In Black and White

In Black and White
Author: Kenneth L. Shropshire
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 1996
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0814780377

Confronts the pressing problems surrounding race and diversity in the front offices of the American sports industry From the years of the Negro Leagues in baseball up to today, when college basketball programs entice and then fail to educate young Black men, sports in America have long served as a barometer of the country’s racial climate. Just as Black employees are often barred from the upper echelons of corporate America, they are underrepresented in the front offices of the sports industry as well. In this compact volume, Kenneth L. Shropshire confronts prominent racial myths head-on, offering both a history of—and solutions for—the most pressing problems currently plaguing sports. Despite the fact that Black athletes represent a huge majority of the American sports industry, the majority of ownership stake in professional basketball, baseball, and football teams is still held by white owners. And yet, when confronted with programs intended to diversify their front offices, many teams resort to the familiar refrain of merit-based excuses: there simply aren't enough qualified Black candidates or they don't know how to network. These hollow excuses not only stigmatize and exclude Black employees, but directly contradict the important value Black candidates can bring to these roles. In the insular world of sports, where former players often move up to become coaches, managers, executives, and owners, Black candidates are eminently qualified. After decades of active involvement with their sport, they often bring to the table experiences more relevant to the Black players on their teams. As a central aspect of American life, the sports industry has a responsibility to be a leader in the fight for racial equality—a responsibility that has not yet been met. In Black and White takes the industry to task, revealing claims of colorblindness and reverse racism as self-serving deflection and scrutinizing professional and collegiate sports, sports agents, and owners alike. No mere critique, however, the volume looks optimistically forward, outlining strategies that will drive the sports industry toward greater racial equality, and help it lead the way for racial justice efforts throughout America.

Paradoxes of Youth and Sport

Paradoxes of Youth and Sport
Author: Margaret Gatz
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2002-03-21
Genre: Sports & Recreation
ISBN: 0791488896

Paradoxes of Youth and Sport explores emergent debates among scholars, youth advocates, and sport practitioners concerning the role of sport in the lives of young people in urban settings. Specialists from diverse fields examine how sport can address social ills and act as a resource in the lives of disadvantaged youth versus how sport itself harbors and fosters social problems and is dominated by unequal access, the obsession to win, and commercialization. This book places sport at the crossroads of inquiry and practice regarding critical issues of our time, including youth development; violence; racial, gender, and class inequities; and inter-group relations.

Sociological Abstracts

Sociological Abstracts
Author: Leo P. Chall
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1166
Release: 1994
Genre: Online databases
ISBN:

CSA Sociological Abstracts abstracts and indexes the international literature in sociology and related disciplines in the social and behavioral sciences. The database provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,800+ serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers.

Dialogue in Athletics

Dialogue in Athletics
Author: Jill Kochanek
Publisher:
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2021
Genre: Electronic dissertations
ISBN:

Inclusive spaces and relationships that honor athletes' unique identities are vital to ensure adaptive sport experiences (e.g., Kochanek & Erickson, 2019a, 2019b). And, the increasing diversity of sport stakeholders and rising visibility of athlete activism a part of the burgeoning Black Lives Matter movement have made visible how sport and social justice-related issues are inseparable (Cooky, 2017). While the current context demands that student-athletes and coaches possess critical capacities that support inclusion and contest discrimination, prevalent approaches to youth development through sport offer little guidance for how to proactively address broader social issues (e.g., racism), and empower youth participants and coaches/administrators as positive change agents. Kochanek and Erickson (2019a, 2019b) also identified the lack of developmental programs to help stakeholders develop such critical competencies and evaluation research that assesses the efficacy of such initiatives. One promising research-informed approach to social justice education in athletics is intergroup dialogue. Intergroup dialogue brings together individuals with different social identities to build their awareness and capacities to promote inclusion and social justice (Gurin, Nagda, & Zuniga, 2013). The purpose of this dissertation was to provide a preliminary evaluation of a (3-week) sport-specific program, Dialogue in Athletics, that used intergroup (race) dialogue to address this gap in youth sport research and practice. The author (who was program facilitator and evaluator) delivered and assessed the efficacy of Dialogue in Athletics within one interscholastic sports community context: Sowers School (pseudonym). A utilization-focused evaluation framework (Patton, 2011) guided the assessment of program efficacy among Sowers student-athlete and coaches/administrators. This framework required engaging key community decision-makers (i.e., intended users) with the aim of supporting use of the evaluation findings. Thus, the author worked collaboratively with intended users throughout this project to define evaluation purposes and ensure that evaluation met their informational/practical needs. The key purposes were to assess the impact of dialogue programming based on participants' improvements in relevant (intergroup) learning outcomes (i.e., satisfaction, awareness, affect, and skills transference), and processes (i.e., program features) salient to participants' learning experience. A quasi-experimental, mixed methods convergent evaluation design was used to collect data at the session-specific, pre/post-program, and follow-up time points. Results showed that student-athletes (n = 7) and coaches/administrators (n = 13) were satisfied with their program experience. Integrated analyses revealed that coaches/administrators showed more marked increases in critical awareness and skills development/transference relative to student-athletes who showed some, though less pronounced, gains following the program. Participants showed favorable affective shifts (i.e., increases in their valuing, confidence, and intentions to take dialogue-related action), with some variation between youth and adults. Participants emphasized the experiential process/practice of dialoguing with others in a supportive, small group setting as meaningful to their learning. Results on participants' program process showed various sources of discomfort, barriers to learning transference, and sources of support related to their learning. From these findings, the author presents a formative judgment of Dialogue in Athletics and programmatic/evaluation recommendations for Sowers. This manuscript concludes with a general discussion of this project's contribution to youth development through sport praxis.