this is a paper i wrote for a class.

8/12/2019 this is a paper i wrote for a class.

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Ezra Schwartz

I Was Made for This: The Experience of the Black Student Athlete

In his book Good With Their Hands," Carlo Rotella suggests that it is not lower- and

working-class boxers who should be perceived as working people [who] are pushed into the ring

to serve as gladiators [to] amuse the middle and upper classes, but perhaps more accurately,

football and basketball players, sports which have an incalculably significant effect on the

futures, imaginations and bodies of people of modest means. (2002:47). Indeed, for many poor

black males, sport and specifically basketball and football seem to be the only ways to escape the

ghetto (Edwards 2000:9), while, according to Scarborough Research, the typical NCAA football

fan is white and fairly affluent (SportsBusiness Daily 2007). With race comes issues of inequality,

autonomy and exploitation, so it is not surprising that college athletics is a highly controversial

institution, with debates revolving around whether college athletes should be paid (currently,

paying student athletes is against NCAA regulations) and about the educational quality received

by college athletes (universities are accused of giving passing grades to student athletes who do

little to no school work, or preventing them from focusing on schoolwork by assigning them

overly demanding athletic schedules.). Together these controversies place the modern college

athlete in a role that is not quite paid worker and not quite student, but something, perhaps

nebulous, in between.

With this in mind, in this paper I present a phenomenology of the contemporary black

college athlete, with special attention to basketball and football players, keeping in mind the

historical sociological background that grounds the embodied experiences of the black college

athlete. I apply Foucault's theory of discipline to the embodied experiences of black athletes, and

Marx's theory of alienation to the separation of college athletes from the fruits of their labor. To

achieve this analysis, I contrast this Foucauldian discipline with the Bourdieuian self-discipline as


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embodied in aspiring boxers from the ghetto. I also briefly trace the history of the black American

athlete and college athletics to contextualize the modern experience of black college athletes. With

this machinery, I seek to understand how institutional discipline and alienated labor characterizes

the lived experiences of black collegiate athletes, and how black collegiate athletes constantly

embody a complex of social ideologies and experiences that constitute their identities qua black,

qua athlete and qua black-athlete.

The Boxer and the Baller

This is a paper about the experiences of black male college athletes, but I wish to begin

with a look at boxing as it is practiced in black ghettos. This will allow me to contrast the

phenomenological experiences of the black boxer, whose practice exists mostly outside of

dominant white social institutions, with those of the black college athlete who lives a life

disciplined by coaches, university officials and NCAA officials, who are ultimately profit-

motivated and generally unable to improve the life of the college athlete. French sociologist Loc

WacquantsBody and Soulis a Bourdieuian phenomenological analysis of boxing as he

experienced it training in a gym in a ghetto of Chicago. Like the black youth who dream of

basketball or football stardom and the financial security it provides, the inhabitants of this gym are

lower or working class, but unlike youths who see basketball and football as their only way out of

poverty, most of the aspiring boxers are employed at least part time (2004:46). Indeed, boxing

itself is seen by many boxers as a job or craft (2004:66), one that requires a disciplined body in the

same way an artisan or carpenter must have a disciplined body. Bourdieus phenomenological,

embodied approach is relevant here: There are heaps of things that we understand only with our

bodies, outside conscious awareness, without being able to put our understanding into

wordsSporting practices are practices in which understanding is bodily (1990:166).It is


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through this disciplined, embodied practice that boxers develop practical reason and invite us

to move beyond traditional distinctions between body and mind, instinct and idea, the individual

and the institution (Wacquant 2004:149). In other words, it is through this practice that boxers

phenomenologically embody boxerdom inside and outside of the ring.

Notably, many boxers compare their training regimen and sense of discipline to joining the

military (2004:56), a distinctly Foucauldian institution that he might have described as complete

and austere (1977:235), echoing Erving Goffmans notion of the total institution.But the

discipline that boxing provides, strict as it may be, is directed by the benevolent and genuinely

caring coach Dee-Dee, and acts as an alternative to the dangerous idleness of the ghetto, a result of

chronic unemployment (2004:23). And while training is directed by Dee-Dee, it is primarily self-

discipline that makes the boxer: his willingness to train regularly and regulate his bodily behavior

outside of the gym (2004:67). But Bourdieu understands this sense of discipline as well: What

is most specific about sport is the regulated manipulation of the body Sport, like all

disciplines in all total or totalitarian institutions is a way of obtaining from the body an

adhesion that the mind might refuse (1990:167).In other words, through sport bodies can be

regulated and controlled in a way that would be impossible at a conscious, mental level. The

disciplinary powers of sport are strong indeed, and can be applied in order to direct or subjugate

the athlete, but applied in the self-directed and voluntary institution of the boxing gym, as opposed

to the capitalist and exploitative world of college athletics, sport allows for a transformation of

body and mind and a sense of self-discipline and actualization otherwise missing from the ghetto.

A History of Black Athleticism

The embodied experience of the contemporary black athlete is one of our specific time.

Although there is now a strong social association between blackness and natural athletic ability


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(Edwards 2000:9), this was not always the case (Harris 1998:55). In order to contextualize the

black athletes contemporary experience, I will briefly trace the history of cultural perceptions of

African American athleticism, and how these perceptions have constituted the experiences of

African American athletes, both in athletics and in their daily lives. Othello Harris begins his

history of the black American athlete with Jack Johnson. Prior to Johnsons victorious boxing

career, popular opinion held that African Americans lacked the physical andmental ability to

compete in sports (1998:55). This was of course consistent with the ideology of blacks as inferior

to whites in every way. For Johnson, then, the identities of black man and successful athlete did

not corroborate one another, but rather seemed to be a contradiction. Perhaps in response to living

as a contradiction, Johnson was adamantly his own man, living the life he wished to without

regard for societys critiques (Wiggins 1971:35). The life Johnson chose to live in fact

corresponded to many stereotypes of black masculinity: fast cars, white women and good times

(1971:35). If stereotypes suggested that a black man was too reckless and not mentally

conditioned enough to be an athlete, Johnson proved that a black man could live his life as he

wanted to, ignoring the stereotypes projected on to him, and at the same time achieve athletic

success. In contrast to Johnsons black masculine flamboyance, Jesse Owens and Joe Louis of the

next generation were racial ambassadors (Harris 1998:56). Owens and Louis served as models

that black athletes and black people were capable of competing with and coexisting with whites,

that blacks were not inherently inferior and could, given hard work and self-discipline, achieve

levels of success comparable with whites. In fact, it was with the successes of Owens and Louis

that popular opinion began to shift towards a belief in the athletic superiority of blacks. (1998:55).

We see how black athleticism both reflects and shapes the dominant racial beliefs of the time, in

an ongoing dialectic. Owens and Louis lived astutely aware that they were not athletes but black


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athletes, and that their actions would be representative of their entire race. For this reason, even

while race dominated their lives, it was always circumscribed under what was acceptable under

white social ideologies.

The next major shift in the social role of black athletes came from the revolutionary black

athletes in the late 1960s, who incorporated ideologies of black power into their identities as

athletes in response to segregation and other racial injustices (Edwards 1969:175). Tommie Smith

and John Carloss actions at the 1968 Olympics represented black athletes who identified and

embraced their blackness, and sought to use their roles as athletes as a means of social change.

Note that blackness was only reified as something that could be embraced because of the

importance attributed to it by mainstream (white) society and the contrast to it that it formed.

Black power is only conceptually possible against ubiquitous, dominating white power. In any

case, the protests by these athletes proved relatively unsuccessful (Harris 1998:65), and as the

demographics of athletes shifted towards increasing (over)representation of blacks, revolutionary

fervor faded.

Tracing the role of the black athlete from anomaly to ambassador to revolutionary, we

come to the present day, in which the role of the black athlete, at least in the highly physical and

highly profitable sports of basketball and football, is one of ubiquity. With the modern black

athlete in the mainstream, there are no longer the same opportunities for radical individualism,

benevolent tokenism or revolutionary politics in black athleticism. The black athlete can no longer

define himself in opposition to mainstream ideologies of race, because by his very identity as

black-athlete he embodies these ideologies. There is no room for him to define black athlete

because black and athlete have become synonymous. The experience and identity of the black

athlete is thrust upon him by the varying institutions and social modes that permeate social


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consciousness. In this sense, the black collegiate athlete lacks the Bourdieuian self-discipline that

characterized the black boxer from the ghetto and allowed him to define himself in opposition to

the destructive norms of the street. Rather, the black collegiate athlete is disciplined by societys

totalizing institutions in a Foucauldian sense, under complete control and without a sense of self-

determination. As so he must struggle to achieve a self-identity.

The Changing Nature of College Athletics

The days when college athletes were the same elite, white, wealthy men who attended their

prestigious colleges are long gone. According to NCAA figures, 58.1% of Division I mens

basketball players were black in the 2012-2013 season, while just 13.9% of total U.S.

undergraduates were black in 2008. The over-representation of blacks in college athletics,

compared to black undergraduates and the total black population, reveals a clear connection

between blackness and college athletics, which can be traced through the changing nature of the

NCAA and the American university system itself. Here I will very briefly cover the history of the

NCAA with special attention paid to changing racial dynamics. The NCAA was initially

established 1906, then called the Intercollegiate Athletic Association, in an effort to reform college

football, which had been causing injuries and deaths, including eighteen deaths and one hundred

significant injuries in 1905 (Smith 2000:12). Thus the NCAAs roots are in the protection (and

regulation of) mostly wealthy white elite student athletes. It would be several decades before the

NCAA would play a significant role in disciplining and regulating poor black student athlete

recruits. Through the 1940s and 1950s, interest in college athletics increased as returning World

War II veterans began to attend college and radio and television broadcasts allowed for a greater

dissemination of the game. Accordingly, universities became increasingly competitive and

exploitative in their recruitment of athletes, still mostly white at the time (2000:15). Although the


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NCAA passed a Sanity Code in 1948 to prevent this exploitation, it was mostly ineffective and

the NCAA only became a significant and powerful institution in 1951 when it began taking more

authority and decisive measures, increasing its regulation regarding the treatment of student

athletes and arranging for control over the television broadcast rights of NCAA games.

Through the 1960s and 1970s, the NCAAs power continued to grow, as did the

significance of and revenue generated by college athletics, and by the 1980s the NCAA began to

struggle with university administrations for control over college athletics, with the NCAA

ultimately winning the battle (2000:19). Notably, black athletes are the ultimate and

predominant source of the labor that produces the revenue by which the NCAA operates, as well

as a significant portion of the money that universities need to operate (2000:20). As amateurs,

ostensibly normal students, and not professionals, the NCAA does not allow the athletes any

compensation for their labor. At the same time, the NCAA has adopted stricter educational

standards that prevent many potential black athletes from being recruited to colleges; Proposition

48 passed in 1984,which set minimum SAT/ACT scores and high-school GPAs for Division I

athletes, affectedblack students by an overwhelming majority (Edwards 2000:10). Proposition

42 passed in 1989 eliminated financial aid to students who failed to meet the requirements of

Proposition 48, again greatly disproportionately impacting poor black athletes (2000:11). The

NCAA thus profits and operates on the athletic labor of poor black athletes while at the same time

denying many individual poor black youths access to higher education in the very name of

educational standards. The NCAAs increased power over and disciplining of college athletes,

especially poor black college athletes, points to the difficult, contradictory position that these

athletes face: They are expected to meet educational standards in order to generate revenue for

their universities and the NCAA, none of which they will see themselves, while at the same time


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of conversation (Beamon 2012:202). In our society, being tall and African -American implies

athleticism (2012:203). Thus a person becomes a body, a body implies a skill, and, as is so often

the case in contemporary American society, a skill constitutes an identity, resulting in an

embodied identity that serves to reduce a human being to muscles and bones. Wacquant

emphasizes that the boxers body is a tool, one that he develops and hones through self-discipline

(2004:66). Thus the boxer is directly connected to and in control over his body and his skill. A

boxers body can come inany shape or size, although after intense training it is honed into a set of

particular mechanical shapes. In contrast, basketball and football require a variety of specific body

types, and so appropriate bodies are seen as gifts of a sort (a potential path to fame and fortune)

separate and above the person behind the body. Thus we see the discrepancy between the boxer,

whose cooperative mind and body always form a distinct subject (2004:96) and the basketball or

football player, whose body is reduced to an object not entirely in his own control.

As a result of this societal objectification, many black athletes and former black athletes

consider their own identities to be primarily athletic ones (Beamon 2012:201). Im a baller, its

not just what I do, it is who I am Im a baller man, a baller plain and simple thats it I was

made for this (2012:202). Aside from the essentialism of athletic identity in the quote above, it is

notable that the athlete believes he was made for athletics, that he is an object that was

constructed by circumstances outside of his control. Boxers speak of being born a boxer

(Wacquant 2004:99) but only in that not everyone is capable of the extreme self-discipline and

drive that boxing requires. A boxer is not made for boxing, but must make himself. But being

made for football or basketball, it is not surprising that many former college athletes have

difficulty moving on from their sports careers (Beamon 2012:204) despite the fact the under 2% of

college athletes go on to a professional career (Harrison and Lawrence 2003:374). I really didnt


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know how to be a regular dude, how to not be a basketball player, what that means even (Beamon

2012:204). A basketball career encompasses an entire identity, distinct from being a regular

dude, an identity that outlives its empirical validity as careers end. Wacquant speaks of lifers,

retired boxers who continue to visit the gym every day for conversation and community (2004:54).

Lifers can comfortably maintain their identities as boxers by maintaining their role in the close-

knit boxing community. The identity of basketball or football player, however, is directly related

to an objectified body and is socially conditioned onto its owner, which makes maintaining such

an identity after onesathletic participation ends nigh impossible. Attempts to distance oneself

from the sport, to give up on it for a new life, come with the loss of ones identity. I have showed

how the embodied identity of the boxer, maintained by self-discipline within a subject, differs

greatly from the embodied identity of the basketball or football player, whose identity is socially

constituted and disciplined around his body which is seen as an object. Later I will talk more about

disciplining of the athletic body, drawing on Foucauldian theory. But first I address specific issues

that student athletes face in their education.

Athletes and Education: Body-Mind Dualism

The ideal conception of the college athlete, the young person who excels both

academically and athletically, a perfect combination of body and mind, is (quite obviously) a myth

(Sperber 1990:K2). While a university is ostensibly a place of learning, and a student athlete

would be expected to have his studies constitute a major part of their identity and lifestyle, this is

rarely the case. Isaiah Thomas, the Indiana University basketball player turned NBA player,

summarizes the situation well: When you go to college, youre not a student-athlete, but an

athlete-student. Your main purpose is [to be] a ballplayer, to generate some money, put people

in the stands (1990:K2).The student athlete, especially the black student athlete who otherwise


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might not be a student at all, is astutely aware that he is an athlete before he is a student. Harry

Edwards emphasizes sport as a means of bringing black youth to educational institutions and out

of the ghetto (2000:12), but it is clear that the student athletes discipline is athletics, not studies.

As I previously noted, the Bourdieuian phenomenological boxerdom, embodied by the

boxers as described in WacquantsBody and Soul, is the result of rigorous training and self-

discipline, a combination of physical and mental prowess. By contrast, the young black collegiate

athlete embodies athleticism as it is forced upon him by society, in which he is valued primarily

for his athletic ability, and sees athletic stardom as one of few available escapes from poverty. In

this way, an athletic essentialism is thrust upon the black body, with the implication that the black

mind is irrelevant. Thus the black athlete is reduced to his body and the economic capital that his

body can generate. Despite the fact that college athletes are unpaid and generate great amounts of

revenue for their universities, their presence at educational institutions is often perceived as a

financial drain or inappropriate for an academic environment. Murray Sperber argues that college

athletic programs have no relation to the educational value of a university and that the academic

scholarships that student athletes receive constitute a form of payment and are inappropriate

(1992:K2). The Knight Commission, devoted to ensuring that athletic programs operate within the

education values of universities, issued a 1991 report issue arguing that college athletics threaten

to overwhelm the universities in whose name they were established and to undermine the integrity

of higher education (1991:vii). Arguments that place college athletics in opposition to college

academics further alienate the student athlete from the educational institution; enrolling and

financing the education of the athlete harms the university qua educational facility, so that the

student athlete is not a valuable member of a scholarly institution but in fact a potential enemy of

education, competing for its limited resources. As Edwards points out, athletic scholarships are


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one of very few ways that young black men have any chance at all of receiving higher education

and escaping the dangers and poverty of the ghetto (2000:9). Thus Sperbers opposition to sports

scholarships is in effect a resistance to black studentsopportunities to attend college. Sperber

recognizes the exploitation of the black student athlete, but seems to prefer to eliminate rather than

reform college athletics, and to give more scholarship money to black non-athlete students who

are otherwise ignored, as recruiters focus only on the black athlete and never the burgeoning black

scholar. (1992:K6).)

From nearly every angle, it seems, the educational experience of black student athletes is a

perilous one. They are recruited into colleges they are not academically prepared for (Donnor

2005:56), believed to be dumb jocks incapable of performing college-level work, explicitly told

not to devote too much effort to their studies (Benson 2009:229), expected to devote up to 60

hours a week to their athletics (Sperber 1992:K3) and seen as separate from or in opposition to

their college as an educational institution. As one college athlete put it, They were already

expecting me not to do well, so why would I want to do more? Students athletes are given little

control over the courses they take, and have little expected of them academically (2009:229).

Harry Edwards describes the myth of the black dumb jock that combines the classic stereotype

of the dumb jock, the ideology of innate black athletic superiority and the racist conception of

the dumb negro as a trifecta that powerfully influences a belief in mutual exclusivity of

physical and intellectual capability (Donnor 2005:46). The embodied athleticism that society sees

in black bodies goes hand in hand with the dismissal of black academic potential. The stereotype

of the black dumb jock suggests that the black athlete has no interest in education and cares only

for sports, and thereby places the blame for academic failures of black student athletes on the

players themselves. This fails to account for the fact that regardless of a players academic


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interests, it is in the economic interest of his coach and his university for him to spend his time

athletically, win games, and generate revenue (2005:48). The same institutions that project

athleticism onto black bodies deny opportunities to black minds. Edwards puts it succinctly:

dumb jocks are not born; they are being systematically created (1984:8).

Labor and Alienation of Black College Athletes

Institutionally separated from the university as an educational system, athlete students are

more clearly read as laborers for the university, generating revenue from ticket sales and television

rights to games. I will be approaching the labor of black student athletes from a Marxist

perspective, focusing especially on his theory of alienation as described in his manuscripts of

1844. As Marx writes, The worker puts his life into the object; but now his life no longer belongs

to him but to the object Whatever the product of his labor is, he is not. The alienation of the

worker in his product means not only that his labor becomes an object, an external existence, but

that it exists outside him, independently, as something alien to him (1959). In the case of the

student athlete, though, the product is his athletic accomplishments as they can be exchanged for

capital. As Bero Rigaeur straightforwardly puts it, the athletes achievement is transformed into a

commodity and is exchanged on the market for its equivalent value, expressed in money

(1981:68) like any other product or service. We can fairly straightforwardly apply this Marxist

analysis of alienation to the student athlete. Student athletes receive no revenue from their labor at

all; they do not have control over the way their labor is reproduced and disseminated on television

and in other media.Neither do they control the means of production, the institutions that

organize and capitalize on college athletics. Student athletes are thus limited by institutional

parameters that prioritize revenue generation above all else, and are alienated from their labor,

both as the products it generates (TV broadcasts, ticket revenue) and their labor potential


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(unrealized academic and non-athletic ability). Thus student athletes find themselves exploited by

various institutional forces. This is perhaps a nave orthodox or vulgar Marxist reading of the

situation, but it is at least partially enlightening. It will become more enlightening when we

analyze the embodied, phenomenological nature of the alienation of the black student athlete.

Marx writes that estranged labor turns man into a being alien to him, into a means of his

individual existence. It estranges from man his own body.Additionally, mans labor enables

him to exist, first as a worker; and second, as a physical subject (1959), in that this labor is

necessary for man to sustain himself. Of course the labor of the student athlete is not directly

necessary to his physical sustenance. If an athlete does not play due to an injury, he will still be

fed. But these notions of being alienated from ones body and existing only secondarily as a

subject are highly relevant to our analysis. Many athletesroom and board plans are linked to their

athletic scholarships and therefore to their athletic accomplishments. The student athlete is literally

being paid in room and board, so that he can continue to produce labor. He receives no wages. As

I earlier pointed out, the black student athlete is essentially viewed as his body, as an object. It is

clear that the emphasis placed on the physical labor of the black body in the form of athletic

success objectifies the black body and does not allow for emotional and intellectual capabilities of

the black subject. Thus the black subject (mind, intellect, etc.) is alienated from his objectified

body, which is the sole focus of white institutional forces and all that he is apparently valued for.

The reduction of the black student athlete to an athletic body (object) that can be treated

mechanically is essentially an alienating process, and thus the black student athlete will be

alienated in his athletic accomplishments. Indeed, almost three quarters of Division I mens

basketball and football players reported feeling exploited by the universities for which they

played, an expression of their alienation (Van Rheenen 2012:10).


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Perhaps the mind-body and subject-object dichotomies will feel overly Cartesian to some,

especially in contrast to Bourdieus notions of practical reason and Wacquants analysis of the

boxers mental and physical states.I am not claiming these dichotomies as essential in any way,

but only as the product of specific social institutions that do not recognize or care for young black

men except for their bodies and athletic capabilities. Michael Eric Dyson points out that the notion

of black physical prowess has its roots in the era of slavery (Donnor 2005:60). There is perhaps

a legacy to be traced then to the modern black student athletesalienated, embodied labor and

exploitation. It is of course hyperbole to suggest that black student athletes are slaves (although

Billy Hawkins, D. Stanley Eitzen and William C. Rhoden have all made such a comparison (Van

Rheenen 2012:12)) but they occupy phenomenologically similar positions. Black student athletes

are reduced to their bodies and their physical labor, alienated from this labor, and thereby

alienated from their bodies themselves.

Discipline

Foucaults theory of disciplining of the body is highly applicable to the institution of

college athletics. Foucault describes the docile body that the institutional powers wish to create: it

is a body that is manipulated, shaped, trained, which obeys, responds, becomes skillful and

increases its forces (1977:136). Discipline of this body is directed not only at the growth of its

skills, nor at the intensification of its subjection, but at the formation of a relation that in the

mechanism itself makes it more obedient as it becomes more useful, and conversely (1977:137).

The extreme Foucauldian disciplining of college athletes is excellently (and disturbingly)

exemplified in notes from University of Texas head football coach Charlie Strongs expectations

from his players. (Strong is himself black.) I believe the expectations are worth quoting almost in


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full, to show the all-encompassing nature they take, disciplining playersphysical, social and

academic lives.

Strong expectations:

1. Players will attend all of their classes and sit in the front two rows of all of their

classes. GAs, academic folks, position coaches will be checking constantly now.

2. No headphones in class. No texting in class. Sit up and take notes.

3. If a player misses a class, he runs until it hurts. If he misses two classes, his entire

position unit runs. If he misses three, the position coach runs. The position

coaches don't want to run.

4. No earrings in the football building. No drugs. No stealing. No guns. Treat

women with respect.

5. Players may not live off campus anymore, unless they're a senior who hits certain

academic standards. The University will buy out the leases for every player

currently living off campus and put them in the athletic dorm.

6.

The team will all live together, eat together, suffer together, and hang out

together. They will become a true team and learn to impose accountability on each

other. The cliques are over.

7. There's no time for a rebuild. "I don't have time for that." The expectation is that

Texas wins now.

8. Players will learn that they would rather practice than milk a minor injury.

9. The focus is on winning and graduating. Anything extraneous to that is a

distraction and will be stamped out or removed. (Tex 2014).


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This program is notable for a number of reasons: it focuses on education, but instrumentally and

through strict, condescending bodily discipline. Athletes are expected to perform to acceptable

educational standards, but only so they can achieve their real goal, which is victory on the field. It

is certainly hard to reconcile these regulations with the lifestyle of a typical student. Strong makes

it abundantly clear that his players are athletes who happen to be students, with little independence

and one goal. Thus, all of the labor that these athletes perform, physical and intellectual, is for this

one purpose, and the dominant institutions employ extreme measures of discipline to achieve this

purpose. Boxers as described by Wacquant are also expected to live constantly and thoroughly

disciplined lives that extend into their social, physical and sexual lives (2004:67). But theirs is a

self-motivated self-discipline. The motivation for their discipline is not fear of being watched or

caught, as in Foucaults notion of Benthams Panopticon (1977:200). The boxer is always a

subject, working for himself. Wacquant does describe a Panopticon-like situation in the boxing

gym, in which Dee-Dee, sitting in his office, takes in the entire exercise area in a single glance

[and] it is difficult to say exactly who he is observing (2004:103). But this is a tool for

motivation, rather than discipline. Dee-Dee has no real control over his boxers, nor does he desire

it. In clear contrast, the college athlete is disciplined as Foucault describes, by powerful

institutions, and loses any sense of agency or subjectivity. Some of the specific regulations are

distinctly Foucauldian: Discipline sometimes requires enclosure, the specification of a place

heterogeneous to all others and closed in upon itself. It is the protected place of disciplinary

monotony (1977:141). Certainly regulations 4 and 5 attempt to achieve this localized disciplinary

monotony.

Other Foucauldian notions of discipline apply generally to athletic programs. [Discipline]

individualizes bodies by a location that does not give them a fixed position, but distributes them


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and circulates them in a network of relations (1977:146). Athletes, especially football players, are

of course defined by the position they play, and are relatively interchangeable without specific,

unique, subjective value. Disciplinary powers can control all activity through three methods:

establish[ing] rhythms, impos[ing] particular occupations, regulat[ing] the cycles of repetition

(1977:149), all of which recall the strict training regiments of college athletic programs. All of

these disciplinary tactics serve to modify the body of the disciplined, which becomes body of

exercise, rather than of speculative physics; a body manipulated by authority, rather than imbued

with animal spirits; a body of useful training and not of rational mechanics (1977:155). In

contrast to the Bourdieuian practical reason of the boxer, to speak hyperbolically the college

athlete becomes almost an automaton, with no need for subjectivity or thought.

Foucault writes that power, after investing itself in the body, finds itself exposed to a

counter-attack in the same body (1980:56). The dominant collegiate athletic institutions invest a

great deal in the body of black athlete, recruiting, financing, training and molding black bodies in

order to produce revenue. But just as there emerged claims of health against the economic

system, of pleasure against the moral norms of sexuality, morality, decency (1980:56) so too

might emerge claims of agency and subjectivity from the exploited black athletic bodies against

the powerful institutions that control them. Throughout this essay, we have seen the black athletes

identity reduced to his bodily presence and athletic capabilities, ignored or subjugated by the

educational system in response to this conception of the athletic essentialism of the black body,

and exploited and alienated from his labor and his body itself. But if Foucault is correct, the

powers that be are now exposed to a counter-attack. One can only hope, for the sake of black

athletes, that the time for this counter-attack is nigh.

Conclusion, Unionization and Hope for the Future


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In this paper, I took a phenomenological approach focusing on the first-person, subjective,

embodied experiences of black student athletes qua black students, qua black athletes and qua

black student athletes, hoping to add some anthropological theory to the wide variety of literature

surrounding race and college athletics. My phenomenological analysis has proceeded by tracing

the history of black athleticism and the changing role of the NCAA to provide historical and social

context, and then by contrasting the experiences of the black boxer with those of the black student

athlete, with frequent reference to the social and personal ideologies embodied by the black

student athlete in everything they do, and special attention paid to the issues of education, labor

and discipline. In applying Bourdieus theory of embodied practice and self-discipline as exhibited

by the boxers of WacquantsBody and Soul, and Foucaults theory ofdiscipline and total

institutions and Marxs theory ofalienation experienced by many black student athletes, I hope to

have added a new perspective to the existing literature which is often dryly sociological and

historical, with little to say from a theoretical perspective. I ended the last section of this paper

quoting Foucault and his suggestion that power, after investing itself in the body, finds itself

exposed to a counter-attack in the same body (1980:56).Perhaps we are beginning to see this

happen. In May of 2014, the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Northwestern Universitys

football players have the right to unionize and play a role in determining their working conditions

and their share of the revenue they generate (Schwartz and Eder 2014). Organizing players are

also asking for more substantial scholarships, efforts to improve graduation rates, and better health

care. There is certainly opposition: Tennessee Republican senator Lamar Alexander suggested that

unionization would lead to players striking, demanding shorter practices, bigger dorm rooms,

better food and no classes before 11 a.m (Greenhouse 2014). For Alexander, players making

decisions about their lives and receiving basic compensation for their intense efforts is absurd. The


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disciplined are supposed to do exactly as they are told and ask for nothing more. But slow as it

may come, perhaps we are beginning to see the start of the assertion of subjectivity and self-

determination of the long objectified and totally disciplined black college athlete.


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Works Cited

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Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990. Programme for a Sociology of Sport. InIn Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive

Sociology.Matthew Adamson, trans. Pp. 156-167. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Donnor, Jamel K. 2005. Towards an Interest-Convergence in the Education of African-American Football

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Foucault, Michel. 1977[1975].Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.Alan Sheridan, trans. New

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Foucault, Michel. 1980. Body/Power. InPower/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-

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Greenhouse, Steven. 2014. Union Effort at Northwestern May Not Mean Much for Public Colleges.

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Harrison, C. Keith and Suzanne Malia Lawrence. 2003. African American Student Athletes Perceptions of

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this is a paper i wrote for a class.

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