[1]Jackie Robinson Day and how it came to be:
As I continue my research, I simply want to know about color barrier issues in sports, but along with researching that comes many of the athletes that helped to change these ideas. One of the most famous that I kept running across in my research was Jackie Robinson. As I sit here trying to gather info on this topic, this article helped further me in my research process in many ways. By reading it, I learned about how Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball and how it was a particularly daunting task for him. This being said because baseball was “America’s pastime” and was one of the country’s most loved sports, and part of that was the perceived “pureness” of the game. That’s what makes Robinson so important: He took on an incredible challenge in perhaps the toughest setting to do so, and he not only succeeded, but he excelled. There is no one really like Jackie Robison for America’s other favorite sports, for a number of reasons. But it still took great courage and strength to be the first black player in the NBA, NFL, NHL, the PGA and even NASCAR. It's important to reflect on athletes like Robinson because it goes to show how they not only had to deal with the pressure of being a professional athlete that performed in front of millions, but they also had to deal with the racial rules, and also comments/slurs that were being thrown their way as well. A key statistic to look at with this is that from 1945 (when Jackie Robinson first came into play) to 1995, the percentage of African Americans that played in the Major Leagues jumped from 2% to 19%. [2] It's almost as if Jackie Robinson was thrown a curve ball and he hit an out of the park homerun with it for himself and all the future African American baseball players.
Wow, crazy to see how far African American athletes have come in just a short span of time! They are now having holidays named after them because of the impact they made in their sport even with racial stereotypes still in effect.
This leads me to ask questions like how come there aren't holidays named after white athletes that made a historical impact in their sport during this time period as well though? It also led me to questions like, "Are African Americans more superior than other athletes because they have holidays named after them?". Yet, even while asking these questions, I am noticing that I am veering off the path of wanting to look at racial barriers in professional sports and am looking at the famous athletes that broke these barriers more so. While this is great, I feel that I want to research more in depth about the topic at large and get away from looking at the individual athletes right now and also maybe research more on how they broke these barriers more because I am still not satisfied with where I want to be yet, so I think it's time to bring another perspective to the table, this time I think a sports psychologists is the view that I need the most. Thus far, my answer to the question on racial barriers still being an issue in professional sports was answered by this article. It said from the evidence from research on similar studies is mixed, with some studies finding bias against blacks and others not. A bias, if it exists, may be diminishing and possibly disappearing, according to a study on fan voting for baseball all-star teams. This guided me in having a clearer answer to racial barriers in the present day, even though I still want to find additional research to back this up.
When reading this article, I also did some critical thinking on how credible it is. I decided that it was based on a few different things. I noticed how there were statistics given, along with the references and sources having an area they were cited in.
[1] Picture source. http://www.aim.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/jackie-robinson.jpg
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_sports
The link to follow up regarding this topic can be found at: http://www.sportsgrid.com/uncategorized/happy-jackie-robinson-day-lets-remember-the-6-closest-equivalents-to-jackie-in-other-sports/
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