in these settings were literary societies and opportunities to participate in student government (little). However, burgeoning interests to include sport among these activities was spurring a popular rationale to further stimulate campus spirit and prestige across black colleges. Sport, as social venue, was adopted into this menu of extra-curricular activities. Analogous to the impacts on white college campuses, the incremental growth of sport culture across black colleges invoked senses of community, while reinforcing superordinate ideas and desires for black empowerment.
The first intercollegiate sporting match took place in 1852 between Harvard and Yale as their rowing teams raced across Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. In subsequent years, the first baseball contest between Williams and Amherst, and later, the first football game between Princeton and Rutgers would unfold on the intercollegiate sport scene of 1859 and 1869, respectively. The culture of intercollegiate sport that proceeded the initial Harvard-Yale rowing contest offered minimal opportunities, at best, for black participants to partake. Early black athletes able to make a presence behind the curtains of de facto and de jure segregation were doing so in near isolation at mostly northern institutions. Consequently, the culture and ethos of intercollegiate sport was evolving outside the assemblies of black colleges.
That was, until, late December of 1892. Two days after Christmas, on December 27, 1892, Biddle University and Livingstone College would come together to compete in the first black intercollegiate football game (Hodge, Bennett, & Collins, 2013).6 In nearly every sense of the meaning, this first meeting epitomized the determined sacrifices that undergird the black freedom struggle. You see, for the hopes of this first football game to come to fruition, it would insist upon the dreams and efforts of more than just a few determined athletes, but that of a determined village of black college students filled with innovative spirits and unremitting resolve. Team members from Livingstone pooled what money they had available and any they could acquire elsewhere to purchase a single regulation football uniform from a Spaulding Sporting Goods Company store. They would also buy one football. With the single uniform as the prototype, women from the college’s industrial department sewed together multiple patterns for other uniforms out of duckling cloth. The ball players engineered their own footwear by puncturing cleats through the soles of their street shoes. They would routinely outfit their shoes with cleats for practice and then remove the cleats afterwards. The game was played in Salisbury, North Carolina on the front lawn of Livingstone. The make-shift game field was covered in snow so deep that the boundary markings were near impossible, at best, to recognize. Nevertheless, under the snowy conditions and in homemade uniforms, these two teams convened on a front lawn with a single waterlogged football to write a page in American history, if they knew it or not. The teams played two 45-minute halves. A Livingston player would score the only touchdown of the game on a fumble recovery. Biddle contested the touchdown, arguing the fumble recovery happened out of bounds. With a seemingly difficult decision to make, considering the snow-covered ground that blanketed the field markings, the official ruled in Biddle's favor. As such, Biddle maintained its 5-0 lead and went on to defeat the home team, Livingstone, it the first ever football game between black colleges.
Historical memories of the endeavors of black athletes in a post-civil war America frequently echo an uplifting story of racial progress beneath the themes of black resolve, black persistence, and even black entrepreneurialism. These positive and affirming themes have served to articulate how people of African descent have steadily labored to rise above an unjust society built upon the marginalization and oppression of their humanity. Such historical figures, who rose out of our nation’s sport culture, are as much a part of the black freedom struggle as is the black educator, poet, engineer, civil rights activist, and musician. The story of black athletes is a story of those that have harnessed their athletic talents to boldly defy beliefs and dogmas meant to expunge the most vulnerable. The story of black athletes, past and present, is about how sport has been used as a conduit and means to attain social mobility all the while defining and redefining black identities. Black athletes’ stories reveal of an intimate relationship with American sport culture and American culture, more broadly. The history of these athletes exposes not only to hegemonic orchestration of race, but so too the configures of class, patriarchy, and sexism. Through their stories, we are forced to encounter the greatest sins of our nation as well as an incongruous ensemble of values, policies, and practices used to inform modern rationale for inequity and inequality. But most significantly, the story of black athletes exposes us to the deepest truths of the human condition.
The black athlete is far from an accidental, bewildering figure that we are forced to reconcile with between the chronicles of history and occasional folklore. Too often, our understandings of the sojourn and contributions of black athletes are disingenuously confined by questions rooted solely in curiosities of how they endured times of challenge, or how they accomplished seemingly insurmountable feats, and even how they have periodically championed the black freedom struggle. Wonders of the black athlete that prompt deeper reflections of their experiences, but evermore, their existence compels us to acknowledge each of them is very much a paradoxical figure. The black athlete is at once a symbol of the circumstances and potencies shaped by their day as they are an expressive symbol of a people’s self-agency to define their reality and destiny. They are a representation of a people cast to the margins and the epitome of determined perseverance. They, too, are a representative of those excluded behind hate and ignorance, yet also a symbol of our nation’s attempt to recalibrate the scales of justice.
To garner a more nuanced gaze upon the truths, for which black athletes reveal, requires deep reflection on those forces influencing the communal, institutional, political, and sociocultural wombs that constitute a figured world not just for the athlete, but that of the decedents of people displaced. Furthermore, to bear witness to the truths of black lives and black spaces through a lens of sport requires a deep read of how these same forces have authored white lives and white spaces, past and present. To this extent and more, fully comprehending the plight of black athletes necessitates a more nuanced look at America’s plight. Being woke in the twenty-first century requires us to struggle through a deep analysis of the paradox of what it means to dream. Or better yet, to be woke to the injustices of present, has and will always require us to be fearful of being what Ta-Nehisi Coates (2015) describes as “a country lost in the Dream” (p. 12).
Enigma of Race
Racist thoughts have captured the spirits, minds, and imaginations of people far before the ships set out to sea from the docks of European shorelines. Race has been the most historic culprit to commandeer peoples’ ingenuities to engineer nation building as they journeyed from Europe to a land known to us now as America. History reveals to us that racist ideas have, time and time again, been employed to launch and excuse systemic endeavors that reinforce racial stratifications of people. Michael Omi and Howard Winant (2014) characterized such endeavors as racial projects to construct ways of living and people, themselves. These ideas and the construction of racial projects are what undergird the birth and maturation of the nation. In this same vein of history, the racial oppression projects ushered in by major league baseball’s gentleman’s agreement to segregate the game (Tygiel, 2008) alongside legal rulings that authorized “separate, but equal” can be understood as further promoting and normalizing explicit racial ideology to govern our nation centuries after the creations of the utility and enigma of race.
While evoking racist ideas, the enigma of race, has too, produced an offspring of anti-racist resistance (Kendi, 2016). From Nat Turner’s 1831 rebellion against conditions of slavery in Southampton County, Virginia to the persuasiveness and political savvy of Fredrick Douglas to the black union soldiers that battled against confederate armies throughout the civil war, black resistance has manifested in many forms to contest anti-black racism. By the turn of the century, the intimate thoughts of Du Bois were well-known and widely read. His writings elevated an anti-racism consciousness calling specific attention to the immeasurable dangers of white supremacy’s resentment to Reconstruction efforts following the American civil war. He wrote extensively of the implications of consequential perils, those social, cultural, structural and psychological, certain to ripple through all the crooks and crannies of America touched by the reaches of institutionalized racial apartheid straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. By 1903, the most fundamental problem of the twentieth century, as claimed by Du Bois, was “the problem of the color line.” At nearly every turn of society, Du Bois insightfully exposed how the color line fueled persistent disparities and inequities across the races and classes of people. Racial gulfs were evermore accentuated as the country suffered through Jim and Jane Crow, the great depression, two world wars and volatile desegregation efforts. The ghosts of the color line familiar to Du Bois and the souls of black folk continues to haunt the nation many decades and generations since his proclamation. The emblematic color line proves to be quite a vivid reality across all facets of society to this day, including our social institutions and systems of education and sport (Leonard & King, 2010; Carrington, 2010).
With an increasing number of black athletes participating across the major sporting enterprises of the American sport scene, excessive hyperbole commonly beholds sport as the poster child for racial progress. With the passing of time, the milestones of black achievements in sport are celebrated as indications of racial progress sown by the seeds of past black resistance. Seemingly without pause, black successes and breakthroughs in sport are heralded to not only black folk, but to the entire nation, that it is moving leaps and bounds from a supposed far distant era eclipsed by Jim Crow apartheid. The unapologetic fists raised by Tommie Smith and John Carlos to the harmony of the national anthem have become the inspirational sermon used to sway American sensibilities. The images of Smith and Carlos represent an iconic moment for which to remember the battles for justice fought in the twentieth century. In reality, however, the enigma of race and privileged rationalizations of race and racial progress muddles our common sense that appropriates those very fists as a time buried in the past and not of the present.
With every breakthrough achievement by black sport participants, social discourse has increasingly advanced a narrative that sport is the most immediate, principal evidence to support a modern worldview with an appetite for racial apathy. Many have gone so far to argue that the means to effectively navigate the post-civil rights era is to use sport as our compass (e.g. Freind, 2016) or that some of our greatest sports icons managed to transcend race conflict with their success (Harriot, 2016). For decades to follow after the protest of Smith and Carlos, each signifier of black achievement—such as the countless Olympic medals by black men and women to our first head coaching opportunities, from the transcendent marketing campaigns that convinced us Bo Knows and that every kid wanted to Be Like Mike to even the late Stuart Scott’s famous “Booyah!” catchphrase that would literally transform sports broadcasting—sport culture was at the forefront of shaping perceptions of race relations and racial ideology. And to this day, the present plight of black athletes and the plight of America is shared in a hegemonic process captured by the enigma of race that works to change how we see and think about our world all the while changing who we are and who we become.
The pace of progress concerning matters of race in America has not occurred in any linear fashion and certainly not with tremendous speed or regularity. While the pace of progress has been slow and deliberate, at best, by institutions and people of influence, the effort by those living in the margins of society has rivaled a sprinter’s pace in the pursuit of justice and the rewards of the dream. Depending on one’s lived experiences, their perspective of this progress might tell us of a different truth than that of reality encompassing all of our histories. I do not claim to argue that change has not come about with every generation. Nonetheless, in the first quarter of twenty-first century, we’ve taken to the streets and media outlets to shout and question how black lives matter as if we’ve been sprinting in place. In such a determined sprint to rid society of its plague of racism, many find themselves frustrated to think that our only progress has been little more than a recreation of past oppression.
Racism remains the most formidable, dynamic captor of our nation’s imagination five centuries removed since the first feet of the enslaved stepped onto the shores of this country. My fundamental argument throughout this book in regard of the dynamisms of racism is that our deepest and evolving understandings of these racial phenomena and its implications cannot be simply reduced to racist ideas or racial ideology nor can we see racism of today as only a vestige and relic of our past. Instead, we must come to recognize and grapple with how we as a society function by the guide of market-driven principles and ideas to shaped a normalizing view and articulation of racial progress in relation to the dream, often times, in particular of black achievement magnified within contexts of sport. And so, this brings us back to that historic and special day in early February of 2007 that will forever be near and dear to me. I want to return us the story of Super Bowl XLI for which I opened this chapter with. It was certain that coach Dungy’s Super Bowl victory would be added to the list of signifying moments in the sojourn of the black freedom struggle as well as the discourse of racial progress. Many saw the Super Bowl XLI match-up between Tony Dungy and Lovie Smith as yet another opportune moment to highlight the determined achievements by the black community through sport channels despite any existence of racial inequities. And likely those and many more, would see the game as proof of a dream, if not many, being fulfilled. Additionally, this match-up cued up racialized rhetoric to emphasize beliefs that for such a momentous occurrence to take shape could only mean that we were becoming a country that did not see race. To illustrate this sentiment, a columnist stated the following in his recap of the game,
If a single event could speak to onrushing opportunity, to a world where folks are judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, this took that title while bestowing another.
Hyperbolic conjectures such as the language of an “onrushing opportunity” while reveling in the first match-up between two black head coaches may do more harm than good to actually promote racial progress—particularly in a league that still necessitates a race-based, neo-progressive policy in that of the Rooney Rule which aims to force hiring authorities to slow their processes and broaden their market analyses of coaching candidates of color. If we are to hold up singular events to suggest an onrush of opportunity that an entire race of people might be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin, then we rob ourselves to see the complex realities of a hegemonic force persisting and reproduced in the present. We rob ourselves of our full capacities to not only speak truth to power, but concurrently speak truth to structure and truth to practices of inequities in manners that lead to a dismantling of inequality. Likewise, we risk robbing others of the ability to do the same.
Assertions leading up to and following Super Bowl XLI frequently signified a country that had lost sight of race in their rearview through a seemingly hypnotic moment suggestive of Dr. MLK’s dream. But more precisely, it reflected a segment of the country that was choosing to indiscriminately and discursively ignore race to promote a dilute notion of racial advances. Sport has all but eliminated its racial gulfs. But the coaching match-up as well as the overly optimistic perceptions concerning fissures wedged deep by race within and beyond sport during this time precisely reveal the paradox of the dream. At the end of this same year, the country witnessed the election of Barack Obama as its first black and forty-fourth U.S. president. Following his first inauguration in 2008, the notion that America had become a post-racial society overnight gained immediate and widespread popularity in mainstream discourse (Tesler & Sears, 2010). The words of James Baldwin to his nephew on the hundredth anniversary of Emancipation fill my thoughts at the utterance of a post-racial America:
You know, and I know, that the country is celebrating one hundred years of freedom one hundred years too soon. We cannot be free until they are free. (Baldwin, 2013, p. 10)
Much has been written to debunk the myths of the twenty-first-century America functioning as a post-racial society (Dawson & Bobo, 2009; Lee, 2012). While this book does not intend to put the most obvious of racial progress at the altar of debate, it does build upon this body of works that aims to dispel the sense that society has evolved beyond the influence and impacts of race. This book, through a lens of the intersections of higher education and sport, is to problematize dominate discourses and mainstream views that purport a naiveté of racial progress and the role of race. But to see how peoples’ lives through institutions of sport are shaped by race alone is to misunderstand the complex, interlocking web of sociocultural gulfs that contribute in the experience of modern black athletes in intercollegiate athletics. The predominance of a narrative today that hoist sport upon a pedestal fails to attentively consider, not only how to understand race and racism within the contexts of sport and higher education, but also how the sociocultural structures of sport are fundamentally captive to neoliberal thought and practices of the twenty-first century.
The perpetual paradox of the dream has coordinated and stimulated black oppression and black achievement. Both of which are no strangers to one another, yet have relied on the assembly of a distorted common sense for which to speak of and see the other as such. The enigma of race and racism has long arrested the imaginations of the structural and cultural milieu of society and sport. And throughout the course of history, many within the black community, molded by an imperfect world, have continued to endure the sprinter’s pace to gain ground, through the dreams of access and opportunity, in an unjust world. All the while, they may be increasingly woke to the reality that the progress of their labor will only be gradually realized in the years and generations to come. In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, the paradox of the dream can be understood as Dungy’s victory in Super Bowl XLI and Colin Kapernick’s coincidentally suspicious disappearance from the same league after protesting on bended knee. The dream can be understood as the election of President Obama as well as the deaths of Trayvon, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, and Eric Garner without culpability. The dream is as much the young black high school athlete that signs a letter of intent to play football and attend college as a first-generation student as it is the 2015 protests orchestrated by the University of Missouri students and their football team. We can even see the dream as LeBron James sits in front of the microphones of the media to speak his truth about the political climate inspired by a Trump administration in the battleground state—his home state—of Ohio as we see the dreams of others vehemently condemn black athletes by burning their jerseys for making a statement to bring awareness to matters of injustice while the national anthem plays.
The paradox of the dream for black athletes, historically and as it remains in the modern age, is a reminder of how they remain tethered to the enigma of race, but evermore more so, the dreams of others. Their paradox is hinged to the harsh realities that laid in the streets of Fergusson, Missouri and ran through the water of Flint, Michigan as the black community is constantly reminded of their disposability (Hill, 2017). This book offers an analysis of how the institution of sport, through the experiences and perspectives of a spectrum of key agents in intercollegiate athletics departments, are profoundly influenced by race and neoliberal rationalizations that encumber, yet ultimately shape peoples’ lives through systems of practices sustained by the dream.
Organization of the Chapters
Imaginations of the institution of sport in the twenty-first century have persuaded many to believe it to be the archetype of social progress upon the mountaintop of post-racial American dreams. For a nation that, historically, has looked with faith and optimism to sport as inspiration to navigate race relations and revise race rules, the endemic social inequities across race seem to many as an increasing certainty fortified by and inside the structure of American society. Despite shifts in racial beliefs and accesses and opportunities for black lives in the post-civil rights era of the American dream, we have yet to achieve a society that treats and values our humanities equally. Today, race remains a captor of our imaginations of the dream playing out in our systems of ideology and practices of inequity across all facets of society. Once again, sport is at the fore of the debate about race and particularly how it manifests in the shaping of our lives and dreams of a better—just—nation.
Today, in the twenty-first century, the relationship between predominate narratives and the complex realities that constitute the multiplicity of black experiences accentuates the paradoxical veracity of our society’s existence. For so long, forces of oppression in its many forms, all to maintain and protect a dream, have sought to damage, degrade, and deny the humanity of black persons while simultaneously instituting hope in a dream to overcome black subjugation. The objectives in such endemic oppression have aimed at manufacturing a social stratification of identities, culture, education, communities, and values to matter as determined by a market that elevates, and so far, as justifies dreams drawn on either sides of the modern color line. This book explores two key threads related to black intercollegiate student athletes. I examine how black athletes make sense of participating in intercollegiate athletics within institutions of higher education and how their experiences are indicative of the paradoxes of a dream kindled by neoliberal principles of logic.
The following chapters are based on my research of how black student athletes are the embodiment of the dream. The study of the dream in this research included several intercollegiate athletics administrators from within top-tier college athletic programs at historically white institutions of higher education. My study of black student athletes and the impacting forces upon their experiences was conducted from 2014 to 2017 as an assembly of interview sessions and series of on-campus observations. This book is about questioning what it means to be a black collegiate athlete in the twenty-first century. It is about questioning what it means for the study participants to live within the bounds and opportunities of the imaginations of the American dream. It is about making sense of the agilities of ideology and a climate of sociocultural praxis that constructs the modern black collegiate athlete, their institutions of education, and the society that surrounds them. But ultimately, it is my hope that readers of this book will come to recognize how “we” are constructed within and by the paradox of the black athlete.
In this first chapter, I have made the case that our imaginative acquaintances with the dream undergird the very foundation of our aspirations for prosperity as well as our plights. Exploring the black athlete of the twenty-first century first requires an understanding of their origins. In chapter 1, I discuss the contexts of historical tensions between ideas of race and the institution of sport that are knotted in the developing nature of the modern neoliberal project. The chapter begins with an analysis of how historical tensions of the social and political mores of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were revealed at the intersection of race and sport through the legacy of an iconic black boxer. I consider how issues of race within the institution of sport are historically situated in the black freedom struggle through Jim Crow to the modern post-civil rights era to shed light on shifting comprehensions of race and racism for which modern ideologies of race and racism have evolved. The material consequences of today’s racism are considered behind the veil and hegemonic chaperon of a neoliberal agenda.
In chapter 2, I introduce the participants in this study through individualized portraits of each of the six student athletes and four athletic administrators. The profiled portraits of each athlete offer insights into their personal backgrounds and journey to and through their respective institutions. Portraits of the athletic administrator participants are introduced to show how each understands and makes sense of supporting the development of student athletes, in particular the black athlete within historically white settings. Before sketching out participant profiles, I provide an overview of the four institutional settings of this research. Following the sections outlining the institutional settings and sketch of participants in this study, I discuss how participants’ experiences and perspectives of schooling and thoughts of how they either personally navigate or support the black athletes to navigate their respective institution are located within and by the paradoxes of their private, and that of a broader, dream. I frame this closing section using three themes that emerge from the data.
The subsequent chapters expound upon how neoliberalism has become entrenched within the intersecting contexts of higher education and intercollegiate athletics. The research presented in this book explores how policies and practices as well as governing strategies and pedagogical approaches intended to facilitate the educational and athletics experiences of collegiate black athletes are fashioned by the ideological schemas of the broader neoliberal project. Drawn from participant narratives, applied manifestations of the neoliberal agenda are critically examined to make sense of how free-market values, sociocultural relations, and sociocultural identities have been defined and redefined to construct a modern social imagination (Lipman, 2013) of black intercollegiate athletes and their education. Simultaneously, the voices of black student athletes are shared to reveal how the matrix of the neoliberal project taking shape in their education is contested. This research seeks to understand how both the ideology and practice, or otherwise, cultural and political praxis of neoliberalism is cultivating our common sense and changing who we are.
I begin chapter 3 by revisiting a parable that warns against the threats of inconspicuous dangers. Drawing from this parable, I provide some historical perspective of the relationship between social welfare policies and the commercialization of intercollegiate athletics. In this chapter I present interview data on participant views of the climate of intercollegiate athletics. I discuss how the study participants understand and make meaning of practices and policies of their athletic departments that shape the athletic and academic experiences of the black student athletes. I go on to explore how rationales of governance, managerial strategies, and the aims to develop human capital are implemented across each institutional locale considering how the hegemonic forces of neoliberal ideology are normalized yet contradict the ambitions to address relevant social and educational crisis by producing and reproducing practices of inequities.
In chapter 4, I argue how academic reform efforts targeting U.S. school systems have informed and guided academic reform within intercollegiate athletics. I discuss how neoliberal education reform initiatives adopted by the NCAA and its member institutions have paralleled the neoliberal logics and polices entrenched with U.S. academic reform since the 1980s. The chapter discusses how motivations for education reform within intercollegiate athletics have been animated, in part, although significantly by views of the black athlete recruited to campuses of higher education. The schooling of black athletes has been marketized by neoliberalism. This chapter presents participant narratives that reveal how their schooling has been shaped by the neoliberal rationalities. In this chapter, I also argue how the student athlete development services and programs, akin to academic reform efforts, are imbued with the logics of neoliberal beliefs of the purposes of human capital development.
Chapter 5 takes a nuanced look at what it means for black athletes to be exceptional. Drawn from Imani Perry’s conceptualization and thoughts of the notions of black exceptionalism (Perry, 2011), I engage in a discussion of how inequity is maintained through the works of neoliberalist perspectives and practices that seek to define and redefine the exceptions of black athletes. This chapter explores how the rehearsal of black American exceptionalism and the exceptualization process of black athletes brands them incongruent anomalies at the poles of a continuum compared to the rules of a neoliberal, color-blind state. The notion of black athlete exceptionalism is framed by a review of the circumstances and course of events surrounding the protests of former NFL quarterback, Colin Kaepernick, from his bended knee while the American national anthem plays and its connection to the discourse racial progress evidenced by black athletes. From here, I tell the stories and counter-stories of several of the black student athlete participants in this chapter to show how each has contested the oversimplifications and distortions of black exceptionalism.
The final chapter of the book begins with a reflection upon a question of when “we” can expect to realize our dreams of “freedom.” I argue that for an alignment of all of those imagining ways to achieve their American dream and those dreaming of an equitable freedom in a just world is predicated on who we can imagine ourselves to be beyond the post-ideological politics of neoliberalism. More precisely, the aims of my argument in the context of the study presented require a critical recognition and a collective reorientation of how the ideological forces of neoliberalism normalizes the concept of intercollegiate athletic realism. I contend the research can stimulate communities of sport scholars and sport practitioners to reassess how programmatic designs, policies, and practices aimed to advance the holistic development of black student athletes are implicated in a neoliberal project. In closing, I offer a pedagogical north star that includes a more complex, critical understanding of a sociocultural-centered pedagogy to better support the holistic development of black athletes.
My overarching ambition of this book is to challenge us to rethink imaginations of modern sport as the model for a post-racial or better yet a post-racist society, but to see how racial inequity is preserved and perpetuated by our beliefs, policies, and practices. The Black Lives Matter movement of the twenty-first century has spawned widespread protests in cities all across the nation.7 We have witnessed evidence of this movement from marches in the streets to the words I can’t breathe printed on shirts worn by athletes during game warm-ups. The evidence of the movement has been reflected by Colin Kaepernick and other athletes, professional and collegiate, protesting by taking a knee during the national anthem. The study of black experiences at the intersections of sport and higher education provides a lens to critically interrogate the contradictions of our ideological politics and the sociocultural logics embedded within intercollegiate athletics. Seated by traditions of thought examining sociocultural productions of power and knowledge, identity and resistance, and pedagogical insights meant to enrich the holistic education of black collegiate student athletes, I draw upon the conceptual framing and analytical tools of critical race theory to study how the relationship between race, sport and higher education is constructed within the logics of neoliberalism. Demonstrated through research conducted at multiple institutions of higher education, and given the paucity of the pages of any book, I attempt to illustrate how the experiences of black athletes should not be merely reduced to the inherent consequences of structural arrangements but must be realized as part of the projects of ideology and complexities of a paradox.
NOTES
1. The terms “black” and “African American” are used interchangeably throughout the text to refer to both the racial and ethnic group in the United States (Cooper, Cavil, & Cheeks, 2014).
2. The Institute for Colored Youth (later renamed Cheyney State University) was founded in Pennsylvania in 1837; this was followed by Ashmun Institute (now known as Lincoln University of Pennsylvania) in 1854 and Wilberforce University in Ohio in 1856 (Redd, 1988).
3. Most of these institutions were established in the southern states under the auspices of the federal Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (or more commonly known as the Freedmen’s Bureau), black churches, and white philanthropists. The Freedmen’s Bureau helped to establish several colleges, including Howard University in Washington, D.C., Atlanta University now known as Clark Atlanta University, St. Augustine’s College in Raleigh, North Carolina, Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina. Churches such as the American Missionary Association, the Disciples of Christ, and the Methodist Episcopal Church founded colleges for religious education and training, such as Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi, Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama (Brown & Davis, 2001; Redd, 1988).
4. The first black public college established with financial resources allocated by the Morrill Act of 1862 was Alcorn Agricultural and Mechanical College (later renamed Alcorn State University), founded in Mississippi in 1871 (Redd, 1998).
5. Tygiel (2008) describes how a “gentleman’s agreement” to exclude blacks from major league baseball was championed by white players, including Cap Hanson of the Chicago Black Sox at the time. Major league baseball gentle agreement to ban contract offerings to black players fall in line with history of efforts that promote racial progress followed by retrenchment.
6. Biddle College is presently known as Johnson C. Smith University.
7. The Black Lives Matter movement unfolded after George Zimmerman was found not guilty on all charges in a Florida court room having shot and killed seventeen-year-old, Trayvon Martin, on February 26, 2012, as he walked through a community in Sanford, Florida. In response to this trial verdict, Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrisse Cullors created a call to action in the form of an open letter linked to a social media banner which they named #BlackLivesMatter (Carney, 2016; Lebron, 2017). The mantra of Black Lives Matter served as a mobilizing force for many people across the nation to take to protest as well as initiate programs to address social injustices that have rendered black lives disposable to violence and death.
