Psychologists
help debunk the myth of Michael Jordan
By Scott
Sleek
News reports and advertisements typically depict
Chicago Bulls great Michael Jordan as almost magically endowed with physical
strength and agility. The Baltimore Orioles� Cal Ripken Jr., by contrast, is
acclaimed for developing his baseball prowess through hard work and dedication.
The message? African-Americans like Jordan are
natural-born athletes. White sportsmen like Ripken may have less physical
talent, but work much harder at their sport to achieve success.
This media perpetuation of a long-standing myth is
leading a generation of black youth to select professional sports as their only
career choice, say psychologists who study media images of black athletes.
Almost 70 percent of inner-city youth ages 13-18 name professional sports as
their first career choice, according to a recent study by the Center for the
Study of Sport and Society. This is a drastically unrealistic goal, considering
that only 1,400 African-Americans men hold contracts in pro football,
basketball, and baseball, says C. Keith Harrison, EdD, a University of Michigan
professor.
Psychologists need to help black males, through such
avenues as consulting work with professional leagues or psychotherapy with
student athletes, to look more critically at media images and consider a wider
array of careers.
�What we need to do is help these athletes� make
what I consider prudent, realistic and rational decisions about their careers,�
says Gary Sailes, PhD, an Indiana University psychologist who also provides
life-skills training to high school and college athletes.
Researchers cite numerous examples of racial
stereotypes in sporting news and advertising.
�I�ve heard everything from African-Americans are
double-jointed to African-Americans dissipate heat better,� says Othello
Harris, PhD, of Miami University in Ohio.
Stereotyping
in sports coverage, Harris says, runs along three main themes:
White men
can�t jump.
In a post game interview, a basketball coach at a Midwestern university said
his team had beaten a predominantly black team despite the fact that he had
three white players who �can�t jump over the local telephone book.� The coach
said the team won through intelligent playing, but named none of his African-American
players when discussing his smartest athletes.
White men
can�t run, either. A recent editorial in Runner�s
World magazine says that blacks now dominate sprinting and distance races
because of a genetic advantage over whites. West Africans, the magazine says,
are endowed with great speed, while East Africans inherit more endurance
capability. The assertion shows the evolution that many stereotypes undergo,
Harris says. Less than 30 years ago, Sports
Illustrated argued that blacks are adroit sprinters but poor distance
runners, he noted.
White guys can
think. A Sports Illustrated poll five years ago
asked the National Basketball Association (NBA) coaches and general managers to
name the smartest player in the league. Boston Celtics star Larry Bird, who has
since retired, ranked first, followed by John Stockton of the Utah Jazz. Both
are white. No African-American made the top five.
Advertisements tend to push the notion that
African-Americans are more suited for the court than the boardroom, Harrison
says. Print ads feature black athletes and use such slogans as, �Basketball is
life; The rest is just details,� or �The game doesn�t end.� And the media seem
to ignore black athletes� off-the-court endeavors, such as NBA star Shaquille
O�Neil�s return to college to finish his degree, Harrison adds.
The media also tend to exaggerate the monetary
benefits of sports careers, Harrison says.
News outlets invariably report the
multimillion-dollar salaries commanded by Jordan, baseball�s Albert Belle or
the multisport talent Deion Sanders. Yet few professional sports players earn
the whopping wages reported in the news, Sailes says. About 95 percent of NBA
players need to find a job after their basketball careers end, and about 81
percent of those players are bankrupt when they retire from the sport, he
notes.
Young African-American males are clearly showing the
signs of this media distortion, psychologists say. Jeffrey Holmes, who is
pursuing a doctorate in counseling psychology and works with student athletes
at Pasadena City College in California, says he often encounters young men clad
entirely in clothes with the insignia of a professional sports team.
�What I�m finding out is that beyond athletics, our
kids don�t have any identity of their own,� says Holmes.
Many of the athletes at the college also expect to
obtain a pro sports career, despite the fact that their �chances of making it
to the pros from a community college are slim to none,� he adds.
Sailes,
who also provides career consulting to professional tennis and basketball
players, says he�s surveyed about 1.100 high school and college football and
basketball players nationwide and made some unsettling discoveries about
African-Americans playing in the nation�s elite college sports teams:
1) Nearly all the respondents say they chose their
college not for academic reasons, but rather to�� increase their chances of being drafted into the pro leagues.
2) Most say they study only enough to remain
eligible to play and would enter the draft before graduation if possible.
3) Only 27 percent say that, if drafted before
graduation, they would eventually return to school to finish their degree.
But Sailes says he also compiled some data showing
the greater career success among athletes who graduate compared with those who
don�t. He found, for example, that graduates are more likely to have jobs and
own homes eight years after college and to have a greater sense of self-esteem
and confidence. Psychologists who work with student athletes need to share such
findings with African-American males to show them that they have more career
options than they think, Sailes says. And psychologists can also show athletes
how to use their sports skills in other occupational pursuits, he adds.
�Going after a pro career is one thing, but the
athletic skills they learn on the field are very important in life,� he says.
�They already know how about hard work.�