Shaun R. Harper runs the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education. He and his colleagues are hired by colleges and universities across the country to evaluate the racial climate on campus and suggest reforms, if needed.
Their findings have, in every case, been clear: “If the institution is predominantly white, we find that there is not a welcoming environment for minority students. What the world is now seeing at Missouri is not that unusual to us.”
The difference at Missouri, where both the university system president and chancellor have resigned over student complaints that they failed to address racism on campus, is how quickly change was enacted — and why it was.
A threatened boycott of this weekend’s game by the football team brought the issue to forefront and made it national news, achieving what a prolonged hunger strike and repeated demonstrations couldn’t. Campus leaders will now be forced to deal with racism issues head on and immediately. Perhaps they will hire Harper.
(AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
Harper has also researched college athletics, and has a book due out next year on NCAA scandals. He figured as soon as the football team got involved at Missouri that change would occur, because his findings in another area — of how university presidents handle complaints about racist incidents — indicate that national media coverage is usually the only thing to spur significant action.
The swift success of Missouri’s football team has some wondering whether athletes at powerhouse schools will feel more empowered to enact change.
On this topic, Harper pauses.
“I want to be careful here,” he says, “about my stance: I hope that we see more of this. And here’s why: It’s not that I have some sinister desire for things to go badly. When researches from the center and I go to predominantly white campuses, we hear students of color and faculty of color report some of the most horrifying and deeply painful experiences with racism on their campuses, yet they feel absolutely powerless to do anything about it. They’re too few in number. The institution doesn’t care. People work hard to silence them and sweep their concerns under the rug.”
According to Harper, black men make up just 2.7 percent of the student body at Missouri.
But they make up more than 60 percent of the football team.
“When you’re 2/3rd of a team that earns millions for the institution and billions for the conference and NCAA, suddenly you have more power,” he said. “This should awaken the consciousness of football and men’s basketball athletes.”
I asked Harper to expound on whether he thought this would actually happen, and he said he wanted to refrain from editorializing. So here’s my view: It should happen, but even athletes who are suddenly woke to their own power will continue to feel powerless, as they are too constrained by the rules and mores of college sports. Missouri players took the ultimate stand because the turmoil on campus demanded it; real change will come incrementally through the sort of sustained work that football and basketball players are too busy to undertake.
In the spring of my freshman year at Penn State, racial unrest roiled on campus as Black Caucus leaders received death threats and were discouraged by the administration’s lack of reaction. They took to camping out in the student union building, which earned local coverage but not much else.
Penn State students in 2001. (AP Photo/Photo Pat Little)
Their attempt to elevate news of their struggle involved football but did little to spread the news beyond Happy Valley. Moments before the 2001 Blue-White game was supposed to begin they ran to midfield and locked arms in a circle, delaying kickoff.
I had taken to carrying a notebook by then, and began writing down the things I heard from the crowd around me. Most of them had not followed the news on campus and needed to be filled in on the background story.
Many of them responded with disparaging remarks for the people on the field. Some used the n-word.
Once the group made up largely of black men and women had been cleared from the field by police, a different group of mostly black men ran onto the field.
Everyone cheered.
I reached out to a couple of players who played for Penn State back then, to see what they remember about that time and find out whether they had considered taking part in the protest. None of them returned my call.
But I know, from reporting that I did a few months later, that some of the black players on the team felt unfairly pressured by Black Caucus leaders, and that they also felt used by people who saw them simply as a means to the end of gaining attention for the cause.
(Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports)
I wrote a column sticking up for the players which, like many things I wrote then, I now at least partially regret.
Their point — that they were already busier and under far more pressure than other students — remains valid. What I’ve come to realize in the intervening years spent covering college sports more closely is that football and men’s basketball players need to realize their own power, to fight for injustice if they see it but mostly to fight for themselves.
That, I think, is the only possible extended consequence of the Missouri football team taking a stand. At the schools making millions of dollars, that means fighting to get paid. It also means pushing for changes to the very structure of their college experience. Athletes are too often shunted into “easy” majors that leave them ill-prepared to enter the workforce. Yet many of them are still overwhelmed with the academic and athletic demands and fail to graduate (Harper’s research shows only 50 percent of black athletes in top-tier programs graduate within six years). Football players are too often asked to play — and then study — through tremendous pain. Basketball season stretches over two semesters. These athletes are usually robbed of the opportunity to embrace campus life, unable to join a club without a coach looking askance and questioning their commitment to the team.
Forget dedicating themselves to a movement.
Today’s college football and basketball players, like other athletes throughout history, do have the ability to enact societal change. They’re just too busy navigating a system that neither rewards them with the money they deserve as professionals nor allows them the time and freedom to become a part of their campus.
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