Fifteenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

Research undertaken within the UK’s education system has shown that the whitewashed Physical Education (PE) curriculum’s primary mode of teaching through social interaction is systemically racialised, which, in turn, racially constrains access to the profession. Using a critically informed qualitative approach to map and explore a terrain of whiteness across the domain of PE, the study investigated whitely thinking’s role in racialising the PE professional pathway. Using data from semi-structured interviews with white PE students and their academic course leaders at English universities, the paper maps experiences of engaging with social justice projects regarding their racial knowledge and empathy. The fieldwork demonstrates the expression of whitely thinking, producing layers of racialisation within the context of the PE space. The term constrained inclusion is introduced to further understand the role of individuals in racialising social interactions. Moreover, although the participants say they do not see race, the analysis shows they continue to think in whitely ways. The participants cognitively adopted a “cloaking” of whitely thinking to hide their engagement with racism(s). Frequently, the teaching content of PE courses was shown to align with the course team’s preferences, reflecting both an issue of staff (lack of) diversity and those housed within the confines of being-white usually do not examine the costs of a racialised society. The paper proposes to disrupt the profession’s self-perpetuating dominant whiteness, using a strategy of active and actionable anti-racism curricula activities.