African American Male College Athletes’ Narratives on Education and Racism

Abstract

This study presents narrative case study vignettes of three elite African American male football athletes at a major historically White institution of higher education with a big-time athletics department. More specifically, I draw from critical race theory to garner insight into their secondary schooling background, what education means to them, and how racism impacts their holistic development. The focus group and individual interviews revealed each came from urban high schools in close proximity to the university, viewed education as more than classroom learning and obtaining a degree, and perceived racism as alive and well in college sport.

Keywords

urban emergent urban characteristic critical race theory college sport African American male athletes qualitative inquiry

The purpose of this article is to illuminate African American¹ male college athletes’ narratives² on issues related to education and racism, and discuss some broader implications for the education and holistic development of African American male athletes in both higher education and PreK-12. I draw from critical race theory (CRT) to analyze case vignettes of three African American male football athletes’ perceptions of education and their developmental experiences. In particular, the athletes described ways in which racism affected their educational experiences as African American males. Highlighting the voices and experiential knowledge of this student population is important because African American male athletes arguably play the predominant role in the continued growth and commercial appeal of college athletics in general, but football and basketball at historically White institutions of higher education (HWIHE) in particular (Donnor, 2005; O. Harris, 2000). Moreover, in comparison with their peers, African American males have been most severely and disproportionately affected by the schooling process in the U.S. educational system (Howard, 2014). In this regard, engagement of the participants in the present study potentially helped empower them to critically reflect upon their education and holistic development—past, present, and future. This research also offers some important insight for various educational stakeholders to consider if they are interested and invested in the overall well-being of these highly prized athletes—African American males—but too often undervalued and underserved students.

Since the early pioneering work of noted sociologist and scholar-activist, Harry Edwards, who stressed how racism and other macro-level or societal/structural factors have stymied and stifled the education and holistic development of Black athletes in organized school sport (see Edwards, 1969, 1973, 1984), several scholars have taken a great interest in educational experiences and challenges of African American male athletes at HWIHE in the United States (see Beamon & Bell, 2006; Benson, 2000; Cooper, 2016; Donnor, 2005; Hawkins, 2010; Singer, 2013; E. Smith, 2007). Harper, Williams, and Blackman (2013) and others (e.g., Purdy, Eitzen, & Hufnagel, 1982) have reported the academic disparities (e.g., lower high school grade point averages [GPAs] and precollege admission test scores, lower college GPAs and graduation rates) between African American male athletes (particularly football and basketball players) and the rest of their athlete peers. While some scholars have attributed this academic underperformance to micro-level or individual factors such as a lack of academic motivation or academic self-concept (see Gaston-Gayles, 2004; Simmons, Van Rheenen, & Covington, 1999), other scholars have moved beyond these “deficit-laden attributions” (Cooper, 2016, p. 268) to more of an emphasis on structural factors at the organizational level (e.g., organizational cultures of university athletic departments) and societal level (e.g., systemic racism in U.S. society; see, for example, Donnor, 2005; Hawkins, 2010; Singer, 2015).

In acknowledging that educational issues and challenges African American male athletes face in the PreK-16 U.S. educational system are complex and multidimensional, I have challenged researchers and theorists to embrace CRT and focus first and foremost on what is “wrong” with U.S. society and the educational and sport systems African American male athletes are affiliated with, instead of focusing on what is “wrong” with the African American male athletes and their interactions with these social systems and organizations (Singer, 2015). I stressed that focusing on these macro- and meso-level factors would not only allow scholars and educational stakeholders to keep the primary focus on the broader structural issues at the societal and organizational levels but also allow for critical examination of the role these athletes as individuals play in their educational experiences and outcomes. In that work, I made reference to the educational disparities between African American male athletes and their peers, but also highlighted research that offered counternarrative “success stories” to the dominant discourse (e.g., “dumb jock” myth) on African American athlete academic underperformance (e.g., Bimper, Harrison, & Clark, 2013; Martin & Harris, 2006; Martin, Harrison, Stone, & Lawrence, 2010).

More of these counternarratives on the academic successes of African American male athletes are needed in the literature. In addition, there is also a need to provide more narratives that give insight through African American male athletes’ own voice and positions (Milner, 2007) about what education means to them, as well as the impact racism might have on the educational and developmental experiences of this student population. Many African American male college athletes are recruited to HWIHE from urban school contexts that might lack the infrastructure and/or resources necessary to prepare them for the challenges they face in higher education. In this sense, understanding how African American males make sense of and reflect on their education and preK-12 schooling experiences is important. Therefore, in this article, I focus on the perspectives of three African American male athletes to provide insight into their educational pipeline experiences, particularly at the secondary level. Implications of the study point not only to their higher education outcomes but also to their preK-12 experiences.

In the next section, I outline CRT and some of its key tenets as the framework used to situate the three African American male athletes’ narratives on their general background and high school experiences, thoughts on education and/or development, and perspectives on the issue of racism.³

CRT

CRT is a form of oppositional (to the White racial status quo) scholarship and activism birthed from the missions and struggles of the African American Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and the dissatisfaction legal scholars of color had with the limitations of the critical legal studies approach to produce meaningful racial reform (see Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, & Thomas, 1995). According to Lynn and Adams (2002), CRT scholars have emphasized “the many ways that race and racism were fundamentally ingrained in American social structures and historical consciousness and hence shaped U.S. ideology, legal systems, and fundamental conceptions of law, property, and privilege” (p. 88). Since early work of legal scholars, other scholars in fields such as education (see Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995) and sport management (see Singer, 2005a) have introduced this framework to their respective fields, and subsequently, scholars in these fields have used CRT as a powerful analytic and explanatory tool to understand and address a myriad of issues related to the impact race and racism has on people of color in schools and other educational settings (see Lynn & Dixson, 2013) and sport organizations and related contexts (see Hawkins, Carter-Francique, & Cooper, forthcoming).

Several major tenets and core precepts have emerged from the work of scholars in the CRT movement (see Tate, 1997, for an overview). But two in particular are most relevant to the present study. The first tenet focuses on the permanence and endemic nature of racism in U.S. society (Bell, 1992). This is reflected in many U.S. social systems and institutions, including education and sport. Scholars in the fields of education and sport management have explicitly used CRT to examine and interrogate racism in organized school sport contexts and the experiences of African American male athletes (Cooper, 2016; Donnor, 2005; Singer, 2005b, 2009a). A second tenet focuses on the importance of the “voice” and experiential knowledge of people of color and other historically marginalized social groups (Matsuda, Lawrence, Delgado, & Crenshaw, 1993). The emphasis is on centralizing the narratives, stories, or perspectives of subordinated groups, and the potential this has to counter the status quo and cast doubt upon the master narratives and dominant discourses that often characterize people and communities of color as inferior or deficient. The aforementioned work of Bimper and colleagues (2013) serves as an example of this important counterframing.

My Positionality

My background as a Black American male who was born and raised in the United States, attended high school and middle school in a predominantly Black small town, played high school basketball and fell short of my pursuit to play at a major Division I HWIHE, formally worked as an academic advisor and mentor to African American male athletes at HWIHE, and has interacted with African American male athletes (in and out of the classroom) as a college professor in the field of sport management at HWIHE for several years compelled me to embrace a CRT approach to study African American male athletes’ educational experiences and challenges in high profile athletic programs at HWIHE. Moreover, in line with education scholars who have highlighted and promoted the interconnection between CRT and qualitative inquiry (Parker, 2015; Parker & Lynn, 2002), I have found qualitative inquiry to be most compatible with and suitable to this research and work being done with African American male athletes. In the next section, I briefly discuss the qualitative research designs used for the present study and the data collection and analysis process.

Method

In this study, I used a combination of two approaches to qualitative inquiry that are compatible with CRT: case study and narrative research. The focus of case study research is on developing an in-depth description and analysis of a case or multiple cases (Creswell, 2007). The units of analysis for this case study were the three individual African American male athletes who were members of the same football team at a major university with a big-time college sport program.⁴ According to Parker and Lynn (2002),

thick descriptions and interviews, characteristics of case study research, not only serve illuminative purpose but can also be used to document institutional as well as overt racism. The interviewing process can be pulled together to create narratives that can be used to build a case against racially biased officials or discriminatory practices. (p. 11)

My focus on the narratives of each of these individual cases was helpful in this regard. In line with Rinehart’s (2005) call for sport management scholars to use narrative as a research methodology, the goal was to hear from these African American male athletes and lend voice to their short stories or perspectives on the topics of education and racism.

Access to the participants for this study was gained from my previous work as an academic mentor to African American freshman football players at the university where this study took place, and the relationship I established with one of the African American male academic counselors in the athletic department there. More specifically, after I shared with this academic counselor my desire to conduct this research, he talked with some of the African American male athletes in the athletic department about my study and invited them to a meeting where I could further explain to them the purpose and goal of the study. Initially, five athletes expressed interest in participating, but only four showed up for the meeting and agreed to participate in the study and focus group that evening. Because only three of the four who participated in this initial focus group provided rich, detailed narrative on education and racism during the follow-up individual interview, the focus of the present study was on these three athletes’ narratives. Prior to this meeting, my research proposal was evaluated and approved by the institutional review board for human participants at the university, as well as by a separate committee within the athletic department.

The primary sources of data for this study included background questionnaires from each athlete, a 2- to 3-hour single focus group with all the athletes, and semistructured individual interviews with each athlete that lasted anywhere between 45 and 90 minutes. The background questionnaire asked participants to respond to questions about their racial identity, age, hometown, sport participation background, year in college, and college major. This questionnaire was used not only to gather this basic information but also to build rapport and provide a springboard to garner additional information from the athletes during the individual interviews. The focus group interview centered on three broad topics: the role of sport in society, the potential pros and cons of organized school sport participation, and the experiences of African American athletes on college campuses at HWIHE. Because these athletes were the ones who actually raised the issue of racism during the focus group, it became a focal point of their narratives. The fruitful conversations generated in the focus group allowed me to delve deeper into the issue of racism and the topic of education with each participant during the individual interviews. The interview guide for these individual interviews consisted of questions related to the topics of education, development, and racism.

The analysis and interpretation of data from this narrative case study began with a focus on hearing “the voices within each narrative” (Chase, 2005, p. 663). This involved first literally listening to the audio recording and reading the transcript from the focus group interview multiple times in efforts to begin identifying narrative categories and segments within the data. Mimeoing or note-taking during this process also allowed me to begin making tentative and preliminary assumptions about each participant’s or what Chase (2005) refers to as “narrator’s” emerging story. This initial analysis of content (see B. Smith & Sparkes, 2005) from the focus group helped me to further probe and frame questions during the individual interviews, which allowed me to gain more insight into each narrator’s respective story about education, development, and racism.

Three Narratives on Education, Development, and Racism

In this section, I outline the narratives of three African American male athletes: Bobby, Marcus, and Mark. Each of these individuals chose these respective names as their pseudonyms. The athletic department and football program Bobby, Marcus, and Mark were a part of is situated within a large HWIHE that has been consistently ranked by US News & World Report as a top 20 national public university. Moreover, the athletic department is affiliated with one of the major Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) conferences, has one of the largest operating budgets in major college sport, and has hundreds of athletes across several varsity sport programs. The tradition-rich football program has won several conference titles and multiple national championships throughout its history, and been consistently ranked in the top 25 and sent players to the National Football League (NFL) year in and year out. In fact, after this study, Marcus and Mark eventually went on to play in the NFL for multiple seasons, and Bobby had a brief stint with an NFL team before being cut in his rookie year. Below, I present the stories of these three athletes. Afterward, I use a CRT lens to engage in a cross-case analysis and discussion of these stories.

Bobby’s Story

Bobby was a 19-year-old freshman running back and kick returner at the time of this study. He attended high school and participated in football, track, and baseball in what Milner (2012) described as an urban emergent schooling environment. According to Milner, the population of cities in these social contexts is typically under 1 million people, but these cities are still relatively large spaces. Furthermore, although these cities do not experience the magnitude of challenges that the larger (particularly in population) urban intensive areas do, they still encounter some of the same scarcity of resource problems and other challenges (e.g., qualification of teachers, academic development of students), but on a smaller scale. Milner stated, “In these areas, there are fewer people per capita; the realities of the surrounding communities are not as complex as those in the intensive category” (p. 559). Bobby’s high school was located in a large major city in the Midwestern portion of the United States. According to the 2000 census, the racial demographics of the city were approximately 68% White and 24% Black with the remaining 8% consisting of people from other racial backgrounds. The public high school Bobby attended was founded in the 1960s, but closed several years after Bobby graduated due to declining student enrollment and a failed levy.

Bobby was a 4.0 student in high school who was ranked third in his graduating class and served as the president of his senior class. He came from a two-parent household. According to Bobby, his dad worked 10 to 12 years for a company that makes burial vaults, and his mother was a banker in construction lending. Both of his parents participated in high school athletics. His dad played football in high school and his mother ran track. In addition, Bobby has two older brothers who both played college football. One of his brothers also played semipro football.

Bobby’s decision to attend the university was based in part on the very close proximity of this school to his home. His parents played an integral part in his decision to attend this university as well. Bobby explained,

I grew up here, so you know, I really wanted my parents to see me play football, you know. Because they’d seen every game, so it is hard to leave them when, knowing that they can’t see some other game if I went to another, farther institution.

His family ties were crucial to his decision to stay close to home for school. When asked about his athletic career goals and aspirations, Bobby expressed a desire to crack the starting line-up as a freshman on his college football team, and eventually, win the Heisman Trophy, the most prestigious annual award given to one of the top players in major college football each year. One reason he came to this university is because “you want to get exposure.” He felt that this exposure would give him the best shot at making it to the NFL.

Bobby decided on communications as an academic major because he wanted to become a sports analyst once his playing days were over. Bobby explained,

Um, just because, I felt like I wanted to be a sports analyst—you know, cover college and professional football one day. I thought that would be good. I felt like, you know, I can talk pretty good and I’m good in front of the camera

This revealed his desire to stay connected to the institution of sport during his adult life and career.

My conversation with Bobby about the topics of education and development yielded some interesting narratives from this talented freshman running back and kick returner. In reflecting on the concept of education, Bobby described it in the following way:

Education is everything that, pretty much everything that has to do with your own life. A lot of people think education is just, you know, you come to college, and get your degree and I got education now, because I got my degree. But you know it is really, I mean that’s part of it, but that’s not the big picture . . . I think, you know, education, when you go to college is about learning about yourself, about finding new things out that you didn’t know about yourself and other people.

Bobby’s conceptualization of education suggests that a true college education extends well beyond earning a degree to developing a better understanding of self and others. It involves African American male athletes acquiring a greater knowledge of their history and who they are and their potential as human beings, as well as learning more about people who might be different from themselves.

In thinking about what development meant to him, Bobby described it as “growing, still growing, and getting, you can say uh, more developed physically.” When asked more specifically what some of the important dimensions of his development were to him as a college athlete, Bobby responded, “physical, mental, you know, spiritual, you know, that’s always in there.” In further reiterating the importance of his physical, mental, and spiritual development, Bobby also suggested that his independence has become a part of his development:

. . . being on my own, doing, you know doing things for myself. You know that, that has helped me, I think, grow a little bit as being more responsible, knowing I got to do this, nobody is gonna tell me to do this. So I think that has helped me grow as far as, I think mentally, and of course I’m still growing physically, because I’m lifting and running you know, with my sport. And spirituality is, I think it’s really helped me . . . .

Bobby’s focus was clearly more on the importance of his physical, mental, and spiritual development, not racial identity as an important dimension of his development. However, he did acknowledge that he identifies as “African American,” but suggested it “doesn’t matter” if he is identified (by others) as African American or Black because “they both seem like the same thing.”

Although racial identity (development) was not a focal point of Bobby’s narrative, issues of race and racism did emerge as important aspects of the narrative. In discussing some of the major issues African American male athletes face on campuses at HWIHE, Bobby focused on how some educators unfairly judge and label African American male athletes in particular:

Yeah, I know that, because I mean, in a classroom, I know a lot of people, well I mean, sometimes it is just athletes, but sometimes it is just, its Black athletes, that that you know, teachers don’t like or teachers think they’re gonna cause a problem in their class.

Bobby specifically stressed how these teachers and other people in the campus community tend to stereotype African American male athletes as troublemakers or “dumb jocks,” especially if they are dressed in “baggy clothes” or their “pants are sagging” down on their buttocks.

Bobby also stressed how African American male athletes experience treatment discrimination as a form of racism on these campuses. As one specific example, he discussed the differences in how African American male athletes, in comparison with their White peers, are treated when it comes to scheduling athletes for classes each semester. According to Bobby, African American athletes too often are scheduled for

classes they really don’t need and that’s why they are here forever, because they are taking all the classes they don’t need, where the White guy, he’s just, you know, all classes you need . . . or, or even if he [White guy] doesn’t know, they might, I think they might give him a little advantage. They might tell him, “well, you need this,” where the Black person, they just, you know, “we just want you to play football pretty much.”

Bobby further specified,

Sometimes, sometimes I feel like the academic counselors, they um, you know, I don’t know if they don’t think that Black people are just as smart as the White people are, because you know, when it comes to the Black people, they want to, they just want to get us by, by giving us any old class, you know what I mean. Where the White person, they are like, “Well, you need to take this, this, and this.” Where with the Black person, they are like, “Well, we’ll give you this,” you know, “you just take this,” you know. Sometimes it’s like that I think.

Bobby’s narratives above explicitly names college faculty and academic athletic advisors as the main culprits in the negative differential treatment African American male athletes experience at HWIHE (i.e., racial stereotypes, focus on athletic eligibility over graduation and true education), in comparison with their White counterparts.

Marcus’s Story

Marcus was a 21-year-old junior defensive back at the time of this study. Similar to Bobby, Marcus attended high school and participated in football, basketball, and track in an urban emergent schooling environment. However, the schooling environment where Marcus grew up and attended high school is not nearly as large as the one in which Bobby was raised and schooled. It can be best described as a midsize city in the Midwestern portion of the United States. According to the 2000 census, the racial demographics of the city were approximately 74% White and 21% Black, with the remaining 5% consisting of people from other racial backgrounds. The public high school Marcus attended was originally established in the early 1900s as the first high school in the city. By the 1970s, it was the only high school in the city after the other high schools in the city closed. This particular high school had a tradition-rich, highly successful athletic program, particularly in football. According to Marcus, his high school was “predominantly White, but the athletic programs were all Black.” He further stated it was “a school of about 5000, you know, 2, 3, 3000 White . . . 1500 Black, and then other ethnic backgrounds.”

Marcus identified himself as a “pretty good student” who “kind of lacked off on my education” once he realized during his sophomore year that “sports would probably help me to get over a little bit.” In his words,

I was sort of concentrating more on my athletics, but at the same time I just did enough, was forced with education, just to get by. I graduated with like a 2.6, you know, like a 21 on my ACT and whatever. When I first came in I was like a 3.0 student and whatever.

Marcus’ academic and other developmental activities outside of sport participation took a back seat to his engagement in high school sport.

Although Marcus was raised in a single-parent home, it was not the typical single-parent female-headed household that people stereotypically associate with young African American males like Marcus. According to Marcus, his uncle was his legal guardian when he was growing up:

So I was raised by my uncle in a single-parent home and what not since I was about 7 years old. He got me started playing sports when I was 8, playing football. So I’ve been playing football since I was 8 years old. You know, basketball, baseball, every season. Every sport, that season, I was playing it. So I was a 3 sport guy and he [uncle] just, understood the values and coming to a man at an early age. I was always on my own from basically high school on up with him working bid nights and stuff like that. So, you know, be able to cook myself dinner, and I learned a little bit and washed clothes and did some stuff and I had the house to myself, clean up the house. You know, the yard, cut grass, and all that different stuff. So I learned how to, you know, be a man . . . .

Marcus also talked about his father and his two uncles and how “they are all real close” so they each had a hand in helping to raise him. But again, it was the uncle he spoke of above who raised him and introduced him to sport, which allowed him to begin developing into a “man at an early age.” This particular uncle played basketball in college and was the only college graduate in his family at the time.

Marcus decided to attend this university primarily for economic reasons. He was impressed with the “rich tradition” of the football program. In particular, he commented on the nature of his playing position at this institution. Marcus stated, “This school has been putting defensive backs into the NFL year in and year out, first round.” Marcus was able to earn significant playing time very early on in his playing career, and was very successful on the field as a defensive back since day one. In addition, the school’s proximity to his home “played into the mix” when he decided to sign a letter of intent to play football there. When asked about his athletic goals and aspirations, Marcus first discussed his goals at the college level. He stated,

My goal is to win a national championship for this university. I mean, I’ve been winning championships since I was 8 on every level I played at. So pee wee to middle school to high school, I’ve been winning the championship. And my goal is to, you know, do that here. So that’s why I came back to this university for my last year

Marcus was talented enough and had the opportunity to skip his senior year and enter the NFL draft, but decided to come back for his final year of eligibility at the time of this study. In fact, he was named an All-American (i.e., one of the top players in the country) in multiple seasons leading up to his senior year. After completing his college career, Marcus planned to “reach the NFL and be the best wherever in my position and win championships.” He wanted to “dominate the sport” at every possible level.

In preparation for a career after his playing days, Marcus majored in communications. He talked about the number of former athletes who have been able to establish themselves as television commentators. In light of this fact, Marcus had this to say:

I decided well, maybe after I get done playing my sport, I can go ahead and do that because I will be very familiar with that, you know, playing and knowing what goes on, on and off the field and just being able to talk about it and just being around the game and doing it. Do something that’s fun, you know—I love and care about.

Marcus’ quote above speaks to the importance of him using his college degree and transferring the knowledge and skills he learned from the playing field to a successful postplaying career as a sports commentator or broadcaster.

In sharing his insights into what education means to him, Marcus provided a rather lengthy narrative on this topic. He initially suggested that education for African Americans involves having that double consciousness W.E.B. DuBois spoke of over a century ago.⁵ In his words,

To me education is just being able to grasp knowledge and know, know exactly what’s going on around you in each environment . . . because you can’t be in a ghetto and communicate with them and then go over here to White society and communicate with them, you know, unless you have some sense of education.

Marcus seemed to imply that education for African Americans involves having the ability to not only understand the different social contexts they might find themselves in but also to effectively communicate with people across these contexts. In other words, Black male athletes being educated is tied to their ability to function in the communities they grew up in and come from, as well as within mainstream, White society.

In further exploring the notion of education, Marcus shed light on how the current educational system has been more conducive to the history, traditions, and interests of White people, not Black people:

They’ve taught us the language and taught us, you know, all that educational and whatever . . . so, they kind of have a feel more genetically as far as just absorbing the educational. It took a while for, you know, Blacks to actually try to accept, understand the things that were being taught to them.

In response to this statement by Marcus, I asked, “are you suggesting that we as Black people have struggled to learn White peoples’ way of knowing, their system of education?” In response, Marcus stated, “Right! Their education was initially taught to us . . . they eventually made us learn it. We were slaves and then we probably got our freedom.” Throughout this particular dialogue, Marcus implied that White athletes have an advantage over Blacks in terms of their education and development because they are essentially learning about themselves in the curriculum, while African Americans are not being given an education that is culturally relevant to them.

Based on Marcus’ understanding of education as a historically Eurocentric, White enterprise, he seemed to suggest education for African Americans involves having an awareness of one’s environment, a certain level of independence, and the ability to control things going on in life. In his words,

But as far as education, it is just being able to have a maturity and understand exactly what’s going on around you. I’m saying it is like being able to control your own life . . . you have to be able to make your own ideas, your own points, and your own thoughts and go through your own actions.

In Marcus’ eyes, education involves a developmental process that grows and empowers African American Americans into independent, self-sufficient human beings.

In discussing the notion of development and its relationship to the educational experiences of African American male athletes in college, Marcus provided a rather lengthy narrative:

I see that is 4 years of college, as I said before, or kind of the main development to you as far as your life. I mean you come here as an 18-year-old, teenager . . . by the time you leave here you are a 22-year-old man. Hopefully, you’re trying to set up, you know, the next 10 years of your life, hopefully, next, say next 2 to 10 years of your life with your education and what not. The whole development is kind of squeezed into 4 years. But you know, it’s gonna, it’s hard whatever, at the same time you get to see what you’re really made of because you’re on your own, making your own decisions. You don’t have your parents to lean on and what not. And you are here every day trying to survive. So it is just, you’re trying to mature and understand exactly the world and everything around you; try to use everything to your advantage; try to see, not trying to step in no potholes and different circumstances that are going to come against you; and try to overcome those because you’re going to have adversity you know, throughout your whole life. This is like the development, to see how you are going to accept it and attack it. Some people, you know, they try to run around it, and then some people look adversity right in the face and try to step right on it and then try to move forward.

Marcus’ commentary reveals that being a college student and athlete challenges African American male athletes like himself to grow from the adversity they are sure to face in preparation for life beyond the college experience. He spoke in particular about how he uses his “spiritual will to try to push through everything” he deals with as a high profile athlete at this major university. In this regard, the spiritual dimension was particularly important to Marcus’ development as a college athlete.

Similar to his other peers who participated in this study, Marcus did not explicitly focus on his racial identity development. But interestingly, he was the one of the three who specifically listed “Black” as his racial identity on his background questionnaire. But when asked about his racial identity during the individual interview, he referred to himself as African American. When asked why he identified himself in that way, Marcus replied,

I don’t; I mean I just see myself as a Black man. So far as you know, when you come down to the applications and all that different, whatever, they might have “Black” and they might “African American,” and I’ll put African American for, you know, the ethnic background where I originated from but then here in America, you notice I’m a Black man.

Based on his narrative above, Marcus appears to embrace African American as his ethnic identity to reference his cultural heritage and ancestral roots, and Black as his racial identity to reflect the socially constructed reality of being an American born citizen of African descent in the United States.

As an African American male who was conscious of his status as a racialized being, Marcus’ understanding of racism emphasized the lack of access African Americans have to certain leadership positions in college sport in particular. In commenting on this issue during the focus group, Marcus stated,

. . . here at X university . . . we ain’t got no Black quarterback, you know what I’m saying . . . Certain universities still won’t have like a Black athlete at quarterback, you know what I’m saying . . . It’s just that, their so-called tradition where they’re trying to uphold, you know what I’m saying.

Marcus reiterated this point in the individual interview. He stated,

. . . racism exists in sports because I mean, we talked about it in the group, about the Black quarterback, and then how um, they always want a White quarterback to lead. You have to be an exceptionally, you know what I’m saying, Black athlete to be a quarterback.

Marcus also believed access discrimination was particularly prevalent for African Americans seeking the leadership opportunities in professional and college sport off the playing field. According to Marcus,

. . . if you look at mostly all of the owners of all the teams, you know what I’m saying, they’re, you know, Caucasian, you know what I’m saying. Or the leaders of the school, they’re Caucasian, you know what I’m saying. So they feel like they still want to have, you know what I’m saying, that Caucasian part . . . .

Marcus’ perspective was that White people overwhelmingly and unfairly occupy the major decision-making positions, both on and off the field, in college and professional sport. As will be seen in Mark’s narrative in the following section, this is a perspective that not only Marcus shared.

Mark’s Story

Mark was a 21-year-old junior (red shirt) wide receiver at the time of this study. He attended high school and participated in football, basketball, and track in what Milner (2012) described as an urban characteristic schooling environment. According to Milner, schools in these environments are not located in large or midsize cities but still might be starting to experience some of the challenges (e.g., increase in English language learners in a community) often associated with the urban intensive and urban emergent environments described by Milner. “These schools might be located in rural or even suburban districts but the out-of-school environments are not as large as those in the urban intensive or urban emergent schools” (Milner, 2012, pp. 559-560). Mark’s high school is located on the outskirts of a large urban emergent city in the Midwestern portion of the United States. According the 2000 census, the racial demographics of this small suburb were approximately 78% White, 11% Black, and 10% Asian, with the remaining 1% of the population consisting of people from other racial backgrounds. According to various reports, this small town has a highly rated public school system. The public high school Mark attended was established in the late 1800s and is the only high school in the district. The enrollment was roughly 1,700 students. According to Mark, he attended a racially/ethnically diverse high school in a “nice city,” and the school “was about 60% White and 40% Black. It was a pretty good mix.”

In terms of his high school academic experiences, Mark reported that he was “an average student” with a 2.7 GPA in high school. In Mark’s words, “I did enough to get by . . . I could have done a lot more. I probably could have studied more for tests, but there was another thing, like, I guess, a student-athlete. I was just tired.” He grappled with the challenge of balancing academic and athletic endeavors, and like Marcus, Mark’s athletic identity seemed to take precedence over his student (academic) and other identities.

Like Bobby, Mark was also a product of a two-parent household. His mother was a dentist who graduated from a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) and attended dental school at a prestigious Midwestern university. His father, who was a “real fast” athlete in high school, started off as a special education teacher, and then became the superintendent of the public school system in a major Midwestern city. However, Mark and his older brother were the “first ones to excel past high school to play sports.” His brother, who is 2 years older than him, competed for and graduated from a school that is in the same major football conference as Mark’s university. When asked whether they played on the same football team in high school, Mark revealed some very interesting facts about his football experiences. He spoke of his brother’s focus on football, and his own late start in highly competitive football:

He was a football player and I was a basketball player. But then my senior year, because my coach just kept asking and asking . . . And I basically, the main reason that I did not want to go and play, or join football, is because I did not want to do fall conditioning for basketball. So it was kind of weird and then, I kind of thought that I would enjoy it and it became second hand to me.

Standing around 6′ 4″ tall, Mark was able to successfully transfer his athleticism on the basketball court to the position of wide receiver on the football field, and parlay this into an athletic scholarship to play football in the big-time college sport program at the university that was the focal point of this study.

When asked why he chose to attend this university, Mark emphasized the opportunity to receive a scholarship as the main reason. Similar to Bobby and Marcus, he also mentioned that this university’s proximity to his hometown and his hometown buddies going to school there played into his decision. Finally, he mentioned the strength of the athletic program as a major influence on his decision. Mark was attracted to the major television exposure that the football program receives. He insisted, “. . . it is just a lot easier chance to go to the NFL from X university than it is from a D3, you know.” Mark, like so many other highly talented African American male athletes recruited to HWIHE with big-time college sport programs, chose such programs over less prestigious ones (e.g., HBCUs, Division II, Division III) because of the belief and understanding that it would lead to greater upward social mobility via professional sport opportunities.

In terms of his athletic career goals and aspirations, Mark desired to achieve All-American status at the college level, and then play professional football in the NFL. While acknowledging that professional sport can be emotionally taxing, Mark saw it as “one of the easiest ways that you can make money.” However, he also acknowledged that a career as a professional athlete is not promised to anyone. His postathletic (college football and NFL) goals and aspirations were to eventually become an athletic director at the high school and/or college level. He discussed a conversation that he had with his father about career options outside of sport participation. Essentially, his father talked to him about becoming a physical education teacher, and the benefits of that type of career path. According to Mark, being a physical education teacher “is not bad when you first start off, because you are 24 or 25 years old. You don’t want to be working in the summer time. I don’t want to be working in the summer time; I know that.” In Mark’s mind, whatever he does for a career must involve sport in some way. He expressed an intense desire to stay immersed in the institution of sport because it has been such an integral part of his life:

I am going to be involved with sports for my entire life. Then after I can’t play anymore, it is just, I need to be, since I have been around it my entire life, I need to be around it . . . it is instituted in me. You know, I am basically, I’m basically sport you know what I’m saying . . . I can’t be without; it is like water; I can’t be without it.

Clearly, Mark had a robust inclination to stay connected to sport, and viewed his continued involvement in sport as a crucial component to his identity, growth, and development going forward in life.

In reflecting on education and the role it plays in his growth and development as an African American male, Mark echoed the sentiments expressed by his peers in this study. When asked what education meant to him, Mark stated,

Higher learning. Just you know, life, learning about your life, learning about not just the class and not just book smart—learning about what goes on in real life. How you have got to deal with it. How you don’t have nobody like your parents to be there for you. You are on your own . . . being independent is definitely a main part of education.

Mark stressed how education involves dealing effectively with the challenges and vicissitudes of life, and eventually learning to become an independent thinker and doer.

Related to his conception of education, Mark described development as “something where you are being educated and you are, day-by-day learning more and more and you are developing different skills and developing different techniques, uh, of what you want to do.” He specifically emphasized the “emotional” part of development. He acknowledged that you have the intellectual development, “but like, emotional, you got to deal with a lot of different things. Being an athlete and it is just that some people cannot handle it and they will break down and burn out.” It was Mark’s contention that college athletes have a difficult time dealing with the “stress in their life” because

they might not know how to juggle the family and the work and the school and the social life all in one and it is like . . . hitting them and then all of a sudden they realize and then all of sudden something breaks down.

Mark believes strongly in the importance of emotional development and stability if athletes like himself are to successfully navigate the challenges and demands that come with participation in big-time college sport.

When asked about his racial identity, like Bobby, Mark did not necessarily have a preference as to whether or not people identify him as Black or African American:

I don’t really think that there is a distinction. Uh, African American, I can say I am Black. I don’t really have a preference. I am not from Africa, so I guess you could say that I am Black. I am American, I am basically American, but I guess my ancestors are from Africa so . . . .

Mark’s words speak to the conceptual entanglement between the concepts of race and ethnicity (Armstrong, 2011), and how people of African descent sometimes struggle with determining which identity moniker, Black or African American (or some other racial identity), to embrace.

In discussing the racism Black male athletes experience on college campuses at HWIHE, similar to Bobby, Mark told stories about faculty and how they tend to label Black males in a negative, stereotypical way. According to Mark,

I mean, you might have, you got teachers here that I think judge right away. That this person, okay, he is tall, but he is Black and he is going to be lazy and he is not going to make a good effort in class.

Mark offered more insight into his perspectives on racism, noting the differences in treatment that Black athletes must grapple with at this university in comparison with their White peers. When asked to elaborate on racism in college sport, Mark discussed a situation where one of his former teammates who is Black was always singled out for drug testing:

. . . my friend played football here two years ago, and he, I guess you could say, he is a dark guy; he is real dark, you know what I’m saying. He is real dark, but he somehow, every, you know what I am saying, he doesn’t do no drugs, or anything, but every drug test he will be picked . . . .

At this point in the individual interview with Mark, I chimed in and asked, “Isn’t drug testing supposed to be random?” Mark responded,

Random, it is random, but every single time he would be picked somehow. It is supposed to be totally random . . . I know plenty of White boys on the team that do drugs, but never get checked. Because they think, and if I looked at the person, the White boy, I would be like, “he doesn’t do drugs,” but when I seen (sic) it I was like, “dang.”

Mark’s comments point to the negative impact racial stereotypes against Black male athletes can have on the differential treatment they receive in comparison with their White male counterparts.

Mark offered even more perspectives on racism in the form of differential treatment of Black male athletes in comparison with their White peers. For example, Mark stated,

. . . like when we had, I mean, I guess you can say recently, you know like I think about like if we had the same situation of our quarterback I guess you can say and it was bad like, bad like the press, the media, you know what I’m saying, the fans disapprove of him but you know like when they recruited the person, he was, he was a, you know what I’m saying, an athlete, I guess you can say. He was a defensive back . . . but he was, he was—turned him into a quarterback, but if it was a Black athlete you know right when things went bad, things went bad they’d move him back . . . they’d move him back to, to a DB.

Mark elaborated on this point: “that person that was the quarterback, he made, he made more mistakes off the field and still got shots.” But “if it was a Black athlete” that person would not have gotten the same chances. Mark’s perspective was that Black male athletes are held to a different standard and do not enjoy the same privileges as their White teammates when it comes to getting away with inappropriate behavior or breaking team rules.

Mark also shared a similar perspective as Marcus in regard to the access discrimination African Americans experience when seeking opportunities to break into leadership positions in sport. He discussed how Black athletes have taken over and now dominate college football as players on the field, but continue to be viewed solely as athletes not leaders who are capable of also performing at a high level in major decision-making roles off the field. According to Mark,

. . . you got White coaches; you got a lot more White coaches than Black coaches and they see it as we’re athletes—Black, Black players as athletes—but they can’t see us in the main position role . . . they enjoy us being around but they still don’t want us to be the leader . . . .

Mark further asserted, “We have to excel more. To become a head coach . . . like Tony Dungy and them, you got to excel on the field and then you get respect.” He illuminated this point even further during his individual interview:

. . . the managers and the owners of the clubs, most of them are predominantly White, and it is a lot harder for, I think, you know, for a person to get a job if you don’t know them. If you don’t know them, I said, the only way that you can get that job is if you win two Heisman Trophies or if you do something outstanding where everybody already loves you. It is like, “oh, since we love them we are going to get them. But if you are just somebody applying for a job, and they see ethnic background [i.e., non-White] . . . they are going to be like, “oh, what did you do?”

Mark’s narrative speaks to the notion that African American males are held to a much higher standard than their White peers, and must work at least twice as hard and achieve extraordinary feats on the playing field to be even considered for these major leadership positions in sport.

Discussion and Conclusion

In this section, I draw from relevant tenets of CRT to advance what we know about these African American college athletes’ preK-12 experiences. In addition, this discussion will shed light on pipeline issues and the support mechanisms needed for African American male athletes during their time in preK-12 on into higher education. The narratives of Bobby, Marcus, and Mark helped illuminate some educational issues and challenges these particular African American male athletes faced as students in the urban high school environments each came from, as well as within the urban emergent environment in which the university they played football at is situated. These narratives also potentially speak to issues and challenges that other African American male college athletes from similar and different backgrounds might face as high profile, high school and college athletes in the U.S. educational system.

One of the primary goals of this research with these three African American male college athletes was to glean insight into their perspectives on education and their holistic developmental experiences, and factors (e.g., racism) that potentially affect their educational experiences and outcomes. As one of the major tenets of CRT that is highly compatible with the narrative approach to conducting research, I focused in this study on the centrality of experiential knowledge and the illumination of the voices of Bobby, Marcus, and Mark in efforts to allow them to name their own realities as high profile athletes in organized school sport. In discussing the importance of the “naming one’s own reality” theme of CRT, Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) argued “the voice of people of color is required for a complete analysis of the educational system” (p. 58). Likewise, I argue here that the voice of African American male athletes is necessary if we are to better understand and address educational challenges this particular student population faces in the preK-12 and higher education contexts. I have highlighted and reported elsewhere the significance of providing the athletes in the present study with a platform to voice their concerns, share their stories, and “get some stuff off your chest” as one of them stated when discussing strategies for fostering institutional integrity in college sport (see Singer, 2009a).

The narratives each shared in the present study about their precollege schooling experiences, conceptions of education and/or development, and perceptions of racism in college sport are of particular importance to helping advance what is known about the educational challenges of African American male athletes. With regard to their precollege schooling experiences, Marcus and Mark revealed how in high school they did not maximize their efforts as students in the classroom, and therefore, did not perform as well academically as they could have performed. Although each were capable students who had potential to achieve high marks academically (e.g., above a 3.0 GPA), their stories demonstrate how their focus shifted primarily to athletics once they realized they were talented enough to play football at the major college level.

This shift to a predominant focus on sport is a familiar story for many other young African American males, past and present, who exhibit great athletic prowess during, and in some instances, even well before they reach high school. Several of the African American male athletes I worked with for three summers—as an academic advisor in a 10-week university summer bridge program for so-called “at-risk” racial minority students—shared with me how they did not take academics seriously and focused more on athletics during high school. Some shared stories with me about how teachers and other educational stakeholders (e.g., coaches, school administrators) had low academic expectations for them, often allowing them to miss class with little to no consequences. Although Marcus, Mark, and other African American male athletes I have worked with throughout the years acknowledged some culpability (i.e., lack of effort) in contributing to their academic underperformance in high school, their stories also point to issues at the organizational or meso-level (i.e., cultures of low academic expectations) in preK-12 schools that could negatively affect African American male athletes once they reach HWIHE (see Benson, 2000; Comeaux, 2007).

Bobby’s story of academic success in high school (i.e., 4.0 GPA, ranked third in graduating class, senior class president) serves as an important counternarrative to the popular discourse on the chronic academic underperformance of African American male athletes and the culture of low academic expectations that exist for this group in many schools in the United States. Unfortunately, one limitation of this study is I did not delve deeply enough into Bobby’s or Marcus’s and Mark’s preK-12 histories and backgrounds to know the extent to which these participants might have been impacted by the culture of low academic expectations that could have existed in their respective high school and early schooling (i.e., prek-8) experiences. Despite this limitation, Bobby’s narrative is still reflective of a counter-story that challenges the Black “dumb jock” myth (see Edwards, 1984) and other racial stereotypes (e.g., deficient, disengaged, apathetic) aimed at African American male athletes (see Cooper, 2016; Hodge, Burden, Robinson, & Bennett, 2008). Bobby was a “scholar-baller,” which Harrison and colleagues described as an individual who exhibits both academic and athletic prowess and succeeds in both domains (Harrison et al., 2010).

This narrative case study also contributes to the ongoing dialogue concerning the educational experiences and challenges of African American male athletes. Benson’s (2000) narrative of the schooling experiences of “at-risk” African American male college athletes was one of the first early studies that encouraged these athletes to “name their own reality.” The present study was not only concerned with the narratives of the schooling experiences of Bobby, Marcus, and Mark but also their narratives about what the concept of education actually means to them. Bobby echoed the sentiments of Edwards (1984) in his acknowledgment that graduation is not equivalent to education, and being educated goes well beyond getting good grades and earning a college degree. It also entails gaining knowledge of who you are as a person, and learning about the world and people from different backgrounds (Singer, 2009b). In a similar vein, Mark described education as extending beyond “grades” and being “book smart,” and viewed it as learning how to be independent and deal with “real-life” issues.

From a CRT perspective, Marcus’s conception of education was particularly insightful because he inferred that race was significant when he suggested that African American male athletes must be culturally versed in the norms and realities of their own communities (e.g., “ghettos”) as well as White mainstream society if they are to be considered educated. Marcus was keenly aware of the racism that is embedded in the U.S. educational system. Similar to Shujaa (1994), who made the distinction between schooling and education, Marcus understood that African Americans were not being holistically educated in the current system; they were being schooled or trained to acquiesce to the dominant social order where the cultural orientations of elite Whites are the norm. In Marcus’s mind, education, and subsequently his development, involved moving beyond the limitations of the Eurocentric ways of thinking and knowing (Ladson-Billings, 2000), embracing and directly confronting the challenges and circumstances he experiences as an African American male athlete at a HWIHE, garnering an understanding of “the world and everything around you,” and eventually maturing into an independent and self-sufficient Black man.

As mentioned earlier, it was the African American male athletes in this study who first initiated a discussion of racism during the focus group discussion. I have documented here and in previous work some of their insights into the issue of racism and the impact it can have on their and other African American male athletes’ educational and career experiences (see Singer, 2005b). Both Bobby and Mark expressed an awareness of how racial stereotypes by university educational stakeholders can lead to treatment discrimination against African American male athletes. Greenhaus, Parasuraman, and Wormley (1990) asserted treatment discrimination occurs when individuals or members of a particular group experience negative behaviors directed toward them in organizational contexts. Bobby and Mark alluded to the differential treatment of African American male athletes by college professors who unfairly judge and label them as lazy, troublemakers, and not serious students because of their physical appearance (e.g., skin color, height and size, clothing). They also shared how White academic support staff within the athletic department treat them differently than their White teammates by attempting to schedule them and other African American male athletes for classes they do not need to take, but giving the White athletes classes that advance them toward graduation. However, in line with CRT, Bobby, Mark, and Marcus resisted and countered this treatment discrimination by choosing their own class schedules and/or going to the Black academic support staff to help them with their class schedules (see Singer, 2009a, for these athletes’ (counter)narratives).

Mark’s story of his real “dark” friend and teammate who always got selected for “random” drug testing is another salient example of how racial stereotypes can lead to treatment discrimination against African American male athletes. Mark appeared to be very frustrated with the double standard to which Black athletes are often held. This frustration stemmed from what he perceived as some of his White teammates not having to face any real consequences for their wrongdoing. Mark suggested that Black athletes, whether guilty or not of some indiscretion or transgression, do not typically get the same benefit of the doubt or second chances their White counterparts often enjoy. This is an example of the privileges associated with Whiteness that CRT and other scholars have discussed in the literature (C. Harris, 1993; Lipsitz, 2006; McIntosh, 1992). Each of these examples shared above by Bobby and Mark demonstrate how White privilege can account for the unequal educational opportunities available to athletes from different races, and treatment discrimination can adversely affect the educational experiences and outcomes of African American male athletes.

The participants in this study also shared stories about how access discrimination might affect their and other African American male athletes’ educational experiences and career outcomes. Access discrimination occurs when individuals or members of a particular group are denied opportunities to pursue certain endeavors and obtain positions (Greenhaus et al., 1990). Marcus and Mark both discussed the lack of opportunities African American male athletes have been given to pursue and obtain the major leadership positions in sport. They both expressed how Black athletes have, for the most part, taken over and dominated on the fields and courts of play, but opportunities at the top of the organizational hierarchy have been severely limited for them. Marcus even suggested that although progress has been made in providing access for Black athletes to assume the leadership position of quarterback, some of the long-held racial stereotypes that Black athletes lack the mental capacity to play the position (Hawkins, 2002; Lewis, 1995) are still around and have prevented Black athletes from gaining full access to this leadership position on the field. Although it could be argued that African American male college athletes have gained even more access to the quarterback position since this study was conducted with Bobby, Marcus, and Mark in the early 2000s, African American male athletes still often contend with the racial stereotype they are athletically superior while intellectually inferior to White male athletes (Hodge et al., 2008; Mercurio & Filak, 2010).

Marcus and Mark also focused their stories on access discrimination African American males experience when pursuing head coaching and upper management careers in college and professional sport. Mark suggested African American males must achieve exceptional, extraordinary feats on the field of play as athletes (e.g., win two Heisman Trophies) before even being considered for such positions; and in many cases, this still is not enough for them to break through the proverbial glass ceiling into these major decision-making and leadership positions. My colleagues and I (Singer, Harrison, & Bukstein, 2010) and other scholars have drawn from CRT (Agyemang & DeLorme, 2010) to examine the dearth of African Americans in these elusive leadership positions. We found in our reanalysis of the measures used from the Black Coaches & Administrators (BCA) Hiring Report Card to the assess the hiring process of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) athletic departments that process racism, which Asante (1988) described as procedures that produce racially disparate outcomes, was a major factor in the pervasive denial of African American males’ access to these postplaying career opportunities. Marcus’s and Mark’s stories add important voices of African American male athletes to the discourse and literature on access discrimination in college and professional sport, and how it could affect the career opportunities and overall educational experiences during their time on campus. In related work I have published elsewhere, these athletes stressed the need for there to be more African Americans in influential positions of leadership within the athletics department and broader university setting (see Singer, 2009a).

In conclusion, there are some practical and future research implications that should be considered. From a practical standpoint, educational stakeholders in both the preK-12 and higher education contexts must be willing and able to create positive learning environments to effectively engage African American male athletes as well as all other student groups in critical conversations about race and racism, and other pertinent diversity and social justice issues. Harvey (1998) rightly discussed the importance of this learning opportunity for college students in particular, but because many of the educational challenges African American male athletes face begin during their formative early schooling in preK-12, I would argue these facilitated discussions should also begin at least by middle school. Given that sport is a microcosm of society and has become an integral part of the educational experiences of students in the U.S. educational system today, teachers, coaches, counselors, administrators, and other relevant educational stakeholders, particularly in the preK-12 context, should utilize organized school sport as an important teaching and learning space. And as the focus of this study suggest, these educational stakeholders should critically engage African American male athletes (and other students) in discussions on the purpose of education, what it means to them, and how issues pertaining to racism might affect their educational development. In previous work, I have challenged these educational stakeholders to think about these and other issues as they prepare African American male athletes for higher education in particular, and life in general (see Singer, 2009b).

In discussing the notion of excellence beyond athletics, Cooper (2016) drew from CRT and other relevant literature/frameworks to outline several best practices for enhancing Black male college athletes’ educational experiences and holistic development: self-identity awareness, positive social engagement, active mentorship, academic achievement, career aspirations, and balanced time management. Each of these strategies and recommendations advanced by Cooper (2016) should be taken into consideration, and policies should be implemented that hold higher education stakeholders (e.g., coaches, faculty, athletics administrators, student affairs professionals) accountable for fostering learning environments and opportunities for African American male athletes and their peers to excel not only on the fields and courts but also in the classroom and other educational settings.

These athletes must also hold themselves accountable for their education and holistic development, because as Edwards (1984) has asserted, education is an activist pursuit that Black athletes must ensure takes precedence and priority over all else. This activist pursuit of education is in alignment with Cooper’s (2016) strategic responsiveness to interest convergence (SRIC) approach, which posits that Black athletes must (a) recognize the inequitable structural arrangement that is designed to exploit them (holistic consciousness), (b) internalize or believe they possess the power to alter their personal outcomes within this system (internalized empowerment), and (c) actively engage in behavior to counter the inequitable arrangements to maximize the holistic benefits for themselves (engagement in counteractions). Bobby, Marcus, and Mark demonstrated to some degree a holistic consciousness (e.g., recognized the impact the inordinate time spent in athletics had on other developmentally useful activities outside of sport participation, see Singer, 2008; and the disparities in financial compensations between athletes and other stakeholders, see Singer, 2009a), internalized empowerment (e.g., viewing the challenges they face on the field as a mechanism to develop and deal with challenges off the field, see Singer, 2008), and an engagement in counteractions (e.g., not allowing White academic counselors to choose their class schedules, see Singer, 2009a).

Future research should extend the work presented here by focusing on more in-depth case study narratives on some of the macro-, meso-, and micro-level factors affecting the educational experiences and holistic developmental opportunities of African American male athletes (past and present) in secondary and postsecondary educational settings. In addition, other qualitative approaches such as critical ethnography, participatory action research, grounded theory, and phenomenological research could help expand what we know about the educational issues and challenges facing this student population in the various urban schooling environments Milner (2012) outlined. Scholars should combine these qualitative approaches with CRT and other relevant frameworks as they continue building knowledge that is grounded in the voices and perspectives of African American male athletes and their athlete peers.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biography

John N. Singer focuses his research on the intersections of race, sport, and education with a particular emphasis on the stakeholder interests of Black males in organized school sport in U.S. His teaching and scholarship also spans the broad area of diversity and social justice in sport organizations.

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