The Whiteout in Minnesota

Let's face it. We live in a world with many prejudices and biases. We like to think that things like racism and bigotry are a thing of the old world. Well they're not, in fact one could argue that we are still very racist and we let things like skin color give us our first impression of people. Whether it be a good impression or bad it still happens.

It is no different in sports there are still prejudices that drive a lot of people's opinions on different types of athletes. The fact that some people believe that since you were born black that you are endowed with athletic abilities from birth. This of course not taking into a count the countless amount of hours that some of these professional athletes have put in over the course of their careers. There is a certain instance in the NBA that happened recently that I think that I need to address. There was a group in Minnesota that is called the St. Paul's African American Leadership Council and what they were claiming was that the Minnesota Timberwolves starting roster consisted of too many white players. The Timberwolves are Minnesota's NBA franchise. And if anyone knows or even watches the NBA they would know that it is a black athlete dominated sport. So for a franchise to be called too white sounds a little strange. 

The claim by this organization was that since the Timberwolves had a predominate white fan base that they only signed white players for their team. They figured that since the majority of the people watching are white they could sell more seats to see white people play. This is an absurd statement because any sports fan knows that you put the best possible players on the floor ,and if they happen to be majority white or majority black so be it. This year the Timberwolves have a roster consisting of 15 players of those 10 are white and five are black. However last season their roster consisted of 8 black players and seven white players and they still sold 90.4% of their tickets. making them one of the two teams that ranked in the top 15 in attendance and not make the playoffs. This in fact disproving the notion that the people of Minnesota only would come out to see a white dominated team. 

Race when it comes to basketball is something that I have always found to be very interesting. I came from a high school that was about 90% white if not more. So you would always expect the majority of our sports teams were majority white. So whenever our basketball team or our football team would go out and play  a school with a heavy black population we would always hear things like " you will never be able to keep up with those kids" or " they are just to big and athletic for you guys." There were so many people that just immediately assumed that since the apposing team was majority black they were going to automatically be good. 

 I see now that racism in sports is at all levels from high school all the way up to the pros. However I know that racism has been around in sports and I believe it is here to stay. 

Cherner, Reid. "Civil Rights Leaders Question Timberwolves Racial Makeup." USA Today. Gannett, 29 Oct. 2012. Web. 27 Feb. 2013.

Goff, Brian. "Racism Behind Lack of NBA Interest?" The Sports Economist RSS. N.p., 24 Feb. 2011. Web. 27 Feb. 2013.

Manfred, Tony. "There's A Conspiracy Theory That The Minnesota Timberwolves Are Hoarding White Players To Boost Ticket Sales." Business Insider. N.p., 30 Oct. 2012. Web. 27 Feb. 2013.