[1]Overall, through this research process, I was able to gather a lot of useful knowledge needed for this project, and also knowledge I can use down the road in life as well. As I reflect on this process, I think about my journey of where I started and where I am now. When I first started this project, I was talking about the great athlete Jesse Owens and how he started the trend of breaking racial color barriers, so I started to research what race and sports looked like in the broad spectrum of things. By this, I originally just started looking at some articles to get a basis on racial barriers in sports and where I was heading. Along with this, I looked at YouTube videos to get others opinions on this topic, not solely just my opinion and view on it to deepen my understanding even further by listening to others. , I looked at different perspective of people to fill in the missing puzzle pieces and to once again assist in gaining more knowledge on this topic, but also to have a more current and present day view.
While looking at these, this led to other topics such as the discrimination and unfair treatment of these athletes in sports too. As I was researching these topics, a common issue that kept coming up was this topic of "Black athletic superiority". I wanted to learn more about this misconception, so I started to dig deeper in learning about this and how it was effective to African American athletes. Then, I started to narrow it down and began my focused knowledge to just looking at the historical African American athletes that took part in breaking color barriers over the years versus every single African American athlete as a whole, which would take way too much time. Of these, I started to pinpoint a few that I thought had made the most impact so I picked Jackie Robinson. However, as interesting as he was, I still wasn't getting the answers that I needed for my topic. So, I decided to get other people's views on this topic, in which I picked a Sports Psychologist and coaches of professional sports. By doing this, I was able to learn in depth more about my topic because I saw the trends that they had studied which were about the changes in racial barriers over the years, which was what I was looking for the entire time. As I started to become more engaged in this topic, the psychologists view made me realize that I need to look at not only racial barriers, but also the gender barriers that came up in sports as well. I came up with this thought because I had picked two athletes from the list I was studying, as I mentioned earlier, and without even realizing it at first, I had picked two different genders, which I felt that this was a good launching pad into my research. I say this because I now was looking at the racial and gender specific barriers that came up in sports over the years and how they had changed over time. This also gave me an inside look to how males and females took on different roles in sports and each faced different trials, regardless of their skin color. So, I looked more in depth at this topic and came a color equality law called Title IX. I then spent a lot of time and research on this topic because this was all about my topic and I felt that it was leading me closer and closer to my focused idea that I wanted. As I was getting answers to these two topics of gender and race in sports, I knew that I still wasn't satisfied at arriving at my final focus of interest. So, as I sat there with all of the research that I had already done, I asked the question, "What if I were to combine both of the topics and see what kind of answers I can get?". So, I started to research on prosperous African American female athletes over the years. When doing this, the one that kept popping up over and over again wasSerena and Venus Williams Serena was a famous professional tennis player that was one the first black athlete to cross the color line of international tennis. She has become one of the first people of color to win a Grand Slam title and many other major titles. As I was researching, this is what really piqued my interest since I am a tennis player myself. As I looked more and more at Venus and Serena, their story is what got me thinking. I had read that they had come from a really poor neighborhood called Compton. TA-DA. From reading this, I knew that I wanted to focus my topic on how tennis is regarded as a "rich, white person" sport and how this misconception came to be and if there can be a way to break it. From this, I decided to focus my topic on the racial, gender, and socioeconomic factors that play a part in sports and then narrow it down to just tennis alone and get answers from that.
You ask, "Where am I now?", while I ask myself this same question. As this topic is very intriguing to me, it has prompted me to want to keep taking steps of research on it because I want to see if I can somehow be the person to change this misconception. Also, besides how I can change things, I wonder who else is at the table that can help to end these stereotypes as well. As I was thinking about this, I thought about how this can affect so many others too. This can include: African American athletes themselves for generations to come.
The questions I would ask further if I still did even more research on this would be: "Can there be a way to stop this misconception from happening?" and if so, "How exactly can we do so?".
All in all, I feel that this project opened my eyes and taught me more than I never knew before on barriers in sports and how they can be eliminated. "Will we ever get to a place where any one regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, religion can go show their passion for a sport without a judgment being cast upon them?".
As I did research more about this topic, I feel like I successfully reached my goals of helping to further my knowledge on racial barriers in sports, 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.
Thanks for reading my blog. I hope you enjoyed it!
[1] Picture. http://www.bigbeat.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/black-and-white-handshake-c-e1353325910300.jpg
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