Discussions of race and sports in the United States, where the two subjects have always been intertwined in American history, have focused to a great extent on African Americans.Gems 2009, p. 238. Depending on the type of sport and performance level, African Americans are reported to be over- or under-represented. African Americans compose the highest percentage of the minority groups active at the professional level, but are among those who show the lowest participation overall. And though the list of African Americans in professional sports remains high, it only represents a small fraction of aspiring black athletes.
History The Journal of African American History's (JAAH) Special Issue on African American participation in sports in the 19th and 20th centuries demonstrates that African Americans have often used sports to challenge the social subjugation of their communities and stigma of the society.
Early history
"Black athletic superiority" theory "Black athletic superiority" is the theory that black people possess certain traits that are acquired through genetic and/or environmental factors that allow them to excel over other races in athletic competition. Whites are more likely to hold these views; however, some blacks and other racial groups do as well.Sheldon 2007, p. 33.Wiggins 1997, p.197. A 1991 poll in the United States indicated that half of the respondents agreed with the belief that "blacks have more natural physical ability in endurance, but in strength the whites win".Hoberman 1997, p. 146
Various hypotheses regarding racial differences of black and white people and their possible effect on sports performance have been put forth since the later part of the nineteenth century by professionals in many various fields.Wiggins 1997, p. 177. In the United States, attention to the subject faded over the first two decades of the twentieth century as black athletes were eliminated from white organized sport and segregated to compete among themselves on their own amateur and professional teams.Wiggins 1997, p. 179. Interest in the subject was renewed after the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and Jesse Owens's record-breaking performances at the 1935 Big Ten Track Championships. Regarding Jesse Owens's impressive four-gold medal performance in the following 1936 Olympics, the then U.S. head coach remarked that "The Negro excels. It was not long ago that his ability to sprint and jump was a life-and-death matter to him in the jungle. His muscles are pliable, and his easy going disposition is a valuable aid to the mental and physical relaxation that a runner and jumper must have."
In 1971, African-American sociologist Harry Edwards wrote: "The myth of the black male's racially determined, inherent physical and athletic superiority over the white male, rivals the myth of black sexual superiority in antiquity." Later in 2003, the JBHE Foundation published an article in The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, where they pushed back against this idea of a "black gene" leading to black superiority in athletics, a concept referred to here as "Racist Theory". The JBHE contended that "If there is a 'black gene' that leads to athletic prowess, why then do African Americans, 90 percent of whom have at least one white ancestor, outperform blacks from African nations in every sport except long distance running?"
Segregated seating
In 1960, the Houston Oilers implemented a policy at Jeppesen Stadium to segregate the black fans from the white fans.Lomax 2008, p. xii. Clem Daniels, Art Powell, Bo Roberson, and Fred Williamson of the Oakland Raiders refused to play in a stadium that had segregated seating. The 1963 game against the New York Jets was relocated to a different stadium.Lomax 2008, p. xiv.
Black-majority sports leagues
Overview In 2013, while 2.8% of full-time degree-pursuing undergraduates were black men, the group comprised 57% of college football teams, and 64% of men's basketball players, according to Shaun R. Harper. While blacks predominate in football and basketball, whites predominate in many other regulated sports.
In the words of William Ellerbee, basketball coach at national powerhouse Simon Gratz High School in Philadelphia, "Suburban kids tend to play for the fun of it. Inner city kids look at basketball as a matter of life and death" (Price, 1997a). Thus, one might speculate that black inner city kids, whose stature in their community is defined by their physical prowess (Hoberman, 1997) start earlier in life, practice more hours, experience greater activity specific developmental changes, and possess greater self-efficacy in sports such as basketball, football and track than white youth. Pseudo-scientific conceptions of race continue to play a role in the way many in the United States understand African-American contributions to sports.
Unlike black athletes, blacks as a group have not perceived sports as an important venue to prosperity. There are higher participation rates by blacks as well as higher numbers of people in non-athletic endeavor, such as policy, teaching, physicians, lawyers, engineers, and architects.
By league African Americans accounted for 75% of players in the National Basketball Association (NBA) near the end of 2008. According to the latest National Consortium for Academics and Sports equality report card, 65% of National Football League players were African Americans. However, in 2008, about 8.5% of Major League Baseball players were African American (who make up about 13% of the US population), and 29.1% were Hispanics of any race (compared with about 16% of the US population). In 2020, less than 5% of the National Hockey League (NHL) players are black or of mixed black heritage.
NCAA sports have mirrored the trends present in American professional sports. During the 2005–2006 season, black males comprised 46.9 percent of NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and 58.9 percent of NCAA Division I basketball. The NCAA statistics show a strong correlation between percentage of black athletes within a sport and the revenue generated by that sport. For example, University of North Carolina's 2007–2008 men's basketball team (the team was 59% black relative to the 3.7% black population of the institution as a whole) generated $17,215,199 in revenue, which comprised 30 percent of the school's athletic revenue for the year. Given NCAA rules prohibiting the payment of players, some have come to see the structure of NCAA athletics as exploitative of college athletes. Some believe that since black athletes comprise a high percentage of athletes in high revenue college sports (FBS football and Division I Men's basketball), they are therefore the biggest losers in this arrangement. Billy Hawkins argues that "the control over the Black male's body and profiting off its physical expenditure is in the hands of White males." His position refers to a very high percentage of Division I universities controlled by white administrations that prosper greatly from the free labor produced by the revenue sports that are heavily populated by black athletes. This claim is substantiated by statistics, such as the 2005–2006 NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament in which games started, and minutes played for black athletes were over double that of their white counterparts, with 68.7 percent of scoring in the tournament coming from black players.
Major League Baseball
Jackie Robinson was the first African American to play a major league game on April 15, 1947. Jackie loved the sport of baseball but that wasn't his only goal to make the majors. He wanted to make a way for more African Americans to join the league. However, with struggles of people being racist in the stands, players spouting off racial slang words to other players or fans, etc. Jackie wasn't discouraged to the hate as he was not only one of the best African Americans to play the game but one of the best in the history of baseball. +African Americans in American baseballYearMajor leaguesPopulationRatio19452%10%1:5195917%11%3:2197527%11%5:2199519%12%3:2
In a journal titled Using Giddens's Structuration Theory to Examine the Waning Participation of African Americans in Baseball, it says "Numerous studies have shown that African-American youths are more likely than Whites to be encouraged and even directed to play basketball over other sports."
National Basketball Association
Although Japanese-American Wataru Misaka broke the National Basketball Association's color barrier in the 1947–48 season when he played for the New York Knicks, 1950 is recognized as the year the NBA integrated. That year African-American players joined several teams; they included Chuck Cooper with the Boston Celtics, Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton with the New York Knicks, and Earl Lloyd with the Washington Bullets.
In another example from an interview with NBA Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar he states "For people of color, professional sports has always been a mirror of America's attitude toward race: as long as Black players were restricted from taking the field, then the rest of Black Americans would never truly be considered equal, meaning they would not be given equal educational or employment opportunities." Jabbar played in the NBA for 20 seasons dating back to 1969.
National Football League
Black players participated in the National Football League from its inception in 1920; however, there were no African-American players from 1933 to 1946. There is a great deal of speculation as to why this "gentleman's agreement", as it came to be called, was implemented during this era. Some argue that it was purely because of the Great Depression. Jobs were difficult to come by, and thus race relations became increasingly strained as African-Americans, and other minorities, became perceived as "threats". Finally, in 1946, the Los Angeles Rams broke this unofficial "agreement" and drafted Kenny Washington along with Woody Strode in the same year. The final NFL team to break this agreement was the Washington Redskins, who signed Bobby Mitchell in 1962.
In October 2018, George Taliaferro, the first African American who played in the NFL died at the age of 91. While George was the first African American drafted to play in the NFL, the first African American would not be drafted as the Quarterback until 1953, when Willie Thrower was drafted to play with the Chicago Bears. It wouldn't be for another 14 years, 1967, until the first African American, Emlen Tunnell, would be elected for the NFL Hall of Fame.
National Hockey League
On November 16, 1926, Native American Taffy Abel joined the New York Rangers, breaking the NHL color barrier and making history as the first ever Native American to play in the National Hockey League since its founding in 1917. On January 18, 1958, Willie O'Ree joined the Boston Bruins in a game against the Montreal Canadiens, making history as the first ever black person to play in the National Hockey League. Some 16 years later, Mike Marson became the second black player to join the league with his expansion to the Washington Capitals. Decades later, a 2020 analysis revealed that people of color still comprise less than 5% of players in the National Hockey League and that out of 377 head coaches hired over 102 years, only one has been black.