I am broadly interested in disparities that hinder access to the American sporting landscape. More specifically, I want to explore how social factors such as racial identity, gender identity, sexuality, socioeconomic status, and neighborhoods are associated with barriers to sport participation for minoritized youth and intercollegiate athletes and the ways in which lack of access to sport furthers health disparities, educational disparities, and social exclusion. In short, the American sporting landscape is a stratified institution and I believe it is key for understanding how systems of inequality are reproduced in American sport.
Nadia Jackson-Fitch is from Norman, Oklahoma where she obtained her undergraduate degree in Political Science from the University of Oklahoma. Nadia is now a Sociology Ph.D. student at the University of Minnesota. She is broadly interested in the modern manifestations of racism and and colorism, the Black experience, and the role sport plays in upholding racialized and classed structures in the United States. Her research focuses primarily on the ways in which sport, as an institution, reproduces systems of inequality. Additionally, she works to highlight the racialized dynamics of the American sporting landscape while also examining the intersectional dynamics of gender, class, body image, education, and place. Lastly, she is deeply invested in Black athletes’ engagement with the athlete-activist role.