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The legacy of racism and anti-Blackness that permeates society also permeates higher education, creating marginalizing experiences for many Black students. With few exceptions, critical discussions about race in kinesiology are lacking, or race talk is oppressive, negotiated as “safe talk,” and/or often silent and masked in race neutrality, racial coding, and color blindness. Consequently, a “quiet game” is in session in many kinesiology classrooms. However, racial silence has different meanings and effects on people of color. For Black students, race is often a salient part of their history, story, and lived experiences; consequently, it often impacts their learning inspiration and aspirations. This essay discusses the concept of “learning while Black” and illustrates ways in which kinesiology may “teach to transgress” racial oppression by intentionally and boldly embracing education as a practice of freedom, imparting race into a pedagogy of empowerment.

Sport managers and marketers strategically include individuals with specific characteristics as spokespersons in their persuasive communications (i.e., advertisements, promotional messages, development campaigns, and announcements) to appeal to and influence the attitudes and behaviors of their intended audience. This study was designed to examine African-American students’ responses to race (when moderated by the students' ethnic identification) as a salient characteristic of the person featured in a persuasive sport communication. It sought to examine the role of race in the communication process as: (a) a heuristic/peripheral cue for inducing message responses and evaluation, and (b) a variable that influenced the students' tendency to engage in biased or objective strategies to process the information presented. The results offer an illustration of how sociological variables such as race and ethnicity influence the communication process in general and the means of communicating sport related issues to African-American students in particular.

Black consumers' general sport attendance is relatively poor; however, their attendance at historically Black college/university (HBCU) sport events is noteworthy. The purpose of this study was to examine how factors such as general perception of sport, psychosocial involvement with HBCU sports, and intensity of ethnic identification influenced Black consumers' (n = 278) attendance at HBCU sports and their general/non-HBCU sport consumption patterns. Descriptive statistics revealed that the respondents attended HBCU sports more frequently than they did any other type of sport events and were also avid consumers of televised sports. Multivariate multiple regression analyses revealed that intensity of ethnic identification and psychosocial involvement with HBCU sports significantly influenced HBCU sports attendance frequency. Moreover, psychosocial involvement with HBCU sports exerted a profound and positive influence on general sport consumption. This study offered an examination of the social psychology that may under gird Blacks' consumption of sport.

This essay provides a general introduction to and foundation for the scholarly explorations of how race and ethnicity impact Sport Management. Briefly discussed are the changing portraits of racial and ethnic demography, the conceptual treatments of race and ethnicity, and the methodological challenges and research imperatives. This essay also offers a brief summary of the trends in research on race and ethnicity in Sport Management, and it provides an integrated overview of the scholarship featured in this Special Issue which (in varied ways) explicate the salience of race and ethnicity to Sport Management practices, and to the experiences of sport employees, athletes, and sport marketing and media consumers.

Women’s sports is at an all-time high, as evidenced by the emergence of a number of professional women’s sport leagues (such as basketball, baseball, and fast-pitch softball). Notwithstanding the growth and popularity of women’s sports, these leagues will have to compete with other forms of leisure for consumers’ discretionary time and resources. Since financial stability is vital to the longevity of the developing women’s leagues, the competition for consumers will require a greater need for the marketers of women’s professional sport organizations to understand the variety of factors that influence sport consumers’ behavior and shape the composition of their respective markets. Presented in this article are the results of a study in which the consumers of one of the professional women’s basketball teams that competed in the American Basketball League (ABL)were investigated. The teams’ spectators are profiled as sport consumers, factors that influenced their attendance, are identified and implications for effective marketing strategies are noted.

Women’s increased interest in and consumption of professional men’s sports have made women a viable target market for men’s sports (Shank, 1999). However, since males comprise the majority of the consumer base for men’s sports, the challenge for men’s sport organizations is to identify the factors that may influence sport consumption among males and females differently. The objective of this paper was to examine image congruency among male and female spectators (n=120) in attendance at a minor league men’s ice hockey event. Image congruency refers to the match or consistency between consumers’ self-images and their images of products they are consuming (Sirgy, 1986). The results revealed differences in the selfimages, product images, and (consequently) level of image congruency experienced between males and females with the overall event. The results also revealed a need for differentiated sport marketing strategies targeted to male and female consumers.

Sport is a social institution that is rife with raced and gendered discursive fields, creating structural and power relations that may influence the leadership experiences of Black women there-in. Tins study utilized the tenets of Black Feminist Thought as a foundation for examining the leadership experiences of a case selection of Black women (n=21) in community recreational sports. The results revealed that a personal interest in sport and an ethic of caring motivated the women’s involvement in the leadership of community recreation sports. Although the women reported barriers of gender inequity, racial discrimination, poor communication, lack of resources, and organizational constraints, they appeared to rely on their internal fortitude as a reservoir for resistance to combat the institutional challenges faced and have meaningful sport leadership experiences. The study illuminated the importance of individual consciousness to these women’s sense of self and their ability to resist the domination of the power and ideologies situated in their sport leadership settings.

People have an innate and fundamental need to belong (i.e., to establish and maintain high-quality and enriching relationships with others). Belonging is important to our personal and professional lives, and culture is often the conduit filtering our sense of belonging. Some organizations are culturally inclusive wherein a culturally diverse array of individuals feel connected and have a sense of belonging. In contrast, others are marred by cultural exclusion, leaving some individuals culturally disconnected, culturally disengaged, and lacking a sense of belonging. This article posits cultural belonging as the “impoverishing errand” that kinesiology must accomplish. It discusses personal and positional culture, organizational culture, and the leadership needed in kinesiology to create institutional environments that support and sustain inclusive cultures of belonging for faculty, staff, and students. In so doing, it illustrates the need for the philosophical/ideological and managerial focus on people-centered leadership that normalizes cultural inclusion.

This two-stage study investigated a proposed model of impulse buying of sport team licensed merchandise among college students (N = 464) enrolled in a large Midwestern university. The proposed model included measures of impulsivity, psychological attachment to sport, and financial situation. The proposed model was tested with structural equation modeling. The results indicated that the proposed model (RMSEA = .058; NFI = .916; CFI = .947, χ²/df = 2.57), along with the partial models of impulsivity (RMESA = .062, NFI = .96, CFI = .98, χ²/df = 2.78) and psychological attachment (RMSEA = .057; NFI = .98; CFI = .988, χ²/df = 2.50), fit the data with a degree of reasonable fit. This study illustrates how personal, psychosocial, and situational factors might interact to influence impulse buying of sport team licensed merchandise.