From the NYT:
Black and White Women Far From Equal Under Title IX
By WILLIAM C. RHODEN
... But the focus of Title IX has been gender equity, not racial equity in women’s sports. The most glaring outcome of the legislation is that white women — as athletes and administrators — have been the overwhelming beneficiaries.
... In Harlem, there was a sense — among some, although certainly not all — that the gap was in some ways a moat designed to protect white privilege, opportunity and power.
... She said she did not think that the inequities in sports opportunities were an accident. “These white women don’t want us to compete with them,” she said. “They want their kids to get the scholarships. They’re thinking about themselves. They give us all kinds of awards, but when it comes time to distributing the money, it’s a whole other story.”...
Yeah, pretty much. Upper middle class white people are damn good at figuring out what's in their own children's best interests. It gives daughters something to put on college applications and the best get a few college scholarships. Notice how they keep adding women's versions of white sports like water polo. (The Olympics added women's water polo in 2000.) I'm from L.A., I've played water polo in gym class, I had friends in high school who were star water polo players, and I'm still not interested in water polo.
“But in the grand scheme of things, Caucasian girls have benefited disproportionately well, especially suburban girls and wealthy Caucasian girls.”
According to a 2007 report by the United States Department of Education, among high school sophomores, white girls had a 51 percent participation rate in sports, compared with 40 percent for black girls. The percentages were lower for Asian/Pacific Islanders (34 percent) and Hispanics (32 percent).
The lack of access to sports at youth levels becomes manifest at the intercollegiate level, where African-American women are underrepresented in all but two sports: Division I basketball, where black women represent 50.6 percent of athletes, and indoor and outdoor track and field, where they represent 28.2 and 27.5 percent. They are all but missing in lacrosse (2.2 percent), swimming (2.0), soccer (5.3) and softball (8.2). They are an underrepresented rising presence in volleyball (11.6).
And, of course, Hispanic females are far more underrepresented in sports than black females, but my typing fingers are becoming heavy and sleepy as I merely try to grind out a conclusion to this sentence about how virtually nobody is interested in Mexican women athletes, especially Mexican women, and furthermore zzzzzzz ...
Anyway, Title IX's emphasis on women's versions of minor sports has set the clock back a century to a time when most sports mostly consisted of affluent amateurs getting together on Daddy's dime: e.g., back when the annual Harvard v. Yale football game was the 1912 equivalent of the Super Bowl for the small number of people who cared.
And, you know, maybe that's a good thing.
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51 comments:
Oh, cry me a river! The results of this Title IX crapola on NCAA athletics programs rhyme with the results of similar policies in the workplace. Real sports like men's wrestling, baseball, tennis, etc. get moved aside for women's tiddlywinks. Then the black and white tiddlywinks girls have a catfight over the spoils. When the Olympics come around our baseball team gets shellacked by Cuba and the Iranians pile-drive our wrestlers and everyone wonders how the heck that happened.
One really bizarre feature of college sports is the fact that college tennis features lots of foreign pros on US college scholarships. Wayne Bryan, the father of the number 1 Bryan twins, had this to say about the situation:
"With 65% of the players being from overseas, it is criminal and most of all, it is a crying shame that American college tennis is now a world class sport. It should be for our American youngsters to enjoy and to derive the wonderful benefits. Are those parents of the players from Europe and Asia paying taxes to support UCSB and all the other colleges in this country? To ask the question is to answer it."
By the way, the USTA supports foreign players getting US scholarships, which goes to show that the default position is pro-diversity and pro-foreigner, even when the foreigners are German and French adults.
Surely traditional white-dominated male sports have been hurt far more than black women by Title IX. (In fact, black women haven't been hurt at all, they just haven't taken full advantage of the situation like white women). UCLA cut rowing, for example (it is now a 'varsity club' sport where the guys -- all white men from web site images--pay $600+ for the privilege of rowing for the school).
"Oh, cry me a river! The results of this Title IX crapola on NCAA athletics programs rhyme with the results of similar policies in the workplace. Real sports like men's wrestling, baseball, tennis, etc. get moved aside for women's tiddlywinks. Then the black and white tiddlywinks girls have a catfight over the spoils."
Sorry, but even in highly conservative regions I'm willing to bet there are more fans of the women's "tiddlywinks" sports of softball, gymnastics, volleyball and soccer than there are of men's wrestling or tennis. Especially men's wrestling. Who other than proles watches wrestling?
And baseball has not been moved aside at big-name schools. That's largely at regional and liberal arts colleges, which don't need sports teams for either gender anyway.
This guy Rhoden might be laughing to himself as he writes this stuff. I get the feeling he goes to parties where other blacks come up to him and tell him with a smile, "it might be time for another guilt trip."
"They are an underrepresented rising presence in volleyball (11.6)."
Which is, of course, almost exactly their percentage of the US population. Underrepresented?
Robert Hume
What's nice about Lacrosse and swimming and soccer and CYO Track and Field is that you can put your daughters in the games and there are no young black men chasing them and leering at them and pinching them and no ugly black women screehing the latest reason they are an Angry Negress.
As always it's "...and then"
"In Harlem, there was a sense..."
I'll never forget when a philosophy professor took me to task for using the weasely construction "there is a sense.." in an essay. No doubt I picked up from reading Newsweek or Time.
So this guy writes for the NYT...Ah well.
Who wins the battle between diversity and feminism?
Always bet on black.
Did anyone consider that many of the Black and Hispanic women of college age are not playing, due to the fact that many of them are pregnant or already mothers, often to multiple babies? Meanwhile, the White and Asian women are skipping having families, often even after marriage, to pursue their careers. Each generation will have a lower IQ if this trend keeps up. Anyone ever see the move, Idiocracy?
Steve if you haven't looked into black women's empowerment blogs you should. The general focus is that black women should seek to marry white men because the vast majority of black men aren't interested in marriage, or at least marriage to black women. It's certainly reasonable for black women to prefer white men to black. But most of these bloggers resent white women because white men as a group are pretty good protectors and providers for their wives and children. You can see this in that in this article's quote,
“They want their kids to get the scholarships. They’re thinking about themselves."
Basically they think white women should share their resources with black women, well, because... blacks always seem to think that whites are their parents and ought to take care of them.
Of course black girls have just as much right to such scholarships as white girls but I really doubt that announcing that they think white women as a group are excluding them is going to endear them much to the white men they hope to marry.
Gloria
"Then the black and white tiddlywinks girls have a catfight over the spoils."
In this situation black women are the ones starting the cat fight. They'd love to turn it into a public brawl but white women with a modicum of class will find it beneath their dignity to claw black women's eyes out over college sports.
I'm sure the white people who run these programs will make them more black friendly but it is not entirely clear from the article what criteria they are allegedly using to exclude blacks.
Gloria
...Iranians pile-drive our wrestlers...
...By the way, the USTA supports foreign players getting US scholarships, which goes to show that the default position is pro-diversity and pro-foreigner, even when the foreigners are German and French adults...
Something tells me that this thread is going to end up being so depressing that maybe I should just skip the whole thing for the sake of my mental health - sometimes it's better just to stick your head in the sand and be blissfully ignorant.
I'm all for every group exercising who..whom, as long as they make no moral pretension about it. I'd prefer that white males close the who...whom gap, it's way more important than the nonexistent missile gap or throw weight gap back when I was growing up. I'm contemplating golf for my youngest girl, as I understand it shouldn't be insanely difficult for her to get effective status bonus points even with totally mediocre talent.
Pretty soon we will see title 99, affirmative action for white females sporting wanna-be's, although it will be phrased more carefully.
That article seems like it might have come from The Onion. "Black females under-represented in lacrosse and water polo."
Meanwhile, in Sudan . . .
"Upper middle class white people are damn good at figuring out what's in their own children's best interests."
Not really. The women are taking care only of their daughters (hence Title IX), and only in the short term (hence half a century of White displacement with SWPL support).
Of course, the people who run the universities are the most anti-racist people in the world. Yet they don't even realize that their thinking process has gone like this: "We're bending over backwards to bring in more than our share of black students, whether they excel academically or not, so we've done our part for political correctness, and no one will care who's on the lacrosse team. What's a few dozen minor sports scholarships compared to thousands of affirmative action spots?"
Brenda Villa is the best hispanic water polo player smaller and heavier than most female water polo players she grew up in commerce where hispanics can join a swim team and do water polo. Water Polo didn't become a women's sport in high school in California until the 1990's. And the US WOmen's water polo is better than the men's since Europe plays water polo a lot. Villa is going to her 4th oympics in Water Polo. In swimming CIndy Tran which has powerful underwaters will not make the olympics since it is not an advantge in long course but she won 100 yard backstroke twice at NCAA's.
it's not like feminism has been much for diversity
or that since they have been the primary beneficiaries of AA, it's the white man conspiring to keep the power within his fold.
Indeed. And this is how baseball got its 20th century reputation as a populist sport - in contrast to elite sports that incubated in colleges and boarding schools, professional baseball evolved upwards from neighborhood leagues, each city (or even neighborhood) having a few teams, who could in turn put together a "MVP" team for regional competition.
Now that I think of it, there's a parallel to the modern incarnation of roller derby, with your various hipster cities sporting a handful of local teams that merge together for travel matches. If the sport keeps up its popularity I could see it following a similar trajectory, though the banked track/flat track distinction is a bigger gap than the DH rule.
Similarly, in Europe, soccer/football followed a similar progression. Thus the residual structure of league tables with periodic promotions/demotions, where a given Thursday-night hobby team could in theory win its way up to the top levels of the sport.
Of course no mention is made of the fact that numerous elite men's programs throughout the country have been killed of because of Title IX. Title IX considers any school with less than equal participation for men and women in sports to be de facto discriminating. I once saw a debate on an ESPN program about Title IX's potential negative impact on schools with long traditions of producing male Olympians but the first half the program was just misdirection. This is because they allowed Title IX advocates to frame the issue as being about big schools giving too much money to men's football and basketball teams, and therefore depriving the less popular men's and women's sports of resources. Finally one of the men's gymnastics coaches called B.S. on the entire orientation by pointing out that over 70% of the men's programs abolished since Title IX provisons were being pursued with gusto were at Division I-AA, II, and III schools. In other words schools where the football and basketball teams aren't going to bowl games and the NCAA tournament and are therefore not raking in tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in stadium and broadcast rights. This completely invalidated the previous 15 minutes of spin, so of course the Title IX zealots that had hijacked the debate just ignored that hatefact and continue to attack big universites for investing in the two sports that make the lion's share of revenue for them. Curse their economic rationality!!!!
Ahem. Dare I suggest that no doubt a good number of black women have indeed benefitted from Title IX over the years, and many of them -- the majority? -- never belonged in college in the first place, and would not have been there without it.
Some people are never satisfied.
"Some people are never satisfied. "
a pretty good strategy.
Each generation will have a lower IQ if this trend keeps up. Anyone ever see the move, Idiocracy?
Normally I would just say something ever-so-slightly snarky, such as "Welcome to iSteve!"
But I have heard [VERY ANECDOTALLY] that chicks who participate in some of the more extreme sports [from a cardiovascular point of view - especially swimming and track] can have a great deal of difficulty conceiving later in life.
Has anyone else heard this?
Has anyone ever seen any hard data on it?
If there is any truth to the anecdote, then apparently Mother Nature doesn't like to see its young ladies with their BFP too low [and their muscle mass too high].
PS: There was a new story the other day about how extreme cardio is TERRIBLE for your heart.
I don't know, however, whether the heart damage kicks in at NCAA ages [18-22], or whether it is more of a 30-something phenomenon which middle-aged folks need to fret about.
All one has to do is look at the top 20 tanks for women's college soccer, lacrosse, field hockey, softball, or basketball teams.
Most of the schools are in the US News top 100 schools. Just look at Northwestern winning women's. Look at the final four in women's soccer including Wake Forest, Duke, and Stanford.
Since there is no real pro prospects for most women athletes, the women athletes focus on using college sports to get into better universities.
You go do find a women's version of George Mason, VCU, Butler, or STonybrook in most sports.
Who other than proles watches wrestling?
NCAA wrestling and WWE wrestling are two different things.
If someone can show some evidence that black girls actually WANT to play these sports then it might be worth discussing. There are very few blacks (male of female) involved in 4H programs. Is that because they are excluded or because they just don't care about it? From what I've seen from teaching in a high school with a fairly large black population is that black girls don't participate in sports other than track or basketball because a) they don't participate in sports they don't perceive as being "black" and there are several other black girls on the team b) they don't participate if they don't think they can dominate c) their sex life takes precedence over most everything else or d) they are lazy as hell
Especially men's wrestling. Who other than proles watches wrestling?
That's a problem. We need more white men with college wrestling experience roaming the streets of Philly and the Chicago Gold Coast.
I love how these things always contain a tacit accusation that somehow Tanesha is being denied access by universities because she black. Yeah, universities, those famous Right wing hot-beds of whites-only exclusion.
If Tanesha showed up with excellent lacrosse or swimming skills and even a reasonably decent high school average, the admissions people would instantly shit themselves with glee and Tanesha would get every penny they could find. They would bump Susie Whitebread in a second to make room. But sadly, oh so sadly, lacrosse playing Tanesha doesn't show up much.
I think it would be hilarious to go to Hood High and ask the black and brown girls if they ever even heard of lacrosse or field hockey. I bet you'd get 90%+ that had no idea.
"Since there is no real pro prospects for most women athletes"
Good grief. Imagine that I am saying this in all-caps: The purpose of college sports is NOT as an incubator for a professional career. The purpose of college sports is EDUCATIONAL, as is befitting an ostensible institution of learning, that is to say, ahem, a "college."
Not all learning experiences are scholarly in nature. College sports teach the participants teamwork, leadership, endurance, strategy, the benefits of training, grace in victory and dignity in defeat: in a word, SPORTSMANSHIP. These skills are very useful to people in all walks of life who aren't going to go on to do Ph.D's in molecular biology.
By focusing (as in men's basketball and football) on a kind of hypertrophied excellence in "winning" (whatever that is) at the expense of the overall educational experience, countless students are deprived of these learning opportunities by the presence on-campus of "ringers" who don't belong in a college to begin with. The problem is less egregious in women's sports, but consider the idea of athletic scholarships for foreigners who have no business being here otherwise: who benefits? The school brings home some funny-looking trophy, but its native-born students don't get the chance to acquire types of knowledge and experience which they came there to LEARN.
Imagine of college drama clubs had the same level of competitiveness, and the same amount of money in play. Then imagine a deep-pockets university simply enrolling the entire staff of the Royal Shakespeare Company as alleged "students" in order to win some imaginary drama playoffs.
Looks pretty stupid, dunnit. Now, reason back again to reality.
They are talking about racial representation in sports. If we are going to ask why they are under-represented in Water Polo, shouldn't we ask why they are over-represented in basketball?
Curious as to how they would respond to that.
Sorry, but even in highly conservative regions I'm willing to bet there are more fans of the women's "tiddlywinks" sports of softball, gymnastics, volleyball and soccer than there are of men's wrestling or tennis. Especially men's wrestling. Who other than proles watches wrestling?
You're not very bright if you don't know the difference between competitive Greco-Roman wrestling and the type of wrasslin' entertainment that is watched by proles.
Someone needs to do something about the puzzling underrepresentation of black women in the sport of competitive eating.
But I have heard [VERY ANECDOTALLY] that chicks who participate in some of the more extreme sports [from a cardiovascular point of view - especially swimming and track] can have a great deal of difficulty conceiving later in life.
All women decline in fertility as they get older. What does "later in life" mean?
where African-American women are underrepresented in all but two sports: Division I basketball, where black women represent 50.6 percent of athletes, and indoor and outdoor track and field, where they represent 28.2 and 27.5 percent. They are all but missing in lacrosse (2.2 percent), swimming (2.0), soccer (5.3) and softball (8.2).
So over-representation in 3 sports (4x in basketball, 2x in indoor and outdoor track) is insufficient to overcome underrepresentaion (1/3 participation)in 4 sports. The black women basketball and track athletes will be very unhappy when their slots are cut back to accomodate the obvious solution of proportional racial set asides.
BTW, how many black males participate in college lacrosse, swimming, soccer, and baseball? (The legacy of the great Jim Brown in lacrosse in the 1950s had no effect whatsoever.)
"Then the black and white tiddlywinks girls have a catfight over the spoils."
Where do you see a catfight? Here is what a read:
Some girls' daddies took them to the beach volleyball net or a soccer field and taught them how to play a game, probably to spend time with them, to keep them fit and trim and to increase their prospects in certain colleges. And, now, black girls who often don't even have daddies, let alone the kind who worry about or spend time with them, are jealous of the whole experience and outcome. I feel for them. I can't imagine what it would be like to miss out on having a father, except that it would be very sad.
"You're not very bright if you don't know the difference between competitive Greco-Roman wrestling and the type of wrasslin' entertainment that is watched by proles."
I'm aware there is a difference but the point stands. Admittedly WWE stuff is much worse.
The only high schools in my state (cause to my knowledge it hasn't existed on a college level around here for decades) which offered wrestling as a sport were usually in very prole areas. Not many people ever showed up for the matches either. Even small sports like track seemed to get much more spectators. Most people just don't find it that entertaining, I guess. There are a lot of problems with IX but I don't think it is responsible for the decline of men's wrestling.
Many sports are poorly conceived for television. Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling is a good example, two guys locked together in immobility. Boxing works because you can see the hands and the full torso. Football covers the head and baseball uniforms cover the torso. Baseball player wear these baggy outfits and hardly look like athletes at all.
Basketball works because you can see the athletes. Of course that's not true of Women's Basketball. Women simply aren't athletic. Don't blame me. If you're religious - blame God.
Women's athletics is the moral equivalent of a "Bridge to Nowhere". A pointless waste of taxpayer's money.
The only sport(?) I know that has a level playing field is Ninja Warrior. There have been about three thousand entrants in this four stage obstacle course maybe a quarter of whom have been female. The women tend to be dancers, and gymnasts. In general they are more fit than the men who include lots of middle age male office workers and comedians.
Only one woman has ever completed even the first stage. There is essentially no cross over in the two distributions. There are two separate populations - the athletes and the women.
It's time for reform. Drop all subsidies for female sports and cancel the equal resources mandates.
Albertosaurus
Camlost:
In criticizing a comment (Anonyia) about wrestling being for "proles," you are correct. But scholastic (and other amateur) wrestling is not, per se, "Greco-Roman."
Greco-Roman is a type of "limited" wrestling--in that opponents aren't permitted holds of their opponent's body below the waist nor permitted to
use theirs except as support. It's of a piece with arm wrestling, sumo, Indian wrestling, etc. but, of course, it's an inclusion in the Olympics. The more common style is generally called "freestyle," though it used to be called "catch-as-catch-can."
Nearly the entire repertoire of modern "catch-as-catch-can" wrestlers is said to appear, in one place or another, in ancient Egyptian decorations. And there are two black African tribes (the Big Nuba and the Little Nuba) who place great social emphasis on wrestling (and whose wrestling resembles very closely the American collegiate style). As far as I am aware, only one basic wrestling hold has been invented since ancient times: the "tackle," said to have been invented right here in the U.S. by a (frustrated) football player.
I wouldn't say that one has to be "brainy" to be a wrestler but the sport seems to have a great appeal to higher-IQ types (though not to "nerd" types).
Its been said before, but it needs to be said again:
If the girls' sport is not done in a swimsuit or skirt, it is not worth watching.
It's hop[eless anyway. I just read "Study Shows Black Girls Do NOT Reap As Many Benefits From Exercise As Other Races". This corresponds to my research watching high school girls leave the building as I wait to pick up my daughter.
By focusing (as in men's basketball and football) on a kind of hypertrophied excellence in "winning" (whatever that is)
"Winning" is when you play by the rules of the game and outscore your opponents. Glad I could help.
If kids who have been playing sports all their lives still need to learn sportsmanship at college at the age of 18+, we've got a problem. What the heck was all that peewee soccer for?
To everyone who pointed out that blacks don't try out for lacrosse and water polo, that's true, but it misses the point. These people aren't claiming that the coaches of those sports are excluding blacks. No, it's much more sinister than that! They're claiming that the people running the sports programs are so crypto-raciss that they've intentionally used Title IX to focus on sports that only whites like and grow up playing. It's essentially the "you biased the test by using the word 'regatta'" accusation.
Which raises the question: if the people in charge weren't so raciss, what sports could they offer that young black women would have some experience and interest in, beyond the ones they already dominate such as basketball? Are they playing sports at predominantly black high schools that the universities don't offer? See also Hispanics: what sports dear to Hispanic girls are the universities refusing to offer?
scoobius dubious,
One of the big differences is that since there is pro prospects for women that women do not mind stacked teams. That is why the number one seeds almost always win in women's basketball or the same schools are consistent winners in the other sports.
No second tier school like George Mason, Butler, Gonzaga, Houston, Fresno St, VCU, or Temple. College womens sports is the domain the the upper middle class suburban women. Who else puts their kids into field hockey camp or soccer camp since they were six.
What college sports teaches women is that there will be a few stacked teams that win everything and all of the rest of the teams will be bad not matter how much they pracetice or try.
Well, those sports swimming and water polo give the white girls of OC and a lot of the top high school girls in Orange County are white a chance. There are a few black sisters even in the OC that play basketball and run track and I see a few black girls there swim or played water polo since they plan on doing those sports in college. Republican Orange County noticed for the white sports of swimming and water polo
Here are the women olympic swimmers from Orange County, Shirley Bashashoff, Janet Evans, Amanda Beard, Katlyn Sandeno, Kristen Calvery. Male swimmers Gary Hall Sr, Steve Firness, Bruce Firness, Brain Goldell, John Mykakken, Steve Gregg, Justin Lezak, and Aaron Perisol.
"Many sports are poorly conceived for television. Olympic Greco-Roman wrestling is a good example, two guys locked together in immobility. "
Yes, the exception is the wrestling scene in the original Night and the City, one of the most exciting scenes I've ever watched. The tension is almost unbearable.
Wrestling scene
Then again, I consider Dassin, not Hitchcock, the true master of suspense.
(Yes, I know, another commenter citing a movie to bolster an argument about real life.)
"'Winning' is when you play by the rules of the game and outscore your opponents. Glad I could help."
For your next assignment, give us a glib definition of "missing the point."
"If kids who have been playing sports all their lives still need to learn sportsmanship at college at the age of 18+, we've got a problem. What the heck was all that peewee soccer for?"
Yeah, and let's say in my first grade Christmas pageant, I got to play a camel; in college I played Falstaff. The two learning experiences were of equal importance.
You're an idiot -- and a smug one, too... the funniest kind.
scooby,
YOU miss the point. In sports for adults, the name of the game is to win. If winning's not the main thing, we wouldn't ever keep score.
No, 1st grade Xmas play & college play aren't the same thing. Only a fool can't tell the difference between adulthood and something he can't remember 18+ yrs ago.
If you're paying attention all during those yrs, then by age 18 or so, you've learned the key lessons by that time regarding sportsmanship, which is a quaint naive and somewhat outdated and outmoded concept for 21st cent. realities of life.
In pro sports, the main idea, is to win. Or else make the most money. Only a fool plays for free or lets himself get exploited by management/ownership.
You sound a bit like an Obama supporter, to be quite honest. Where winning never ever ever comes into play. And even he believes in personal winning.
"Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser."--Vince Lombardi
There is complain about blacks being underepresentive but the Lations what ever race out number them in Swimming and so forth in Texas and California the majority hispanics are very underrepresentive but the media focus on Blacks who are never the majority kid population in any state its because blacks are so good at track and field while only one hispanic made the US Olympic team in Track..
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