E-racing false narratives: a black woman track star’s multimodal counterstory of possible futures

Abstract

In 2019 the University of Missouri Athletics (Mizzou Athletics) tweeted an image of student athletes as part of their “I am” campaign. While the two white student athletes are defined with captions stating the certainty of their future careers, the Black students are defined by their racial identity and current values. The Mizzou tweet demonstrates how collegiate sports programs at PWIs reflect white patriarchal systems that seek to control the futures of Black women student-athletes like Arielle Mack. Throughout this paper we, two Black women literacy scholars, present a critical re-telling of Arielle’s story for her future, which she narrated through a series of visual images and words. Specifically, we frame Arielle’s multimodal counterstory with two reflective questions in mind: (1) What did Arielle have to say in response to the Mizzou tweet? and (2) How, if given the chance, might she have represented herself and her future differently?

Keywords:

• Multimodality
• Black women student-athletes
• critical race theory
• counternarrative

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Autumn A. Griffin

Autumn A. Griffin is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Reading, Writing, and Literacy at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests center the multiple and digital literacies of Black youth, with a particular focus on Black girls. Autumn employs Black Feminist, Critical Race, and antiracist multimodal theories to explore the literacies of Black youth both in and out of classrooms.

Jennifer D. Turner

Jennifer D. Turner is associate professor of reading education at the University of Maryland College Park. As a critical multimodal researcher, she currently studies Black Futures through youth-generated drawings, digital collages, speculative nonfiction writing, and photography.