Racial Discrimination in Modern Sports

Pittsburg Steelers coach Mike Tomlin (above) is one of a very few African American coaches in the NFL.

Racial inequality and discrimination has existed in professional sports for a very long time. Most notably was the banning of African Americans from Major League Baseball. It wasn’t until the year 1947, when Jackie Robinson broke the “color barrier”, did the owners of professional baseball organizations start signing African American baseball players to major league contracts (it should be noted that a few African Americans did play in the MLB during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, but they were quickly released as other teams refused to play against any team that allowed African Americans to play). Due to the intensely segregated society that was prevalent in America during the 1940s, these ball players were often harshly criticized by opposing players, fans, owners, and at times, their own teammates. Eventually, the American public started to relinquish some of their stereotypes towards black ball players and started to accept them into their games. In today’s society, one will have a hard time believing that the sports world used to be so racially intolerant as more African Americans and foreign athletes made their way into professional sports. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are treated as equals.

The examples used above are advertent uses of discrimination, but many of the racial discrimination found in sports today can be considered inadvertent thus making it difficult to identify possible discrimination. For example, in professional baseball, African American players are more likely to play one of the three outfield positions, which are considered to be the “athletic” positions in baseball and a very low number of African Americans are expected to play pitcher or catcher, which are consider to be the “thinking” positions in baseball. This can be referred to as “stacking”, which is the position segregation by race or ethnicity in team sports. This is not only found in baseball. In professional football, traditionally white players are expected to be quarterbacks and this position is usually considered to be the team’s “leader”. Segregation also seems to be a common trend when examining the coaches for professional sports teams. Coaches in the NFL, NBA, and MLB are heavily occupied by Caucasians despite a large number of African Americans and Latinos participation within these organizations. The message this sends society can be problematic. Will African American and other minority athletes not aspire to become managers or coaches? Are minority players expected to assume their roles as just “players” and not “leaders”? These are interesting questions to ask oneself while watching a professional sporting event.