<p>haha, boo hoo here come the PC police, wo00oop woo000p</p>
<p>How was that being PC? I was being candid.</p>
<p>"You have to have money to play tennis. You can't just pick up a game anywhere. Most inner-city kids can't just get lessons or go to tennis academies like that." <-- This is okay, but challenging it isn't?</p>
<p>here come the denial police, wooo000oop wooo000oop</p>
<p>do i sound like homer simpson, much?</p>
<p>You sound like someone who is frustrating me, so yes! :). I'll take your 'Homer' comments with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>k so back to the subject about how all black people live in NYC and only have access to those caged bball courts.</p>
<p>discuss</p>
<p>Its the truth.</p>
<p>i think tennis is just a lot harder to start playing out of nowhere. even today, its definetely less accesable to anyone of any color. you dont find tennis courts everywhere you go like basketball courts, or somewhere to run, or fields to play field sports. and tennis eqiupment is so expensive compared to other sports.</p>
<p>but in the US, its even less accesible to blacks and hispanics as a whole since there are more of these two races in poverty. and even if minorities aren't poor, the cultural aspect has a lot to do with it. before our generation, the sports that were the hardest to have access to were golf and tennis because a golf course it so huge and requires so much money to keep and tennis courts also cost a lot of money to build. not to mention the rich white people kept blacks out. so blacks played sports like basketball because 10 people can play at once with a ball that didnt cost a lot. its become sort of a cultural sport. just like a lot mexicans play futbol (soccer). indians cricket. english rugby along with others. tennis just isnt really what blacks are pushed to play.</p>
<p>most pro players have families with a considerable amount of money. but not all of them. and since i'm Puerto Rican i'd like to point out that besides Spaniards and some Argentines, there aren't a lot of other Hispanics that are pro. some of the richest hispanic families live in argentina and spain, and its no coincidence that almost all the hispanic pro tennis players are from these two countries. and a lot of them have the more white/european hispanic look.</p>
<p>anyway just food for thought.</p>
<p>
[quote]
whites dominate every sport out there. 90% of the medals won at the Olympics are won by white athletes.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Damn that Jesse Owens.</p>
<p>Boris Kodjoe, the famous actor, was supposed to be pro, but he had back injuries, but he was pretty good</p>
<p>There are probably tons of black males who are athletically gifted enough to play sports like tennis and lacrosse. These sports, however, are often automatically labelled as preppy, white sports. These preconceived notions probably keep a lot of potentially talanted black males from participating in these activities.</p>
<p>Sorry if I offended any overly politically correct CC'ers. Let me rephrase my statement seeing that CC'ers seem to get offended by comments that are not meant to be racist, even if they are correct. I originally wrote:
"You have to have money to play tennis. You can't just pick up a game anywhere. Most inner-city kids can't just get lessons or go to tennis academies like that."</p>
<p>NEW VERSION acceptable for filmxoxo17:
"Since African-Americans, statistically speaking, are less economically advantaged than caucasians, it is harder to get a large amount of talented African American athletes involved in this costly sport. Although there are, of course, wealthy African Americans who do not live in large urban areas, they are a minority among the African American population. It's difficult for anyone without a comfortable amount of money to get involved in this sport because the training is expensive, and it's less accessible than sports like football and basketball."</p>
<p>Happy now?</p>
<p>I don't get why people care so much about what race people are who play certain sports. Can't everyone get over race as the first thing you think about in people?</p>
<p>"I don't get why people care so much about what race people are who play certain sports. Can't everyone get over race as the first thing you think about in people?"</p>
<p>No, but I try.</p>
<p>Race comes first, gender comes second, look comes the third, everything else comes later.</p>
<p>I think this is primarily an economic issue more than anything, although certain factors definitely weigh in.</p>
<p>Tennis, golf and many sports are EXPENSIVE. you must pay for court time, green fees etc. and especially for lessons, lessons and more lessons, camps etc. So to the extent you want to equate race with economics, which would certainly not be completely unfair, it then also becomes a race issue I suppose. To this end, tennis and, again, golf for that matter are your traditional country club sports (again money and race issues play in).</p>
<p>The Williams sisters and Arthur Ashe come to mind as exceptions to the rule in tennis, as is Tiger in golf. Others are few in far between. At the other end of the spectrum you don't find many who are born with a silver spoon who turn to boxing as a sport of choice.</p>
<p>This goes on also in baseball, for example. Youth baseball is expensive. A bat can be $200+. Youth baseball is now dominated by travel/club teams and those costs and lessons, camps etc. The NCAA adds to this with drastic limits on scholarships in baseball and by requiring that a college baseball player (unlike football or basketball) cannot be drafted until completing their junior year. So a kid in need of money may not want to wait that long and baseball is not what they will pursue. There are no 18 year old phenoms in baseball getting zillion dollar shoe deals etc. as there is in basketball for instance. Kids see that and think some day it can be them and travel that path, which unfortunately leads to nowhere but for just a few.</p>
<p>There are also undeniable cultural, regional and other differences which connect to the popularity or lack thereof of a given sport. I don't think NASCAR is huge in Manhattan, but is huge in the south. I don't suppose hockey leagues are big in San Diego, but in Minnesota there's no trouble finding 'em. </p>
<p>At the bottom line of who plays what, race is an indirect element to the more immediate issue of economics IMO and cultural, regional issues play a large part too.</p>
<p>Hey Untitled....Thanks for helping us to realize how ignorant the south still is!</p>
<p>My dad was raised in the "inner-city" and poor however he picked up tennis and loved it. Tennis helped to earn him a scholarship to Princeton and he is now what is known as the "black middle class" it's seems as though many of you would not even believe it ever exists. Although I can somewhat understand if you are barely able to have any direct experiences with black people and your only impression of them is through the media.
I (being African-American myself) was raised in a predominately white environment and recieved a lot of my info from the media. Noticing the negative images the media portrays of black people I had to tell myself this can be true...we can't be all gang bangers and crackheads.
I went on to attend a historically black university in a sense to prove to myself that there is an intelligent, progressive population of black youth.</p>
<p>If I had to go through all of this just to have a better understanding of my own culture, I can't imagine the hard time that others must have!</p>
<p>He was being sarcastic, although I've found that the huge majority of people do think of race first. That's why we have affirmative action, college ethnicity polls, the KKK, and topics posted like this one.</p>
<p>eadams: I'm not trying to say that there aren't successful black people out there with enough money/motivation to start playing tennis, but as a whole, the African American population is more socioeconomically disadvantaged than whites. Even the NAACP acknowledges that blacks are more disadvantaged than whites. Is this black people's fault? Probably not. It's just a reason for this trend, nothing against blacks.</p>
<p>I understand there is nothing against blacks, I also understand that African-Americans in this country are disadvantaged in a myriad of ways. </p>
<p>I just want to get away from the thought where most assume that the average black person is poor and in the city.
There is a black upper and middle class....why don't they play pro tennis???? </p>
<p>Who knows maybe many go after what they might percieve as more lucrative ventures, tennis hadn't been a very lucrative sport until recently. I personally like tennis but I never had enough interest to consider it too seriously.</p>
<p>Also I had hoped Untitled was joking however it cant be ignored that many people do have this mindset.</p>
<p>Also I had hoped Untitled was joking however it cant be ignored that many people do have this mindset.</p>
<p>Almost everyone has this mindset. Why do you think people ask how "diverse" colleges are? Because they believe that there are inherent differences among the races. Why do colleges take ethnicity polls? Because they believe there is something inherently different about races. Why does the KKK hate non-whites? Because they believe that races are inherently different and that the white race has superior qualities. Why is there race-based affirmative action as opposed to need-based affirmative action? Because many out there believe there is something intrinsically different about "underrepresented minorities".</p>
<p>angela haynes</p>