Sunday, November 29, 2009
Race and Sports
African Americans have always had to deal with racism. In sports, the progress has been slower than the rest of society. Basketball has developed faster than the other sports in this country but football is another. Only four starting quarterbacks and five head coaches are African Americans even though over 60% of the league is black. Baseball is an even sadder story in the black community. Ten percent of the players are African American and some teams don't even have a black player, and it doesn't look like any of them will be improving soon.
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Blacks always had football and they were good at it!
ReplyDeleteInteresting post. C.C. Sabathia (Go Yanks LOL) spoke out on it a little while back. In all honesty it depends on your neighborhood. If you have a big patch of field, you'll probably play football....A Court B-Ball. But Baseball is a lttle different. It's not as interesting to watch (to most). Therefore many youths would rather follow those they actually watch everyday (B-Ball and Football). This is also due to the fact that kids tend (not always) to what their parents did because they are able to teach them.
ReplyDeleteI'm a prime example. My dad played B-Ball and Football while in the military. To my knowledge he never really played too much baseball. Yet at age 2 I was shooting the ball....At age 6 I was running routes and catching the ball....To this day I'm awful at baseball.
Therefore you can expect baseball to continue to decline as our generation isn't really playing, you can expect fewer black baseball players in the next generation.
As for Black QBs, they go as the trends go. If there are a lot doing well every team will want one. (Late 90s Early 2K's with Stewart, McNair, McNabb, Vick, and a lot others). ...But as they play poorly, teams gravitate away from them. It's really wrong and stereotypical but it happens.