Race & Ethnicity- Are they important?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jimmie-lee-solomon/african-american-baseball-players_b_4923689.html​

          In class on November 11th, we covered the topic of race and ethnicity. First, we learned that today all around the United States, racial minorities continue to face systematic and pervasive discrimination. Discrimination is defined as treating someone differently from others. We can directly connect sport and racial issues in society because they reflect each other. Prior to the 1950’s, African Americans faced a segregated sport system. In the article, “Percentage of Major League African-American Players Has Fallen Drastically,” written by former MLB Executive, Jimmie Lee Solomon, he states that it was not until 1947 that the color barrier in the MLB was broken. Famous baseball player, Jackie Robinson, was the individual that broke the barrier and ended the discrimination and segregation that was very much alive at that time. Second, we learned that African American men and women are underrepresented in most sports. We learned that the number of African Americans in the MLB has decreased significantly since 1975 by 15%! In the article, Solomon supports this fact in saying that since Jackie Robinson, Ernie Banks, Willie Mays, and other great African American players with Hall of Fame talent, the number of African Americans playing the game has decreased over the past three decades. In the mid 1970’s, the MLB was made up of 27% African Americans and today they represent 8.5%. Third, we learned that from these statistics comes reasoning for why the numbers are dropping. We learned that such reasons can include power imbalance, family income, medical insurance, etc. In the article, putting an emphasis on baseball, Solomon explains that African Americans are underrepresented for various reasons. These reasons include the cost of playing baseball, increasing competition in football and basketball, lack of mentor, MLB’s focus on Latin American recruiting, and the national marketing of the game of baseball. He says that all these factors not only push away potential players but they are mostly rejected from the game. From the reasoning and statistics above, it is clear that race and ethnicity are very important factors in the way sports are viewed in relation to society.