[1]As I research more on the topic of Black athletic superiority, I decided to look at a book for evidence besides other websites to get raw opinions and first hand accounts of how this topic is being handled. The book that I came across is called Taboo: Why Black athletes dominate Sports and why we're afraid to talk about it. This book was able to give me a lot of answers regarding the questions I have been asking. Not only did it talk about the basis of the concept of Black athletic superiority, but also how we as a society want to try and ignore that it is actually true and we need to acknowledge these athletes for who they truly are. The thing that I liked about this book was that the author faced this issue head-on and didn't let any political correctness or other bias opinion get in the way of what he wanted to share. From reading pieces of the book, it is clear to see that athleticism in African Americans comes from only the biology and culture of the athlete, but not from any genetic advantages. As I read on, this book got me thinking on how if there is such a thing as the "dumb Black jock", then how come so many of them are successful. For instance, look at Michael Jordan. No only was he a great athlete, but he also had the smarts to start his own shoe/clothing line as well to market himself and make more money than he was before just as an athlete. So, he doesn't fit into this stereotype at all. With many cases of these stereotypes happening, the big picture here is that African Americans should be recognized the same was as every other athlete and have the same privileges. As I continued reading this book, I learned that "Black athletic superiority" was a huge issue for along period of time. Besides genetic factors being a possible issue, researchers started to blame environmental factors as well. They started to say how the genetics of the athlete can't determine how well they perform but depending on the environment they grew up and trained in could play a role in how hard they try as an athlete as well in sports. Even with the inherited attributes, these atheltes still will fall into racial groupings unfortunately. The research showed that their were indeed differences physically among blacks and white as far as size and shape go, but this still didn't show a correlation with sports performance. As time went on and reasrech continued even during the twentieth century, the majority of people started to decline the idea of black athletic superiorirty. Altohough some questions were still rasied about some performaces such as the Olympics, where black atheltes would dominate. But, for the most part, black athtletes started to be left alone from this sterotype and were able to just compete in the professional sports world. As I became immersed in this topic, I thought that I had my focused topic: Black athletic superiority. As I started to research in depth about this, I soon realized that there wasn't enough research done to really make enough blog posts about it. So, it was back to the drawing board to come up with more research topics and questions to focus my research again.
An interesting spin that this takes is that even though African Americans are dominating the sports, the corporate leaders and coaches are all mainly in white hands still. This pushed me to want to research about a coaches perception on racial barriers in sports, so that is where my research headed to next. Over time; coaches, sport psychologists, trainers, doctors, and sport broadcasters all developed their own theories regarding the racial differences and their impact on sports., and I want to know if getting some of their perspectives could help in my opinion on the topic as well.
I chose to include this source because I feel that it is credible based on my evaluation of it. Primarily, it is a published book so I know the first hand source of where the info is coming from. By the fact that it was a book, I was to determine that it was useful for my research because I wanted more than just websites for info. Also, I say this because I determined it was credible by looking at what the reviews had to say about it and I found all good things written about it, including some from authors. In addition, I looked to see where it was published, which is Public Affairs Books from Perseus Books Group. In addition, I knew that this book was credible because it had a works cited area with all of the sources, as well as a copyright page to show it is legit. Overall, the texts purpose was to inform audiences about Black athletic superiority misconceptions and how we need to let black athletes have their voice heard. This helped me a lot with my purpose in turn because I really wanted to get additional knowledge on the black athletic superiority and how it related to color barriers in sports and where to move next and this pushed me to do so. The final way that I thought about this being a credible source was because the author's tone in quite direct and straight-forward about the topic. This affects the books usefulness as a source, especially for a researcher like me, because I know that they are giving me solid info and not writing just to fill space on a page. With all of this being said, I know to keep looking for credible sources similar to this one as I continue on.
Further reading can be done at: http://www.amazon.com/Taboo-Athletes-Dominate-Sports-Afraid/dp/158648026X#reader_158648026X
[1] Picture found at: http://www.africanbookstore.net/prodimages/taboo_lg.jpg
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