Race & Sports: The Relation Of Race And Sports

Alireza Berenjian

08/25/2015

The question that may cause many people to think about itself is the relation of race and sports. My younger brother was not an exception. Today he came to me and asked why there are many black people in specific fields of sports, and here is my answer to his question. Based on “Black athletic superiority" theory, black people have more natural physical ability. This theory is a belief by some group of people 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. The reason behind this is that black people due to evolution have more physical capabilities compare to white people. This can allow the

He received no support from his teammates; he was on his own. Although it was difficult, Robinson made it through his first day. Other games followed and they were no less difficult. But Robinson remained focused. Finally, when one of his team- mates, Pee Wee Reese, a southerner, reached out to him at a time when it appeared that Robinson was bending under the stress, that gesture of friendship on the field helped to reassure Robinson of the obligations he had made to himself, to his race, and to society. An excellent athlete in college, (he won letters in four sports at UCLA), Robinson never expected to be selected to carry this national burden. Despite this, he was named Rookie of the Year in his first year with the Dodgers. He remained focused over the years, and in 1952, he was so important to the team that he became the highest-paid baseball player in Brooklyn Dodgers history. In 1962, Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of the Fame, the first African American to receive this

In those leagues there was no white athlete. This racial segregation was seen in horse riding as well. There was a time, in the late 19th Century, when black athletes dominated a sport – horse racing. When horse racing became an organized sport in the early 1900s, many black jockeys were at the top of the stage. When the Kentucky Derby began in 1875, 13 of 15 jockeys were African-American, and 15 of the first 28 Kentucky Derbies were won by black athletes. Their success was one of the first times in American sports that black athletes truly dominated the ranks of an entire sport. Isaac Murphy – the first millionaire black athlete – was the first jockey to win three Kentucky Derbies (1884, 1890, and 1891). Jimmy Winkfield, another black jockey, won the Kentucky Derby in 1901 and 1902. There hasn’t been another black jockey to win the Kentucky Derby since. This is due to the Jim Crow laws of the 1880s which segregated blacks and whites, making it increasingly difficult for young black athletes to become engaged in horse racing (or, of course, any other sport). What was once a sport where black athletes could thrive, became a sport desolate of black participants. This situation reversed the mores of the later 19th and early 20th centuries, where in football, basketball, and horse racing, for example, black and white athletes competed against each