As the years go by, our nation’s relations between a plethora of races continues to improve. Even as these relations improve, there are still some groups of people that continue to discriminate based on racial differences. Sometimes, this discrimination is done unintentionally just because it is something that hasn’t changed in society over many years. In the most recent years, we have seen multiple occasions of discrimination involved with law enforcement and politics, but one that doesn’t really stand out as much as these is discrimination in current day professional sports. Even in today’s day and age, we still witness a few instances of racial discrimination in large sports organizations such as the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), National Basketball Association (NBA), and the National Hockey League (NHL). According to Richard Lapchick from ABC News he writes “such acts tripled from 11 in 2015 to 31 in 2016” (Lapchick). In the united states alone, these discriminant acts have tripled throughout all of the professional sports platforms. Things such as mascots have also created a large discussion of whether or not some professional sports mascots and team names were considered racist or not. If these factors did not exist, then there would be no negative outbreaks or discussions happening trying to abolish these team names and mascots.
One event that did take over the news and media platforms recently was the whole incident with Colin Kaepernick in the NFL. Kaepernick decided to take a knee during the national anthem on multiple occasions to make a statement and to show his support for another cause. Kaepernick believed that people of color were not being treated well and the national anthem is about our nation being one as a population, but he believed that we were not living up to the lyrics of the anthem. He continually showed his support for the people of color who were being oppressed in the United States and for the people who were victims or potential victims of police brutality. Kaepernick’s actions have influenced athletes from the Pop Warner level all the way up to professional sports. It got to the point where High School Athletes would take a knee during their national anthems to stand up against racial slurs that they would hear from their teammates. This gesture that Kaepernick performed at some NFL games was meant to be a subtle gesture to silently protest police brutality towards minority groups. It eventually became a matter that was being brought up in the media and discussions all over the nation.
It has been a continuous question of whether or not having an Indian Mascot for professional sports teams was in the wrong or not. We have always known Indians to be a group of people who were native to the United States before almost everyone else and we kind of just came over and invaded their space. As time passed, we began to use this group of people and their history and associate their cultural practices of becoming warriors with our sports pep rallies and half times. In an article written by Cornel Pewewardy called Why Educators Should Not Ignore Indian Mascots, he says “Many school officials claim they are honoring Indians and insist their schools’ sponsored activities are not offensive but, rather, a compliment.” (Pewewardy 3-4). The people who make the decisions for these sports mascots don’ t think anything of it, but this could be affecting the people who actually practice those cultures. Even after these minority groups that are affected by these stereotypical propagandas speak out against this behavior, people still want to believe that they are doing the right thing and honoring these groups of minorities such as the Native Americans. The teams and owners think that they are honoring these groups by showing these groups in their war-like aggressive state. Little do they know that these things are sacred to groups such as the Native Americans. These are all things that the Native Americans do that are important to what they do and believe in for their culture. By using these team names and mascots, it’s almost as if we’re mocking them for practicing their own culture. Brian Clasdoosby, President of the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) says, “Specifically, rather than honoring Native peoples, these caricatures and stereotypes are harmful, perpetuate negative stereotypes of America’s first peoples, and contribute to a disregard for the personhood of Native peoples.” (Cladoosby). Cladoosby, being a part of this Native American society, experiences himself the disrespect and the negativity from these Native American mascots in professional sports.
The National Congress of American Indians as well as Native rights advocates have been pushing for almost 50 years to get the Washington NFL team to change the name of their team as well as their mascot. In the year 2015, there was a game between NFL’s Washington Redskins and the New York Giants and most of the Washington team’s fans were dressed in red face paint in support of the Washington NFL Team. Because of this, there were numerous protests against Washington’s team and their name throughout the season. Citizens were beginning to speak up and push others to agree with them that the team’s name and mascot was racist towards Native Americans. But these protests would not be happening if it wasn’t for these stereotypes being put out to the public in the first place, “Many of these negative repercussions occur as a result of exposure to stereotypic images in the popular media.” (Kim-Prieto 535). Even in some movies such as Mulan and Pocahontas, Asians and Native Americans are portrayed in a way of violence and related to criminal activity. The more we publically put out these types of media that continues to portray minorities in a stereotypical way, the more repercussions and outbreaks we are going to encounter.
There are many professional athletes that we know of who have had to deal with racial discrimination growing up but still in the end, became amazing successful athletes. One huge influence on many people is Jackie Robinson. Robinson was the first ever African American to play in Major League Baseball. When the Brooklyn Dodgers signed Robinson, this was the start of the end of racial segregation in professional baseball. Baseball players who were African American would no longer be segregated into their own “Negro League”. This was a huge deal because before this, no African American man has ever played with the white players on an actual MLB field. It wasn’t until after Robinson retired in 1956 that almost every Major League Baseball team had black players playing for them. Around this time, other professional sports had also begun allowing black athletes to join teams and play, “Jackie Robinson retired after the 1956 season. By that time, nearly every team in baseball had black players. Most pro teams in other sports had black players too.” (Scher). Robinson left a huge impact on all professional sports platforms by the time he was done. He had played in six world series, been awarded National League MVP, as well as Rookie of the year.
Some people do believe that racism at the professional sports level has been done with for a while now. That may be mostly true for a lot of the athletes at this level, but racial discrimination is still shown through the players’ actions as well as actions that have taken place in the past that are still practiced because that is how things have always been done. Nobody feels the need to change anything until they are literally forced to do so. A professor from Harvard named Andrei S. Markovits wrote an article called Sports Fans Across Borders where he compares the amount of violence rooted from racism in our country to other countries such as Europe. “In contrast to Europe, violence is a very marginal occurrence in present-day US sports culture, and open racism is practically taboo and socially sanctioned in the stands and among players.” (Markovits 18). Social scientists Philip Goodhart and Christopher Chataway have observed that most of the violence that happens in the US that has any connection to sports can be considered “celebratory violence”. This mostly just involves overly excited fans rioting through the streets celebrating their team’s victory. But in the past, this has included burning cars and garbage cans in the streets and fighting the police. It has been decided that these actions are completely random acts of destruction and do not target an opposing team’s fans.
Racism in current day American professional sports teams is not as occurring as it has been in the past. The movement with Jackie Robinson was a huge improvement and helped promote the idea of maybe allowing people of other races to join these professional sports teams. And soon after Robinson’s retirement, almost every professional sports team had followed suit. Even after the racial discrimination between players has seem to come to an end, we are still having long tiring debates about many of the mascots for multiple professional sports teams. Some examples of professional sports teams that have questionable team names and mascots are the Washington Redskins, Seattle Seahawks, Golden State Warriors, Cleveland Indians, and the Atlanta Braves. Groups such as the National Congress of American Indians and Native Rights advocates have been trying to get teams such as these to change their team name and mascots for years but continue to have no luck as the owners of these teams are not wanting to deal with the name change situation for as long as possible. As long as these team names and mascots remain, the longer we will see a negative response from these minority groups being affected such as the Native Americans. The negative responses are only a concern because these stereotypical propagandas are flooding the media and putting out a message this may not all be true. If we were to rid of these concerns or even tweak them a little bit, we could avoid