Discussion 1
Spend some time listening to the news, reading articles, doing research, etc. that illustrate race and racial diversity in sports.
Have major professional sports franchises eliminated racial barriers in participation in every aspect, including coaching positions and ownership?
I believe that sports in particular have done a pretty good job of breaking down racial barriers in recent years. I will use the NFL for my examples in this (and many more discussions). As it pertains to participation, I believe that most, if not all positions are earned and not dictated by skin color. The position that draws most of the racial "attention" is the quarterback position. Just this past season we had a black quarterback win a super bowl for the first time since 1988. This was a great accomplishment for anyone, black, white or other, but the fact that "a black quarterback" winning wasn't really mentioned may be the biggest accomplishment of that day. Some of the best and brightest young QB's in the NFL (Newton, Wilson, RG3 and Kaepernick) are all black and it really is not discussed at length (McMillan 2014). As far as coaching and ownership, things such as the Rooney Rule were implemented to help give minorities more opportunities as it requires teams to interview a minority candidate every time a coaching or GM position is available. Before the rule was put into effect in 2003 there had only been 6 minority head coaches in the NFL in more than 80 years. After the rule, there have been 12 hired (Associated press 2013). This is a step in the right direction although many would argue that the rule still needs more revisions. I think ownership has the farthest to go as there is currently only one minority owner, Shahid Khan, who owns the Jaguars (http://www.jaguars.com/team/management.html). In general I think that sports are heading in the right direction as society grows and becomes more and more accepting of different cultures and races.
Discussion 1...