Episode 25: Race, Gender, and Youth Sport History with Samantha White

In this episode, Johanna and Nathan speak with Dr. Samantha White about her research on the discourses about African-American girls sport and physical education. Samantha White highlights the contradictions between the trivialization of youth sport and child athletes by the contemporary media and even academia one the one hand, with the history of the immense racialized attention and harmful discipline exerted on the bodies of African-American girl athletes in the 1920s-1930s on the other. Despite these practices, Black girl athletes found community through their physical activity and sporting practices. She then discusses her forthcoming article in the Journal of Sport History, “Ebony Jr.! Meritocracy and Sports in African-American Children’s Media” about how the magazine in the 1970s reinforced sport as a site of meritocracy and racial uplift rather explain to child readers the racist structures and barriers that Black children readers would face in their lives.

She moreover explains some groundbreaking feminist sports writing from her piece, “Negotiating Female Athletic Identity in Educational Spaces Through the Works of R.R. Knudson,” in Aethlon journal. We conclude the episode with a discussion with her about how academics can best support Black athletic laborers in this moment of societal upheaval and protests amidst white supremacist pressures to return to the field. Dr. White will begin the prestigious PRODiG postdoc at SUNY-Plattsburgh in fall 2020.

Samantha can be found on Twitter @dearsamwhite, and also through her Women Also Know History page here.

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**For a transcription of this episode please click here. Huge thanks to @Punkadmic for making this happen!**