“They Think You Should Be Able to Do It All:” An Examination of Black Women College Athletes’ Experiences with Role Conflict at a Division I Historically White Institution (HWI)

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the perceptions and experiences of Black women college athletes at a Division I historically White institution (HWI) to understand their role negotiation processes. There is a need to explore the experiences of Black women college athletes in Olympic sports along with their same race peers in high-profile sports to ensure the professed National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) mission is being fulfilled for all college athletes regardless of their race, gender, and sport and specifically related to their academic experiences and outcomes. The current study fills this gap. Data collection methods included a focus group interview with four participants, two individual interviews, and an 8-item demographic questionnaire. Priori intersectionality, psychological identity, and college student development theories were incorporated to highlight key aspects of participants’ lived experiences in college. Findings revealed participants’ experiences with role conflict, athletic identity foreclosure, and social isolation. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Given the historical origins of the term “student-athlete,” which primarily focused on legally protecting the NCAA from worker’s compensation claims from athletes who were injured while representing a member institution, we opt to use the term college athlete. The latter term has been widely incorporated among critical scholarship in the field of sport and higher education (Carter-Francique et al., 2017; Cooper et al., 2017).

² Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) refers to the highest level of Division I athletics within the NCAA and includes 129 current institutions across 10 conferences with four independent institutions. This classification is based on institutions that sponsor football and meet specified requirements related to number of sports offered. The FBS level does not include any historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs).

³ HWI is used to refer to the historically White institution in the current study rather than the commonly acronym “predominantly White institution (PWI)” to emphasize the historical roots of racism embedded at these institution types. More specifically, the HWIs refers to the widespread historical context of segregation under the auspices of Jim Crow laws that birth the need to establish Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and provide a non-subservient context between the two classifications of institutions of higher education. Furthermore, a HWI is an institution of higher education in the U.S. that historically excluded and/or limited large numbers of Black students from enrollment prior to 1964 and whose current student population is at least 50% White and whose overall structure (e.g., origins, curricula, racial representation across faculty, staff, and administration ranks, etc.) privileges Whiteness over racial and ethnic groups such as Blacks, Latinx, Indigenous People, and Asians.

⁴ For the purposes of this study, potential educational navigators (PENs) are students who experience academic challenges at the intercollegiate level that result in concerted support efforts to improve performance and maintain eligibility.

⁵ The primary researcher is the first author.

⁶ In order to preserve the anonymity of the participants and the underrepresentation of their race on their respective athletic teams, the specific year and semester of data collection is not provided. However, data was collected within the past four years of the submission of this manuscript, which is within the six year window of the NCAA’s GSR metric and consistent with the traditional length of college enrollment. Hence, the data is current and relevant to the discussion of Black women college athletes’ experiences at Division I HWIs in the 21^st century and post-Bowl Championship Series (BCS) era more specifically.

⁷ Pseudonyms were selected by the participants and used throughout this manuscript to preserve their anonymity.