African-American males look to professional sports superstars for their role models
The African-American athletes’ entire future rests upon a professional contract and nothing else matters.
Sports in the African-American community has always been viewed as a way out of the inner city and on to financial freedom.
Education doesn’t matter, world events doesn’t matter, the only thing that counts is that professional contract.
You can drive around any inner city in the country and you’ll see African-American young men throwing a football around on the city streets or playing basketball with some make-shift basketball hoop.
In the mornings, when young African Americans are on their way to school, instead of carrying their books and book bags they’re bringing footballs and basketballs to school because that’s their role model; books are just a requirement to get through the day.
There are very few role models in the inner cities.
You don’t grow up in the African-American community where you’re living next to lawyers or doctors or even business owners; those people just do not exist in most inner city African-American communities.
African-American males look to professional sports superstars for their role models, believing that if they work really hard playing football or basketball that they can have millions of dollars and all the fame and success that comes from being a professional athlete. Becoming a doctor or lawyer does not appeal to them or the so-called hip-hop generation of black males.
Everyone knows about Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant because those are the role models for African Americans. These athletic superstars are on TV all the time, they have big-time major endorsement deals and this lifestyle is so fascinating and appealing to a lot of African Americans who believe that with hard work playing their sport, they can also live the lifestyle of the rich and famous black athlete.
Education does not seem as important if you play sports but without it, what kind of future are you going to have if you don’t beat the odds of being the one in a million who makes it to the pros? African-American athletes are putting every ounce of the strength they have into sports without the thought that they may not make it to the pros. Even if they are a success in college many of them still leave a four year institution without a college degree.
The barber shop is an African-American gathering place in the inner city and the conversation is often about politics, community events and sports. Young black kids are going into the barber shops getting haircuts and are being asked questions about what they want to be when you grow up?
Before the young black man can answer the question the members of the barbershop will already know the answer, “you’re going to be a football player or you’re going to be a basketball superstar, right?”
It’s never about you’re going to grow up and get a law degree or medical degree or go off to a fancy college and get a high powered education to be whatever you want to be. The conversation is about sports and what the local teams are doing.
There is a huge cultural difference between blacks and whites when it comes to sports. Whites grow up with the mindset of going to college to get an education and to one day have a career, maybe as a lawyer or a doctor.
It is not the same conversation with blacks in their community. The conversation is all about music and fashion and becoming a sports star as their ticket out of the inner city. The conversation is rarely about using education as a means to success.
Being a superstar in sports and music is a one in a million shot at the big time but what happens to the millions who never make it, who didn’t do enough in school to have something to fall back on if they didn’t win first place on American Idol or were the number one draft pick for the Chicago Bulls, now that is the question.
It seems to me that too much time and energy is spent on sports and only viewing that as their ticket on the yellow brick road to a better life.
These young African-American ballplayers are focused on going to a major college program because it can help them in their belief of going pro. It’s all about going pro; getting that scholarship only gets them one step closer to becoming a professional athlete, it doesn’t bring them one step closer to getting a college degree.
I love sports but it’s a one in a million shot for African-American young men that need to focus on education to first, be able to become a businessman and to then become a leader and a role model in the African-American community.
