WR 152 Public Writing Assignment

Blacks dominate American sports. One school of thought is that Black persons are biologically predisposed to perform better in sports; however, such claims lack a scientific basis and only manage to promote racial stereotypes. Most scientists accept the cultural and socioeconomic explanation for black domination in sports, which argues that a person’s environment, culture, and socioeconomic position influences their affinity towards a certain sport.

Black persons are still overrepresented in several American professional sports sectors, and nowhere is it more expressed than in the NBA. The dominance of African Americans in sports is something that everyone seems to be aware of, and no one wants to mention. Moreover, some have suspected the involvement of the ‘black gene’ in these inequalities. Harrison et al. mention that when race discussions are factored in sports, the conversation usually takes the path of skin color. Moreover, race is defined as a group of persons thought to be biologically or naturally different from other groups of people (Coakley 1). Coakley goes further to explain that race derives its existence when people start classifying each other based on the genetically-determined physical traits, using these to divide each other into distinct groups. Hence, because race discussions in sports quickly divert to skin color, they start having racial undertones.

Recent developments in technology in the scientific field has seen an influx of work in the genetic field. For example, in the study of alleles, a section of the gene responsible for inherited characteristics shows that the comparison of allele frequency among different human populations has not distinct discontinuities. Moreover, anthropologists have always maintained that the physical traits in humans vary gradually among every population on earth, strongly supporting the information coming from the study of alleles. Moreover, the differences observed in human populations such as skin color, height, and hair texture, are highly superficial and climate-related variations. For instance, saying that a Kenyan is more naturally built to win a marathon than a Chinese person is scientifically wrong. However, arguing that a Kenyan is more attuned to survive in his/her environment makes more scientific sense. People coming from different geographical parts of the world have a wide range of physical appearances even among themselves.

In the NBA, it is surprising that while 74.4 percent of the players who run up and down the court are black, Blacks form a small proportion of the coach demographic; there is only 20 percent of Black head coaches in the league. A study by Schroffel et al. published in 2012 found out that pro-basketball coaches displayed racial bias when selecting players to send in the court. Similar research performed by Letian Zhang from Harvard Business School in 2018, had data about every player and compared with data with the same players under black coaches. The findings revealed that players averaged 40 seconds less per game when they played under a coach that was not of their race. Additionally, the Zhang study reveals that the 40 seconds disparity is quite substantial as NBA players only average of fifteen minutes per game. Unlike Schroffel et al., Zhang’s study reveals that players have it difficult the most in their first year of play under the coach, but the disparities disappear gradually after the first three years. Zhang’s study does not reveal that coaches are racist per se but stems from the psychological theory that persons have an innate preference for people who look like them, and the habit might be happening subconsciously. This subconscious behavior is damaging those young athelets’s confidence as well as their cohesiveness as a team.

Downing explains that the relationship that varsity sports have with colleges do not follow the regulations and traditions imposed by the institutions of higher learning that most established universities are keen to observe. According to Downing, athletes active in college sports exist in their complete and self-contained spheres, free from the grasp of college and its standards. Corruption in college sports stems from the revenue that the college sports industry generates for colleges. For most Americans, the idea of college identity are athletes running back and forth in their televisions. Moreover, TV driven spectacles such as the yearly competitive college sports tournaments like the NCAA basketball that attracts millions of spectators across the country are the main impersonal forces of money that drive corruption in college sports.

Given that most athletes go to college but not with a focus on education, it has further led to the myth that athletes are dumb. Moreover, given that most athletes on sports scholarship are black, this a further disservice in promoting the black and white genetics and sports stereotype. Many times, professional basketballers have been told to shut up and dribble whenever they try to use their athletic success for activism in some of the numerous subjects that Americans are divided on. In the US and Canada, the term “Jock” is a stereotype of an athlete as someone having no interest in academic or intellectual matters but is mainly concerned with matters pertaining to sports or sports culture. Wininger & White state that a common stereotype in the US is that athletes are generally not able to perform well in academic endeavors than their non-athlete counterparts. This Jock stereotype is particularly disturbing because research in psychological effects such as the Rosenthal and Jacobson Pygmalion effect demonstrated in 1968 suggest that expectation plays a role in academic achievement. Hence, when one is expected the fail, the prophecy is fulfilled most times. The Wininger and White study identify that student-athletes had a perception that their instructors and fellow students had significantly low expectations of them.

In the olden days, an example of competitive sports was in the Roman colosseums, where slaves hacked themselves to death for the pleasure of the audience. However, today sports are organized, civilized, and operate under distinct ethics and values. Moreover, as in olden times, sports still hold a special place in most people’s hearts. In the second half of the twentieth century, African Americans have come to be overrepresented in professional sports in the United States, prompting scholars to explore the scientific reasons for such a phenomenon. One school of thought is that Black persons are biologically predisposed to perform better in sports; however, such claims lack a scientific basis and only manage to promote racial stereotypes. Most scientists accept the cultural and socioeconomic explanation for black domination in sports, which argues that a person’s environment, culture, and socioeconomic position influences their affinity towards a certain sport. In other avenues, college sports are usually marred with corruption, perpetuating the stereotype that sportspeople are Jocks. Professional sports coaches show racial favoritism when selecting players. Therefore, it is vital for us to realize the on-going and racial issues in sports so that we as audiences will have a more civilized sports as entertainment; the professional athelets would suffer less from racial styreotypes as well.

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