Moving from Underprepared to Prepared: Educators' Facilitating Conversations about Race with Black Girl Student-Athletes

Abstract

With heightened national attention placed on race and gender identity, the ability and preparedness of students to engage in critical conversations on such topics and with diverse groups is of much concern to educators. High school student-athletes are frequently thrust into the spotlight on topics related to race and racial identity, due to their hypervisibility and role as representatives of their schools. This chapter uses current events involving Black girl, high school, student-athletes to demonstrate how racialized and gendered experiences may shape how they understand themselves as well as their school and non-school environments. Further, this chapter includes a study that highlights the narratives of two Black female college athletes who, when prompted to discuss racialized and gendered experiences, shared stories that highlighted their primary and secondary educational experiences. These narratives identify school diversity and fitting in, and the coach as influencer as salient themes from the study. This illuminates the influence of early racialized encounters and the salience of those occurrences in shaping the way Black girls think about their own racial and gender identity development. In closing, this chapter calls on educators to prepare themselves to facilitate conversations about race through the use of equity audits, effective programming for Black girls, and a call for education advocates for Black girls in preK-12 environments.

Citation

Ferguson, T. and Bonds, M.S. (2022), "Moving from Underprepared to Prepared: Educators' Facilitating Conversations about Race with Black Girl Student-Athletes", Mayes, R.D., Shavers, M.C. and Moore, J.L. (Ed.) African American Young Girls and Women in PreK12 Schools and Beyond (Advances in Race and Ethnicity in Education, Vol. 8), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 95-117. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2051-231720220000008005