Thesis (M.A. (Human Movement Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Thesis (M.A. (Human Movement Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Thesis (M.A. (Human Movement Science))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

Participation in sports has a strong influence on the development of African American youth and the Black community as a whole. The purpose of this paper is to explore the positive and negative effects that participating in sports has on the African American community using previous works and experiments on the topic. Results found that participation in athletics helps African American youth develop important social skills, creates an outlet to keep Black youth off the streets in impoverished neighborhoods, and establishes a vehicle to help Black youth get into college. However, the overemphasized importance of sports within the African American community through the media and Black families themselves has resulted in multiple negative effects including career immaturity, lower academic achievement and the exploitation of the Black intercollegiate athlete.

The dissertation examines the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), a Black Power attempt to build a black boycott of the 1968 US Olympic team that ultimately culminated in the infamous Black Power fists protest at the 1968 Olympics. The work challenges the historiography, which concludes that the OPHR was a failure because most black Olympic-caliber athletes participated in the 1968 games, by demonstrating that the foremost purpose of the OPHR was to raise public awareness of “institutionalized racism,” the accumulation of poverty and structural and cultural racism that continued to denigrate black life following landmark 1960s civil rights legislation. Additionally, the dissertation demonstrates that activist black athletes of the era were also protesting the lack of agency and discrimination traditionally forced upon blacks in integrated, yet white-controlled sports institutions. The dissertation argues that such movements for “dignity and humanity,” as progressive black activists of the 1960s termed it, were a significant component of the Black Power movement. The dissertation also examines the proliferation of the social belief that the accomplishments of blacks in white-controlled sports fostered black advancement and argues that the belief has origins in post-Reconstruction traditional black uplift ideology, which suggested that blacks who demonstrated “character” and “manliness” improved whites’ images of blacks, thus advancing the race. OPHR activists argued that the belief, axiomatic by 1968, was the foremost obstacle to attracting support for a black Olympic boycott. The manuscript concludes with a discussion of the competing meaning and representations of Smith and Carlos’s protest at the Olympics.

Sports play an important role in the culture of the United States as does language, so the choice to use non-Standard dialects in a nation that privileges the Standard and negatively judges dialectical differences, especially those spoken by mostly people of color, is not undertaken lightly. Because of this privileging of Standard American English, it is assumed that only professional African American athletes are allowed to keep their native dialect if it is African American English (AAE) and still be successful. However, this is complicated by the historical and present increased criticisms women face in both sport and language. To investigate this claim, a quantitative analysis of post-game interviews of five men and five women in the National Basketball Association and Women’s National Basketball Association, respectively, was conducted. The athletes were analyzed to see if they used dental stopping and be-leveling, two features of AAE. Four additional features of AAE were also investigated on an exploratory basis. Inter-gender variance was found among both genders. Across genders, women used the features of AAE studied an average of 30.6 percent less than men, demonstrating a clear gender difference in the usage of AAE. The results of this study illustrate disparities in women and men’s language use that could be a consequence of the inherent and historical sexism women must face in the realms of both sport and language.

The dissertation examines the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR), a Black Power attempt to build a black boycott of the 1968 US Olympic team that ultimately culminated in the infamous Black Power fists protest at the 1968 Olympics. The work challenges the historiography, which concludes that the OPHR was a failure because most black Olympic-caliber athletes participated in the 1968 games, by demonstrating that the foremost purpose of the OPHR was to raise public awareness of “institutionalized racism,” the accumulation of poverty and structural and cultural racism that continued to denigrate black life following landmark 1960s civil rights legislation. Additionally, the dissertation demonstrates that activist black athletes of the era were also protesting the lack of agency and discrimination traditionally forced upon blacks in integrated, yet white-controlled sports institutions. The dissertation argues that such movements for “dignity and humanity,” as progressive black activists of the 1960s termed it, were a significant component of the Black Power movement. The dissertation also examines the proliferation of the social belief that the accomplishments of blacks in white-controlled sports fostered black advancement and argues that the belief has origins in post-Reconstruction traditional black uplift ideology, which suggested that blacks who demonstrated “character” and “manliness” improved whites’ images of blacks, thus advancing the race. OPHR activists argued that the belief, axiomatic by 1968, was the foremost obstacle to attracting support for a black Olympic boycott. The manuscript concludes with a discussion of the competing meaning and representations of Smith and Carlos’s protest at the Olympics.

College football is big business, earning slightly more than $1 billion in profit in the last few years. As a result of its popularity, fans of the game devour massive amounts of information about college teams and their players. Less known are the non-academic challenges college football players face, in addition to the typical concerns shared with their non-athletic peers. Along with academic and cognitive challenges, the ability to effectively navigate non-academic areas - such as personal, social and cultural - is critical to the development and holistic growth of today’s college football players. These factors can affect a student's ability to thrive or persist toward graduation. In this report, I explore the specific challenges of African American college football players at predominantly White institutions. Within this scope, I will examine the growth of college football in addition to the reach and impact it has on African American families. Within these communities, research shows a pervasive focus on playing professional football. Some players believe that college football is a mere stepping stone on the road to a professional career. The reality is that very few college football players are chosen to play professionally – actually less than .2%. This report explores some of the psychosocial issues that can impact the on and off the field success of African American college football players at predominantly White institutions The goal of this work is to lay a foundation and make an argument for counseling and therapeutic support targeted to, but not exclusively for African American college football players. As systems that seek to understand growth and change for optimum mental and physical well-being, the field of counseling and sports psychology present intervention models that can be useful for today’s African American college football players. / text

During a period in American history when the racial landscape was rapidly changing, racial advances in collegiate athletics were taking place across the South in the 1950s and 1960s. At the University of Texas, that process proved harder to achieve than many expected as it would take nearly two decades to integrate athletics following the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that admitted blacks to the university in 1950. Caught in the middle of the decade-long struggle, as blacks finally began integrating various UT athletic teams, was a group of black basketball players whose story reflects the racial progress made not just in Austin, but also across the United States. / text

Exploitation of African-American male athletes is one of the results of integrating collegiate sports. Predominately White Institutions’ infatuation with the athletic prowess of black men has become a societal norm. African-American student-athletes make up a majority of these revenue-generating athletic teams. Universities have shown that they are willing to achieve fame even at the academic exploitation of their black student athletes. Since integration there have been multiple cases of academic malfeasance of athletes. Select universities want to utilize the utility of Black male bodies but are not interested in expanding their minds. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will be used as an example in this study. Since the 1960s, scholars have assessed this problem within collegiate sports. This thesis adds to previous research and can assist universities across the country that are committed to solving the dilemma of black athletic exploitation and reforming this oppressive model.