Suchergebnisse

In this article, the author describes their mental health struggles tied to Black Masculinity as a (former) Black athlete. In particular, the author focuses on the stigma surrounding mental health in the Black community and the ways in which Blackness, Black masculinity, and mental health battles emulate the (Black) struggle that must be. The author attempts to highlight the complicated nature of mental health struggles, specifically the ways in which suicide is handled in the world of sport and the ways in which the narrative can have juxtaposed racial frameworks. The author moves into and through their own personal experiences with mental health as a Black man, both in present tense and including personal journal entries, to make sense of "the (Black) struggle that must not be ignored."

On August 26, 2020, the sporting world experienced a monumental return of athlete activism when National Basketball Association (NBA) players executed a boycott of the playoffs as a result of heightened frustration after video evidence of the unjust police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, surfaced on social media on August 23, 2020. NBA players (followed by WNBA players) decided to cease play and enter into discussions with league officials to garner a deal that intertwined the promotion of the Black Lives Matter movement with that of the (W)NBA playoffs; players demanded that the (W)NBA playoffs ground zero for Black Lives Matter promotion and social justice initiatives. As the "fifth wave" of athlete activists stormed the sporting world, their demand for dialogic practices is starkly different than the pioneers of the past, while also aiming to accomplish the general mission of the Heritage—racial equality through athlete activism. This article aims to analyze the new frontier of athlete activism through a Critical Race Theory lens by analyzing the ways in which the implementation of dialogic practices led to one of the most iconic waves of athlete activism in sport history.

In this article, the authors examine the period of time between Edwards' third and fourth waves of athlete activism, featuring a lapse in The Heritage of Black athlete activism efforts. By applying a Black Critical Theory lens and analyzing athletes like Michael Jordan in the apolitical era of Black athletes, this study provides contextual understandings in addressing the gap in Black athlete activism and advancement from the 1980s to the late 2000s. The BlackCrit lens allows for the exposure of the problematic nature of racial capitalism, and how it caused athletes to go against The Heritage of Black athlete activism.