A study of critical whiteness in sport research and disrupting racism: research with a Black Lives Matter task force

ABSTRACT

This research note considers tensions and challenges faced by our research team in raising questions about white researchers, problematizing whiteness in research, and confronting anti-Black racism in sport. We document important insights to disrupt how white privilege is connected to complicity in racism. In doing so, we critically reflect on the process of our work with a Black Lives Matters (BLM) task force and our shift towards proactive allyship. Specifically, we frame our discussion through the concepts of critical whiteness, critical humility, and discomfort as white researchers involved in a social justice project confronting anti-Black racism in sport. Finally, with a call to action we identify the need for researchers to practice flexibility in research design and embrace social movements that alter the linear approaches to data collection and analysis. We also critique research team composition with our commitment to disrupting racism by problematizing whiteness.

Résumé

Cette note de recherche examine les tensions et les défis auxquels notre équipe de recherche a été confrontée en soulevant des questions sur les chercheurs blancs, en problématisant la blanchité dans la recherche et en affrontant le racisme anti Noirs dans le sport. Nous documentons des idées importantes pour perturber la façon dont le privilège blanc est lié à la complicité dans le racisme. Ce faisant, nous réfléchissons de manière critique au processus de notre travail avec un groupe de travail Black Lives Matter (BLM) et à notre évolution vers un allié proactif. Plus précisément, nous orientons notre discussion sur les concepts de blanchité critique, d’humilité critique et d’inconfort en tant que chercheurs blancs impliqués dans un projet de justice sociale visant à lutter contre le racisme anti Noirs dans le sport. Enfin, nous lançons un appel à l’action en soulignant la nécessité pour les chercheurs de faire preuve de souplesse dans la conception de la recherche et d’adhérer aux mouvements sociaux qui modifient les approches linéaires de la collecte et de l’analyse des données. Nous critiquons également la composition de l’équipe de recherche en nous engageant à perturber le racisme en problématisant la blanchité.

KEYWORDS:

• Black Lives Matter
• critical humility
• critical whiteness
• social justice

Mots-clés:

• Black Lives Matter
• humilité critique
• blanchité critique
• justice sociale
• mouvement social

Acknowledgments

The authors provide profound thanks and gratitude to the members of the Black Lives Matter task force discussed within this work, for allowing us to learn and grow as scholars through our ongoing involvement with your group.

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare that are relevant to the content of the article.

Ethics statement

This research has received clearance from Brock University Social Science Research Ethics Board, file #18–091 – TRUSSELL.

Role of the funding source

The funding source had no involvement in the research design, writing of the report or decision to submit the article.

Notes

1. We completed 16 months of task force meeting observations and conducted three interviews with task force members. The task force was created by a sport governing board to address racial disparities within their region.

2. The broader four-year ethnographic project was initially designed as a critical investigation of sport board governance but shifted into a social justice-based equity inquiry while working with this task force.

3. The task force that our research team was invited to work with was created following the high-profile murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd (Brown, 2020) by police officers in the United States, and the subsequent public outcry and protests against police brutality and white supremacy. The BLM name of the task force reflects the popularization of the BLM movement and the upsurge of anti-Black racism movements during this time (Evans et al., 2020; Jolly et al., 2021; McCoy, 2020).

4. Relatedly, the departure of one of the Black task force members to a provincial sport organization was a substantial detriment to the task force as the bulk of educational labour surrounding racism was placed on other Black/racialized members.

5. Of course, our whiteness as a research team examining sport was not invisible. As Evans et al. (2020) detail, ‘Whiteness is only invisible to those who inhabit it, or benefit from it. For racialised groups, [w]hiteness can seem all pervasive, all embracing’ (p. 294).

6. There is an important distinction between ‘white supremacist’ and ‘white supremacist consciousness’. ‘In the United States, “white supremacist” refers to a person who advocates racial separatism based on the conviction that white people are superior beings. In contrast, “white supremacist consciousness” refers not to a person, but a system of thought’ (European-American Collaborative Challenging Whiteness, 2005, p. 247).

7. At the time, Talia was working for the Brock University’s Human Rights and Equity Office and facilitating anti-oppressive educational sessions.

8. European-American Collaborative Challenging Whiteness (2005) describes that essentialist racism occurs when races are considered unequal in systems of white superiority.

9. Power evasiveness exists when white people believe in the idea of equality but fail to recognize the significance of historical factors and structural inequality.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Insight Grant (Number 435-2018-1412) and Sport Participation Research Initiative grant (Number 862-2018-0004).

Notes on contributors

Teresa Hill

Teresa Hill (PhD) is completing her post-doctoral studies in the Department of Sport Management at Brock University, Canada. Her research interests focus on equity-owed populations, access to public and private spaces, and engagement in physical activity.

Dawn E. Trussell

Dawn E. Trussell (PhD) is a professor in the Department of Sport Management at Brock University, Canada. Her research focuses on leisure and sport culture in the lives of individuals, families, and communities. She is the Past-President of the Canadian Association for Leisure Studies and is a Chancellor’s Chair for Research Excellence at Brock University.

Talia Ritondo

Talia Ritondo is a doctoral candidate in the School of Human Kinetics at the University of Ottawa, Canada. Her research interests are gender, community and high-performance sport, and pregnant and parenting athletes’ sport experiences. Her current dissertation research focuses on the nexus of pregnancy, parenting, Canadian safe sport policies, and gender justice.

Shannon Kerwin

Shannon Kerwin (PhD) is an associate professor in the Department of Sport Management at Brock University, Canada. She conducts research in the areas of organizational behaviour and human resource management in sport. Specifically, her research focuses on how HRM practices align to produce (or stall) equitable practice, and the role of board member experience in the effectiveness of volunteer boards of directors.