Lanterna Rally

Author: Ajhanai Newton-Keaton

Publisher:

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13:

Since 2013, select Division I athletic departments in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) have adopted Athletic Diversity and Inclusion Officer (ADIO) positions (Author, in press). Notably, an insurgence of these positions was implemented weeks and months following the racial unrest and protests related to the grotesque murder of George Floyd, Ahmad Aurbery, and Breonna Taylor. Many political commentators referred to this juncture of protests, as a "racial reckoning", as corporate businesses to rural White communities were chanting "Black lives matter" and aligning themselves with the socio-political movement that is #BLM or the Black Lives Matter Movement. Interestingly, NCAA athletic departments, conferences, and collegiate sport leaders felt compelled to participate in this "racial reckoning". Consequently, there was a wave of excitement for racial equity, as Black lives appeared to matter to the NCAA institutional field (NIF) (e.g. athletic departments, conferences, leaders, etc.), as anti-racist initiatives, inclusive racial hiring practices, and inaugural diversity equity, and inclusion committees were formed and celebrated. Also, as previously mentioned, ADIO positions were adopted following this fervor for racial equity. Although the increased adoption of ADIOs is exciting, I have concerns about the ADIO position being perceived as the savior or "the fix" for addressing sustained and embedded practices, structures, and norms of inequality and inequity in collegiate sport. Thus, my dissertation illuminates the complexity of ADIO leadership conceptually, methodologically, theoretically. In the first paper, I conceptually illuminate how the NIF adheres to the tenets of a racialized organization (Ray, 2019). This means the NIF hinders the agency of Black athletes and administrators, legitimates unequal resource distribution on the axis of race, credentials whiteness and white identities, and decouples formalized rules to benefit White interests. Given Black athletes and Black administrators have these lived experiences of marginalization in the NIF, I am concerned about Black women ADIOs' leadership, given the NIF is not only deeply racialized but deeply gendered. In the second paper, I interrogate the aforementioned question by moving beyond studying lived experiences and examining the meaning of Black women ADIO leadership and how their identities inform perceptions of organizational inclusivity. I found that Black women ADIOs cannot evade the politics of their identity, specifically race and gender, as their identities are omnipresent in how they experience, navigate, and lead diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in their respective sport organizations. Findings from this study revealed three themes capturing what it means to be a Black woman ADIO: a) The ADIO positions elicits the strong Black woman (SBW) stereotype, which leads to emotional fatigue, b) Black women ADIOs are athletic departments' conscience, this means they have the ability to interpret substantive (good) and symbolic (bad) DEI practices to uphold the integrity of an athletic departments' commitment to inclusivity, c) Black women ADIOs are proud of and leverage their intersectional identities (specifically race and gender) to withstand marginalization and pursue organizational change.