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Race, ethnicity and diversity in sports
Racial equality in the United States
Racial equality in the United States
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Recommended: Race, ethnicity and diversity in sports
Conceptualize, for a moment, a segregated society encompassed with constituents of any and every ethnic group you can envisage. A society that was structured on the basis of a congressional constitution that ostensibly embraced all citizens by the same token. A society that refused diversification in social institutions such as: formal education, restaurants, professional sports, and the collective public all together. A society where manifestable racial discrimination was not considered deviant, and as opposed to present times, a norm.
Admittedly, the nation by which you just visualized is indeed the United States of America about a half a century ago. As you visualize our great and beautiful country presently, you will perceive that times have changed dramatically. To take a case in point, educational institutions now encourage inclusion rather than segregation, interracial relationships are at an all-time high, sports are extremely diverse, North America has the leading net migration rate universally, and our President, Chief of the State, Chief Executive, Chief Diplomat, Commander in Chief, Chief Legislator, Chief of the Party, and Guardian of our economic system is in fact, an African-American man.
Although it is true that, the successful diversity of our society can be attributed to the progressive interconnectedness of the many racial-ethnic groups within it, I concede that sports played an immense contribution in the evolving diversity of our society. To put it succinctly, the diverging of color barriers in professional nationwide sports greatly contributed to the converging of the varying national populace. One instance in particular was indispensable to this progression, which was the landmark battle of Jackie Robinson ...
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...tatives in the world leading social institutions counting: education, religion, health and medicine, law, governmental politics, economics, mass media, and indubitably sports.
Conjure up if Jackie Robinson would have not had the courage to cross the color threshold of Major League Baseball sixty-six years ago. Would sports be integrated with representatives of every nationality in the universe and be as diverse as it is today? Would our republic and/or government consists of members of one racial-ethnic group? Would our country be generally adhering to the foundations it was built upon by our founding presidential forefathers? How would our economy operate? How would society function coherently? The current success of our nation is due to diverse society we compel for, without that one dramatic occurrence in 1947, where would be as a nation contemporaneously?
Making Whiteness: the culture of segregation in the south, 1890-1940 is the work of Grace Elizabeth Hale. In her work, she explains the culture of the time between 1890 and 1940. In her book she unravels how the creation of the ‘whiteness’ of white Southerners created the ‘blackness’ identity of southern African Americans. At first read it is difficult to comprehend her use of the term ‘whiteness’, but upon completion of reading her work, notes included, makes sense. She states that racial identities today have been shaped by segregation, “...the Civil War not only freed the slaves, it freed American racism
Crack! Back, back, back the ball goes. Home run! Who hit it? It was Jackie Robinson, the first black baseball player in the major league. Many people would agree Jackie was one of the best players to ever swing a bat. However, he faced many difficulties on his journey to becoming a professional baseball player. Without Jackie playing in the pros, baseball and civil rights wouldn’t be the way it is today. Baseball may have taken a long time to not be made up of mainly white players. Jackie was a beacon of hope to black people in the fact that they could compete and succeed in a white man’s sport.
Although Jackie Robinson was not the best African-American baseball player of his time, his attitude and ability to handle racist harassment led the way for the rest of his race to play Major League Baseball, amongst other sports. Being accepted into professional sports also helped African-Americans become more easily accepted into other aspects of life. Jackie's impact in the world for the black population is enormous.
Jackie Robinson’s ability to successfully integrate his sport set the stage for many others to advocate for an end to segregation in their respective environments. His period of trials and triumphs were significant to changing American perception of the Civil Rights revolution. By becoming the first African-American baseball player to play in the major leagues, he brought down an old misconception that black athletes were inferior to white athletes. Successively, his example would inspire those advocating for their civil rights, he lived out a message of nonviolence similar to the one Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. lived out. Despite the constant prejudice he faced in his sport, he was able to keep himself composed and never retaliate.
"Over the decades, African American teams played 445-recorded games against white teams, winning sixty-one percent of them." (Conrads, pg.8) The Negro Leagues were an alternative baseball group for African American baseball player that were denied the right to play with the white baseball payers in the Major League Baseball Association. In 1920, the first African American League was formed, and that paved the way for numerous African American innovation and movements. Fences, and Jackie Robinson: The Biography, raises consciousness about the baseball players that have been overlooked, and the struggle they had to endure simply because of their color.
In the 1920s and 1930s, segregation was a massive thing for everyone. Minorities were looked down upon mainly because of their different skin color and culture, as people from all over the world started to come to America because of its freedom that it offered. They did receive many of the rights that was said to be given, nor much respect, especially from caucasians. They were mostly slaves, workers or farmers for caucasians. Although they would work as hard as they can, they wouldn’t receive fair pay. In the result of that, they were never able to live the life of a middle-class citizen. They were always low on money. Also, taxes would bug them as it would rise only for the lower-class...
Shropshire, Kenneth L. 1996. In black and white: race and sports in America. New York: New York University Press.
Does the name Jim Crow ring a bell? Neither singer nor actor, but actually the name for the Separate but Equal (Jim Crow) Laws of the 1900s. Separate but Equal Laws stated that businesses and public places had to have separate, but equal, facilities for minorities and Caucasian people. Unfortunately, they usually had different levels of maintenance or quality. Lasting hatred from the civil war, and anger towards minorities because they took jobs in the north probably set the foundation for these laws, but it has become difficult to prove. In this essay, I will explain how the Separate but Equal Laws of twentieth century America crippled minorities of that time period forever.
In an era of addressing social issues and inequality, many African Americans were segregated and divided; they fought for justice but racial tensions still formed. The Progressive Era: a time of major movements of the American population. During the decades between the 1890s and 1920, Americans were faced with many challenges and in turn, they entered a modern era of change. The states and cities were experiencing a newly diverse and urban society. There were new technological advances and industrial economics were growing rapidly since the Civil War. Although, not all innovations made during this time were beneficial. With the large innovations in society and the progressive mindsets, the lives of African Americans dramatically changed. The
History has experienced a distinct separation between the minorities (Latinos, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and African-Americans) and the majority (the whites) in the United States of America. This separation has been brought about by the several models of the exclusion of the minority; these two models are: political and economic disempowerment and apartheid (Forum 2, 1). Apartheid involves the separation of a certain group of people from other parts of the society through legal, political and economic discrimination (Denton 2). Whereas political and economic disempowerment is reducing drastically or taking away the rights previously held by a group, they are taken away to minimize the power of the minorities in the society. Apartheid
“We are more visible, but not more valuable”. This famous quote was said by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, one of the most famous black basketball players, symbolized what many black athletes were pursuing when they first got into sports. In today’s world not only are black athletes a part of our sports venue, they are dominating the landscape of some sports such as the NBA which consists of a whopping 80% black athletes. Black athletes continue to revitalize sports in America as some athletes became the face of their sports such as Muhammad Ali in boxing, Jackie Robinson in baseball and Michael Jordan in basketball. Sports came as a form of entertainment for many Americans, but for black athletes it came as a pathway to express who they were and what they believed in. The more they became involved in sports, the more media they were able to attract which enabled them to talk about topics other than sports such as racism, their religions and equality through the civil rights movement. These views and statements made in their interviews and press conferences were the ones that became publicized and more popular amongst the typical white men in America and it played a huge role in changing the way blacks were viewed in American society.
For instance, ?The American Dream of unlimited possibilities was shattered for black athletes. By 1900 most of them had successfully been excluded from American sport and were forced to establish their own separate sporting organizations. The most famous of these were the black baseball leagues, a loose aggregate of teams that did not achieve much organizational structure until Rube Foster founded the National Negro Baseball League in 1920. Late nineteenth-century black athletes were often disturbed by their inability to be classified by an...
Diversity, we define this term today as one of our nation’s most dynamic characteristics in American history. The United States thrives through the means of diversity. However, diversity has not always been a positive component in America; in fact, it took many years for our nation to become accustomed to this broad variety of mixed cultures and social groups. One of the leading groups that were most commonly affected by this, were African American citizens, who were victimized because of their color and race. It wasn’t easy being an African American, back then they had to fight in order to achieve where they are today, from slavery and discrimination, there was a very slim chance of hope for freedom or even citizenship. This longing for hope began to shift around the 1950’s during the Civil Rights Movement, where discrimination still took place yet, it is the time when African Americans started to defend their rights and honor to become freemen like every other citizen of the United States. African Americans were beginning to gain recognition after the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, which declared all people born natural in the United States and included the slaves that were previously declared free. However, this didn’t prevent the people from disputing against the constitutional law, especially the people in the South who continued to retaliate against African Americans and the idea of integration in white schools. Integration in white schools played a major role in the battle for Civil Rights in the South, upon the coming of independence for all African American people in the United States after a series of tribulations and loss of hope.
Since the end of Jim Crow laws and the signing of the Civil Rights act and the Brown vs. Board of Education law, much of society believes that racism, especially in sports have ceased. However, racism is still embedded in the cloth of American society. Racism in society and in sports may not be overt as it
How did sports "both reflect and influence" North Carolinian society from the late nineteenth century to the 1970s? During this era, athletics in college, basketball in particular, proved that many native-born citizens became Americans through participation in sports in which their accomplishments merited praise. Sports effectuated life lessons learned as well as cultural values, including teamwork and sportsmanship. Race and gender played an enormous role in the history of sports.