Doctoral Dissertations

Maria J. Veri

Date of Award

8-1998

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Education

Major Professor

Joy T. DeSensi

Committee Members

Handel Wright, Faye Harrison, William Morgan, Patricia Beitel

Abstract

Sport, one of America's most pervasive cultural forms, has been historically plagued by racism and the exclusion of racially-identified minorities. A number of studies have addressed race-related issues in sport, with a focus on black Americans and/or racial minorities as the victims of racist practices and ideologies. None of these studies, however, have considered positions of racial privilege in their analyses. Scholars in the new and burgeoning field of whiteness studies have attempted to broaden the parameters of race consciousness by interrogating whiteness as a socially constructed racial category and position of privilege. This study, which is situated within cultural studies, operates from the notion that race is a socio-historical construction and seeks to contribute to whiteness studies with a specific focus on the analysis of race in sport contexts. Specifically, this research project examines how white women negotiate racial constructs while working within sport environments. Drawing on the work of Frankenberg (1993), this qualitative study endeavors to determine, through discourse analysis, how a select group of white women consider themselves in relation to race, and, in conjunction, how these women view male and female black Americans in regard to race. This study thereby explores distinctions of white womanhood on the one hand, and white, female constructions of blackness on the other.

In order to achieve these ends, six white women were interviewed and observed who hold positions of leadership in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I athletic departments and demonstrate diversity in regard to age, geographical origin, job position, ethnicity, and religion. This study is informed by a modified ethnographic methodology of semi-structured, partial life history interviews and participant observations. Discourse theory was employed in the analysis of the six semilife histories. The research findings reveal that the participants view race primarily in terms of skin color and culture, but have difficulty viewing themselves as 'raced,' or considering their own racialization as white women. The hegemonic discourse evident in the six interviews reinforces race as a reified, essential category, conceals whiteness as a privileged racial position/identity, conflates race with culture, and infuses blackness with fear, victimization, and exoticization. The counter-discourses present among these interviews explains race as a labeling device which advantages whites and disadvantages racially-defined minorities in material, social, political, and cultural ways.

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