Prejudice In Baseball

Socio and political forces have shaped baseball in a dramatic fashion over the last forty years, resulting in a sport dominated by white males, acting on a smaller scale to reproduce social inequalities that plague American culture to this day. The “hetero-normative, middleclass, white” standards of both masculine and feminine ideals—and the figures or types of figures celebrated as a result—have existed in the United States since its inception, having stemmed from the European powers wherefrom this county finds its roots. Such traditions or worldviews can be attributed to both cultural and structural bases of power as established on a larger scale, whether within governmental, religious, or even educational systems. Additionally, they can

Prejudice, among its endless list of fallacies, is far too simple. In fact, “prejudice,” to some extent, could be defined as a type of simplification: the simplification of one’s identity. Taking the concept of race, for example—“race,” here, used in reference to one’s skin color, barring relation to ethnicity, nationality, or cultural identity of any kind—racism, by definition, separates mankind into clean-cut categories. In so doing, it boils down the entire concept of identity to the color of one’s skin. This assertion not only segregates one race from another, but it also maintains the self-sameness of all persons within a certain group, ignoring differentiations related to other lines of power. This concept of “intersectionality” dictates that one’s identity cannot be defined by a single trait or line of power. This idea, although its purpose aligns MORE readily with the traditional belief that one’s participation in the realm of sport should be determined by one’s ability therein, also complicates the conversation. For example, keeping with the theme of race: while holding public forums, educating the public, attempting to reach out to nonwhite athletes, and other means of addressing white dominancy in baseball seem like positive, even necessary, steps to be taken to ensure future diversification within the sport, they could have an equally negative impact in their neglecting to address this pattern’s complexity. While we must not fail to ask ourselves how this pattern was established, we must also demand to know why it has persisted. Further, in failing to acknowledge the complexity of both pattern and prejudice, we disable ourselves from finding an equally, but necessarily, complex