Eminent scholar Harry Edwards (2000) has articulated three major realities of African American males in sports: a) The presumption of innate, race-linked black athletic superiority and intellectual deficiency; b) media propaganda portraying sports as a broadly accessible route to African American social and economic mobility; and c) a lack of comparably visible, high-prestige African American role models beyond the sports arena. Driven by labeling theory (Becker, 1963; Goffman, 1959), eight African American male student athletes were surveyed and interviewed. The last two points of Edwards' scholarship were investigated. "We have pretty good historical data and quantitative data about African American athletes. Now we need good qualitative data-in the form of detailed information on the real life experiences of African American student athletes. And we need it done by African American men and women who can do in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations and collect data." -Jay Coakley, Professor of Sociology, 1999 "Relatively little research has focused on the subjective experience of members of stigmatized groups. Understanding the consequences of social stigma requires an understanding of the phenomenology of being stigmatized." -Jennifer Crocker, Kristin Voelkl, Maria Testa, and Brenda Major, 1991 "The interplay between automatic biases caused by racial cues, and the subjective conscious states in which perceivers "sincaely believe" their judgments and intend to behave consistently with them remains fertile ground for social cognition research. "-B. Keith Payne, 2001