Black Women Athletes Still Don’t Live in a Post-Title IX World

Since its codification into law as part of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, Title IX has evened the playing field for women at all levels of sports.  

Simply put, Title IX protects anyone in the United States who is involved in federally funded educational programs from sex-based discrimination. The law applies to educational institutions that receive federal dollars of any kind and is enforced through the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education. The institutions that come under its jurisdiction include the more than 17,000 local K-12 school systems, as well as the country’s thousands of charter schools, colleges and universities, and vocational rehabilitation programs. Cultural and educational institutions that receive federal assistance, including museums and libraries, are also included. 

The protections that Title IX offers include the ability to choose fields of academic study without being pigeonholed into stereotypically “male” or “female” subjects, awarding of scholarships based on fair and gender-equitable criteria, and equal access to sports and athletic programs.  

For many women, Title IX was a significant change. It opened new opportunities in multiple aspects of life and provided redress for systemic problems such as pregnancy discrimination and sexual harassment.  

Chances are, anyone who enjoys watching the Olympic Games or similar sporting events has benefited from Title IX as well. Without it, many of the highly accomplished women athletes whose accomplishments astonish sports fans today might not be where they are. 

A wide range of experts will tell you that there’s no doubt how much Title IX has helped White, suburban women and girls achieve their dreams of athletic participation and careers. The problem lies in the limitations that hold back the dreams of Black women athletes. Black women continue to step forward to publicly call out these limitations. 

Still so far to go 

In 2012, on the 40th anniversary of the passage of Title IX, the New York Times ran a retrospective on its effects with a headline that said Black and White women were still “far from equal” under its rollout. In 2020 a Ms. magazine summary called the law an “unfulfilled promise” where Black women in sports were concerned. 

In 2020 the Women’s Sports Foundation held a livestream program on the topic of Black women’s limited opportunities under Title IX. The organization’s founder, tennis legend Billie Jean King, appeared as a featured guest. Panelists included WNBA two-time MVP Candace Parker, who noted the extent to which sports can serve as a barrier-breaker, bringing people together and exposing them to new opportunities. 

The speakers identified several pressing issues, including the fact that more than 40 percent of schools in the US are either about 90 percent majority-White or 90 percent majority-students of color. What this amounts to is a type of de facto segregation in which resources and opportunities are still distributed unequally among schools based on the financial and social capital of the families who make up the school community.  

Not all states allocate their educational funding in recognition of this problem. Participants in the foundation’s event noted numerous instances in which school districts that have larger percentages of students of color continue to struggle for adequate levels of funding.  

This is what led the livestream’s speakers to argue that community-level activism is central to dismantling this lop-sided system and allowing us to root out persisting inequities. Potential solutions include better parent education, greater promotion of the value of sports to Black girls and women, and improved channels of mentoring and support as Black women athletes take their rightful place at a table from which they’ve been historically excluded.  

Unequal representation, unequal treatment 

Lack of representation continues to be another factor holding back Black women athletes. These issues parallel the problems in male sports organizations, notably men’s professional football. For instance, although about 80 percent of the players in the Women’s National Basketball Association are Black, there were only three Black women WNBA coaches at the beginning of 2022. (Vickie Johnson has coached the Dallas Wings since late 2020, and Noelle Quinn of the Seattle Storm and Tanisha Wright of the Atlanta Dream achieved their head coaching positions in 2021.) While there is a history of other distinguished Black women WNBA head coaches, the league still has a ways to go.  

Another societal problem—in the global sense—is an apparent unacknowledged bias against Black women athletes. US sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson called this out during the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, when Russian figure skater Kamila Valieva was permitted to continue competing even after she tested positive for banned substances that can be used to artificially enhance performance. Richardson’s experience at the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo was very different. Olympic officials barred Richardson from even entering competition after a test detected the presence of cannabis (not known to be a performance-enhancing substance) in her system. Richardson, who had been grieving after the death of her mother, took the decision especially hard. Like Valieva, she came out of the pre-Olympic trials as a heavy favorite to win a medal. The only difference Richardson could see was her skin color. She tweeted, “It’s all in the skin." 

 Check out the hashtag #TheEquityProject to learn more about what the Women’s Sports Foundation is doing to bring us all closer to fulfilling the promises of Title IX for women and girls of color.