Black Collegiate Athletes and the Neoliberal State. Albert Y. Bimper Jr.
resolve of racism today is contextually defined by the present moment of the twenty-first century. For the past several decades, the prevailing responses to arguably irrefutable patterns of inequity and discrimination have commonly been to address the impacts of personal bias, bare the systemic and structural formations of racialized institutions and simultaneously rationalize injustice as an outcome of natural order absolving persons of any explicit contribution. If we are to wholly concede that racial inequity pervasive in sport and society is merely a manifestation of unconscious biases, natural structuring of institutions, and inadvertent happenstance, we risk neglecting a deepening understanding of how to address the racism and racial injustice of today as consequences of conscious practices and ideological rationalizations. We risk being absorbed by metaphoric depictions of how we are positioned as a remnant of old-fashioned racism. We risk being trapped in crude conceptions of racial inequity and racial disparity that inhibit more sophisticated understandings of the utility as well as the consequence of race and racism today. A commitment to describe the here-and-now through lens of old-fashioned racism limits certain capacities to stoutly interrogate how modern ideological projects produce conscious assemblies and adherences to policies, practices, and a penetrable discourse that fosters racial inequalities and inequities. The problem with ascribing to the lens of the plantation reincarnated is that it codifies the plight of black athletes in such a way it appears utterly tenuous to change without a progression to the devices of radical warfare, or at the least, an abrupt systemic overhaul of multiple institutions all of which intermingled. This figurative and rhetorical depiction, in my opinion, seems although consciously and fervently thought-provoking, is but an unviable apparatus of change for most to make hay of within a society thoroughly engulfed in a state of neoliberal thought and action. Not to say that it does not present a valid interpretation of structural racism that persist today, yet it concurrently offers a stifling take on one’s capacity to see their respective onus and a pathway to actively engage as an agent of change in both structure and ideology. Most significantly, if we are to solely frame racism simply as a relic or even restoration of eras past, we are then vulnerable to curbing a hope for a better world by narrowly focusing on how we’re situated while decreasingly mindful of one’s self-agency to authorize change. One’s convictions to remedy the present and achieve a world better than that which we live could very well be arrested by inabilities to see deeper and broader connections between how and why we make decisions. It is evermore imperative to see how the daily lives of people and the web of decisions and practices that animate our lives are purposefully manipulated by a hegemonic ideology.
The Proliferation of Neoliberalism
Just south of that which is the past half century, the ideological paradigm of neoliberalism has served as the most durable, hegemonic force to manage the structural crisis of capitalism and pervasiveness of social inequity across the majority of the globe (Giroux & Giroux, 2006; Harvey, 2005; Jones & Ward, 2002). The ideology of neoliberalism morphed from marginal prescriptions stemming from neoliberal think tanks into a manufactured common sense (Giroux & Giroux, 2006; Lipman, 2011). As a state strategy, the common sense of neoliberalism was subtly cemented at the core of imaginations to make sense of and define how the world should effectively function. In its broadest sense, the neoliberal agenda embodies an assembly of economic and social policies and practices, political alignments, and a repertoire of discourse employed at an individual level as well as laced throughout the multi-levels of institutions (Plehwe, Walpen, & Neunhoffer, 2006; Saad-Filho, 2011; Saad-Filho & Johnson, 2005). The neoliberal agenda works to produce and legitimize a fundamentalist economic rationality that defines and redefines market-driven values and identities for the purposes of efficiency and capital accrual. The replacement of democratic idealism with the doctrine of free-market fundamentalism is the most dynamic driving force of economic, politics, and sociocultural conditions beneath the reign of neoliberalism.
In an effort to stimulate and revitalize the U.S. economy suffering under the Great Depression, the U.S. government introduced a cadre of social welfare policies and programs such as Social Security Act of 1935, unemployment insurance and federal agricultural subsidies. Collectively, the policies and programs endorsed by the Roosevelt administration are known as the New Deal. While the policies and programs of the New Deal offered the prospects of tenable employment, senses of economic revitalization, and security for all, the impacts were most certainly not distributed equally across stratifications of class and race (Frey, 1979; Jackson, 1985; Sugrue, 2014; Wilson, 2012). The New Deal era eventually conjoined with sustained government interventions to support broader employment, economic growth, and post-war rebuilding efforts during and after WWII (Lipman, 2013). While this period was littered with political conflicts, the prolonging of government intervention policies and programs is notably characterized as the age of Keynesianism (Harvey, 2005). The social welfare state through the aged of Keynesianism insinuated an economic persona of stable corporate production and social gains acquired by a working middle class and union employees (Palley, 2005). Still, the illusions of gains of the Keynesian welfare state was not the reality for the majority of Americans, particularly people of color, the poor—both employed and unemployed, and women. As a result, the resistance movements of the 1960s and 1970s were further galvanized by the social contradictions, deepening fissures, and failures of the Keynesianism welfare state (Lipman, 2011).
Neoliberal reform principles, prescribed by a marginal minority of elites, outlined a new managerialism strategy and economic rationality to address the structural and social crisis of the Keynesian welfare state (Palley, 2005). The neoliberal reform movement, thus, posited a paradigm shift to underscore market-driven values and efficiency as necessary to aims of economic growth and removing discrimination. Educational policy scholar, Pauline Lipman, describes neoliberalism as “an ideological project to reconstruct values, social relations and social identities—to produce a new social imaginary (Lipman, 2013, p. 10).” While it is true that neoliberalism is an assembly of ideas, policies, and practices, several central beliefs are fundamental of the neoliberal project: (1) the marketplace is inherently impartial, efficient, and most effective; (2) the role of government is to enable unrestricted corporate and industry growth while distributive social welfare is receded; and (3) the individual acts rationally, with an entrepreneurial spirit, to purse their own interests (Harvey, 2005; Lipman, 2013; Turner, 2008). These beliefs outline a framework of unassailable values of neoliberal theory that are commonly conceptually coded as assets of freedom, individual rights, and choice. The neoliberal state believes the marketplace, above all things, is the truest guardian of these assets for all individuals and institutions.
Neoliberal Creeds
A hallmark belief of disciples of neoliberalism is that a market allowed to operate without interference or state intervention possesses the inherent efficiency to meaningfully advance progress—economic, cultural, and social. Simply put, government is largely perceived as the adversary to freedom. The benefits of progress achieved in a free market are believed to eventually spread to all. Not only do believers of neoliberalism pour their faith in the self-regulatory competencies of a free market, they too, believe all things should be left to the fate of its respective marketplace. Thus, neoliberal theory promotes marketization as a process to define and reconstruct matters and relations—social and cultural—as their own marketplace and a part of a grand, comprehensive “marketized” society. Through this process, all things, matters, and relations are made economic and rightfully committed to free-market values.
Neoliberalism, as a driving force of ideology, delivers all things to auction in their respective markets. Essentially, everything under the sun has a market value. All is “either for sale or is plundered for profit (Giroux & Giroux, 2006, p. 22)”. Under the neoliberal state, the market rationality of governance is confined to a managerial strategy of deregulation, privatization, and systems of efficiency to ultimately promote economic growth and the accrual of fiscal capital. The neoliberal agenda unapologetically works to divest in social welfare policies and programs as public goods. The hegemony of neoliberalism reimagines investments of time and effort as well as resources are best allocated toward the transformation of public goods to private goods for purposes of sustaining a competitive labor market. Through the lens of neoliberalism, investments in policies and programs targeting the public good risk severely altering market efficiencies and thus market yields.
Belief in the indispensability