KINESIOLOGY SCHOLAR STUDIES HOW THE SAINTS AFFECTED NEW ORLEANIANS, PARTICULARLY BLACK WOMEN, POST-KATRINA
By: Nicole Geary
Marita Gilbert’s grandmother lived through Hurricane Katrina.
She stayed with family in Texas for a time and returned to see her New Orleans home, passed down through generations, covered in mold floor to ceiling.
Everything was destroyed.
“It’s one thing to know it’s going to be difficult,” said Gilbert, a Ph.D. student in Kinesiology at Michigan State University who saw the storm’s aftermath herself not long afterward. “It’s different to smell it and see it and have to put the mask on.”
Fast forward five years to a football arena where few people could have predicted the city’s pro team would have what it takes to win its first Super Bowl. But they did. And it was a moment when seemingly every New Orleanian ran celebrating into the streets, whether their houses were new or still covered by tarps.
After growing up there, Gilbert knows firsthand how residents have struggled to regain hope after the hurricane. Now as a sport sociologist, she is exploring how the Saints’ historic season played a role in post-Katrina recovery.
During intimate interviews with her research subjects, who were all black women, she used photo elicitation techniques (see selected photos, right) to find out how the football team’s journey affected their own. She was surprised to uncover how game-watch parties or parades could be connected to honoring the legacy of loved ones and the city itself.
And yet, she found, “The Saints aren’t really the story. They are a chapter.” A chapter in the story of transformation after the storm, and in the historical accounts of African American women striving to “recover home.”
Many researchers study the psychological and sociological effects of sport because they know the old “It’s just a game” response is far from the truth. Within the context of New Orleans, Gilbert says, celebrating seemingly impossible athletic victories became an extension of a celebratory culture that has helped define people for centuries.
“The game is important because it underscores their understanding of home,” Gilbert said. “And the game allows people the opportunity to have catharsis. It’s not just a release, it’s a culturally specific practice.”
Who ‘Dat?
From the chants of Who ’Dat? in the arena stands to New Orleans’ classic “second line” street parades, you wouldn’t find the same thing in, say, Oakland or Detroit.
And in contrast to the images of flooded homes and teary eyes, those football-related festivities became even more important. Gilbert argues that the rest of the world did not give New Orleanians a chance to be credible contributors to their own narratives about the Katrina experience.
The Super Bowl-winning season helped residents resist the sense of victimhood. It gave the city something else, something positive to be known for, at least temporarily.
“It’s hard to convince academics, who most likely were not athletes, about the power of sports,” said Feltz, former chairperson of the MSU Department of Kinesiology and a preeminent expert on sport psychology. “But if you look worldwide, how do countries get on the world stage?”
Consider, for example, the impact of the first major sporting event after the end of apartheid, when South Africa won the Rugby World Cup. And Michigan State University itself is often known to people in other parts of the world not for its research, but its Spartan sports teams.
Indeed, the media has portrayed the Saints’ success as a symbol of recovery in New Orleans. However, Gilbert says, those stories did not always include the voices of people who actually live in New Orleans — particularly black women. In fact, when she searched through thousands of digital images, she could find only two depicting black women celebrating the Saints’ success. And yet, when she talked to 10 women of vastly different ages and occupations — all who lived in the city before and after the storm — they revealed how the football team’s story symbolized their own efforts to return to and resume a sense of normalcy at home.
One’s daughter was a cheerleader for the team. Another said she made a point to go to the games because it was important to her terminally ill mother, who stayed outside in the cold for hours, despite being sick, to be sure she watched the parade.
“I would have never thought black women would say the Saints are important to home in such significant ways,” Gilbert said.
But these unknown narratives of African American women, in many contexts, have unfortunately woven a common thread throughout history.
This black feminist perspective, along with the use of photo elicitation as a qualitative method, created a bit of uncharted territory in the field of kinesiology.
It required Gilbert to collaborate and consult with other scholars from across campus, such as Steven Gold in the Department of Sociology and Kristie Dotson in the Department of Philosophy. Above all, it took the encouragement of fellow kinesiology researchers who helped Gilbert grow her research aspirations beyond the bounds of their own disciplines.
She defends her dissertation this fall and hopes to become a faculty member in kinesiology — still an uncommon career path for African American women — in the near future. Gilbert is a King-Chavez-Parks Fellow and will be a visiting scholar at Allegheny College for the 2012-2013 academic year. She previously directed student-athlete development programs at the University of New Orleans and many of her family members live in the city.
“MSU is the place that could push me the most and the hardest,” Gilbert said of her decision to pursue her doctorate in East Lansing five years ago. Feltz has been a driving influence (see page 26 for more
on her).
“In the time that I’ve been here, Dr. Feltz has really encouraged us, not only to dream big things but to really take on big challenges.”
UPDATE: LESSONS LEARNED, OR UNLEARNED?
Gilbert says broadcasts covering Hurricane Isaac, which hit New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2012, ignored neighborhoods, particularly those home to black women, in favor of continued focus on the French Quarter and Central Business District. This suggests the recovery narratives of New Orleanians are still being largely overlooked.
Meanwhile, Gilbert says Saints fans have been unwavering in their support of the football team in lieu of the recent scandal alleging players were paid bonuses or “bounties” for injuring opponents. Hopeful resilience as a tenet of “home” in New Orleans is again pervasive.