# What's actually the most diverse American professional sport?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-actually-the-most-diverse-american-professional-sport/831152>\
**Category:** The Game Room\
**Created:** [March 14, 2019, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-actually-the-most-diverse-american-professional-sport/831152 "2019-03-14T22:00:29Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2019, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-actually-the-most-diverse-american-professional-sport/831152/1 "2019-03-14T22:00:29Z")

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I looked this up online but apparently “Diversity” in professional sports basically means “How many African-americans are in the league” and doesn’t actually factor in true diversity (For example a website claimed the NBA was the most diverse league because 75% of the players were black and 23% were white. What?)

In terms of true diversity (as in, players from different countries and races) what is the true most diverse American sport? The obvious answer is Major League Soccer but again I’m not getting good records of diversity since again the articles just focus on how many black players are in the league. Major League Baseball also seems like a good guess since there’s prominent black, hispanic, asian, and European players in it as well.

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2019, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-actually-the-most-diverse-american-professional-sport/831152/2 "2019-03-14T22:18:23Z")

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Is your ideal level of diversity all ethnic groups being represented equally, or all ethnic groups being represented in the same proportion as the proportion they form of the world’s population, or all ethnic groups being represented in the same proportion as in the US’s population?

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**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\
**Post date:** [March 15, 2019, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/whats-actually-the-most-diverse-american-professional-sport/831152/3 "2019-03-15T00:07:27Z")

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MLB appears to be fairly close to the US population. Any analysis is complicated by the fact that one MLB team is in Canada, and that quite a few of the Asian and Hispanic players are not US or Canadian citizens.

Non-Hispanic whites  
MLB 64%  
US 63%

Non-Hispanic blacks  
MLB 7%  
US 12%

Hispanic/Latino  
MLB 27%  
US 17%

Asian  
MLB 2%  
US 6%