‘All deliberate speed': black education and the collegiate sports economy

This paper employs a historical case study of the University of Michigan’s Fab Five to examine how ostensibly progressive reforms, such as Brown v. Board of Education, can mask enduring structures of racial exclusion. By centering the educational experiences of Black Division I collegiate basketball athletes, the discourse situates the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) within a longer history of racialized schooling and institutional co-optation. It argues that while Black athletic labor is publicly celebrated, it is simultaneously disciplined and devalued. The discourse unpacks how the NCAA operates through logics of anti-Blackness, commodifying Black athletes symbolically, materially, and ideologically, while denying them full citizenship within the academy. Ultimately, this work illustrates how sport functions as a site of racial domination under the guise of opportunity and inclusion.