Stereotypes In Malcom Gladwell's The Sports Taboo

Malcom Gladwell writes an editorial called “The Sports Taboo” addressing the social prejudices that certain athletes face in particular African Americans. Gladwell’s piece also addresses the issue of being politically correct, what I mean by this is when Gladwell refers to the statement of African American athletes being naturally better than white athletes. According to Merriam-Webster stereotyping is to believe unfairly that all people or things with a particular characteristic are the same. While the idea of stereotyping can be most commonly seen as negative, there are instances in which stereotyping can be seen in a positive manner. For example, one of the most common positive stereotypes is that women are more nurturing than men because it is a positive

assumption about women based on their gender. In America, stereotyping is part of a culture where prejudice and racism have been passed down from generation to generation without any sign of improving in the last couple of decades.
As a biracial athlete myself being judged in the sports field is one of the most common occurrences on and off the court.

Many spectators and players that either went against myself or trained with me often said what is he doing better than I’m or why is he so much better than me. The most common generalization that is made about myself is, “He is only playing basketball because he is 6 foot 4 inches, all he is good for is his height”. As an athlete is undermining when someone makes a generalization of your ability based on your characteristics rather than your talent. Gladwell in “The Sports Taboo” says “Bear in mind, too, that there is no evidence that Kerr works any harder than his teammates, least of all Jordan himself, whose work habits are legendary” (Gladwell 118) to put this in comparison to the generalization of myself I was never the best player on any team I played on, but the one thing I did was out work everyone. I was known not for how much talent I had but for amount of hard work and dedication I put in. No matter the sport being basketball, tennis, or volleyball especially considering the fact that I played at one of more Caucasian schools in NYC where 76 percent of the school was

white.
The main basis for people generalization of me during any particular sport was if I was either black or white. Many people would tend to draw the emphasis that I was only good at basketball because I was black. They would also make the comment why are you not playing at a Division school, you’re black they’ll take you for free. Gladwell states in his essay “Boys are more variable than girls on the College Board entrance exam and in routine elementary school spelling tests” (Gladwell 114), in comparison to my previous it is the common misconception that only African American athletes are getting scholarships to play collegiate sports at any level because they are black and naturally athletic. Which is not only taking away from the performance that these student-athletes put in high school but the massive amount of hard work they applied It was not only an issue on mental capability but on my ability as athlete. It had not only positive effects on the way I was playing at the time, but also had severe negative effects. It was demeaning to my character it made me less focused on my goals of basketball and more importantly trying to fit the common stereotype of African American playing basketball. The positive effect my game did improve slightly at some points but the main focus was I’m not of African American descent, but of French and Portuguese decent. Which not only undermines my character but undermines my heritage.
In tennis, the mental damage was only worse from my teammates. While, I happen to be the best player and captain on mostly dominant white