Athletics and Diversity

Diversity is a pressing issue that presents ongoing challenges and opportunities in the United States and internationally. Diversity and inclusion relate not only to gender, race, and ethnicity, but also to diversity of thought, personality, perspective, and experiences. In the context of higher education and athletics participation, the ideologies and realities of diversity and inclusion provide a “window to society” for understanding issues related to race, gender, culture, social class, and educational achievement. Collegiate student-athletes possess unique, multidimensional identities with respect to their academic, athletic, and social experiences. This entry examines the effects of athletic participation on student attitudes toward diversity. It then describes institutional efforts to strengthen leadership skills and build positive relationships among student-athletes from diverse backgrounds.

Numerous factors contribute to (or impede) cultural inclusiveness and meaningful diversity in college athletics. Academic research and scholarly literature in this area indicate the following:

• 1.
  A relationship exists between team cohesion and team performance, making the development of team unity critically important to coaches and student-athletes;
• 2.
  The key determinants in achieving team cohesion are (a) working cooperatively toward common goals and (b) having the coach (an authority figure) emphasize his or her support for intergroup interaction;
• 3.
  Increases in the ethnic diversity of student-athletes suggests that working cooperatively toward common goals increasingly requires effectively interacting with racially and culturally diverse peers; and
• 4.
  College athletes often spend more time with ethnically diverse teammates than do high school students due to the greater amount of time college athletes spend engaged in activities with their teammates (e.g., eating, traveling, practicing, studying, and living together), which leads to more substantive interactions and positive racial and cultural attitudes.

Numerous scholars have examined the relationship between the experiences of student-athletes and their conceptualizations of diversity. Researchers have found that participation in college athletics has a strong positive influence on openness to diversity after the student-athletes' third year in college because student-athletes were likely to have had extensive and intensive interactions (i.e., educationally powerful encounters whereby student-athletes learned to appreciate one another's strengths and limitations and to accommodate different perspectives for the sake of the team) with diverse teammates by that time. Another research study, focused on the ability of participation in athletics to build a sense of community among ethnically diverse teammates, found that the development of a strong sense of community results from the student-athletes sharing a common goal, engaging in intense, frequent interaction, and having a coach who promotes teamwork. Research [Page 186]studies have also found that student-athletes frequently report that racial prejudices they held prior to participation in college athletics were diminished as a result of their interactions with ethnically diverse teammates, which indicates that intercollegiate sport helps to create an atmosphere in which the constraints of race are subjectively reduced.

Scholars have examined the race and gender of leaders within the athletic departments at colleges and universities to assess the commitment of each school to diversity and inclusion. The Racial and Gender Report Card published by the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida assesses the level of diversity in college sport with respect to women and people of color in leadership positions, and the Black Coaches & Administrators Hiring Report Card, published by the Paul Robeson Research Center for Academic and Athletic Prowess (2003–2009), critically examines the decision-making process of academic institutions when hiring a new head football coach.

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