"Darwin's Athletes": Sports and Ethnicity

To some African-Americans, sport represents much more than just a game; rather, it has come to be viewed as a ticket out of the impoverished neighborhoods in which many African-Americans live. The "ghetto lottery" has proven to be a mostly impossible dream. The main reason for this is that the leagues in question are small and very tough to get into.

The NFL has about 1696 players (32 teams with 53 players per team). Of that total, roughly 66% of players are black, which is a little over 1100 players. 1100 black players may seem like a lot, until you realize that, according to the 2010 Census, there are roughly 39 million African-Americans in the US. It's even harder to make it in the NBA, since the teams are so much smaller. Black players make up almost 80% of the NBA, a league which only has around 450 total players (30 teams with around 15 players per team). So combining rough estimates, we get 1100 black NFL players with 350 black NBA players giving us a rough total of 1450 professional African-American athletes out of 39 million total African-American citizens.This means that roughly 0.000037 % of African-Americans ever actually make it to the NBA or NFL.

In spite of the crushing reality of statistics, many young African-Americans dream of making it into one of those two leagues, starting at the high school level. The struggles of youth athletes are depicted vividly in Hoop Dreams, as well as Denzel Washington classic Remember the Titans. Both films depict young athletes, but obviously in very different styles: Hoop Dreams is a documentary that follows two high school athletes while Remember the Titans is a Hollywood film that often bends the truth to add drama, as any good sport film should. Titans deals with segregation and shows young athletes adapting to changing circumstances and a growing political movement against racism.

Hoop Dreams depicts the hollow aftermath of that movement, with an African-American community weakened by poverty and lingering prejudice encouraging kids to take up extremely improbable dreams as a way out of their homes. Each film depicts the African-American community as being separated from their white "neighbors" and left vulnerable to poverty, although in the Titans universe (America in the early '70's) getting into the pros wasn't quite seen as the ticket out of poverty quite like the NBA in Hoop Dreams. Nevertheless, the two films do a good job showing how sport and racial ideology are linked by showing two sports that are dominated by black players despite their minority status, which serves to prop up the myth of race that African-Americans are better athletes.

With all that being said, I find it difficult to believe that sport is damaging the black community, although it could easily be argued to be preserving the myth of race thanks to the national media. The African-American community faces many contemporary issues relating to politics and economics. The most important is that all across the US public schools have experienced budget cuts as schools witness their state funding being cut in an attempt to reduce their short-term debts. These kinds of cuts to education are far, far more damaging to minority communities than any impossible dream. The lack of quality education means that many of these kids dream of sport simply because they have nothing else to go on, through no fault of their own. The bottom line is that in today's society, you have to have some kind of college degree to get most jobs, and by gutting public education our state governments are borrowing against the future to pay off debts that may or may not actually matter.

sources:
 -http://www.tidesport.org/RGRC/2013/2013_NFL_RGRC.pdf 
 -http://www.tidesport.org/RGRC/2013/2013_NBA_RGRC.pdf
 -http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=4011

SP 12: Gender in Sports Marketing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IOSX-Hdqx0

So while this assignment specifically said to pick one commercial, I decided to bend that rule slightly by picking an entire series of commercials that are all essentially the same ad. Each ad is for a Kia Optima, which is specially equipped for the purposes of this ad to allow NBA star Blake Griffin to travel backwards through time. Each ad has Griffin specifically returning to his own past to give advice to his younger self.

These ads all feature Blake Griffin going back in time and trying to set a sort of example for himself at various points in his youth. He is constantly nonchalant, sounding gruff and emotionless as he attempts to steer his younger self through some of his old dilemmas. The football vs. basketball ad in particular is a relatively common choice posed to present-day jocks, and Griffin is clearly trying to make his own life easier by specializing earlier. This reflects modern attitudes towards certain sports as athletes face increasing pressure to pick and choose earlier in life.

However, in addition to certain comments this makes about sport, it also contains very strong elements of conventional masculinity. Particularly, the second ad (the football ad again), which has Griffin telling his younger self to abandon his denim jean shorts. "Just trust me." What this commercial is implying is that while jean shorts are extremely practical, Griffin does not wear those types clothes anymore now that he is a 'real man.' In the third ad, set in an arcade, the younger Blake is playing a racing simulator video game when the older Blake appears, plugging his real car by mockingly comparing it to the fake arcade car. Now that Griffin is a real man, he can drive a real car. This is the message the Kia is clearly driving home with this series of ads.