Which sports are and are not racially diverse?
It seems like baseball mirrors the breakdown of races in the population, with lots of visible whites, blacks, hispanics and asians.
Golf and hockey have fewer blacks and basketball has more than expected.
I would guess football is somewhere in the middle. No clue on soccer, since I don’t follow it.
Hockey doesn’t reflect American demographics because the vast majority of its players are not American. I can’t find up-to-date figures(there’s been a recent trend of fewer European players and more Americans due to the league’s drafting rules ), but this site breaks down the NHL as of the 2002-2003 season as follows:
53.6% Canadian
33.3% European
13.0% American
The European players are mainly drawn from Sweden, Finland, Russia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. There are also handful of Germans, one player from France and some players from Eastern Europe. None of these countries AFAIK have significant black populations. Much the same is true here in Canada, although the vast majority of black players in the NHL are Canadian, I believe. So I don’t think that we should be surprised that the NHL is a mainly white sport.
Auto racing is pretty white. So is golf, like you said, although I’d wager that we’ll be seeing a lot more Indians and Asians (Koreans, etc) in it in the coming decades, just based on those particular ethnicities’ ascension to economic power in America. (You don’t HAVE to be rich to start out as a golfer, but it helps, moreso than in team sports.)
I’d agree that baseball is the most diverse mainstream sport. And therefore the most American.
The less money it takes to be good at a sport the less white it is.
Soccer has about every country in the world playing it.
The only whites left in top-level track events are from all-white European nations.
Baseball’s become kinda like Los Angeles: a lot fewer blacks and more Hispanics than thirty years ago.
Football is relatively expensive but is heavily black, and has little Hispanic presence. Volleyball, which is cheap to play, is not nearly as dominated by blacks as basketball, even though the physical skill sets are quite similar. Hockey is expensive, but so is golfing, and white Canadians dominate hockey but have very little impact on the world of professional golf.
Racial presence in a sport is reflective of popularity among the members of the ethnic group, not expense. Popularity can be affected by the price of entry, but it’s not a perfect correlation by any means.
Curling is played mainly on an amateur and club level. There are few, if any black curlers. Why? The following is purely speculation. At least in the US, curling is most popular in the cold upper Midwest; North Dakota, Wisconsin and Minnesota, where African-Americans are few and far between. In the Great Lakes region and the Northeast, curling clubs are either actively or formerly associated with country clubs, or located in suburban areas. In other parts of the US, curling clubs comprise of a large number of Canadian transplants. Curling is also an ice/winter sport, where blacks have traditionally been underrepresented.
Curling is expensive, but it’s not something like polo that is out of reach of the middle class; annual club dues of $200 to $500, a “broomstacking” bar tab that will add about $200 to $400, and fairly low one-time equipment costs (shoes and broom: $150 for mid-end gear). For many, the cost isn’t a factor; the money spent on curling dues would be otherwise spent on other forms of entertainment. My club has a growing number of college students and young adults, and there are few complaints about the cost of the sport.
The curling club I belong to is associated with a non-restricted country club that has a small but growing number of black members, in a racially and ethnically diverse middle-class suburb of Cleveland. The curling club has Asian, Indian, Jewish, and Hispanic members, but no African-Americans. Open houses are packed, but I’ve never seen a black face among the crowd. At bonspiels, where clubs from across the US and Canada compete with each other, same thing; all hues except black.
I’ve heard rumors that there may be a black curler in Columbus. When you hear rumors like that, you know a sport isn’t racially diverse.
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I wonder how many blacks – really, how many non-WASPs – play lacrosse. In the Northeast, where it’s most popular, lacrosse is generally thought of as a preppy upper-middle class sport. The cost of entry is low, and it’s a common high school sport in public school districts throughout upstate New York and much of the Northeast.