Black Lives Matter in Sport…?

In this invited professional insight paper the author draws parallels between recent debates on racism, Black Lives Matters, and related research in sport and cognate domains. Drawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT) the paper contends that a) sport is a contested site, b) sport is a microcosm of society c) ‘race’ and everyday racism are central to our understanding of sport. It overlays this critique with a recognition of the dynamic and multi-dimensional nature of racisms. While the deaths of Black lives are being mourned it is argued that our attention can also become distracted by narrow manifestations of racism (overt). Such approaches leave key stakeholder efforts focused on the individual to the detriment of challenging systemic policies, practices, and dispositions that entrench racism. The colour-coded racism of past decades is still with us but in addition to this, our critiques and activism require continued surveillance of cultural, institutional, and structural arrangements in the everyday that remain nebulous, complex, and difficult to challenge. This is a viewpoint paper. The author draws on previous original empirical work and current insights to draw parallels between sport, Black Lives Matter, and broader social contexts. Due to limitations in the extant literature in regard to cycling and ethnicity, examples are drawn primarily from the US and UK. This focus on sport and leisure past times demonstrates that the Black experience of ‘race’ and racism transcends social boundaries and cannot be perceived as restricted to narrow social domains. This paper draws on the author's original published research and current insights. The paper makes a contribution to the development of critical race theorising to the sociology of sport, and broader ethnic and racial studies

Negotiating the Coaching Landscape: Experiences of Black men and women coaches in the United Kingdom

The current article provides a critical examination of the racialised and gendered processes that reinforce disparities in sport coaching by exploring the experiences of Black men and women coaches in the United Kingdom. The findings are based on in-depth qualitative interviews with coaches from two national governing bodies of sport. Using a Critical Race Theory approach and Black feminist lens, the coaches’ narratives illuminate the complex, multifaceted and dynamic ways in which ‘race’, ethnicity and gender are experienced and negotiated by sport coaches. The coaches’ reflections are discussed under three themes: negotiating identities; privilege and blind spots; and systemic discrimination. The narratives from the coaches’ experiences emphasise the need for key stakeholders in sport to recognise the intersectional, structural and relational experiences that facilitate, as well as constrain, the progression of Black coaches in order to challenge racialised and gendered inequalities

Managing and monitoring equality and diversity in UK sport: An evaluation of the sporting equals Racial Equality Standard and its impact on organizational change

Despite greater attention to racial equality in sport in recent years, the progress of national sports organizations toward creating equality of outcomes has been limited in the United Kingdom. The collaboration of the national sports agencies, equity organizations and national sports organizations (including national governing bodies of sport) has focused on Equality Standards. The authors revisit an earlier impact study of the Racial Equality Standard in sport and supplement it with another round of interview material to assess changing strategies to manage diversity in British sport. In particular, it tracks the impact on organizational commitment to diversity through the period of the establishment of the Racial Equality Standard and its replacement by an Equality Standard that deals with other diversity issues alongside race and ethnicity. As a result, the authors question whether the new, generic Equality Standard is capable of addressing racial diversity and promoting equality of outcomes. © 2006 Sage Publications