From: daj@reef.cis.ufl.edu (David A. Johns)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american
Subject: Black athletes
Date: 16 Aug 92 13:11:21 GMT
Article-I.D.: uflorida.36748
Organization: Univ. of Florida CIS Dept.

Another of local columnist Bill Maxwell's columns.  This is from the
Gainesville Sun, 8/15/92.

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        Most African Americans place too much emphasis on sports

        Football practice begins soon, and Kenny, an 18-year-old Duval
        County high school senior, has a dream.

        He carries 228 pounds of sculpted muscle on a 6-foot-4 frame,
        benchpresses 520 pounds, and runs a 4.6 in the 40-yard dash.
        Each day, he works out for two hours.  Kenny, who's black, may
        very well be one of the best receivers in his school's
        football district.  And rumor has it that a handful of college
        scouts will follow his play this season.

        His immediate goal -- with his parents' urging -- is to win an
        athletic scholarship to a Division I school.  Ultimately, he
        wants to become a rich and famous professional football
        player.

        Many observers of African-American culture, such as University
        of California sociology professor Harry Edwards, belive that
        athletes like Kenny and their parents place too much emphasis
        on sports.

        "The almost universal perception that sport ... offers African
        Americans unique socioeconomic and career advancement
        opportunities has prompted black parents to be four times more
        likely than white parents to view their children's
        participation in sport not as mere recreation but as a start
        down the road to a professional sports career," Edwards writes
        in the August issue of "Ebony" magazine.

        "Similarly," he adds, "black parents are more likely than
        white parents to see their children's sports participation as
        a potential economic mobility vehicle for the entire family."

        Also a staff consultant for the San Francisco 49ers and the
        Golden State Warriors, Edwards seays that blacks became
        obsessed with sports careers shortly after Jackie Robinson
        integrated major league baseball in 1947.  Since then,
        hundreds of thousands of would-be athletes have pinned all
        their hopes on becoming pros.

        Black families, Edwards argues, daydream about sports mainly
        because of the excessive media coverage of black
        professionals' lavish lifestyles and the red-carpet treatment
        of college athletes.  Such treatment and the fact that blacks
        channel their energies into sports account for the
        disporportinately high number of black athletes on Division I
        teams nationwide.

        A 1991 Ntional Collegiate Athletic Association survey showed,
        for example, that while only 6.9 percent of the sudents at the
        University of California at Berkeley were black, 43.5 percent
        of the football players and 53.3 percent of the basketball
        players were black.

        What makes these figures ugly, Edwards contends, is that many
        of these athletes were admitted with test scores and high
        school grade-point averages far below those of regularly
        admitted black students.  In fact, according to another
        national survey, many otherwise qualified black students are
        routinely refused admission to make room for black athletes.

        Most sports researchers agree with Edwards that this
        preoccupation harms many black youngsters and their culture in
        general.

        A counselor at Florida State University, for instance, reports
        that he's advised many black athletes who were so serious
        about their games that they couldn't mature personally and
        socially.  If such students don't enjoy successful sports
        careers, they probably will fail also as citizens, the
        counselor says.

        Edwards is more candid.  Because so many naturally competitive
        black teens are sports-minded, he claims that "black society
        is diminished in its ability to motivate ... requisite numbers
        of capable black youths to fulfill extremely important roles
        in institutions outside of sports -- in medicine, education,
        law, the media, public service, and so forth."

        What, then, are the odds that teens like Kenny will land in
        the pro ranks?

        The average black child has a better chance of becoming a
        brain surgeon than becoming a pro athlete, writes Jon Huer, a
        sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at
        Wilmington.  In basketball, where blacks dominate, for
        example, the average black high school athlete has a 1 in
        975,000 chance of becoming a pro, a 1 in 153,000 in football,
        and a 1 in 333,000 in major league baseball, Huer points out.

        Despite these odds, once in college, about 50 percent of these
        athletes expect to play professionally, Huer says.  In
        reality, only 3 percent fulfill their dreams.

        Should African Americans simply de-emphasize sports?  Some
        educators think so.  But most leaders, such as Edwards and
        former tennis great Arthur Ashe, want to see black interests
        in sports balanced between the playing field and the front
        office, thus creating genuine, broad-based power.

        "We as African Americans willl continue our cultural emphasis
        on sports participation, and we will make our mark in new
        areas," Ashe wrote recently.  "The most important event would
        be black ownership of professional franchises or companies
        which distribute sports programs around the globe.  That may
        well occur before the year 2000.  Jackie Robinson would
        approve and applaud."

        <end>

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David