Negotiating the coaching landscape: Experiences of Black men and women coaches in the United Kingdom

Introduction

Contrary to the popular belief that sport represents a meritocratic and egalitarian space, we have previously noted that sport coaching remains an arena in which interconnecting disparities of ‘race’, ethnicity, and gender (as well as other social categories) create structured power relations that serve to reinforce patterns of inclusion/exclusion (Rankin-Wright et al., 2016). In particular, Black ¹ coaches are underrepresented in sport leadership and sport coaching in the United Kingdom (UK), and we know little about their lived experiences (Bradbury et al., 2014, 2018; North, 2009; Norman et al., 2014; Sporting Equals, 2011). Research on racial equality in sport organisations lacks insight on the institutional discourses and power relations that embed racialised and gendered disparities. The purpose of the current paper is to explore the experiences of Black men and women sport coaches in two national governing bodies of sport (NGBs) in the UK. Specifically, we consider the complex, multifaceted and dynamic ways in which intersecting racialised and gendered processes are experienced and negotiated by coaches on entry to, and progression through, their sport. In doing so, the paper augments the sociology of coaching literature that focuses on the social dynamics of the sport coaching context, while also centralising the experiences of Black coaches.

It is important to note that whilst acknowledging critiques of the term ‘Black’, and recognising the multiplicity of experiences within and across different groups of people, we adopt Black as an inclusive theoretical and political term to refer to groups that experience processes of racialisation and suffer discrimination due to their colour, culture or phenotype. Within UK policy circles, terms such as BAME (Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic) and BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) are common ethnic labels though not necessarily accepted by those they supposedly represent. While acknowledging theoretical and policy discourses on ethnicity, we have employed the coaches’ self-identified terminology so as not to obscure the individual identifiers and heterogeneous lived realities of ‘race’ and racism. As we examine Whiteness we recognise it as a dynamic, contested process that invariably privileges White people, though is different from White people who themselves are socially constructed (Frankenberg, 1993; Singer, 2005a). Much of the earlier research into ‘race’ and sport coaching has rendered Blackness visible while White people and the Whiteness processes that privilege them and institutional hegemony remain invisible (Long and Spracklen, 2011).

Critical research in sport coaching is necessary to better understand processes of inclusion and exclusion. In the following sections, we review the limited albeit significant literature that explores Black coaches’ experiences before outlining a Critical Race Theory (CRT) approach and Black feminist lens. We then introduce a qualitative methodology used to explore and centre the experiences of Black coaches in the UK. The coaches’ reflections are (re)presented under three themes: negotiating identities; privileges and blind spots; and systemic discrimination. The insights from the coaches’ narratives emphasise the need for key stakeholders in sport to recognise the intersectional structural and relational experiences that facilitate, as well as constrain, progression in order to challenge racialised and gendered inequalities.

Sport coaching in the UK: locating the experiences of Black coaches

Critical scholarship that examines intersecting racialised and gendered experiences related to organisational practices in sport is sparse (Birrell, 1989; Borland and Bruening, 2010; Bruening, 2005; Carter-Francique and Olushola, 2016; Carter-Francique, 2017; McDonald and Birrell, 1999; Ratna, 2011, 2013). Studies focusing on the UK sporting context examining the interconnections of ‘race’, ethnicity and gender in sport have tended to focus on the experiences of participants, rather than coaches (Burdsey, 2007, 2009; Ratna, 2011, 2013). Though there is still a dearth of work on the Black experience of coaching in the UK, what has been completed has generally focused on men (Bradbury et al., 2018; King, 2004). Consequently, knowledge gaps remain, including a more in-depth understanding of the experiences of Black women in sport leadership and coaching and their negotiations of and challenges within the racialised and gendered structural practices and power relations embedded within sport organisations (c.f. Borland and Bruening, 2010; Carter-Francique and Olushola, 2016; Norman et al., 2014, Rankin-Wright and Norman, 2017; Sporting Equals, 2011).

Research that has foregrounded the lived experiences of Black women coaches has demonstrated that they confront multiple, complex and intersecting oppressions. These oppressions include: limited institutional support for professional development; prejudiced assumptions that position them solely as players, rather than coaches or leaders; and situations that make them feel isolated, intimidated, and under-appreciated (Borland and Bruening, 2010; Carter-Francique and Olushola, 2016; Norman et al., 2014; Rankin-Wright and Norman, 2017). In the US, Borland and Bruening (2010) found that Black women coaches downplayed and masked their collective identities and curbed their normal preferred behaviours to avoid drawing attention to their diversity to better assimilate into hegemonic norms and culture. King (2007) extended Fanon’s (1967) analogy of the ‘white mask’ to include a gendered dimension by arguing that Black women coaches in the UK adopt a ‘gendered white mask’ to negotiate the layers of oppressions to progress as football coaches and managers.

The emerging interest in the marginalisation of Black experiences within sport coaching research and practice highlights the imminent need for further critical studies that explain the intersecting dynamics of ‘race’ from the perspective of Black men and women coaches. Coaching research has yet to fully address these unique and diverse aspects of racialised and ethnic identities that become more or less pertinent for coaches at different times and in different situations, as well as the Whiteness of sport coaching as an institutional field (Rankin-Wright and Norman, 2017). Specifically, research is necessary to examine the interconnections across systems of power and oppression and how they are organised (Collins, 2000: 12). This paper contributes toward the development of these theoretical insights by advancing understanding of the multiple racialised dynamics that reproduce the inequitable racial and gendered order in sport coaching.

CRT and Black feminist thought

The research was foremost informed and framed by a CRT approach that centralised, privileged and theorised the experiences of those Black coaches that have traditionally been inadequately represented in sport research, policy and practice (Burdsey, 2009; Hylton, 2009). Despite the scientific refutation of ‘race’ and its marginalisation in sport coaching research and discourse, CRT begins from the premise that ‘race’ continues to be a powerful social construct, a signifier of broader structural problems in society and reflective of real lived experiences (Crenshaw et al., 1995; Delgado and Stefancic 2001; Hylton, 2012). The underpinning principles for this research were based on broad precepts of CRT, outlined by Hylton (2015) that included: (1) the centrality of ‘race’ and racism(s) in society whilst recognising interconnections with other forms of subordination and oppression, in this case gender; (2) challenging dominant ideologies of meritocracy, equal opportunity, ‘race-neutrality’ and colour-blindness to facilitate a reimagining of the everyday realities of sport coaching; (3) a commitment to social justice and transformation in regard to racial and gender inequalities in sport to engage a politics of resistance to tardy approaches to change; and (4) centring the lived experiences of marginalised groups as a counter narrative to representations and terms of oppression in sport.

Whilst CRT was used as a guiding framework for the research to centre ‘race’, gender and its intersections, the research was sharpened further by the insights and concepts of Black feminist thought that enabled a specific focus on the everyday sport coaching experiences of the Black women coaches. Black feminist thought was initially conceptualised by Collins (1986, 2000) and hooks (1984, 1989) to address the intersecting identities experienced by African American women in the USA that had been ignored or marginalised by mainstream feminism. Dominant theories in the social sciences and in sport have been critiqued due to their silencing of the voices and experiences of Black women through a lack of, or misrepresentation (Bruening, 2005). The critical paradigm adopted by Black feminists moves beyond merely describing gender and ‘race’ as distinctive systems of oppression, to naming and critiquing interconnecting systems of institutional and cultural oppression as being part of one overarching structure of domination (Collins, 2000; Crenshaw, 1989; hooks, 1984, 1989; Mowatt et al., 2013). This agenda recognises and privileges the Black coaches’ position of “perspective advantage” (Rollock, 2012: 65), or ‘outsider within’ status, argued by Black feminists to provide a distinctive standpoint on existing social paradigms and ‘sociological spaces’ such as the context of sport coaching (Collins, 1986, 2000; hooks, 2000). This is particularly relevant for Black women coaches whose experiences, in many cases, are not synonymous with either the experiences of Black men or White women (Bruening, 2005).

In the study, CRT was used as a framework that engaged insights from Black feminist thought to explore the experiences of Black men and women coaches. The complementary principles of CRT and Black feminism with regards to providing a platform to privilege the experiences, positions, and perspectives of coaches who have previously been marginalised and to drive social justice agendas to challenge and transform discriminatory practices ensured that ‘race’ and gender remained central to the study. In this respect, the study provides a counter-narrative that disrupts the dominant thinking of the sport coaching system and the popular perspectives shared across sport organisations and sport coaching research.

Methodology

The purpose of the current research was to explore how Black men and Black women coaches experience coaching within their sport and NGB in the UK. The findings presented are drawn from a wider study examining racial and gender equality and diversity in sport coaching in the UK. The current paper analyses the qualitative accounts of eight coaches who self-identified as: (i) being Black or from a ‘Black and minority ethnic’ background; and (ii) with coaching experience and a UK Coaching Certificate (UKCC ² ) qualification between levels one to four. Four coaches (two women and two men) were interviewed from each of two anonymised NGBs (eight coaches in total). These two NGBs, NGB1: ‘Team Sport’ (TS), and NGB2: ‘Grouped Individual Events’ (GIE), had been purposively selected based on a larger study that included six NGBs and the coaches were only selected from these two NGBs (Rankin-Wright et al., 2016). The two NGBs were selected because they represented contrasting approaches to racial and gender equality, and were willing to participate in the research.

Both NGBs were actively working toward The Equality Standard. ³ Team Sport was a small governing body that administered support to a non-Olympic team sport for both men and women. At the time of the interviews, TS had achieved the intermediate (third) level of The Equality Standard and had a dedicated full-time Equality Lead. Although in the larger study, TS demonstrated the greatest engagement with an equalities agenda, including a number of programmes in place to diversify participation, they were unable to accurately state the ethnicity of their coaching workforce. GIE was a large governing body that oversaw the development and management of a number of Olympic and Paralympic individual events for men and women. At the time of the interviews, GIE had achieved the preliminary (second) level of The Equality Standard and had employed an Equality Lead on a six-month contract with the sole remit to deliver the intermediate level of The Equality Standard. GIE were represented by a diverse national team of athletes, but could not provide the ethnicity of their coaching workforce. The typical profile of a GIE coach was noted to be White, male, middle-class, and forty years old and above. In the larger study, GIE demonstrated the least engagement with an equalities agenda. Levels of engagement were gauged by assessing each NGB’s equality and diversity strategies, senior level commitment to equality and diversity agendas, coach monitoring and action planning.

The coaches from TS and GIE were purposively selected based on the criteria above. Some coaches were recruited through the first Author’s contact with key ‘gatekeepers’ in the two NGBs or through processes of snowball sampling where existing coaches recommended and helped the first Author to contact other coaches. The coaches’ profiles are shown in Table 1, along with their self-selected pseudonyms and self-reported ethnicities. Given the high profile of some of the coaches and the low representation of Black coaches in the UK, confidentiality in relation to the coaches’ names, the sports they coached, and their NGB was necessary in order to create freedom for the coaches to feel safe and open in discussing their experiences as a coach. All eight coaches gave informed consent for the recording of their interview and were assured that their identity and responses would remain confidential.

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Table 1.

Profile of the coaches interviewed from the two national governing bodies of sport (NGBs).

Coach (pseudonym)	NGB	Gender	Self-identified ethnicity	Age	UK Coaching Certificate coaching qualification level achieved	Current coach status
Seema	Team Sport (TS)	Female	Asian British Pakistani	30	Level 1	Previously coached in primary schools but no longer coaching. Not employed by NGB
Olive	TS	Female	Pakistani	29	Level 2	Previously coached in secondary schools but no longer coaching. Not employed by NGB
Zac	TS	Male	Afro-Caribbean	43	Level 3 – currently completing level 4	Actively coaching at high performance level. Employed part time by NGB
Harris	TS	Male	British Asian	33	Level 2	Not actively coaching on a regular basis. Currently employed by the NGB as a part-time tutor for coaching courses
Carol	Grouped Individual Events (GIE)	Female	Black Caribbean	45	Level 2	Actively coaching at high performance level. Not employed by NGB
Amelia	GIE	Female	Black British	49	Level 4	Actively coaching at high performance level. Employed by NGB as a full-time head coach
Jay	GIE	Male	Black of Caribbean descent	45	Level 4	Was previously a national coach employed by the NGB. Now coaches on a voluntary basis three times a week and is no longer employed by NGB
Frank	GIE	Male	Black	58	Level 3	Was previously a national coach employed by the NGB. Now coaches high performance athletes on a part-time basis and is no longer employed by NGB

Semi-structured interviews were carried out face-to-face at the coaches’ preferred locations and lasted between 36 and 80 minutes. The interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim (with pseudonyms used for any names, sports, organisations, clubs, and places). Prior to each interview, the coaches were briefed about the research and discussion themes. The research question was: What are the experiences of Black men and women sport coaches (in two NGBs in the UK)?

The interview questions focused on: personal background; getting into coaching; progression; ambitions; insights; and reflections. Qualitative interviews were selected to encourage rich, discursive responses regarding each coach’s experiences. Following Braun and Clarke’s (2006) step-by-step guide, thematic analysis was used to aid the identification of themes from the interview transcripts in a predominantly inductive way. This involved selecting text from the transcripts and filing it under themes and sub-themes, referred to as nodes and sub-nodes in the computer software program, NVivo 10. The themes were refined and cross-checked against each interview transcript. This coding process was initially completed by the first Author and significant themes across the data set were then shared and triangulated with the authorship team to ensure reliability of the conclusions reached.

As part of the CRT and Black feminism framework for this study and through the processes of privileging those voices that have been traditionally marginalised, the first Author, who carried out the interviews, was mindful of her multiple identity positions and the need to recognise her subject position. As a White, middle class, British female coach and researcher, the first Author was aware, not only of her own privileged position(s), but also the responsibility to disrupt rather than perpetuate power structures within the research production process and within coaching literature. We remain acutely aware that the experiences and perspectives shared during the interview interactions and the understanding and re-telling of these will have been influenced by our subjectivities as researchers and power relations including but not limited to gender, ‘race’, ethnicity, class, religion and age (Bhopal, 2010; Frankenberg, 1993; Ladson-Billings and Donnor, 2008; Rollock, 2012, 2013). For example, the re-telling of Black women coaches’ experiences will be interpreted differently by a White woman, who occupies a privileged, rather than liminal status within sport and society (Carter-Francique, 2017; Rollock, 2012, 2013). As an authorship team, which included a Black British male of African-Caribbean descent, the second Author, and another White British woman, the third Author, we were challenged to comprehend the insight of lived experiences of racialised gendered processes within sport coaching. At times, we drew out divergent readings of the data based upon our own lived experiences and our critical insights on the literature. Although the experiences of all the coaches were individualised and multidimensional, and therefore cannot be reduced or essentialised, relevant and related threads of the coaches’ experiences and stories have been interlinked in order to form an overarching narrative informed by a CRT framework and the insights of Black feminism.

Findings

The findings are discussed here under three themes: negotiating identities; privileges and blind spots; and systemic discrimination. These theme titles encapsulated the interview quotes that reflected significant patterns within the data analysis.

Conclusion

The purpose of the current paper was to explore the experiences of Black men and women sport coaches in two NGBs in the UK. This paper has privileged these voices on the basis that sport is a gendered and racialised institution that often marginalises Black men and women. Critical race theorising in this respect facilitated a focus on sport’s meritocracy ideals and the need for principles of social justice and transformation to underpin a critique of an under-researched area of sport studies theory and practice. In addition, by ensuring the conscious inclusion of Black feminist methodologies, the theoretical framework strengthened our capacity to critically conceive of racialised gendered practices to avoid a reductionist approach to intersectionality and more sensitively incorporate the experiences of Black women coaches. The findings from the coaches’ narratives provide a critique of sport coaching within two different NGBs that help forefront and deconstruct the cultural norms and taken-for-granted assumptions within sport coaching. Hylton (2009) contends that such a perspective lends researchers and practitioners a clearer understanding of the major structures, power processes, White supremacy, racism and (in)equality within sport organisations that have consistently been ignored by both practitioners and mainstream theorists. The coaches’ counter-stories to sporting myths of meritocracy and inclusion make an intriguing and challenging contribution to coaching research and the broader sport coaching landscape.

The findings, across both NGBs, demonstrate that although the diversity of coaches within the UK may be slowly improving, the institutional systems within sport coaching organisations continue to disadvantage and subordinate Black coaches in generic and specific ways. Although NGB1: TS displayed the greatest engagement with an equalities agenda, the coaches’ narratives still shed light on the resistant nature of sport coaching culture that equality policies and programmes were unable to regulate. Their experiences reflect the gendered and racialised discourses underpinning sport coaching in both NGBs that played out during everyday interactions and that positioned them as ‘othered’. In particular, the Black women coaches had to negate racialised gendered practices in the form of prejudices and discriminations that led to compensatory behaviours in recognition of the biases and disparities in their sport. These experiences will always be unique to their particular lived reality and embodied identity. Their mutual but different experiences of racism with the Black men coaches were differentiated by the location and privileging of men in each sport even though there was consensus across the coaches that they did not feel they met the somatic norm of the ‘ideal’ leader/coach and felt vulnerable in how their competence was perceived.

The stories shared during the interviews and analysis evidenced that gender was often expressed as more salient by the women coaches than their racialised identity and ‘race’ was expressed as more salient than gender by the men. For the women, this hints at the masculine discourses underpinning sport coaching and women’s position as coaches within this space. Ratna (2013) has suggested that forefronting sexist discrimination, rather than racism, is a coping mechanism in an attempt to facilitate a sense of belonging in organisations that in/advertently deny the significance of ‘race’ and presence of racism. However, as stated in the methodology section, the racial and gender positioning of the first Author and in particular, her racial and cultural privilege and own outsiderness in this context, likely impacted on the accounts shared by coaches, the shaping of interview interactions, and understanding of the coaches’ narratives. Gunaratnam’s (2003) argument that ‘race’ and ethnicity should not be essentialised nor privileged as a relation of difference over others, at times, played out during the interviews. For example, Seema explained that having the same gendered identity as the first Author meant she openly shared certain experiences of sexism that she would not have openly discussed with a male researcher. Another male coach acknowledged that he ‘censored’ his stories and views because the first Author was a woman. Different identity characteristics became more or less relevant at different times throughout the interviews and within each interview process. To assume that insider/outsider status is based solely, or even primarily on ‘race’ is to ignore the inherent and fluid heterogeneity of social identities that are actively produced and reproduced across and within different social contexts (Carrington, 2008; Flintoff and Webb, 2012). In this respect, the findings indicate that further research is needed to examine the interlocking oppressive systems for coaches as part of the complex processes of inclusion and exclusion.

The findings highlight the importance of considering interconnected identities and the multiplicity of coaching experiences when recruiting and developing coaches in the UK. Crucially, the coaches’ journeys and experiences cannot be essentialised nor generalised, though do reveal intersecting racialised and gendered patterns of behaviour reflected in other studies (Bradbury et al., 2014; Norman et al., 2014). The different stories within these narratives illustrate that the coaches were contending with different racialised and/or gendered discourses and these discourses became salient at the same and different times (Collins and Bilge, 2016). The centring of ‘race’ and the interrelationship between ‘race’, ethnicity and gender was critical in order to reveal and understand these dominant power relations within sport coaching. Hence, performing ‘race’ and gender at one and the same time emphasises the complexities of intersectional learning in everyday life and for those researching it. Essed’s (1991) concept of “gendered racism” illustrates that the personal, lived experiences of Black coaches are structured by converging systems of ‘race’ and gender, and by racist and ethnicist notions of gender. Although Harris, Frank and Jay reflected on their ethnic and cultural identities, a discussion of gendered identity was rarely volunteered in the reflections on their experiences, despite being probed during the interviews. Harris and Jay did, however, recognise their gendered privileges through their telling of stories of prejudice and discrimination towards female colleagues. This hints at the requirement for strategies to manage the pressures of accommodating the hegemony of coaching environments in attempts to fit in and progress as ‘outsider’ Black men. The silences and denials around these systems of dominance and unearned privileges within coaching circles and NGB organisations keeps the thinking about equality incomplete and maintains the myth of a ‘level playing field’ within sport coaching (McIntosh, 1997). These institutional inequities can also be highly ambiguous and seemingly invisible to those most implicated, and as a result can often be denied or difficult to identify (Rankin-Wright et al., 2016).

Making visible the coaches’ perceptions and experiences in this research has been instrumental to understanding the connection between everyday experiences, routine practices and the structural forces within the equalities landscape of the these two NGBs. Experienced realities can be used as “a valid source of knowledge” for informing institutional custom and practice that lead to discriminatory outcomes (Collins, 1986: 30). It can also assist sport stakeholders to recognise and challenge racialised and gendered routines in everyday coach education and development that have become normalised (Essed, 1991). Therefore, understanding the coaching journey for Black men and women coaches, who are often on the margins of decisions regarding policy and practice, should be mandatory practice for NGBs. This may involve specific consultations with them, and improved ethnic monitoring and diversity in organisational leadership and governance, which might involve specific positive action interventions.

It can be concluded that NGBs need to improve their approaches to and implementation of equality agendas and coach education. For example, diversifying the coaching workforce with transparent recruitment and development systems should be of paramount concern for NGBs. Organisational workshops on creating inclusive cultures should be mandatory for all staff including coaches, coach educators and leaders. Bradbury et al. (2018) have previously advocated a package of positive action measures that included: educational programmes for key stakeholders in NGBs on institutional racism and its impacts, and the benefits of a culturally diverse coaching workforce; clear policy goals in relation to equity targets; and measures to increase recruitment opportunities for Black coaches. Such positive action measures are advocated by the commitment to social change endorsed by CRT and Black feminism in order to positively transform mainstream coaching agendas where ‘race’ and gender issues have been marginalised or ignored.

The key intended outcomes of these recommendations should not be merely to increase the number of Black coaches within NGBs, although this would indeed be a favourable outcome (Burdsey, 2007). Rather, NGBs need to acknowledge and challenge the dominant discriminatory discourses and practices within their organisations and sport coaching to ensure equality of opportunity for all coaches aspiring to enter and progress.