Economic Discrimination in Professional Sports
Over the past twenty-five years many believe that sports has reached equality. There are still many that believe that discrimination based on race is still a problem in sports. This article studies this issue using numbers to compare whether there is still discrimination in salary, position, or entry barriers to get onto a team.Up to date evidence has been collected and presented. From this information it was concluded that race discrimination in professional sports does exist. In order to find out the percentage of blacks to whites on sports teams they simply calculated the numbers and amounts of players. In the 1954 season about 7.5% of the major league baseball players were black. By 1966, nearly twenty-five percent of them were black. In basketball between the years of 1954 and 1970 the percent of black players in the NBA went from 4.6% to 57.3%. This increase also happened in football, by 1970 33.7% of players in the NFL were black compared to 3.3% in 1951. It is believed that the increase of hiring of blacks is due to the fact that they could be paid less for equal performance and therefore didn’t cost as much to teams. Positional Segregation was also studied, there are trends in black players being overrepresented in some positions and underrepresented in others. In 1968, 22 percent of the players in baseball were black. They were clearly overrepresented in certain positions such as outfielders and first basemen. 53 percent of outfielders and 40 percent of first basemen were black. There was a very clear under-representation in positions such as pitcher, catcher and third basemen. The percentages there were 9, 12 and 14 respectively. In football blacks were over-represented as defensive backs, running backs, and wide receivers. They were under-represented as quarterbacks, kicking specialists, centers, guards and linebackers. It has been suggested that reasons for these segregations has been due to stereotypes of blacks. The roles that blacks tend to be over-represented in involve little thinking and decision making and are not leadership roles. Entry barriers were studied and it was concluded that blacks have consistently outperformed whites in every position. This indicates that in order to have to same entry into a league blacks must perform over and above their white teammates. In terms of salary discrimination there was no evidence to support the claim. It was even found that black players earn more in every position in major league baseball. The author however says that this can not conclude that discrimination is not present. As stated earlier blacks outperform whites in all positions so performance must be taken into account. When that is measured it was concluded that blacks receive less for their performance than white players in major league baseball. This suggests that salary discrimination may be a feature of all professional team sports. From studying the ratio of blacks to whites, their salary, and how hard it is to get on a team the author of this article came to a few conclusions. It shows that black athletes do face positional segregation and are restricted to certain positions. Entry barriers to in fact exist for blacks and in order to make and stay on a team they must outperform whites. Lastly, blacks are paid less for equal performance levels.
Scully, Gerald W. "Economic Discrimination in Professional Sports." Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 38, No. 1, p. 67-84. Winter-Spring, 1973.