Barry son Portrayed by the Media!!

D.C. Council member Marion Barry son was issued a warrant for his arrest because he failed to show up in court. He was being charged for possession of five sandwich bags of Marijuana and vial three-quarter full of a liquid later determined to be PCP. hHe fled off on foot after jumping out of his first floor apartment the police said he refused to answer the door. The media portrayed him a s a bad image on his dad part because his father is involved into the state. I think that is was non-sense to make a whole article of somebody because of whom their father is ,this type of is committed every day. The media felt that it was important to show the other side of the father family.

Hated slur toward own race..

When I first saw the Fab 5 on espn 30 for 30 I was so happy to get the chance to watch how good that team was having five good freshmans on your team. They lead Michigan to the NCAA championship two years in a row. They also had alot more advertisement than any other school at that moment. One school that Michigan really hated was Duke University.
Jalen Rose once said that he hated Duke so much he would not help any Duke player out if they were burning in a fire. Jalen once made a terrible comment about Grant Hill. He said that "Duke only accept Unle Tom black players". I never knew that Jalen would say something like that towards another athlete especially another black athlete. I guess that it doesnt matter what type of race you are others are still going to say bad negative things about eachother. Everybody is out the get their own and isnt worried about what would happen to the next.

NBA and NFL lockout effect Black Kids?????

Watching professional basketball next year is going to be really challenging for me, well for right now it look like it will not be NBA basketball next year because of the lockout. I think that since the lockout have alreay happened in football that is going to set alot of african american athletes back. If you take a look at how many black athletes are playing professional sports it will be alot of them. Playing sports is a way for many black athletes to get out of the sitituation that they are in. Now that the lockout is in process its going to be very hard for many african american to find a job.
The kids thats have nothing to enjoy but watching sports and playing it. Now that the lockout is going to occur is many kids are not going to have sports to foward to watching.

What does Latino mean?

The term "latino" is something that has become more and more prevalent these days mostly because of not only what is going on in the political sphere due to the issue of illegal immigration, but because of the tremendous growth in this group's population over the past decade. As a matter of fact "Latinos" have surpassed blacks as the biggest minority group in America, and many politicians are looking to appeal to this group of voters for the upcoming elections. But the thing about "Latino" is that we still have not yet figured out how the classify this new group. Not all "latinos" are the same for one, because they come from a variety of countries which may include Mexico, the Domincan Republic, Panama and a whole list of others. Furthermore given the history of these places, "latino" is not a race although we seem to refer to it as some sort of racial category. In these countries just like in the U.S., there are whites, black, and there are also natives and people with a mixed background. So not only are these people different culturally, they are also a mixed bag racially but we have decided to group them together "as latino" because they come from a Spanish speaking country. The problem with this is that Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz are clearly not the same race, but the real question then becomes when they have children and grandchildren that are 3rd generation americans, that no longer speak spanish and know nothing of their country of origin, are those kids still latino, or are they now white and black? Are we later on going to start funneling latinos into the white or black groups?

This is the problem in the national discourse, talking about a group that has no real racial identity and juxtaposing that group along side actual racial groups. We seem to have this confusion with racial identification a lot these days in our society notably with bi-racial individuals, who are still considered black, but hey 80% of blacks in the country have white blood anyway (you know, the whole slavery thing), and also when talking about Muslims when we really mean Arabs and vice versa, here we confuse religion and race. Identity and heritage are important aspects of who someone is. They help us figure out who we are and how we fit in the grand scheme of things, but we've gone so far in our social construction of race that we don't even know who and what's what anymore. That is why this influx of latinos might be a good thing, it could force us to take a second look at our stringent racial classifications and help us move past these divisions that we've created, helping us realize that race and culture are not the same thing.... or at the very least we'll finally have a good soccer team. OLE OLE OLE OLE!!!!

Female Sports

Watching the women's world cup and the new season of the WNBA, I can't help but notice the lack of interest that female sports generate. When one looks at the crowd, the first thing that you notice is that lack of people in the stands and i am still trying to figure out why that is. At least for the WNBA the lack of interest is understandable because it is a fairly recent organization, as is most of female athletics, and you also are not likely to see any highlight reel dunks and crazy feats of athleticism. However for soccer, crazy athleticism is not normally what people are seeking. The women seem to be just as skilled as some of the men, there have been just as many goals, everything is real technical although obviously with a little less power in the execution of the moves but that still does not take away from the enjoyment of the game. Given that that is so, why do female sports attract so little attention, even among female viewers. Looking at the world cup, the buzz that was there for the male's tournament is just not there for the women and one wonders why. It still involves professional players participating an in event to represent their nation. In an event that sill pits country against country, you would think that level of interest would always be somewhat up there.

Is there something about women athletics that turn us off? We know the stereotypes associated with female athletes. Most people automatically seem to think that they are "butch lesbians" for some reason. Being physically strong and fit still seems to be something that is viewed as an exclusively male attribute, and women that seek to be that are somehow deemed to be masculine. To even have a shot at attracting male viewers, it seems that the women have to be out there playing in next to nothing or lingerie as they do with the lingerie football league, or better yet beach volleyball. It seems that no matter the level of skill, however good the games might be, people don't care to see women sports whether at the college or professional level. What is responsible for our aversion to female athletics? I still can't put my figure on what it is exactly.

Biracial... What am I?

In class we put on the board the stereotypes for black people/athletes, and the stereotypes for white people/athletes, but I started thinking, what's the stereotype for multi-racial athletes like myself? My mother is white and my father is black, therefore making me biracial. Should I have my own stereotypes for my race or do I automatically inherit the presumptions towards whites and blacks? It is becoming more common to see interacial relationships so I feel like our society will eventually categorize biracial athletes as well. I have had my own personal experience with racial stereotypes in sports. I played AAU basketball for six years. I was fortunate enough to have my mother support me at most of my games. It was interesting to me because after my games my mother would always have stories for me. Most of the time when people saw me walking out with my mother, they asked me if I was adopted. This would drive my mother crazy, but what was it that made people think I was adopted? Was it the fact that on the court I fullfilled more "black" stereotypes or is it that we just differ so much in our appearence? As a society we always speak in terms of white and black but what are we missing by not acknowledging people as biracial? Personally, I have never self-indentified as black or white. I see myself as both and not just one or the other. As our biracial populations grows, I think it's important that we recognize them as a different race, rather than continuing to simply categorize someone as black or white.

NCAA Basketball & Football will be the ONLY hot topics this year!!

With this NBA lockout starting June 30th, 2011 puts two of Americas major, most watched sports in danger of not being played this year. The lockouts are all over money, everything revolves around it! The rookies of both sports are not getting paid and the owners are trying to get paid more than they already have. This causes A major problem because people are at different levels and have different opinions on this. College sports will probably be the most watched this year if these lockouts continue. Baseball and Soccer are popular but Football is Americas sport. We will see the turnout of things in a few months with the lockouts but as of now everyone get ready for some COLLEGE FOOTBALL!!

First NFL... now NBA Lockout??

Why have the lockouts in the first place? I believe the whole look situation is very overrated and do not think that it is a very good idea at all. The whole thing is in place to make rich people richer. For the simple fact the National Football League and National Basketball Association, both of their broadcasting contracts are all coming to an end. Which they are trying to hold out to see how much they will be able to get from the different stations that will be trying to takeover broadcasting for both of them. Which they have even said that Comcast is looking to being a high bidder in all this. But for the simple fact that they are both in a lock out and are holding money away from player and even stop them from practicing I believe this is all ridiculous. Which the fans are even worried if they are even going to have a season this year so they could watch their team. I'm wondering how this is really coming to effect the economy and television productions with all this going on.

Sosa's Skin

One thing that really stuck out to me in one of our class discussions was the picture of Sammy Sosa and his "bleached" skin. This really interested me and I decided to try to find more research on why Sosa would want to change or in his words "lighten" his skin color. I read a bunch of articles about Sosa's case, but none of them ever got to the actual reasoning behind the skin change, except that Sosa was using a skin cream that he claimed to "lighten" his skin. In an article by ESPN Sosa says the cream may have bleached his skin as well, but none of the articles indicated why or what were Sosa's intentions. I tried to find reasoning that maybe, baseball, had some affect on Sosa's decision, but compared to other sports I feel like baseball is the one sport that is immune to the racial stereotypes in sports. In baseball there does not seem to be an assumption that one race is more dominant than any other at any position. It makes you wonder why Sosa would want to "lighten" his skin color. Sosa has established himself as a great baseball player, he's wealthy, what would possess him to make such a drastic alteration? Looking at Sosa alot people make the assumption that he is black, but Sosa is in fact Hispanic. He is from the Dominican Republic. The fact that Sosa is Hispanic, makes his transformation even more puzzling. In sports and even socially there is this perception of blacks verses whites. When it comes to athletics there are certain stereotypes that project "blacks" or African-Americans as more dominant. In society there are stereotypes that project whites as more dominant from and economic or educational standpoints. It is not certain exactly when Sosa started using the cream, but it started appearing after his retirement from baseball. Could that have some affect on his decision? He was known as a dominant athlete with obviously other ethnicity than white. Is it a coincidence that Sosa's skin changed after his athletic days were over? I feel like Sosa's case is an example of how the message that whites are better not only affects blacks but all races, but as a society we forget about the other races. There is a reason Sosa decided to alter his skin though, a reason we may never know.

Sportsmanship at Maryland

A recent article in the Washington Post described the hostile environment that's become too prevalent in American sports, with fans yelling obscenities and threatening fans of opposing teams, or even taking it a step further and resorting to violence -- I remember the Maryland v. Villanova basketball game last year at the Verizon Center when a Villanova fan threw a glass beer bottle on the court and was ejected from the stadium. I'm all for passionate fans -- trust me, I yell and scream with the best of them and bleed red, white, black and yellow. But this tradition of aggression that has been adopted at Maryland is beginning to really hurt our sports programs. For example, no family wants to bring their young children to a stadium chanting "asshole" at the unfortunate guy wearing a Duke shirt. Those families in turn will be less likely to buy season tickets to games, discouraging alumni relations and possible athletic sponsors. While I admittedly have yelled my share of curses at visiting teams, I think our athletics department needs an overhaul to pull Maryland away from the negative image its projecting and focus more on sportsmanship and begin supporting our teams in a positive manner.