Project 2: Race Analysis Coaches vs. Athletes Worksheet

Instructions

Pick a sports team—it can be a professional team or a college team—and take a look at the racial demographics of the athletes, coaches, and owners. Summarize your findings from the table, then answer the questions below. Make sure you tie your answers to the course and course content.

Objectives

·       Critically analyze the racial/ethnic demographics of sports teams.

·       Apply course concepts and ideas in a real-world context.

Fill out the Table

·       After selecting your team, navigate to their website and note the race of the players. Do this to the best of your ability based on the pictures on the website. Use your best guest.

·       Provide the total for each row and column. Tally the number and calculate the percentage for each group (put percentages in parentheses as modeled in the table).

·       you select a college team, there won’t be an owner so put N/A or leave these cells blank.

·       You can edit the table slightly as-needed by adding or deleted categories—keep this within reason to preserve the goals of the assignment.

What team did you pick?  _____________________

What’s the sport?  _____________________

1.     In the space provided, summarize the table above.

For the next few questions, use the Messner (2000) article and “Episode 51: Racialized Organizations, Politics, (and Sports) with Victor Ray” of The End of Sport Podcast as support for your answers.

2.     Thinking about the interpersonal level of social interaction (micro), explain your findings in the table. Do your findings make sense in the context of what we’ve been learning in class? To support your answer, use terminology, resources, and readings from the course.

3.     Thinking about the cultural level of social interaction (meso), explain your findings in the table. Do your findings make sense in the context of what we’ve been learning in class? To support your answer, use terminology, resources, and readings from the course.

4.     Thinking about the structural level of social interaction (macro), explain your findings in the table. Do your findings make sense in the context of what we’ve been learning in class? To support your answer, use terminology, resources, and readings from the course.

5.     Explain whether and how the sport and team you chose is an example of a racialized organization.

6.     What surprised you the most in completing this assignment?