Bryant 1
Unique Bryant
Mr. Gentry
English Comp 2
26 February 2019
What is the Importance of Racial Controversy in Sports?
Sports have always been kind of a big deal in my family. From the time I was little,
almost every member of my family had been in at least one sport or coached a sport within their
lives. If they did neither of those things, they sure did watch sports on the television. Being
around that type of environment at young age and seeing my friends in small tyke sports made
me want to be an athlete even more. I wanted to wait till I was old enough for school sports
though because I knew only the best of the bunch were chosen. I was mostly in volleyball and
cheerleading. My family pushed my siblings and I to do all the sports we wanted, but I did not
get why most of the time. Now that I am older, I kind of understand it better. Not everyone in my
family had the chance to do the things we can do now, especially some of my older family
members. They allowed us and pushed us to do the things we wanted because they understood
the value and wanted us to experience what they could not. They knew it could have positive
affects towards our lives as we got older. Racial controversy in sports is a relevant topic because
it goes deeper than just African Americans being shunned and profiled away from being able to
participate in sports. This has changed tremendously, and the world has been shaped by sports
but the discrimination still sometimes happens. I think this article would appeal to families that
experience similar things or children that may want to talk their parents or guardian into letting
them get into sports. This can even be interesting to someone who studies this type of thing as
well.
Bryant 2
For this essay, I used books and different articles, and some personal
anecdotes/knowledge. I found the books to be more relevant because they are straighter forward.
I tried to keep my paper quite equal and tried not to make it all about the controversy with only
African Americans because they were not the only ones that suffered from it. Though I tried to
keep it well rounded, most of the books and articles I found were mostly focused around the
African American race because it had the greatest deal of controversy. In this essay, I will speak
about the controversy with first all African Americans, Then I will go into other races which will
include the Olympics as well. To finish, I will talk about how Caucasian people felt in dealing
with this issue at well.
The fist group of scholars that explain the controversy in race and sports, mostly dealing
with African Americans. Stephen Meyer’s book includes great insight on what and how sports
