The Demise of the White Athlete
I have been an avid watcher of sports, professional and college alike, for as long as I can remember. Just like any sports fan or person with a father, I've heard about the supposed "glory days" of sports and how great everything was in the past. After watching old games and seeing documentaries, movies and television programs, I observed one glaring difference in the sports of old and the sports of today; the vast majority of players were Caucasian. This got me thinking and I wondered how such a drastic change occurred in the last 30 years or so. The demise of the white athlete in professional sports can be traced through physical, social and psychological factors.From the onset of integration in sports, African Americans seem to have the advantage in the majority of popular sports. What once used to be an area of our society that was dominated by whites is now the polar opposite. In the mid 1960s the racial breakdown for the National Basketball Association (NBA) was 80 percent white and 20 percent black; currently the statistics are almost reversed with 15 percent white and 85 percent black (Entine 19). After being compared to general society, these numbers seem even more amazing. The US popula
French physician Marcelle Geber conducted a study in 1957 of Ugandan children and infants compared to European children; "The motor development was greatly in advance of that of European infants of the same age. Many Blacks may choose the opportunity to go skiing over staying home and playing ball, but as 40 percent of Blacks are below poverty level in comparison to 16 percent of Whites, for many it just isn't realistic (Price 34). This test became quite popular and elements of it are used in over 50 nations. The same thing is occurring among black kids, but in the opposite manner: "Discrimination curtails black access to alternating high prestige occupations, we are channeling disproportionately high numbers of young blacks towards athletic participation. "There were no items that the white children were doing earlier than the black children in the first year of life" says Dodds, who was quite shocked to find the same results occurred over thousands of tests. Whites in general have just lost interest in competing any longer. If blacks develop stronger and faster as infants, what's to say that this trend doesn't continue throughout life? Being born with greater innate physical ability enables blacks to dominate sports from an early age, a trend that continues throughout life, placing Whites at an obvious physical disadvantage. Multiple aspects combine to create this problem, the three greatest being physical, social and psychological factors. This quick onset of growth and physical excellence continues throughout the youngest years of a child's growth, which are the most important for development. Black athletes on the other hand are the polar opposite. Such sports have not gained popularity throughout black culture, partly because of general disinterest and partly because blacks are succeeding at sports such as basketball and football and don't need other sports to fulfill their desires to succeed. There are also social factors that have lead to the downfall of the white athlete. Ultimately, the demise of the white athlete is a vicious cycle, which is unlikely to be broken. There is a clear line drawn between the two races, quite similar to the line drawn in sports, with the black athlete easily in and the white athlete fighting hard for a small piece of the pie.
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