Sports began to develop approximately 3,000 years ago and included activities like human and chariot races, wrestling, jumping, disk and javelin throwing, and more. Many athletic activities have been altered to coincide with community values and political agendas. Sports play a key role in the dynamics of societal issues such as racism, sexism, and classism. The racial aspect of sports is generally focused on the physical differences between minorities — typically blacks—and whites.
People of color usually perform extremely well in a majority of athletic activities, even if they are not a majority on a team, according to Taboo. Blacks are most known for performances in sports such as track, football, and basketball, but they still manage to stick out more in other culturally popular sports like soccer, baseball, rugby, and cricket. On the other hand, whites dominate the business aspect of sports as owners of teams, coaches, and managers. The difference is accredited to the societal stereotypical viewpoints of blacks being physically superior, yet intellectually inferior. In other words, there’s an ideology attached to whiteness and blackness. Jon Antine in her New York Times chapter publication of “Taboo” stated: “Whiteness has come to symbolize political power, wealth, economic advancement, rationality, and civilized culture, whereas blackness is equated with the natural, sensuality, hyper-sexuality, musicality, laziness, intellectual deficiency, cultural pathology—and athleticism.”
However, the real reason for the athletic success of blacks in sports is accredited in studies of science to their inherited phenotype and genotype from their African ancestors. Blacks are considered to be more physically capable of maintaining themselves in sports that require a lot of physical strength, vigor, or speed, while whites are considered to be more successful in sports that require some form of equipment or extraneous training for success in that sport. Researchers from Howard University and Duke University have concluded that "physical differences in the length of the limbs and the structure of the body mean the center of gravity tends to be higher in the bodies of black people," which makes them more successful in sports that require running. A better center of gravity affects how fast feet move when they hit the ground, and long legs and shorter torsos give blacks an even bigger advantage, since legs do the work of running.
On the bright side, some racial barriers have begun to disappear over the years as racial consciousness has become a “thing.” The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport is “a comprehensive resource for issues related to gender and race in amateur, collegiate and professional sports.” In their most recent study, they have reported a Racial and Gender Report Card for the National Basketball Association (NBA) that indicates areas of improvement, stagnation, and regression.
For the 2014-2015 season, 76.7 percent of the NBA’s players were people of color, decreasing 3.8 percentage points from the 80.5 percent recorded in 2013-2014. As of the end of the 2014-2015 regular season, 64.6 percent of all NBA League Office professional employees were white, 18 percent were African American, 7.2 percent were Latino, 9.8 percent were Asian, and 0.4 percent were classified as “other.” Furthermore, people of color represented 33.3 percent of all NBA head coaches, compared to the 43.3 percent recorded at the start of the 2013-2014 season.
So, what do you think sports would be like without African Americans? Do you believe it’s just a genetic variation that separates the physical capabilities of blacks and whites? Are blacks intellectually inferior to whites, which accounts for their large success as athletes rather than businessmen/women?
