Our Work
Fractured Futures:
Colliding Traumas and Opportunities in High School Football
Concussions have dominated public and media discourse and research resources, but football and its violent collisions can result in serious injuries of many kinds. Labrum tears, ACL ruptures, bone breaks, and deep bruises are still common threats to this sport’s participants. Perhaps due to an increased awareness about these potential injuries, The Atlantic, New York Times, and The Washington Post all note demographic shifts in who participates in youth tackle football. White boys in mostly upper-income communities are leaving football for other sports. Meanwhile, Black boys in lower-income communities participate at increasing rates because their options to participate in other sports are structurally limited, and a college scholarship and the possibility of playing professionally are still seen as advantages to youth football participation. Therefore, we focus on the ordinary, everyday experience of Black high school football players who continue to participate in football, despite the well-known violence and health risks. For Black players, the sport presents a double bind between promises for social mobility and potentials for bodily harm. Because these athletes are presented with several competing issues, it is imperative for social scientists to question how football injuries, including concussions, are forms of embodied inequality that are discussed, lived, and experienced by Black youth, and attend to the differences in who is affected by them.
Funded by: Duke Social Science Research Institute
Integrating Tobacco Road Football, 1965-1975
This is an archival and oral history project about the Black football players who integrated teams at Wake Forest University, North Carolina State University, UNC-Chapel Hill, and Duke University in the late-1960s. These are four historically white universities along Tobacco Road, a theoretical area in the Piedmont of North Carolina known for its powerhouse basketball institutions. We investigate why the first Black players on these teams chose to attend these universities over local HBCUs and the conditions that made these decisions possible, thereby shedding light on the personal, social, and economic dynamics at play. This project sits at the intersection of Black geographies and sport studies to consider how race and place impact student experiences at institutions of higher education. Through Black pioneers’ own words, we consider how integration in college football was viewed and experienced by players themselves to demonstrate the interconnectedness of the recent past and the present.
Funded by: Duke Office for Research & Innovation EXPLORE Seed Grant
First-Year Black Athletes at a Division I Institution: An Oral History
In college sport, Black women and men are often valued for their labor on the playing field but discredited for their intellectualism in the classroom. Further, the same Black body that exhibits extraordinary athletic performances is criminalized and stereotyped in life away from sport. Because of this and other examples like it, a Black player “ever feels his two-ness,” as Du Bois would say, as Blackness is either punished or privileged in different environments. We explore this paradoxical experience, primarily because very little is known about Black athletes’ daily lived reality, even though they often make up a substantial and highly visible portion of a college’s student population. Through qualitative methods, we explore the lived experiences of Black college athletes at a Division I institution, focusing on how they navigated their first year on campus. We describe the material and social contexts within which contemporary Black athletes are living and playing to analyze how they negotiated these juxtaposing systems so early in their college tenure. We document how these Black athletes narrate their own lives, express their opinions, and observe their campus, team, and larger social environments. This research establishes a vital archive documenting the often-overlooked experiences of Black athletes, providing a foundation for understanding and addressing their unique challenges.
Funded by: Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics