Reifying Contemporary Versions of Liquified Racism: Black Representation in Competitive Swimming

Critical Race Theory and Symbolic Annihilation: Policing and Silencing the Racial “Other”

In this research, we use two theoretical frameworks to guide our analysis: CRT and symbolic annihilation. Discourses of difference construct people of color as the other, which leads to both the perpetuation of the commonly held ideology that Whites are deserving of recognition and success over people of color and the depreciation of non-White individuals (Marangoni, 2011). These ideologies are often rooted in essentialism, or the belief that there exists intrinsic and biological qualities that tie subjects together (Hale et al., 2017). Moreover, in terms of essentialist understandings of race, some people hold the belief that various racialized individuals maintain a set of established characteristics that connect them to a specific group (Haslam et al., 2004). For example, Whiteness is often connected to characteristics that highlight intelligence, whereas Blackness is many times associated with being out of control physically and emotionally (Grano, 2010). For many non-White presenting individuals, essentialist understandings of race constrain their identities, as they are ultimately labeled as the other, oftentimes causing them to obtain less social acceptance (Bucholtz, 1999).

At the forefront of critiquing these belief systems is CRT, which argues that racism has become ordinary, in that it has ingrained itself into common-sense ideologies and everyday conversations and actions (Anguiano & Castañeda, 2014; Flores, 2009). Because racism has become such an ingrained set of ideologies, experiences of discrimination have also become a part of everyday life for many people of color through their interactions and communicative experiences (Griffin, 2012). Delgado and Stefancic (2001) concluded that commonsense ideologies of racial discrimination have led to racism being imbedded in social structures and thus is difficult to dismantle. In other words, CRT posits that racism is the product of institutions and belief systems that are set in place to maintain oppression over non-White racial groups (Bell, 1992).

Bell (1995) argued that CRT identifies structures put in place to uphold racism and discrimination and calls for “radical assessment” of those structures to elicit radical change (p. 893). Delgado and Stefancic (2001) noted that, although this assessment is necessary, structural racism is impossible to terminate because of its nearly invisible nature and covert styles of upholding the status of Whites by discretely framing people of color as less than equal. The notion that racism is upheld by a set of unidentified, common-sense ideological structures creates a difficult path to liberation for non-White individuals. In addition, these ideologies are constantly in flux, changing with various micro- and macro-level social conditions to keep racism and discrimination unidentifiable (Delgado et al., 2017). One of CRT’s biggest goals is “social transformation,” which is achieved by taking this often-unseen racism, discrimination, and misrepresentations of the racial other out of common-sense ideologies and into an open dialogue (Mills & Unsworth, 2018, p. 313). In this study, we used examples to show how competitive swimming websites use coded tactics to uphold Whiteness and racism.

Symbolic annihilation is also used as a tool for racial oppression. Originally formulated as a term to highlight the lack of women in media, symbolic annihilation is understood as the cyclical absence of marginalized communities within any given context (Tuchman, 1978). Not only are nondominant groups often misrepresented in various media, but they are often underrepresented, perpetuating a pattern of inexistence (Klein & Shiffman, 2009). Coleman and Yochim (2008) tied the concept of symbolic annihilation to race, arguing that the absence of racialized individuals and discussions about race in various media are oftentimes utilized to trivialize race and racial issues.

In the context of swimming, the continuous absence of Black competitors has constructed this sport as non-traditionally Black, which Norwood et al. (2014) argued makes it difficult for any current or future Black individuals to find any sense of individuality or belonging. With Black people making up approximately 15% of the population in the United States (U.S. Census Bureau, 2019), yet only contributing to 2.7% of all collegiate swimmers (NCAA, 2020), the absence of Black people in this context is striking. Wiltse (2014) argued that this symbolic annihilation is historical, as Black people had limited access to swimming dating back to the 1920s and beyond, leading to the inability to swim being passed down from one generation to the next.

Race and Representation: Who Is Worth the Screen Time?

Representation can be understood as the “production of meaning through language” (Hall, 1997, p. 16). In other words, communication is used to situate people socially in a way that attaches meaning to their bodies. However, this has been made an issue through Whiteness ideologies, which is a system of beliefs that perpetuate Whiteness as a fluid identity that is able to constantly position itself as the dominant norm (Nakayama, 2016). Ultimately, this causes non-White people to reproduce meanings that construct them as the racial other (White, 2011).

Previous scholars have noted the biased coverage of Black representation in sports media through hyper-visibility of racist representations (Cooky et al., 2010; McKay & Johnson, 2008; Washington, 2017). More specifically, Black men athletes are often included in sports media, however, they are expected to behave like middle- to upper-class Whites and acting against this expectation portrays them as “thugs” (Tettleton, 2014; Tucker, 2003). This media portrayal of Black athletes as “thugs” causes viewers to see these athletes in stereotypical ways (Ferrucci & Tandoc, 2018; Rada & Wulfemeyer, 2005). Furthermore, when Black athletes receive representation in sports media they are often viewed as having natural athletic ability rather than intelligence (Buffington & Fraley, 2008; Cooky et al., 2010; Harrison et al., 2019). It has also been argued that there is less representation of Black women athletes in sports due to racist representations of Black women in media (Carter-Francique & Richardson, 2015). More specifically, representation of Black women athletes is limited across the three division levels of college athletics, as they only account for 4.9% of all athletes, while White women (30%), Black men (11.4%), and White men (33.7%) account for the rest of NCAA athletes (NCAA, 2020). According to Carter-Francique and Richardson (2015), the lack of participation of Black women in collegiate athletics can be attributed to historical and contemporary representation of negative stereotypes, as well as an overall lack of representation of Black women athletes in media. For example, when Black women athletes are covered, they are hypersexualized and seen as less feminine as the media others, rejects, and fetishizes them (Cooky et al., 2010; Litchfield et al., 2018; McKay & Johnson, 2008).

For this study, we argue that there is a lack of Black (both men and women) representation in the context of swimming. For example, Simone Manuel was the first African American woman swimmer to win an individual medal at the Olympics, which did not happen until 2016 (Shinn, 2016). The absence of swimming in the lives of many Black people continues to be a cycle, as the lack of Black swimmers leads to minimal Black lifeguards and swim instructors in predominantly Black neighborhoods (Myers et al., 2017). Finally, the lack of racial representation in swimming also acts to constrain agency, as media portrayals in competitive swimming continue to highlight Whiteness as the norm and perpetuate the erasure of Black people from the sport (Norwood et al., 2014).

The purpose of this paper is to identify some of the ways in which liquified racism is still prominent in today’s society by using the context of competitive swimming. Specifically, using CRT, we looked at historical and contemporary beliefs and policies utilized to discriminate against Black people in swimming. In addition, by using the framework of symbolic annihilation, we focused on the underrepresentation of Blacks in competitive swimming, coupled with the competing discourses surrounding White and Black individuals in this context. In doing this analysis, we develop a better understanding as to how the top American swimming programs continue to uphold a contemporary form of liquified racism.

Overview of Swimming Programs

We chose to critique the content of the top 10 ranked DI men’s and women’s collegiate swimming teams due to their prestige and success in the United States. We also focused on USA Swimming, as this organization works with many successful collegiate swimmers from a very young age, preparing them to become future competitors on the national level. The USA swim team’s website and its diversity programs are critiqued because the impact that they have at the Olympics oftentimes creates a collective feeling of identity and success for many United States citizens (Milford, 2012). USA Swimming is a non-profit organization that serves as “the National Governing Body for competitive swimming in the United States” (USA Swimming, n.d., para. 1) that was organized in 1978 following the passage of the Amateur Sports Act, “which specified that all Olympic sports would be administered independently” (para. 1). Within the USA Swimming organization, two distinct programs—the Make a Splash program and the Annual National Diversity Select Camp—have been implemented to assist in the potential diversification of the sport as it is historically placed within Whiteness (Norwood et al., 2014).

The Make a Splash program aims to educate and promote water safety through swim lessons for children across the country (USA Swimming Foundation, 2017). The foundation encourages water safety and swimming knowledge among all children and families, however, they are intentional about their focus on helping lower income families and/or children of color throughout the program’s webpage. The second program, the Annual National Diversity Select Camp, celebrated its 13th annual camp in 2019. In all, 48 swimmers, between 14 and 16 years of age, are competitively selected to attend based on their swim times from previous USA Swimming sanctioned events (USA Swimming, 2019a, 2020b). The camp consists of a 3-day stay, in which the athletes receive training to learn various skills both inside and outside of the pool. The swimmers accepted to attend the camp must identify as “an ethnically underrepresented population that is less than 10% of the current USA Swimming membership” (USA Swimming, 2020b, para. 9), which includes swimmers who identify as African American, Hispanic, Asian or Pacific Islander, and Native American. Overall, the purpose of the National Diversity Select Camp is to “instill a vision of success and inspire athletes from ethnically under-represented populations to become leaders in the sport of swimming” (para. 2), however, many swimmers attend the camp with the ultimate goal to make the junior or senior national team the following year (Bowker, 2019).

Analysis

We based our analysis around our concept of liquified racism, which we argue is (beyond the fact that swimming is closely tied to water) separate and distinct from other forms of racial discrimination, misrepresentation, and underrepresentation in most other sports in the United States. Although we acknowledge the underrepresentation of Blacks across many American sports—including a major gap in the amount of Black people in coaching, managerial, and ownership positions (Regan & Feagin, 2017)—we use liquified racism because of our specific focus on tying together historical and contemporary racial oppression through the use of water.

When looking at the varying sites, we critiqued the intersections between race and various photos found on these websites, competitors on each team, and the specific programs that these swimming organizations have. The photos we use in the analysis of this study were all present as of February 2021; however, many may have changed since the publication of this article. Our analysis of photographs consisted of one picture each from the UT Austin, the University of California, and the University of Florida swimming webpages, and two pictures from the USA Swimming webpage.

We coded these photographs to account for the number of Black people being represented, along with the ways in which each of these individuals were portrayed in the images. We then looked through images and profiles of every competitor on the 2021 top ranked collegiate teams and the USA swimming team, along with different pages on each of the websites that represent these teams, to analyze the representation of Black swimmers and how various individuals are communicated to and about on these websites. Considering suggestions made by H. Johnson et al. (2019) for completing a critical content analysis of visual images, we conducted the analysis in the following steps: (a) determined research questions; (b) selected contexts and images for analysis; (c) researched applicable information, including cultural contexts of the data and relevant research; (d) examined images; and (e) reconsidered symbolic annihilation in relation to images. The utilization of these steps assisted in determining how the various swim teams covertly engage in liquified racism through their representation (or lack thereof) of Blacks. Moreover, using each of these websites, we critiqued how and why Black people: (a) are less prominently represented on swim teams than Whites; (b) are used to uphold false ideologies of a post-racial society; and (c) are inhibited from using their platforms to share their racialized experiences. In addition, we analyzed how and why race is generally ignored altogether in discourse surrounding competitive swimming.

Below the Surface: Photo Portrayals and Rhetorical Strategies of Liquified Racism on USA Swimming’s Website

Beyond the notion of who is in power within the organization, it is also pertinent to consider the overall racial demographic of the USA Swimming athlete membership. As the organization is recognized as the National Governing Body for competitive swimming in the United States, the members of the organization serve as a representation of the racial demographic make-up of competitive swimmers within America. More specifically, of the 327,337 year-round athlete memberships within the organization for the 2019 membership year, only 2,741 (0.8%) of the women athletes and 2,100 (0.6%) of the men athletes identify as Black (USA Swimming, 2020a). The lack of competitive swimmers who identify as Black within the USA Swimming organization demonstrates a contemporary version of liquified racism as Black swimmers continue to be absent within the organization. Furthermore, public swimming spaces have oftentimes been expensive to access and historically limited to middle- to upper-class spaces, leading to many Black people being left out of this context (Wiltse, 2014). This is not to say that USA Swimming is a “bad” organization due to their lack of representation. However, this does stress the need for USA Swimming to address the reasonings as to why they lack racial diversity within their organization’s demographic report. Although USA Swimming is acknowledging the lack of racial representation in swimming by analyzing and publishing a “racial report card,” their absence of engagement in discourse about the minimal amount of Black swimmers ultimately silences issues of Blackness in swimming as USA Swimming perpetuates ignorance toward this issue and how it can be potentially combated in the future.

One of the main links located on the USA swim team’s website connects to the USA Swimming Foundation. Since its creation in 2004, the foundation has donated $5.8 million toward Learn-To-Swim grants, $7.5 million toward water safety awareness, and $7.4 million toward “Building Champions” (USA Swimming Foundation, n.d.). The $7.4 million donated toward “Building Champions” is in reference to the USA Swimming Champions Club. The Champions Club runs on donations made through the USA Swimming Foundation to provide swimming lessons to children in lower-income families. We argue that the connotation of “Building Champions,” invokes the understanding that through swimming lessons, the child will be made into a winner or a success story. Thus, not only does the child learn how to swim and be successful in the predominantly White sport of swimming, but they also learn how to be successful in White America, acquiring “ideal” characteristics that perpetuate White-normativity (Grano, 2010).

A program that has been supported within the Champions Club is the Make a Splash Program. As previously noted, the Make a Splash program aims to provide resources (including the donation of time and money) to local swimming organizations to support lower-income families and children of color to help them gain access to swimming lessons (USA Swimming Foundation, 2017). Although this program seeks to provide swimming resources to lower-income children, we argue that there are various social regulations that inhibit access to these swim lessons that continue to not be discussed. For example, the Champions Club does not address how they might work with or support children who experience economically forced family relocation. In addition, many low-income children have issues finding transportation to and from social events, making it difficult for these children to maintain stability in their schedules (Zanin et al., 2020). It is not our goal to state that all of these children experience these issues; however, we argue that it is important that USA Swimming openly considers these problems through their media outlets as it would be naive to think that all of the low-income children who wish to participate in this organization don’t experience constraints that could be addressed by the program.

Moreover, the visual that goes with the link to the Make a Splash program shows eight different children from a number of racial backgrounds sitting on the edge of a pool—only two of which appear to be White (see Figure 1)—and contains the caption, “Save lives and build champions—in the pool and in life” (USA Swimming, 2019b). While USA Swimming is noting that their program saves lives due to the fact that drowning rates significantly contribute to accidental deaths and are higher among Black individuals (Quash, 2018), we engage in more of a critical reading of the text. Therefore, we argue that this statement, while it appears motivating at face value, contains racist meaning that is hidden by White normativity. Initially, the Champions Club equated being a successful swimmer with being successful in “life,” ultimately claiming that the inability to swim inhibits an individual’s livelihood. Therefore, when the program website argues that minority individuals need “saving,” it is alluding to the idea, so often reinforced by Western culture, that sports are a saving grace for minority populations from an impoverished life and lack of education (Hoberman, 1997; Smith, 2017). In addition, the idea that one’s financial contributions can “build champions” out of these children “in the pool and in life,” highlights the idea that Black individuals are not born with the innate qualities or traits needed to be successful in “the pool” and life. Therefore, said qualities and traits must be taught to racial minority populations, such as Blacks, with the help of those with higher socio-economic status, which is a population historically dominated by Whites (Do et al., 2017). We argue that USA Swimming’s portrayal of swimmers of color as innately less-than great reifies a contemporary form of liquified racism and perpetuates the myth of Blacks being in need of the White savior (Maurantonio, 2017).

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Figure 1.

Champions Club swimmers.

Along with the USA swim team’s website portraying Blacks on the USA Swimming Champions Club page, the website also has a link to its Annual National Diversity Select Camp (USA Swimming, 2020b). The webpage consists of information detailing the program’s purpose and goals. However, along with the posted information, the first thing you see when entering the camp webpage is one picture which is of a person swimming in what appears to be a meet (see Figure 2). The aspect of this image that stands out is that the swimmer is read as White, even though it is the image representing the National Diversity Select Camp. Along with the swimmer, the officials on the right-hand side of the image standing alongside the pool are also read as white (USA Swimming, 2020b). Thus, we question whether this image was even taken during the diversity camp and/or why this image was selected to be the representation of the program. We argue that USA Swimming is portraying what Vasquez Heilig et al. (2012) would call an “illusion of inclusion,” in which viewers are made to believe that racial diversity exists within this organization while perpetuating the erasure of Blackness (p. 421).

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Figure 2.

The national diversity select camp.

Diving Into the Deep End: Unsubmerging Black People From Collegiate Swimming Discourse

Before moving into a specific focus on some of the top collegiate swimming programs’ web pages, we examined the racial demographic of all Division I (DI) swimming team rosters in the United States. In total, this amounted to 330 DI men’s and women’s swimming teams with an approximate total of 9,570 collegiate swimmers. After examining the photographs of every individual on the online roster for each university, we read only 195 competitors as Black (105 women and 90 men). This finding amounts to approximately only 2% of DI swimmers being Black. We argue that this lack of observable Blackness in collegiate swimming is perpetuating Black erasure in the sport, as many aspiring Black athletes may be unable to visualize themselves as a future swimmer due to the lack of representation of people that look like them. Being able to see images of people who resemble oneself has a major impact on one’s sense of belonging in a certain context (Caswell, 2014). Therefore, the absence of Black people in collegiate swimming further perpetuates a racial discrepancy that keeps Black athletes away from the sport.

Liquified racism on web pages for top collegiate swim programs

Before we begin this portion of the analysis by examining various university’s swim team websites, it is important to note that some people may see the USA swim team and collegiate swim teams as two very separate contexts and in need of their own research studies. However, we argue against this and see these texts as intersecting and correlating. Because the universities we observed are some of the most prestigious collegiate (otherwise known as amateur) swim teams in the United States, they also produce a high volume of Olympic swimmers to compete for the USA swim team. Therefore, we view these collegiate teams as representative of U.S. identity to nearly the same extent as USA Swimming.

The structure of almost all of these university’s web pages were nearly identical, being broken into sections based on sport and then more specifically by gender (i.e., Swimming & Diving: Men and Swimming & Diving: Women). For each of these schools, the men’s and women’s swimming and diving websites are set up very similarly; with news stories that scroll across the screen and identical dropdown menus with avenues for the audience to buy tickets, view the rosters, see the teams’ upcoming schedules, and view an archive of news stories published about their athletes and achievements. One of the news stories found on UT Austin’s main web page portrays Michelle Carter, a self-identified African American woman (see Figure 3). At the time of data collection, Carter’s photo was the only image on UT Austin’s swim team page that was overlapped by another picture—of which appeared to be a White man—thus situating her even further in the background (Men’s Swimming and Diving, 2018). This highlights Bucholtz’s (1999) discussion of the racial other because Carter’s racial identity was constrained to being juxtaposed to that of a White individual, causing her success to be seen as less significant or worthy of notice. Moreover, the connection of Carter’s success to that of a White man further reinforces the notion that Black experiences are often only recognized as legitimate when it corresponds to White discourse (Griffin, 2012). Furthermore, this attempt at Black representation on the swim team’s website comes up empty because Carter is not a swimmer, but rather a track and field Olympian. Here, UT Austin is attempting to simultaneously hide the fact that they also suffer from a shortage of Black swimmers while also trying to appear as though they are a diverse team by adding an individual of color to the first page of their website. We argue that this photo was used as a tool for “strategic colorblindness,” in which organizations attempt to make racial diversity appear prominent in a context plagued by racial underrepresentation (Aphelbaum et al., 2008, p. 918). Therefore, UT Austin’s swim team gives the illusion of racial inclusivity in sport by commodifying Carter’s African American body (Vasquez Heilig et al., 2012) . Overlooking the shortage of Black competitive swimmers and attempting to disguise this lack of representation by using an African American individual unaffiliated with swimming reifies liquified racism.

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Figure 3.

News story on UT Austin’s webpage that featured Michelle Carter.

The University of Georgia also ranks in the top 10 for both men’s and women’s swimming. Upon scrolling through news stories dating back to June 2019 on the men’s and women’s teams’ shared websites, there were three total news stories whose cover photo solely contained a swimmer whom we read as Black. Two of which happened to be the same person and one of which was a short interview that has been done with most other swim team members. However, what we found most fascinating about the two non-interview articles was that, although they both had cover photos featuring Black swimmers, these same swimmers were not even mentioned in either of the articles. In fact, after reading these articles without any knowledge of the University of Georgia swimming rosters, the reader would remain unaware of the names of the featured Black swimmers. We argue that the University of Georgia swim team is tokenizing their Black swimmers to demonstrate a false sense of representation and “diversity” on their swim team.

At the time of data collection, the University of Florida ranked fifth and eighth in men’s and women’s swimming respectively. After looking through the team rosters, we read that there were two Black swimmers on each team. The two Black swimmers on the University of Florida men’s team are currently juniors, so we looked through news stories on the men’s swimming web page that dated back through July 2018, which we assumed to be approximately the date they would have joined the team. However, none of these news stories had pictures that exclusively featured these men and, in fact, the only photograph in which we could clearly see the faces of these two Black swimmers was one in which they were surrounded by what appears to be their White teammates (see Figure 4). Bloom and Willard (2002) asserted that sports publishers are often focused on portraying athletics as a venue that has moved past racial issues. We argue that the photographer and publishers of this University of Florida article purposefully centered the two Black swimmers within a group of White swimmers which created an illusion of racial equality. We argue that this picture exemplifies the fact that Black athletes are often utilized as a propaganda tool to promote an illusion of colorblindness in sport (Cooper, 2019). This idea that sports has entered a colorblind age circumvents issues of racism and underrepresentation in sport (Hoberman, 1997). Furthermore, this article stated nothing of their individual success, but rather simply included a link to one of their roster profiles.

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Figure 4.

Black University of Florida swimmers Isaac Davis and Will Davis surrounded by their White-appearing teammates.

Also ranked in the top 10 in both men’s and women’s swimming is the University of Michigan, whom we read as having one Black swimmer on their men’s roster. The layout of this university’s swimming web page was unique because next to an archive of news stories about their swim team featuring only White-presenting swimmers in the headlines and cover photos, they linked tweets and images from what we assumed to be the University of Michigan swim team’s Twitter and Instagram pages. The Twitter account attached to the archived Tweets was, in fact, owned by the University of Michigan swim team. However, when clicking on the archived Instagram photos, we realized that the linked account was the University of Michigan athletics account. There were 25 total photographs copied to this link and 10 of them featured Black athletes—all of whom were on their basketball rosters. We argue that by linking the Instagram account for the University of Michigan athletics to the University of Michigan swimming web page, this school is tactically creating an illusion of racial inclusivity on their men’s and women’s shared (overwhelmingly White) swimming websites (Aphelbaum et al., 2008).

When we looked through the web page for Indiana University, which ranked seventh in men’s swimming at the time of data collection, we came across an article from 2020 that featured the only Black swimmer on their team. One aspect of this news story that immediately stood out to us was the first line that read, “For many year-round swimmers, competing for your high school team could be considered slumming” (DeShazo, 2020, para. 1). While we interpreted the author’s use of the term “slumming” as signifying high school swimming as a lower-ranking form of competition for highly successful swimmers, we did still find the use of this term alarming, especially because it was used in conjunction with a Black swimmer’s success story. Specifically, this article featured someone who inhabits an identity that has been historically prone to institutional acts of racism and discrimination that have led many Black people to a lack of economic success. Stovall (2006) argued that any analysis that utilizes CRT should also focus on the roles that standard practices have played on the class status of racially marginalized people. Therefore, the author’s and the University of Indiana swimming’s attempt at normalizing the verb “slumming” within the article perpetuated the attachment of Blackness to historical laws and policies that have plagued the social status of many Black people in the United States.

Stanford University’s team’s web pages include links to schedules, tickets, news history, and team and individual records. A unique standpoint we gathered from Stanford University’s website is that they seem to call for idolizing their athletes, as they have coined all of their athletics programs the “home of champions.” However, we argue that, with such a lack of Black representation in competitive swimming with only 1.8% of collegiate swimming men and 0.9% of collegiate swimming women identifying as Black (NCAA, 2020), labeling swimmers as champion-like figures enables liquified racism through symbolic annihilation, where White people are generally more visible as valuable individuals within a certain context (Domke et al., 2003). To prove the theory that Blacks do not have representation on Stanford’s swim team, we went through the men’s and women’s 2018 to 2019 rosters. There are a total of 54 people on Stanford University’s swim teams—26 women and 28 men—out of which one person appeared to be Black. Therefore, since there is a clear lack of Black individuals on Stanford’s swim team, the slogan “home of champions” is associated with White swimmers. Ultimately, this exemplifies that White swimmers are to be considered athletic champions in the context of Stanford’s swim team, while perpetuating the inexistence of Blackness.

Of the remaining top-ranking collegiate teams, we found there to be a lack of coverage of Black swimmers, if they had any of them at all. Currently ranked second in women’s swimming and 10th in men’s swimming, the University of Virginia has only one swimmer on either of their rosters whom we read to be Black. However, upon looking through news stories from the past three seasons, we could not find a single article that clearly portrayed the only current Black woman on the swim roster. There were many articles with cover photos that featured swimmers standing and smiling in front of a camera, but none of these featured a Black woman. Moreover, only one of the articles written over the past three seasons mentioned this particular Black woman swimmer in the title of the piece (Virginia Swimming and Diving, 2019). In addition, North Carolina State, which is currently ranked sixth in men’s and women’s swimming, has no Black women and only one Black man on their rosters, but he is not pictured or mentioned in any of the news headlines on their web page since he joined the program. Ranked eighth in men’s swimming is the University of Louisville which also only has one Black man who, much like on the North Carolina State website, is not pictured or mentioned in any of the headlines since he became a member of their team. We also looked at the 10th-ranked University of Kentucky women’s swimming web page and found that none of the front page photographs or news articles included their only Black swimmer and, over the past four seasons that she has competed for the team, we could not find any archived news articles that mentioned her in the title. Finally, we did not read any swimmers on the fourth-ranked University of Tennessee women’s roster as Black.

Effective portrayals of Blackness on collegiate swimming websites

We wanted to take a moment to recognize the very limited amount of occasions that we felt collegiate swim teams’ web pages were effective in accomplishing, to the greatest extent possible, equal and non-racialized representations of Blackness. Specifically, when the viewer opens up the homepage for the University of California swimming program, which is ranked third and seventh in men’s and women’s swimming respectively, they are immediately greeted with a story that clearly features one of their four total swimmers whom we read as inhabiting a Black identity on its cover photo. Alongside the cover photo is an article that discusses this man’s success as a swimmer (Cal Athletics, 2021) (see Figure 5). The visibility of this swimmer’s Blackness stood out to us as impressive, as conducting this analysis brought to our attention just how often Black skin is perpetually hidden in swimming photographs. Moreover, the fact that the author chose to solely picture a Black swimmer in an article about his relay team’s success uniquely emphasized Black agency in a way that was otherwise perpetually ignored on each of the other collegiate webpages. Finally, we also looked at the fourth-ranked Texas A&M University men’s swimming homepage. This website currently headlines one of their two swimmers we read as Black in the cover photo and, not only does it mention his individual success, but he is also named in the title of the article—an act that we found surprisingly absent throughout our research (Guenther, 2021). We conclude that, although scarce in the amount of Black swimmers on their rosters, the University of California and Texas A&M University have given Blackness a platform that does not perpetuate a postracial agenda, racialized Black identity, or ignore the underrepresentation of Black swimmers altogether.

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Figure 5.

Black University of California swimmer Reece Whitley.

Limitations and Future Research

Of course, this research does not come without its share of limitations. Initially, it is important to note that the images we examined were only temporary on each of the websites we critiqued. Although they will all most likely be archived on the websites, the arguments we make based on many of the pictures being front-and-center will naturally become outdated. Another limitation we faced was a lack of personal information on every competitor on the teams we examined in this study. We were limited in our ability to communicate with each of the swimmers for these teams individually, inhibiting us from knowing how each of them racially identify. Finally, although we identified the connection between the historical and contemporary context of liquified racism, our research still lacks an in-depth understanding of the personal experiences of Black swimmers. A description of these lived experiences may have added a unique perspective to this study.

Moving forward, we believe that this research can be contributed upon in a number of ways. For example, a change in methodology may provide an even deeper understanding of liquified racism by learning about Black collegiate and Olympic swimmers’ personal experiences within this context. We also feel that discrimination within the context of swimming could also be found in connection to a variety of other racial, ethnic, gender, and sexual identities. Furthermore, we feel that an examination of the discourse within and surrounding the clubs that Olympic swimmers identify with would add a unique layer to this research. Finally, this research does not have to be limited to just an examination of top-performing swim team websites. There are many more successful amateur, college, and even high school swim teams that can be analyzed to further our concept of contemporary liquified racism.