Olympics Of Racism

During the 2016 Olympics, athletes have received plenty of spotlight in the media. But was every media coverage the same for every athlete? In Valkenburg “Dear Fellow White People” op-ed article, the author employs juxtaposition, ethos, and rhetorical questions claiming that the idea of “white privilege” is existent and people should no longer fail to acknowledge this.

Sociologist Peter Figueroa created a framework in order to analyse racism within society, and particularly to determine the equitable and accessibility within a physical activity (Hede, Russell and Weatherby, 2010). Figueroa’s Framework is an exceptionally useful and educational tool that is utilised in order to understand the socio-cultural factors that impact sports participation as an individual or in a team. Consisting of a five layer structure, Figueroa’s Framework includes the cultural, structural, institutional, interpersonal and individual levels which all umbrella their own factors of accessibility and equitability.

There are quite a few factors that shaped the modern-day Olympics from 1892 to 2002. Pierre de Coubertin states that he wanted to create the Olympics to spread world peace. He does this by substituting war for friendly sports competitions (doc 1). Of course, there were some bumps in the road while trying to achieve this utopia. Some factors that have changed the Olympics are the allowing of women being able to compete in the Olympics, women’s suffrage, nationalism, wars, and economic conditions (doc 2-7).

He sees the validity of this claim, however, declares that this only gives limited knowledge, in that there is much more to this. There are many other factors factoring into athletic performance, not simply genetics. With this, he shows how these athletes followed the 10,000-hour rule, demonstrating that deliberate practice was needed to perform as well as they did. These athletes dedicated large amounts of training and dedication in order to reach the success they did. This success was not simply achieved due to their genetics, it was rather nurtured through their practice. While Gladwell believes in the idea that blacks are generally better athletes than whites, he also believes that hard work is the most important thing for someone who wants to be good at a sport. His theory is that hard work and drive are more important than someone’s race when it comes to being good at a sport, in that athletic ability does not always come down to physical ability. There is no clear explanation of why and if certain races perform better than others. Ultimately, Gladwell believes there is more than one factor that contributes to

Throughout American history, sports has always been a big topic. Many Americans view sports as a part of their culture and an influence in their lives. There are many opportunities to play sports such as basketball, football, golf, baseball, ect. However, not everybody had equal opportunities to play sports before there were major changes in sports history. One of these major changes included other ethnicity groups and skin colored people to be allowed to play sports. African American athletes were one of the main groups of people that changed this view. They were not allowed or qualified to play sports because of their skin color and background. Since the 1800’s, African Americans the views of the people in the United States of blacks in sports

Black student-athletes are taught to value sports over academics at a young age because it is seen as the “only way out”. Black student-athletes are heralded for their athletic prowess from middle school up, so they begin to focus less on their education and more on their sport. Unfortunately, so do the teachers. Black student-athletes are more often than not just given passes, as schools value what their athletic abilities could do for them over the academic success of the athlete. Even normal black students can be seen the same way just because of the perception that they might be an athlete. The sad truth is that the athletes that don’t make it to the professional level are left without the education needed to be successful.

To fully understand where these struggles stem from you need to be fully aware of the cultural influences that African American students face. As African American males grow older they face the unfortunate reality of being the only group in the United States experiencing a decline in life expectancy (Noguera 2003). With a fact like this looming over the head of African American student athletes it becomes easy for one to see why African American male student athletes place such and emphases on playing professional sports (Zeiser 2009). They see the gain from professional sports being immediate and the gains from academia being a longer process. “There is considerable evidence that the ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds of students have bearing on how students are perceived

("Black Women in Sports.")Now because racism is gone African Americans can try out for any sport just like everybody else. ("Black Women in Sports.")They can even join in on the Olympics just like African American Jackie Joyner-Kersee did in the 1980’s and she won two gold medals. No one would've ever thought a African American could do that back in the 1900’s but pretty much ever since the civil rights speech in 1964 people were starting to see that racism isn't right and African Americans can do everything whites can.("Black Women in

On the other hand African American and female students alleged that African American athletes are more competitive and have a different playing style (Sailes 1993). From relevant literature it has been found that the statement made on how athletes are not academically smart enough compared to the average student is proven incorrect due to a number of the following studies illustrating a positive correlation between the increased amount of physical activity being associated with higher academic performance, as well as positively influencing concentration, memory and classroom behaviour (Trudeau & Shepard 2008) (Eitle & Eitle 2002) (Bailey 2006) (Coe et al

nowadays, and you will notice that the sport is dominated by African-American athletes. Just five short

These days, teachers pass school athletes in order for them to continue playing. They don’t care whether or not if they do the homework or actually understand what is being taught, as long as they keep the school wining in that certain sport then they will pass. Henry Gates stated, “The failure of our public schools to educate athletes is part and parcel of the schools’ failure to educate almost everyone”. Most young black athletes can’t read or write but they still get passed year to year. It’s know that 26.6% of black athletes at the college level earn their degree, which means that they didn’t have enough pass knowledge to continue to excel in higher education and they still didn’t make that goal of being a professional athlete.

Race and ethnicity in sports is a very delicate subject. You run a great risk of offending someone when discussing the subject to begin with. Is one race dominant in a certain sport? I think we need to address this with respect and delicacy. But when we look at the need to be so delicate, that should be an indication that race and ethnicity matter with regards to sports.

There are many reasons why the number of minorities that participate is sports vary from sport to sport. Race plays a big part in sports as well as in our society. Why is it that a group of people can harass and abuse a young black male for raping a white female, but on the next Saturday at the big football game cheer him on and hope that he has a great game. Over the years there have been some great black sports players, in almost all sports. Michael Jordan, OJ Simpson, Mohamed Ali, Bo Jackson, just to name a few. When players like these come along that are black and sort of take over a sport, many white male sports fans say stuff like, "He's black, he's faster than the white players." This tends to be true, blacks dominate the speed

The Nazi Olympics in Berlin in 1936 destroyed Hitler’s master race history. "There was very definitely a special feeling in winning the gold medal and being a black man," Woodruff said. "We destroyed [Hitler's] master race theory whenever we started winning those gold medals,” said runner John Woodruff (7). John Woodruff was a black man who won a gold medal. Another African American Jesse Owens won four track and field gold medals. These two people defied the Aryan ideal that Hitler believed that Aryan dominated the world. Another important impact the Olympic brought happened in 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia. In that Olympics, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon refused to participate because of a dispute over the Suez Canal; Spain, Switzerland, and the Netherlands boycotted the Games in protest over the Soviet Union's invasion of Hungary; China boycotted the Games because a flag of Taiwan was raised in the Olympic Village. The original purpose of the Olympics was to make the countries collaborate, however, it also brought negative impacts. Another example is that Olympics in Mexico city in 1968. Americans politicised the Games by letting two African Americans, Tommie Smith and John Carlos, represent the United States. Tommie Smith and John Carlos placed first and third in the track and field. During their medal ceremony, they raised a clenched fist above their

The Olympic Games are a set of friendly competitions that bring countries from all around the world together, but many social, political, and economic problems in the past and present including racial and sexual discrimination and apartheid have prevented the Olympic Games from fulfilling their promise to bring countries together.