Why She PARs: Combating the Deintellectualization of Sport through Participatory Research

Abstract: This empirical research paper is a study of agency and liberatory practices for Black women’s basketball players within a predominantly White institution (PWI) of higher education. Central to this study is the exploration of the dynamics surrounding Black labor in sport, particularly how the regulation and confinement of the body, mind, and spirit of Black women’s basketball players allows for their continued exploitation by the institution of sport in U.S. higher education. This paper uses an Afrocentric feminist epistemology to design and execute a participatory study that flips the proverbial script on student-athlete research by empowering Black student-athletes to critically evaluate their own lived experiences while simultaneously exploring ways of disrupting the tools of regulation currently confining their agency and autonomy. The site of data collection was also leveraged as a space for participants to identify opportunities to secure and exercise agency and bodily autonomy in real time—a process fellow PAR scholars refer to as the design serving as the intervention. In doing so, this paper highlights both how the regulation and control of Black women’s basketball is inextricably linked to power, race and gender, and identifies where they can collectively build towards increased freedoms.