Racial Bias in Women's Collegiate Volleyball

Abstract

Whites and blacks in team sports tend to be distributed by positions according to stereotyped skills and abilities. This phenomenon of racial stacking has been documented for men's team sports at the professional and collegiate levels. Recently, stacking has also been found in women's collegiate basketball. The present study examines the case of women's collegiate volleyball, a sport where the positions are more likely to be stereotyped by race than basketball because the position of setter is so crucial to team effectiveness. Media guides were requested from all of the Division I schools with women's volleyball (n = 261), and 53 percent of the schools provided useable data. Of the 1,399 athletes, 89 (6 percent) were black. These blacks, as predicted, were underrepresented at the setter position (p<.01). They were also overrepresented at the hitter position (p<.02). No significant differences were found for blockers and defensive specialists. This pattern is the same found for women's basketball and consistently for the men's team sports, i.e., blacks are disproportionately found in positions requiring physical characteristics and relatively absent from positions of leadership, intelligence, and outcome control.