In Response to The Undefeated’s Article on the Erasure of First Generation Basketball Players: Racial and Social Class Cleansing of the NBA

In Response to The Undefeated’s Article on the Erasure of First Generation Basketball Players:

Racial and Social Class Cleansing of the NBA

The history of the NCAA has been a history of athletic reform. Since its inception in the early 1900’s the NCAA has worked diligently at constructing a wholesome image for college athletics; most of this has been through the efforts of instituting policies that have sought to address key areas over the history of college sports: player safety, academic integrity, integrity of the game to name a few.

The implementation of policies, especially, their academic policies have had an adverse effect on certain populations that have used sport as a means to an end - social mobility. The seventies represented a significant growth of Black male athletes in both the revenue generating sports of football and basketball. Prior to this, the majority of southern universities adhered to staunch segregationist beliefs and practices, while northern and a few western universities peppered their basketball and football teams with Black male athletes.

The mining of Black athletic talent by predominantly white universities’ athletic programs to build multimillion dollar budgets also created patterns of academic neglect that continue to embarrass several of the nation’s top institutions of higher learning.

The first wave of “racial and social class cleansing” to place when the NCAA implemented academic policies with the intention of improving graduation rates of a certain group of college athletes. This was the era of the propositions/proposals, which occurred during the mid to late 1980s throughout the 1990s – e.g., Prop 48, 42, 16, etc. This era was noted for the protests by Coaches John Thompson and John Chaney and other critiques who foresaw the racial and social class cleansing that would result in the implementation of these academic policies. During this period, Prop 48 was the only one successfully implemented and later modified when Prop 16 fail obtaining approval. Prop 48, as suspected by its critiques negatively impacted the enrollment of Black male football and basketball players. Thus, the cleansing began.

The second wave of racial and social class cleansing is occurring during this current era of the APR (Academic Progress Rate). Intentionally or unintentionally, NCAA academic policies have had this effect on Black male athletes, especially in the sports of football and basketball.

Now with the NCAA Goal study data presented by ESPN Undefeated inform that there is a decline of first generation (first gen’rs) players as the result of academic reform policies and image management strategies employed by the NCAA. Both Latino and Black male athletes, once again, are adversely impacted.

I have mixed emotions about this data. On the one hand, I feel it has been a racial and social class cleansing initiated by NCAA academic policies that have sought to improve their overall image and somehow achieve academic reform amidst it corporate mission; especially as it relates to their money makers - March Madness and the college football playoffs, which generates revenue is over $800 million and $600 million annually. Improving the educational experience, and more specifically, graduation rates is the PR piece that is packaged and sold to millions through sophisticated public service announcements. In the case of the college athlete, graduation rates should not be the ultimate standard to judge academic achievement, because studies, documentaries, etc., have shown that athletes can and have graduate with degrees that they either do not know how what to do with it or how to transfer it into gainful employment.

On the other hand, as a former first gen'r who competed with a host of first gen'rs, we were more susceptible to exploitation, because we perceived basketball to be our only way out; thus, when the coach said jump, we said, how high? The coach said run, and we said how fast and how far? Even competing at a private NAIA Division school, we believed the hype, that sport was our ticket to a better life, and didn’t challenge the imbalance in power.

The notion of having more middle-class athletes competing, is promising in terms of grass roots athletic reform initiate by athletes because this may be the group that tap into the ethos of activism that is prevailing across this nation. If activist efforts do not come from the athletes themselves, who are in revenue generating sport, it may come from their parents, who may be more politically and legally savvy. Parents like LaVar Ball who is challenging the NCAA’s hypocritical and antiquated amateurism policy. The parents of these elite level athletes, and Black parents specifically, with the resources should be proactive in seeking legal counsel before their child sign the rights to their likeness and image away, or sign any documentation that binds them to the mercies of the university.

If history is a predictor of our future, it informs us that this social class has often given birth to many of the leaders of social justice movements. Strategic to the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements were Black college students who attended many of this nation’s premiere educational institutions. Therefore, in the words of C.L.R. James author of The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L ‘Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution, “From the very momentum of their own development, colonial planters, French and British bourgeois, were generating internal stresses and intensifying external rivalries, moving blindly to explosions and conflicts which would shatter the basis of their dominance and create the possibility for emancipation.” The application of this statement to college athletics implies that inherent in the NCAA’s system of expansion and “race and class cleansing” are the potentialities of emancipation, justice or merely, just treatment. In their efforts to spark academic reform and polish their image, the NCAA could be nurturing a group of college athletes to challenge their policies that have mainly benefited the NCAA and its membered institutions, like football players from Northwestern or Mizzou football players who supported the cause of Jonathan Butler and the Concerned Student 1950.

Finally, the erasure of first gen’rs from the predominantly white university could mean an athletic remigration of talent back to HBCU’s. The desegregation of athletics at predominantly white universities, severely impacted the talent pool and level of competition played at HBCU’s. For over 40 years, athletic programs at predominantly white universities have reaped the benefits of Black athletic talents. They have garnered multimillion surpluses, built multimillion dollar athletic stadiums, areas, and ancillary facilities, like practice fields and academic student service facilities for athletes disproportionately off the backs of Black athletic talent. The racial and social cleansing by the NCAA, could mean athletic remigration where this talent is invested in Black institutions; institutions that are able to invest in these student cultural and racial identities.

Billy Hawkins, Ph.D.

Professor

University of Houston