1998, Tracy green Her Florida teammate won the NCAA Women’s Tennis Championships trophy after defeating Duke in five of six matches. Green, who received her full scholarship to Florida, smiled proudly and gracefully.
“Thanks to history, I knew I was a beneficiary of Title IX,” Green, 43, said in an interview, an opportunity that federal law has created since then for women and girls in sports. I recognized it. Enacted in 1972..
But Green also knew that she (a black woman on a team full of white women) represented a small number of athletes.
“That hasn’t changed that much,” said Green, now Harvard’s women’s tennis coach. She added: “On a tennis team, you don’t find more than one black player.”
For all the progress achieved through Title IX, many who study gender equality in sports claim that it has not benefited women of all races.As they point out, white women are the main beneficiaries of the law as a legal framework for gender equality-without mentioning it. The intersection of gender and race and income — Ignore the serious problems faced by many black female athletes, coaches and managers.
Ketra Armstrong, a professor of sports management in Michigan and director of diversity, equity and inclusion, said: She added: “We talk about gender equality, but the numbers show that it is white women who are breaking barriers that are promoted to these leadership roles to a much greater extent than black women. I see. “It’s more comfortable to talk about gender.”
Some sports professionals believe that Title IX cannot close the racial gap in athletics.
“Title IX is strictly a gender filter. It’s difficult to ask Title IX to close gaps along categories such as race and household income,” he said. “The question is whether we need additional policies to address these gaps. I argue so.”
Others, such as Armstrong, argue that the issue of race and gender is linked, and the title IX conversation about gender “defines race is often the essence of race.” Therefore, it claims to be incomplete without including race. She said she felt that when walking in her room, people first saw her blackness, not her gender.
“It improved opportunities for black girls and women, and it shouldn’t be reduced,” she said. “But we haven’t arrived, so don’t get me wrong that we’ve arrived. TitleIX’s promise hasn’t been fulfilled yet.”
according to NCAA Demographic DatabaseIn 2020-21, white women accounted for the largest proportion of female athletes in all three categories, at 68%. 11% of black women were mostly focused on two sports. Basketball accounts for 30% of female athletes and is indoor and outdoor athletics (20%). Black women were rarely represented in most other sports — less than 5% in softball, tennis, soccer, golf and swimming.
“It’s hard to break into these sports because of the stereotypical concept of black girls playing sports,” said Amira Rose Davis, assistant professor at Penn State University, who focuses on black women in sports. Said.
The inequality in college athletics is consistent with similar trends in youth sports.
March study by National Women’s Law Center The Student Organization has found that there is a large gap in sporting opportunities between high schools, with at least 90% white or very non-white and at least 90% non-white. Studies show that schools with many whites had twice as many sports opportunities as non-white schools. The study also found that girls in non-white schools had far fewer team spots than girls in schools with many whites.
Studies show that some of the gaps are “strong indicators of non-Title IX compliance,” and sports with low non-white athlete participation, such as volleyball and soccer, can lead to opportunities to play in college. It is said that the sex is high.
In college sports, athletics and basketball are more accessible and customary for black girls.
Carolyn Peck, who taught college and professional women’s basketball from 1993 to 2018, remembered what she was watching. C. Vivian Stringer Women’s basketball coach in the late 1980s. A black woman, Stringer, showed Peck what was possible.
“She was almost the only person to coach on that national stage, so all eyes were nailed to her from the black community,” she said.
Originally from a predominantly white community in Jefferson City, Tennessee, Peck had access to a variety of sports, including basketball and swimming, when he was young. Partly because she was her talent and the tallest kid in school, but also because basketball was the only sport associated with her.
Peck played for Vanderbilt on a full scholarship and won her first coaching job as an assistant. Pat SummittAn influential Tennessee women’s basketball coach who won eight NCAA Championships. As head coach of Purdue University in 1998, Peck was the first African-American woman to win a national title.
“Without Title IX, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to play sports,” Peck said. “I was able to get a free education, go to college and get a job. Coaching.”
Access and cost remain a barrier to entry for colored girls. Soaring participation rate of high school girls — From 1.85 million in 1978-79 to 3.4 million in 2019 — Greatly helped girls living in school districts who have more sports teams and resources to provide opportunities. But even girls of the middle class and wealthy families often grow up in school districts with few opportunities.
Maisha Kelly, 44, an athletic director at Drexel University and one of the few black women to do top sports work at the university, said that the sport offered at her elementary and junior high school in Philadelphia is basketball. He said it was only athletics.
“Access to sports and the types of sports offered were not offered in racially diverse regions,” Kelly said. “If you want to play other sports, you’ll need financial means, physical access in a way that takes you to an organization that you can participate in,” she added.
Kelly said he was fortunate to be introduced to swimming in Philadelphia’s park department, but the lack of access to some sports for many young girls “appears disproportionately in certain sports. It is the cause.
“It’s not diverse because of socioeconomics, or because of where programming is,” Kelly added.
Kelly added that he didn’t think much about Title IX before he started working in sports (she was once the Title IX coordinator for Bucknell).
It’s common. In a national survey of 1,000 people of color, conducted by the decision-making intelligence company Morning Consult on behalf of the New York Times, more than half of the respondents said they were completely unfamiliar with the law. Of the 133 colored women who said they played sports in junior high school, high school, or college, 41 said they felt they benefited from Title IX.
After playing basketball at Itawamba Community College in Mississippi, Armstrong, who played basketball at a college in southwestern Louisiana, said today’s black women have more opportunities in an era of increased empowerment and representation. He said he believed. Black women are the dominant figures admired in many sports, including tennis Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, and the world’s most decorated gymnast Simone Biles.
“You didn’t see it when I was growing up,” she said. “And we often say you can’t be something you can’t see.”
According to Armstrong, most of the work still needs to be done at the coaching and management level. In 2021, less than 400 black women will lead women’s college sports teams, compared to about 3,700 white women and more than 5,000 white men (and very few women who have coached male teams). did.
Inequality is even more severe at the administrative level, and this trend continues in sports with the highest number of black athletes.
“The battle to become the head coach of the women’s basketball team for black women was tough,” Davis said. “They are often most qualified to have played for a long time and served as assistant coaches, and are often fired first.”
