She's Got Game: An Exploration of the Athletic, Academic, and Social Experiences of Black Canadian Female U.S. Athletic Scholarship Recipients

Much has been said about the academic, social, and athletic experiences of Black males, but very little attention has been paid to the ways in which the axis of gender, intersecting with race and class creates very specific experiences. Therefore, using Social Reproduction, Critical Race, and Black Feminist theories, this study explores the specific athletic, educational, and social experiences of Black female basketball athletes from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) who have received U.S. athletic scholarships.

Drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews with Black Canadian female scholarship recipients, between the ages 25 and 35, this study analyzes how they navigate athletic, academic, and social life to obtain U.S. athletic scholarships. Firstly, I find that the participants were socialized into the U.S. athletic scholarship pathway through a number of factors including social, familial, peer, and media influences. In addition, scholarship aspirations were also informed by negative schooling experiences and motivations like the avoidance of school debt and heightened athletic possibilities. Secondly, I find that once the participants were immersed in basketball, they relied on informal networks/communities of support to develop and share knowledge about scholarship opportunities to co-create complex and sometimes challenging pathways to American universities. Thirdly, I find that throughout this navigation, the participants endured, navigated, and resisted racial and gender stereotyping, identity projections, and gender and race-based barriers that were distinct from their non-Black female and Black male counterparts. Lastly, I highlight how while all the athletes successfully obtained athletic scholarships to American universities and benefitted from their experiences athletically and socioeconomically, their pathways were often arduous and precarious, rife with numerous drawbacks, risks, and sacrifices. In addition, I found that creating fulfilling and enriching academic and athletic opportunities and experiences was often perceived as unavailable and inaccessible in the Canadian context, resulting in the need for emigration.

Therefore, I argue that it is not that Black youth lack the economic, social, and cultural capital to be successful athletically and academically, but that the rate of exchange for their capital shaped by historical scripts, systemically devalues the abundance of capitals they do possess and reproduces existing inequalities, failing to address the systemic nature of their exclusion.