In this post, Dr. Higginbotham discusses personal experiences as a Black man and college student being stereotyped as being an athlete. This is not a unique experience. Not only have peers of both genders expressed similar having similar experiences, but research has found that Black male college students often are incorrectly assumed to be student-athletes.
These experiences and findings motivated Dr. Higginbotham to investigate these assumptions in his own research. He and a research team showed participants pictures of Black and White undergraduate men and women and asked them to say whether they believed the person in the picture was a student or a student-athlete. They found, across five groups of participants that Black male undergraduates were the only group that participants said were athletes more often than students.
These assumptions about athleticism are historically rooted in societal biases, and while some may see the stereotype of Black people being naturally athletic as a compliment this stereotype is often linked to negative beliefs about their intelligence. Black people have not always been stereotyped in this manner though, and this can be traced back to originate in the early and middle 1900s when Black men and women started to break down the color barrier in sports at the national level.
Many lessons can be learned from the research on stereotyping mentioned in this article. Stereotypes do not reflect reality and in fact, can shape it; thus it is crucial to consider where they come from and what they may signal. Applying this lesson to the stereotype-based assumption of Black people, particularly men, may be viewed as a prejudiced assumption that signals they are seen as not belonging in college for their academic ability.
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