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About 50 years after racial segregation had been outlawed in the US, Gabby Douglas made her historical Olympic debut at the 2012 Summer Olympics. But, despite nearly half a century of racial integration in American society, Gabby’s presence on the gym floor was as conspicuous as a polar bear in a desert — a Black girl slaying it in gymnastics, a “White sport”, was extraordinary.

It’s not just in gymnastics that Black athletes are sparse, the same can be said for other sports like lacrosse, swimming, soccer, tennis, and crew, to name a few. So what exactly is going on here? Aren’t we post-racial by now?

It’s no accident that in today’s society, the basketball courts and athletic tracks are dominated by Black athletes, meanwhile white athletes dominate in the pools and on the tennis courts. While it might be tempting to explore “the why” of this matter from a genetics angle, the root cause of it is probably more socioeconomic than biological.

Neighborhoods

The preparation for sports competition at the intercollegiate level and beyond begins several years in advance of college. Youth and high school sports programs are crucial to the skills development of an athlete; the quality of the coaching and sporting facilities; and the variety in sports offered are largely determined by the amount of funding available for these sports programs. In her book, White Sports / Black Sports: Racial Disparities in Athletic Programs, Lori Latrice Martin notes:

Neighborhoods that are predominantly white, tend to have more homeowners than renters, higher housing values, and greater access to resources and quality schools with quality sports programs and facilities. Neighborhoods that are predominantly black tend to have more renters than homeowners, lower housing values, and less access to resources and quality schools with quality programs and facilities.

The far reaching effects of a history of racial discrimination and economic oppression against Blacks in America rears its ugly head (yet again) in the form of informally segregated residential neighborhoods, which results in disparity in opportunities. The cost to maintain a 50m Olympic-size pool or manicured grass for sports like golf and soccer is hefty, in comparison to the upkeep required for a running track or basketball court; thus we generally see more Black athletes in basketball and track, whereas White athletes have wider access to more types of sports.

Not only is access an issue, the personal monetary investment to participate in “White sports” can be cost prohibitive; a private tennis lesson in the Boston area can cost you about $70/ hr, and a new top of the line field hockey stick could set you back about $300.

A friend of mine who played intercollegiate field hockey in the Midwest told me that field hockey was largely perceived as a private school thing, and that some students had never even seen field hockey before seeing it played for the first time in college. “College fields, courts and rivers are now teeming with equestriennes, female soccer players, rowers, and other athletes, but almost all of them — 70 percent — are white,” writes Welch Suggs in the essay: Title IX Has Done Little for Minority Female Athletes.

Social Pressures

While racism in sport definitely does exist (Gabby Douglas spoke about this in an interview with Oprah, and we all know about the hate Serena Williams has had to endure), as a former field hockey player myself, I personally never felt disparaged by my teammates or coaches because of the color of my skin. However, there were a few times when discouragement crept in — stemming from members of the Black community itself.

As a young girl, I’d never thought of sports as being “Black” or “White” but high school quickly changed that. As a freshman, I learned that I played a “White sport,” because Black people would sometimes qualify my Blackness by adding words like, “but you play field hockey,” to the end of a sentence, as if to say that I wasn’t really Black or Black enough. I was Black but with an asterisk — a coconut — brown on the outside but white on the inside. For any teenager, high school is a tumultuous time where you’re just trying to figure yourself out and fit in, so such comments did make me question my choice in sport. I stuck with field hockey though because I loved it so much, and I was able to go to a great college partially because of my athletic achievements. By the time I got to college, I didn’t care anymore if people thought that I was coconut.  

It’s unfortunate that there’s a lot of money left on the table in the form of college scholarships that Black athletes are not accessing at the moment. Hopefully as the socioeconomic barriers that have prevented minority athletes from gainfully participating in classic “White sports” crumble over time, we’ll see a rise in the participation of Black athletes in more sports. Role models like Gabby Douglas, Serena Williams and Simone Manuel will continue to be important as well to break racial stereotypes about Black women in sports.

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