When you look at the African
American culture in sport it is usually of struggles and making it out of bad
situations. The white side of course is based mostly off the idea that the
player was really talented and came from a nice place. This makes sport a very
essential for a black person to be able to go to college, if there is no sport
then college is most likely not an option.
In the movie Coach Carter there is
a team of mostly black kids with some white kids all living in the ghettos. The
message you get from the movie is that this is the life of the average black
kid playing a sport. Coach Carter tries to turn the team around by making them
get good grades so that they can have a chance to go to college. This is a nice
theme that shows school matters to a student athlete but it is also saying that
you cannot go to college unless you have both pieces to the puzzle. Due to the neighborhood
and school district there are not many kids who can do really good in school
and go to college for it. If you are a great ball player but cannot get the
grades then there is another problem. The message is that you cannot just be
smart or just be a good athlete in these types of school (predominantly black)
you have to have both to go to the college level. In white neighborhoods the
college rate may be higher due to the ability for normal students to be able to
attend college just by doing well in school. This puts a huge stress on being
good in sports for the poorer areas that black people live in. Being good in
sports is the only thing that could get you out of these poor areas so that
makes it a priority.
An example of a culture flip of
this idea is of the movie The Blind Side. The boy got moved to a white school
where he began to concentrate on school rather than football. He had the opportunity
to be comfortable with his new family and not worry about being the one who brings
his family out of poverty. This put less stress on sport and just allowed him
to play.
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