My Big Black Paper

I wrote a 30-page paper on why there are so few black skaters in the NHL as compared to other professional leagues. From today on I will post parts of it as to not lose people's interest. It's a lot easier to read one page a day for three weeks than thirty pages all at once. Here is part one!!!!

High-Contrast Hockey

 

One of the most celebrated sports events in the last century is considered to be when Jackie Robinson took to the baseball field wearing the blue and white uniform of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948. The significance is evidenced in the fact that no MLB player can wear Robinson’s number 42 on the back of his jersey; it has been retired by every team. This move of course represented a colossal shift in attitudes towards minorities in major league sports. For the first time in its history, a Major League Baseball team would dress a black player without being dissuaded by the opinions of other members of the team or members of upper management. Such a feat, even a few years earlier, would have seemed unlikely or impossible. But with the defeat of the Nazis in WWII came the supposed defeat of the concept of racial superiority. No longer was it reasonable for a man to be denied the opportunity to play professional sports based on the color of his skin.

Certainly Robinson’s entrance into MLB paved the way for the statistics we see today. According to a 2007 article published by ESPN, non-white baseball players make up approximately 40% of the MLB. This is a trend that continues into other sports. A study done by the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport recently found that as of the 2008-09 NBA season, 82% of players were black. Furthermore, USA Today reported that as of 2008, almost two-thirds of NFL players were black. These numbers certainly say something about the state of ethnic diversity in major league sports today. There is, however, one glaring exception to these numbers: only three percent of NHL players are black.

Out of the seven-hundred current skaters on NHL teams, a mere thirty of them are of African-American descent. Some names are household, such as Jarome Iginla or Chris Stewart. Some are younger players, considered to be up-and-comers of their respective franchises, such as PK Subban, Evander Kane, or Wayne Simmonds. The mere presence of these fine players begs the question: where are the rest of them? Why are there so few black hockey players in the NHL?

There are two potential reasons that I intend to investigate. The first is the issue of racism in hockey. I will examine the case of Willie O’Ree and Herbert Carnegie. I intend to disprove the assertions that these men were never given the opportunities they deserved because of racism, by backing up my arguments with a thorough look at their careers and statistics. Although there exists evidence that several other retired black NHL players were subject to racism during their careers, particularly Mike Marson and Bill Riley, their cases will serve as a foil to O’Ree’s and Carnegie’s. The second potential reason that I intend to prove is that the reason there are so few black players in the NHL is an issue of demography. There are a number of reasons young black athletes do not choose to participate in hockey; among them, cost to play and lack of outreach will reign as the two which are most prevalent.


Tune in tomorrow for the next part or whatever.