Black Athletes
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Over the past fifty years there has been an increasing number of blacks who participate in sports at all levels. While blacks have increased their numbers in sports both on the field and off the field, there is still a good deal of racial prejudice that prohibits blacks from participating in sports on an equal level with whites. However, during the past fifty years there have been many milestones achieved by black athletes that have helped pave the way for the success of today’s black athletes. In 1945, Major League Baseball opened its previously white-only doors to black baseball player Jackie Robinson, who, in 1947, made his major league debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets field (Leavy, 131). The year before his major league debut the National Football League broke the all-white barrier for blacks by signing Kenny Washington and Woody Strode to the Los Angeles Rams and Cleveland Browns respectively. As Jackie Robinson was winning the MVP in the late 1940s for his outstanding play, Alice Coachman became the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal. In 1950, the color barrier was broken in the National Basketball Association when Chuck Cooper, Early Lloyd and Nathaniel Clifton were signed. Of course, throughout the 1940s, Joe Louis was pummeling contenders for the heavyweight title as Sugar Ray Robinson would do to middleweight contenders in the 1950s. The advent of television and media coverage of sports helped prom
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sitions based on gender. Even President Clinton argued that there is an inequality gap seen in sports where blacks and whites are concerned, suggesting that the race relations evident in sports are a symbol of race relations in the country as a whole, “Clinton said that making sure ‘the rules are fair’ in sports could be a lesson for the nation. He cited an ‘opportunity gap’ for minorities seeking jobs as head coaches, athletic directors and front-office managers. ‘America, rightly or wrongly, is a sports-crazy country, and we often see games as a metaphor or a symbol of what we are as a people’, he said” (Is there, 52).
While many black athletes are considered the elite members of the sports world, the number of blacks participating in baseball has declined since the 1960s. However, in the NFL and NBA there have been dramatic improvements, like four starting quarterbacks who are black, black coaches and even black general managers. Nonetheless, the statistics show that there is a double standard in sports. Blacks are often the best athletes at their respective sports, but the statistics demonstrate that the sports world seems dominated by the view that blacks are great as athletes but they are incapable of handling any of
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Approximate Word count = 1708
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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