Black Lives Matter and the protests to gain greater equity and inclusion in society are on everyone’s mind as we share and listen to the divergent opinions on the topic in the United States. Mike Trico, NBC Sports Analyst has called the current professional sport game boycotts around radical injustice “the largest, most widespread day of sports activism that our country has ever seen.” https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mediaite.com/sports/nbc-sports-mike-tirico-on-nba-mlb-and-wnba-strikes-over-jacob-blake-shooting-largest-most-widespread-day-of-sports-activism-in-us-history/amp/
But, professional sports professionals, collegiate athletes, and recreational sports professionals have always led society in change and social policy. By now, we all remember the difficult but necessary contributions Jackie Robinson (https://baseballhall.org/hall-of-famers/robinson-jackie ) made in breaking the color line in National League in Major League Baseball. And, alumni from Indiana University know and are proud of George Taliaferro (https://www.si.com/nfl/2020/02/26/black-history-month-george-taliaferro ) who was the first Black player drafted by the National Football League after becoming an All-American rusher at Indiana University leading IU to their only undefeated Big Ten Conference championship.
Indiana University also figures prominently in leading change in collegiate basketball. Bill Garrett (https://www.si.com/college/indiana/basketball/indiana-honoring-bill-garrett-building-long-overdue ), now with a Indiana University sports facility named after him, was the first Black athlete who regularly played and started in the Big 10. He played for Hoosier coach Branch McCracken who started Garrett thereby breaking the ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ to not play Black athletes in Big 10 basketball. And there are countless examples of the role individual sport volunteers played in promoting sport participation for Blacks and others at the recreational level that are unknown. One such example, sort of lore to some people who remember was Walter Jamieson. As a Paterson NJ park commissioner, Jamieson (related to big-league star Charlie Jamieson) started Midget League Baseball, where a kid showed up at his Paterson house and came away with a bat, a ball, and a glove with instructions to show up for coaching on Saturday. Legend has it the first Black baseball player in the American League, a Paterson resident named Larry Doby (https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/larry-doby/), got his start in baseball this way.
These changes in sport, local and national, helped to promote other changes in our society and laws with goals to promote greater economic and social equity among Blacks and other minorities. They reflect the larger role sports at the recreation and amateur elite level played in changing societal policy, law, and norms including:
• Parks, as designed early in the U.S., had a goal of building space for all members of the community to interact and mingle with each other (https://www.centralparknyc.org/blog/peoples-park-design)
• Recreation professionals celebrate the role of promoting social equity in access to recreation and sport for diverse populations and the benefits of their participation is a key tenet of the recreation and park profession
• Government policy around the globe promotes sport and access by underrepresented populations as a tool for building common values around a safe and civil society
In the end, there are critical roles for sport policy in every countries policies and society. Most country’s have a central sport policy. The decentralized approach to sport policy in the United States however, with over 130 national sport governing bodies, makes unified policy around promoting social equity and diversity through sport difficult. Research has shown that sports programs with large volunteer leadership in sport policy as in the U.S. can make change slow for diverse and underrepresented populations. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1441352318305813
The question becomes, for professionals in sport and recreation, as well as parks and public lands professionals, how to promote social change around equity regardless if it comes slowly in sport for various reasons. In the end, having the long term view that outcomes in promoting opportunity and equity through recreational sports programs will eventually create real societal diversity, equity, and inclusion change. The opportunities that professional sport activism is creating the need to be followed with sincere community dialogue that includes facilities, program, and policy development that builds on the current sport activism. We owe it to all the professional and recreational sport leaders who have advocated for real societal equity, diversity, and inclusion change in the past.
