African American Stereotypes In Sports

The wide range of vocabulary associated with the identities of athletes of different races is quite surprising. It’s interesting to see how athletes are depicted in the eyes of other individuals on a daily basis. There were a great deal of people who felt the same as one another, because when brought together in our discussion course particular words stood out. Many of the words were direct correlations to stereotypes that are affiliated with certain races. For African American male athletes football, money, fast, and strong were the more commonly used words to describe them as a whole. Serena Williams and the sport of track identified African American females. While it was unanimous that Caucasian males were represented by the word baseball. Caucasian female athletes were depicted as tall and participants of the sport of volleyball. All the while Hispanic males and females were only to be described by the word soccer, and other words that most would find to be racist. The responses of the overall interview were outrageous, but for the most part I agree with the words that were most commonly used and do find them understandable. The words used to describe Hispanic athletes shocked me the most, because the words were things …show more content…
I could see where they are coming from, because athletes are often put on a pedestal and so many begin that they are human too. They just so happen to be talented in a certain sport/sporting event and that is a gift that they have no control over. Some athletes feel unwelcome and tend to only surround themselves with other athletes, because they feel as though they are out casted and judged. I think people stand back and hate from a distance and fail to realize that words do hurt and these athletes already go through a lot