Examples of How Anti-Blackness Operates in Kinesiology’s Scientific Practice

Scientific practice is not a purely objective, value-free enterprise but one shaped by historical and sociocultural conditions. Existing scholarship shows kinesiology’s scientific practices have historically been shaped by anti-black assumptions about physiological capacity, yet little is known about how anti-blackness persists today. Employing Afro-pessimist and Black feminist theory, this article explores how 10 Black women doctoral scholars perceive the operation of anti-blackness kinesiology. Semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis revealed three themes: anti-black participant recruitment, resisting and reifying obesity discourse, and the consequences of monocultural complicity. Findings show anti-blackness manifests through misogynoir in the exclusion of Black women from exercise research, monocultural language around obesity, and graduate training that fails to address culture and racial injustice – revealing a need and desire for epistemological expansion. These findings call for kinesiology to move beyond simply acknowledging its exclusionary past and toward rebuilding its scientific tools and standards with equity at the center.