Throughout the beginning, sports were only for the wealthy, or higher social class, white men to participate in. Women, lower class citizens and those of a different race than Caucasian were excluded from participating. As time progressed women became included but had to continue to act and look like women when doing so, those of a different race became included as well but for a while were expected to play within their race and were still not expected to participate with the white men. While todays this is no longer true, we continue to see aspects of social class and social stratification impacting sports. We begin to see stereotypes emerge within sport, the idea that certain sports are for certain individuals, examples being basketball
