What’s life like as a Black student-athlete at a predominantly white institution? Awkward.

Wisdom Quarshie is more than a football player.

You wouldn’t know it to look at him, but to ask him — that sentiment is partly the problem.

Quarshie, a graduate student at Temple, played five seasons on the Owls’ offensive line. At 6-foot-3, 305 pounds, the all-conference right guard is an imposing presence on the gridiron.

What he’d rather not be is considered an intimidating sight off the field.

It’s what Quarshie told Temple professor Jonathan Howe, who recently conducted a study he titled “Self-Presentation and Black Male College Athletes at Historically White Institutions,” which was published in the Sociology of Sport Journal.

The study examined how Black male college athletes at predominantly white institutions have to carry themselves much differently to avoid biases, microaggressions, and, in the case of Quarshie, intimidation.

“Going to a predominantly white institution, you can see people feel threatened by you just walking by you in the same area,” Quarshie said. “But it’s not just that, it’s just this feeling that you’re always making people uncomfortable in certain spaces, but it’s not their space, it’s spaces for all of us. So you modify who you are to make people feel comfortable or to seem not intimidating or threatening. It can be exhausting, but it’s just a reality of being a Black student-athlete.”

The impetus for Howe’s study originated about 1,660 miles from his current position as a member of Temple’s faculty at the School of Sport, Tourism, and Hospitality Management. Before arriving in Philadelphia, Howe spent time on the operations side of big-time college football, working at the University of Texas. He said that the racial disparities between Black and white athletes were evident, in everything from how athletes were spoken to on the field to how they were treated in the classroom.

“To see the racial disparities, firsthand or at least the differences with the treatment of the Black athletes, was surprising,” Howe said. “Whether they did something wrong on the field or once they took the jersey off and they were walking around, there were always constant reminders that what they did and how they acted were under a constant microscope.

“We focus a lot on football and basketball, but [for this study] I also wanted to see what it means for a Black athlete on a soccer team, on a lacrosse team, swimming — all that stuff. What does it mean for them as far as their Blackness and how they present themselves, in those various settings when your Blackness is front and center?”

Howe’s study concentrated on 16 student-athletes from Division I to the junior college level from all over the country, competing in various sports. Through interviews, social media gathering, and an audio diary from participants, one main facet kept coming to the forefront:

Black student-athletes have to code-switch. A lot.

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Code-switching is a term that portrays people, usually people of color, feeling the need to act a certain way to address situations where they are the minority to not be construed as threatening or fitting into stereotypes in any way.

A 2019 Harvard Business Review study that examined code-switching in the workplace referred to it as one of the “key dilemmas that Black employees face around race at work.”

The same can be said for student-athletes.

If you need a reason to understand why these athletes feel the need to alter their true selves, take a look at the overwhelming scrutiny the Colorado football team received, led by bombastic coach and NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders. Having a majority Black program led by a majority Black coaching contingent take a “love us or leave us” approach created a media storm of people rooting for the Buffaloes to fail. It also conveyed a cryptic sense of satisfaction when Colorado’s hype train did finally derail.

“Some of the athletes in the study I spoke with felt they could relate,” Howe said. “They could feel the pressure of needing to act a certain way to gain favor and acceptance. But even in those instances, those interactions aren’t always altruistic. To them, it was portraying a message that you don’t belong, or, you know, you’re not smart enough to be here and things of that nature.”

Howe’s monthlong study focused predominantly on Black male athletes and their experiences. But what about Black female student-athletes? Particularly women in a sport not readily associated with the Black athlete?

Baylor Henry didn’t even think she’d be good at rowing until she was introduced to it before her freshman year of high school. She was a swimmer who also ran track but was eager for something different.

Her decision to choose rowing saw her impress in high school and earn a scholarship to Drexel. But that decision, she affirmed, didn’t arrive without microaggressions (often unintended discriminatory behaviors) along the way — including her time with the Dragons rowing team. She said early on there were “experiences” she had with teammates that made it clear she wasn’t welcome.

“Freshman and sophomore year was where I struggled to fit in,” said Henry, a junior marketing major. “The culture was different, especially when it came to appearances. I love braids, but I didn’t feel comfortable wearing braids because I just felt like it was odd for me to wear them. And I felt like at the time, no one would like it and I didn’t see anyone else do it, and I wasn’t sure if that was OK to wear. It sounds silly to say now, but that was the reality.”

Henry, who made history last season as one of the rowers in the first all-Black women’s varsity 8+ race at the Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston, said that having an outlet in former Dragons coach Asiya Mahmud was a game-changer, not just for her confidence but as an affirmation that she belonged. Mahmud, one of the few coaches of color in women’s rowing, left in the offseason to become the coach at the University of Delaware, but Henry said she left an indelible mark on how she sees herself today.

“She was a big support for me,” Henry said. “I would pop into her office and express my concerns. … The team culture was different than it is now, it was very toxic and uninviting and very clear where people stood on me being one of few [people of color]. She guided me through that and helped me to have that confidence in myself.”

It also inspired Henry to create the Instagram page @BlackGirlsRow, which showcases her experiences and those of other Black women in college rowing.

“It’s important to use your voice and to stand your ground, not to tolerate disrespect, and just always be respectful of others,” Henry said. “Just because you’re Black, just because you’re white, it doesn’t matter. There’s a level of respect and love that needs to be shown anyway. Yeah, we play a sport, but for most of us, it doesn’t define who we are and how we should only be perceived.”

» READ MORE: Drexel rower Baylor Henry is on a mission to show the Black girl athlete that ‘they can do it too’

Henry was fortunate. A key point in Howe’s study was that student-athletes within non-revenue-generating programs didn’t always have representation and felt they couldn’t share personal stories with coaches and trainers as they didn’t want to look vulnerable — or worse, have that information used against them.

“I had athletes tell me about having anxiety to hand in travel letters to professors,” Howe said. “First day of class, they bring their travel letter to [faculty], wondering how will faculty members react. Are they going to be accommodating of their travel schedule, or do they have, you know, some slight comment that they make as well? Do they roll their eyes? You know, that first initial interaction with faculty members sets the relationship up for how [student-athletes] feel they have to react in that class.”

The pressure to perform for student-athletes is already palpable. An often overlooked part of the experience? The additional rigors for student-athletes of color to alter their true self for acceptance.

“Related to this study is that if we know that Black athletes are going to present themselves in various ways, many times they may be guarded because they don’t want to, you know, be vulnerable and have that vulnerability used against them,” Howe said. “There’s a power dynamic in sports, that coaches and administrators especially need to recognize. I think this study challenges those power dynamics and that element of control that coaches and sometimes even athletic departments try to have over athletes — particularly Black athletes.”