Whiteness, Canadian university athletic administration, and anti-racism leadership: ‘A bunch of white haired, white dudes in the back rooms’

ABSTRACT

This paper theorises ‘whiteness’ in relation to systems of power, leadership, and oppression within post-secondary sport athletic departments in Ontario, Canada. Using results from the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) Anti-Racism Project, we position whiteness as a significant and unavoidable obstacle to productive anti-racism leadership and labour within university athletics. While many Canadian university athletic departments have publicly embraced a call to anti-racism practice and policy, progress too-often remains contingent on largely white, male, and older leadership groups making decisions surrounding instances of racism that they often have no history personally experiencing, witnessing, or most concerningly, handling professionally. Examples from the project include administrators who often have more than 20-years-experience referencing ‘blindness’, naiveté, or not knowing where to look as reasons for viewing racism as a cursory or circumscribed problem, or as an issue not on the same scale as other athletic departments have attempted to tackle (e.g. sexual violence and concussion). We argue that these denials of the existence of racism work to reproduce the dominant structures of power, destabilise efforts for education or policy initiatives and maintain the oppression, racial hierarchies and marginalisation of racialised people within collegiate athletics.

KEYWORDS:

• anti-racism
• higher education
• university sport
• staff

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ontario University Athletics.

Notes on contributors

Braeden McKenzie

Braeden McKenzie is a PhD Candidate and Course Instructor working in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto and a Research Assistant in the Indigeneity, Diaspora, Equity and Anti-racism in Sport (IDEAS) Research Lab.

Janelle Joseph

Janelle Joseph is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physical Education at the University of Toronto and the founder of the IDEAS Research Lab.

Sabrina Razack

Sabrina Razack is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Physcial Education at the University of Toronto.