The Professional Athlete Of A Team Sport

Shaun Powell's book, “Souled Out? How Blacks Are Winning and Losing in Sports” scrutinizes the paradoxes of African-American success in sports. Perturbed predominantly with the erroneous perceived accomplishment of equality through sports across the world, Powell offers his work as a portrayal of the evolution of African-american athletes over time and compares past struggles with modern day issues. Powell discusses how African American’s are both winning and losing in sports, but ultimately emphasizes the negative aspects of the on-going crisis. Powell, a well-known journalist, reviews and discusses how education, professional activism, media, and community relate and affect African-Americans in sports, therefore persuasively conveying his argument.

One interesting view by Douglas Hartmann in his journal article entitled “Rethinking The Relationships Between Sports And Race In American Culture: Golden Ghettos And Contested Terrain” said that racial issues in sport is; borrowing Stuart Hall (1981) words- “a contested racial terrain” (qtd. in Hartmann 241). The “contested racial terrain” is defined as “a social site where racial images, ideologies, and inequalities are constructed, transformed, and constantly struggled over” (Hartmann 230). In other words, sports have become a medium where the definition and limitation of racism created. This also means that the definition of racial issues will constantly change over time. Hartmann view is interesting seeing that he believes that the context of racism in sports are actually broader than we actually think. He did not agree with the simple view of because racial discrimination happens in our society, thus racial discrimination also happens in sports (Hartmann 242). He further delves into two interesting problems in stereotyping and biasing.

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.

This paper explores the documentary Training Rules directed by Dee Mosbacher and Fawn Yacker, who released the film in March 2009. This film is about how women’s collegiate sports dealt with homophobia in the league, and it focuses primarily on Pennsylvania State University’s Rene Portland, who was the women’s basketball coach. Under her coaching, she had a “No Lesbians” policy that all the girls had to accept or else they risk being kicked off the team and losing their scholarship. This documentary recounts the instances where some of her players felt discriminated against when they just wanted to play basketball, and their testimonies tell how the university’s basketball program came under fire because of sexual orientation discrimination.

Ward touches on the social context for interpreting public responses to male and female athletes coming out, and this example of Michael Sam details the harsh and cruel reality that society will never be fully accepting to gay and lesbian athletes. Invisibility is the best defense when it comes to athletes being gay and lesbian, but it doesn’t signify approval or disapproval when people have paid lots of money to see a match and they’re more bothered about what type of person is playing. I don’t’ care about Michal Sam’s sexual preference, and the only thing that we should view him as is a phenomenal athlete who could bring a lot to any NFL team. He had an extremely good final year playing college football, rated the best in the country at his position; but because of how super-sized NFL players have become, he's smaller than anyone else at his position in the NFL. While playing with the Baltimore ravens, he gave it a good 12 months, mostly on the practice squad and the whole time he was on this team he was constantly ridiculed and humiliated, which lead him to retire soon after due to mental illness. It takes a lot of will power and strength to continue to try and be the person you’ve longed to be, and do the job you’ve always wanted to do with the majority of people in American hating you for what you are outside of the field. I wish him the best. It isn't just latent homophobia that's costing him; it's also losing himself as a

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

The world of athletics has been built around a binary view of gender. The distinction between genders is obvious: there is women’s sport and there is men’s sport. However, in reality, gender biology is not black and white – there is a multitude of ways to be human. The separation of men’s and women’s sport leads to a large population of athletes getting stuck in the middle. There is a growing social acceptance of transgender and intersex individuals in society, however, when it comes to sport these individuals are often left isolated on an island of controversy. The majority of this controversy surrounds the debate of whether or not transgender and intersex females should be allowed to compete in women’s sports. Society does not have a

My experience facing racial difficulties is when I was fifteen years old and i wanted to play football, because it seemed like fun and i enjoyed playing it with my friends when we went to the park.But my grandmother wouldn’t let me play because she thought that i wouldn’t excel in football because i wasn’t black, and that football is a black people's sport and that it wouldn’t matter how hard I worked I would never be as good as the black players. I don’t understand why the color of you're skin matters when wanting to play sports or do anything if you're good at it you should be given an equal opportunity to try-out and prove your talents. My situation was similar to cory’s because he wanted to play football and was getting recruited by scouts

A weakness to Skyes’ article would be the fact that our society is very judgemental. Sports organizations fear the classification process of transsexual and transgender athletes into mainstream sporting events. Although most people will say they are for the equality of others, in reality many people in our society do not approve of transsexual and transgender people. These non-binary athletes may never be fully accepted into mainstream sports if sporting organizations continue to fret about anxieties these

Up until recently a person could not be gay in the military. Homosexuals were honorably discharged from the military. In 1993 President Clinton attempted to change this tradition. He received much opposition from politicians, citizens and the military. The result was a compromise, a don't ask, don't tell rule. This meant that the military personal was not to inquire about sexual preference, and that service members were not to be blatant about their sexual orientation. Another macho activity is sports. Gay men in sport have not been accepted. " There is much at stake in maintaining the silence about gay men in sports and in discouraging gay male athletes from revealing their identities"(Coakley 234). To even talk about homosexuals in sports would threaten the system of gender classification. The fact is though there are homosexuals in sports and they are discriminated against. In the locker room athletes use anti- gay banter as part of daily life. Homosexuals in sports live in fear of the truth about their sexuality coming out. Although recently studies have shown that organized sports are becoming less homophobic. People in sports are becoming more tolerant of homosexuals. But the value of a homosexual athlete is of core importance. " Gay athletes with high human capital are much more likely to come out of the closet to their teams than are gay athletes with medium or low human capital"(Anderson 12). As homosexuals are slowly accepted

The topic of race in sport, particularly African Americans in sport, has long been a controversial yet, widely discussed matter. Human and social issues are never easy subjects to discuss or debate, and racial differences tend to provoke very strong reactions. To begin, we will explore those whom claim that black athletes excel in sports as a result of their biological make up. Of all players in the NBA, more than 75% of them are black; of all players in the WNBA, more than 70% of them are black; of all players in the NFL, more than 65% of them are black (Hoenig, 2014). Evidently, black athletes make up a vast majority of these sports in the United States. Athletes must be of elite caliber to have the ability to play at this level, so this

Results show that participants with a background in sports have a greater advantage over their contenders with no familiarity about sports, in applying for sports related jobs. In the case of the transgender/transsexual participants, playing sports helps to deal with society’s biases against them. Transgender participants become comfortable playing sports, because they gain acceptance, and experience equal treatment from their team mates. They do not feel discriminated against because they are judged like others, thus based on their play, skills set and so on and not based their choices. For students and people doing activities requiring physical ability, sports contributed to achieving success in their various fields of endeavor. For example, archaeology students doing excavation work, and a geography student who has to climb, break and carry rocks. In life threatening situations, athletes have been able to apply knowledge gained in playing sports to save themselves. For instance some participants have suggested that, during the Calgary floods in 2013, they swam to safety. They said if they did not know how to swim, they probably will be dead by now. I noticed all participants wore the right apparel, gear and used equipment the proper way. The instructors and coaches were always around and insisted on doing everything rightly with the right tools. Some (60%) of the players had knowledge about first aid and knew exactly what to do in times emergencies. For example, in one of our volleyball matches, a participant twisted her ankle and she was giving first aid by another player and the coach. For the mum whose child has Down syndrome, her child was so indiscipline and had a very deviant and defiant behavior. The only time it is easier to control the child is

Homosexuality has nothing to do with whether or not one is a proficient athlete. However, due to predisposed perceptions of what it is to be an athlete and what it is to be homosexual, the words homosexual athlete and the athlete himself are not always met with the warmest of regards. The reason for this dissonance can be somewhat explained through the Role Congruity Theory. Role congruity is the social phenomenon that an individual is perceived more positively when their actions and behaviors are consistent with their gender (Lanter 2008). When action and gender are perceived to be inconsistent the perceptive party feels dissonance, which is can be displayed in a variety of ways ranging from avoidance to disgust or even anger. Athletes are big and strong, they are the men that the women swoon over and the men wish to be. Athletes are considered to be the ideal picture of what it means to society to be a man. When an athlete comes out as gay, especially a male athlete, it skews the entire picture for some; leaving them lost and questioning what exactly it means to be a man based on their learned societal constructs.

Race, gender, history and sexual orientation play major roles in women's participation in sport. Through out the history of women in sport, opportunity has increased. Many athletes and coaches are presented with the issue of sexual orientation throughout their sporting career. Regardless of sexual orientation, all female athletes are affected by heterosexism. One's racial or ethnicity background greatly shapes the experience they may have in sport. This essay explores the many issues women in sport face today.

Before the law of gay marriage passing in 2015, many LGBT people were scared to tell everyone that they are gay because they were afraid that people were going to ridicule them. Especially in the media, professional athletes were struggling to tell the whole world that they are gay. The media, of course, wants to know every detail in professional athletes’ lives, so everyone else in the world can hear about them. Because of the increase of media outlets, like Facebook and Twitter, more and more people are into social media, which makes it harder for the LGBT express themselves.