Racial barriers in professional sports today (intro)

[1]

Racial Barriers in the world of professional sports today

Color Barriers in sports crossing the line:

 

This blog is being created for the purpose of discussing this topic and the issues relevant to it. This research is based off of a project on the historical African American athlete and figure; Jesse Owens.
Jesse Owens was one of the first African American athletes to come onto scene and start the movement towards ending racial stereotypes and barriers all around the world, but specifically in the United States. Owens competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which was a significant event because he was the first to break Hitler's idea of there being a "superior" race. Adolf Hitler was a "monster in society", as I've been referring to because of what I'm studying in my current writing course. With this, it showed how Hitler was using the Olympic games to show the world a relentless Nazi Germany. He and other government officials had high hopes that German athletes would dominate the games with victories, not a thought of an African American beating them because they were inferior. Owens beat this theory by winning four gold medals at the Olympics and forever changed the view on African American freedom especially in the United States. I say United States because this is where the Civil Rights era happened and also where laws such as the Emancipation Proclamation were put into place, which leads me into where I want to focus my research more. With this being said, I feel that I could easily research and relate to finding answers for this topic if I broke it down to looking at racial barriers in sports in just the United States alone. Along the way, I might come across other views from other people in different countries, but I want to learn just about United States professional sports for my purpose right now. I also want to be researching from before the time of Jesse Owens in the mid to late 1930's, to during his time, and to currently.  Along with this, the time period today and how stereotypes in sports are dealt with versus how bad they were before.
When I was working on this project about Jesse Owens, it piqued my interest to research more in depth about racial barriers in sports. Along with this, I got to thinking more about how I was interested to see how racial stereotypes in sports have changed over time, if they are more prevalent in certain sports than others, and the stereotypes that are still existing today that we should work towards demolishing. As I started to ask these questions, it launched me into wanting to research more and find the answers myself. I want to learn about this because I am an avid sports lover myself, but I also have always been bothered quite heavily with the racial stereotypes and barriers that I feel still always come up in society today and how it shouldn't be that way. With being around sports, this is the topic I chose to focus in depth more on because I could relate it to myself more and develop feelings on how things should be. In relation to this, I become very curious on how racial barriers in sports are an issue to be addressed and I am curious if I can be a person to make a difference and stop them somehow from continuing further. In addition, a final reason that this topic sparked my interest is because I came from a college before that was heavily dominated by African American and other ethnic backgrounds in their sports and rarely any white Americans. This really caught my attention because it made me think how times have really changed, and even at this particular university, the tables almost seemed to do a complete 180 turn because there were more athletes that were colored than whites, as well as a lot more international students versus residents of the United States. So, I am looking to research more about this topic to help further my knowledge on these ideas, answer my questions, and to be able to show people I might meet down the road the impact of racial barriers in sports truly do have. As you can see, there are many thoughts and questions that I have now, but I know through more research, I will start to get them answered.

With all of that being said, What is your opinion on color barriers in sports? Do you think that racial stereotypes still exist today in sports? If so, what sports do you see this the most? (Regarding just the professional realm, not amateur).

[1] Source: Jay Busbee, Nelson Mandela- 'Sport has the power to change the world' (Yahoo! Sports: NBC Sports Network, 2013).