Peace and Blessings Family,
Has There Ever Been an All Black Roster for a Professional Sports Team?
What brought this question to mind, was the fact that it seemed like there was only one white person on the Miami Heat Roster, if no mistake. That of course, doesn't mean all the other team members are black. I don't even know if all but one is white. I'm actually asking, but it looked like that briefly watching them play recently.
In an effort to answer my own question, i did a brief search, and found the following journal article written in 1997. It's very interesting, but it did not answer my question. In fact, i didn't find the answer, and am hoping yall can tell me. Is Miami Heat as close as it's come, or am i wrong about their roster?
Has There Ever Been an All Black Roster for a Professional Sports Team?
Racial Composition of NBA, NFL, and MLB Teams and Racial Composition of Franchise Cities.
Journal article by Wilbert M. Leonard II; Journal of Sport Behavior, Vol. 20, 1997
The founding of the major professional sport leagues of baseball, football, and basketball occupy centrally significant portions of the U.S. sports history. Although their ages vary--baseball is the eldest at nearly 125 years old, basketball is the youngest at 50, and football is 75--they all commenced as all-white enclaves. From being lily white in player composition at their conception, today African-Americans comprise approximately 79% of NBA rosters, 65% of NFL line ups, and 18% of MLB teams (about 18 % of MLB players are Hispanic). Obviously there has been a skyrocketing in African-American participation (Lapchick & Benedict, 1994).
Today, racism appears to take a variety of forms, and even sportscasters, hall-of-fame selection committees, sport executives, and owners have been judged racially bigoted (Coakley, 1994). Three contemporary aspects of sport that appear to be racially biased surround (a) position allocation, (b) performance differentials, and (c) reward and authority structures (Leonard, 1993).
The NBA is segregated against blacks. Not just because so few black fans can afford to attend the games . . . black players are kept out of the NBA solely on account of their color. There is a city-by-city quota system. The result is that the whiter the city the whiter the team . . . The coaches don't pick the team; the market does. (p. 56).
Myers (1991) reported that teams such as Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and San Antonio- with large proportions of whites-typically have "whiter" rosters than teams such as Detroit, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C.-with smaller proportions of whites. In short, using the average number of African-Americans on NBA teams as the norm, a direct correlation between the "blackness" of the franchise city and the "blackness" of the team existed. Although not directly related to the present inquiry, Schollaert and Smith (1987) found that the racial composition of NBA teams did not affect live attendance.
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Destee
Has There Ever Been an All Black Roster for a Professional Sports Team?
What brought this question to mind, was the fact that it seemed like there was only one white person on the Miami Heat Roster, if no mistake. That of course, doesn't mean all the other team members are black. I don't even know if all but one is white. I'm actually asking, but it looked like that briefly watching them play recently.
In an effort to answer my own question, i did a brief search, and found the following journal article written in 1997. It's very interesting, but it did not answer my question. In fact, i didn't find the answer, and am hoping yall can tell me. Is Miami Heat as close as it's come, or am i wrong about their roster?
Has There Ever Been an All Black Roster for a Professional Sports Team?
Racial Composition of NBA, NFL, and MLB Teams and Racial Composition of Franchise Cities.
Journal article by Wilbert M. Leonard II; Journal of Sport Behavior, Vol. 20, 1997
The founding of the major professional sport leagues of baseball, football, and basketball occupy centrally significant portions of the U.S. sports history. Although their ages vary--baseball is the eldest at nearly 125 years old, basketball is the youngest at 50, and football is 75--they all commenced as all-white enclaves. From being lily white in player composition at their conception, today African-Americans comprise approximately 79% of NBA rosters, 65% of NFL line ups, and 18% of MLB teams (about 18 % of MLB players are Hispanic). Obviously there has been a skyrocketing in African-American participation (Lapchick & Benedict, 1994).
Today, racism appears to take a variety of forms, and even sportscasters, hall-of-fame selection committees, sport executives, and owners have been judged racially bigoted (Coakley, 1994). Three contemporary aspects of sport that appear to be racially biased surround (a) position allocation, (b) performance differentials, and (c) reward and authority structures (Leonard, 1993).
The NBA is segregated against blacks. Not just because so few black fans can afford to attend the games . . . black players are kept out of the NBA solely on account of their color. There is a city-by-city quota system. The result is that the whiter the city the whiter the team . . . The coaches don't pick the team; the market does. (p. 56).
Myers (1991) reported that teams such as Phoenix, Salt Lake City, and San Antonio- with large proportions of whites-typically have "whiter" rosters than teams such as Detroit, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C.-with smaller proportions of whites. In short, using the average number of African-Americans on NBA teams as the norm, a direct correlation between the "blackness" of the franchise city and the "blackness" of the team existed. Although not directly related to the present inquiry, Schollaert and Smith (1987) found that the racial composition of NBA teams did not affect live attendance.
Click Here To Read More
Destee