your favorite sport would be nothing without black athletes
without the negro leagues we wouldn’t have night baseball or batting helmets or aggressive base stealing. black players made baseball fun, pushing against the rigidness since the 40s.
68% of the nfl is black, and lamar jackson and patrick mahomes, considered two of the most innovative qbs to play the game, are black. due to positional segregation, borne from the idea that black players are not as intelligent but rather just physically gifted, they are underrepresented at the decision making positions and overrepresented at defense and offensive line. they make up the backbone of your favorite team with less recognition and less money.
the nba is 74.4% black and its biggest stars, from lebron to giannas, are black. in the 1950s and 60s black payers took the rigid game and made it into the dynamic, exciting sport it is today. michael jordan, allen iverson, kareem abdul-jabbar, these are all players who transformed the game and our culture through it
the colored hockey league in the 1890s-1930s was the first hockey league to allow the goaltender to leave his feet to get the puck. in 1906, eddie martin, a black player, became the first to use a slapshot, perhaps the most iconic part of hockey. now, there are only 43 black nhlers.
in 2018, 12 out of the 23 players on the french nt that won the world cup, more than half, were black. a similar number of players in liverpool, who just won the premier league, are black. from pele to thierry henry to paul pogba to kylian mbappe, black players have redefined and revolutionized the sport.
black athletes make up the backbone of the sports industry and yet they are rarely represented in management, coaching, or ownership. we ask them to witness a black man get shot by the police and then go entertain them the next night. politics and sports have never been separate because the atheletes are human beings, black human beings with black families and black children. we cannot ask them to put this aside just because we want to be able to watch a game
