While at Work, a Surprise

So a couple days ago, a couple of my coworkers and I were chatting, and one of them brought up an interesting book she'd started reading. She began describing it, say how there was an ex-football player inmate who'd recently finished his time and just got out. She explained that there was this rich paraplegic man who saw him in a bar or somewhere and approached him, asking him to sleep with his wife so they could have he and his wife might have kids. He said he wanted him since he didn't want any suspicion by anyone outside thinking it was anyone other than his own kid--that is, he wanted a blond haired, blue eyed kid. Now after my coworker said that, my other coworker suddenly said, "oh, this whole time I thought he was black." My other coworker laughed and said "yeah I guess since I didn't say you would assume that, since he was a football player and in prison."

That was so revealing to me, because I'm not going to evade the point--I, too, thought he was black the whole time and had a moment of confusion when she said a blue eyed blond baby would be born. Obviously what we've been discussing is not only prevalent, but these stereotypes are completely lodged in people's heads, so much so that they don't even really realize it.

After reading Jessica's latest post, I also agree that a lot of people see female athletes as lesbians actually, at least in basketball. I took a class by Victor Villanueva where we had to read a fiction book about a black lesbian and an Asian lesbian, both basketball players. It talked about how a bunch of the girls are lesbians actually and also it seemed like most of the players were of color. I wonder if this book is really based on truth, and if not is it too perpetuating stereotypes? Because I had no previous judgements about athletes being lesbians, until this book and Dr. Villanueva talked about it. I do feel that people think athletes are very masculine--sports clothes can look really look masculine, and the sports themselves are from sports men played. This reminds me of another point brought up earlier, I think by Jessica, about other sports and whether these stereotypes are just about certain sports. I really think it is, because swimmers are not really seen as masculine or lesbian, because it's an individual sport that is still very much geared toward both sexes. Horseback sports are also equal in judgement for the same reasons, and other sports as well: tennis, volleyball (where I know of a few instances where my guy friends only watched it because of their outfits and the way it made their behinds look), track, etc...

Anyways, I do not think people assume that every black person is an athlete, but I do think that people assume that many athletes are black/of color. And I see it in sports. Are stereotypes there because the reality caused them to form, or is reality there because people stereotyped athletes? And another question I hesitated to bring up... are stereotypes stereotypes if they are reflected in reality? I have class in a few minutes, but I am going to investigate the manner and pull out some statistics on this matter.

Hmmm...

Betsy brought up some interesting questions and I'm not quite sure how I feel about all of it but I have a few thoughts. At one time, weren't Jewish people believed to be better at sports than other people? I think I remember learning about that before. So now there has been a shift to African Americans being more athletic. Why the change? I have no clue but it will most likely change again. The idea that they were once bred to be bigger is an interesting idea and I never thought about that before. But not all athletes of color are slave descendants. Plus, if they are better athletes from breeding, why don't more black people become athletes. In my experiences, I have met as many African-American non-athletes as African-American Athletes. So I think that if that was the only reason...well I don't know how to end that sentence but I think I made the point.

In response to Aaron's question. I don't really think that my thoughts about student athletes have changed. The dumb jock stereotypes for me have mainly been aimed at football and basketball. Since we didn't really work with those athletes it is hard to say the ones we did work with changed my perspective. Even though it is ignorant and as a somewhat educated person I should be able to look beyond the preconceptions, I am unable too.

I do disagree with one thing that Aaron brought up though. I don't feel that female athletes are generally seen as being leaders for participating in sports. It seems like a lot of female athletes are stereotyped as being masculine and/or a lesbian. Especially in the media, if a woman plays she's always trying to compete with the boys. That's what I see anyway.

Follow up

In response to Jessica, when I think of the way I have stereotyped student athlete’s as being less intelligent then most, I have only ever thought of those who play football, basketball, and only male athletes. I think this comes from the media’s portrayal of athlete’s, and my acceptance of this over the years. Given that, I would say that the athlete’s participating in the less publicized sports are probably less likely to face the same kind of stereotypes, because they have never been criticized for a lack of intelligence, and therefore people don’t think of them in the same way they do those athlete’s who play the more publicized sports. On that same note, I havenever thought of female athlete’s in the same way that I do males, and I think a good majority would agree with that. It seems that people give female athlete’s a bit more credit because for a women to be in a leadership roll, its assumed that she is driven, goal oriented, and determined otherwise she would not be in such a position, and because of those notions (which too have been promulgated by the media, which often times dictates history) female athlete’s are less likely to be stereotyped as dumb jocks.

To answer the question "for student-athletes of color, does the reputation of being student athletes outweigh ethnic stereotypes? Are they intertwined at all?" I would have to say no the athlete reputation does not outweigh ethnic stereotypes. The ethnic stereotype is that if you are a student of color you are an athlete, and if you are an athlete of color, people assume you attained that position because of your ethnicity and whatever athletic abilities are supposedly inherent to your race (a stereotype). This point was raised throughout the blog, and even lead Betsy to question why it is that the most talented athlete’s are of color.

This leads to Katie's question about how whether it is the University or athlete’s themselves that perpetrate these stereotypes, and their response to them. To be honest, I don’t think the athlete’s care about the stereotypes, and that lack of care could be translated into the athlete’s perpetuating the very stereotypes that seek to degrade them. All of them are aware of the dumb-jock connotation that comes with playing a sport, but what really can they do about it? It has yet to get to a point where there intelligence or lack there of has caused disruption on campus or within their own community, so I really don’t think its anything they have gotten tired of fighting, so much as it simply may not be an issue.

Concurrently, the university is just catering to the needs of the demographic of students they chose to recruit. If there is a division between students and athlete’s its not because of the academic resources provided by the university, so much as it is due to the fact that the athlete’s make up such a small part of the university population, but represent the university as a whole. Therefore, if the university chooses to recruit "high-risk" athlete’s then they know that in order for those students to be successful they must set up a work environment that best caters to their needs so that those athlete’s can cater to the needs of the university. The only real reason why there is a division between the athletes and other students is because they are more recognizable figures than most on campus, and therefore like any other minority group, are subjected to immediate scrutiny or praise.

As for my own question after reading all the responses and our experience, I’d like to know if anyone’s view’s on these athlete’s changed, and if so why or why not? Where is it that we get these stereotypes, and why are we, intelligent people well versed in the politics of racism and Burke’s rhetoric of identification, still so willing to continue to stereotype others? Just curious.

once again (briefly)

i do not have a lot of time to discuss this, but i would like to vehemently reiterate that the majority of the undergraduate students of color on this campus ARE NOT ATHLETES.
taking data from the institutional research report, the number of students of color enrolled fall 2008 was 2,296 on the pullman campus, while white students accounted for 11,342 students. a staggering statistic.
roughly tallying the number of student-athletes, we have around 345 total. even if EVERY STUDENT ATHLETE was a student of color, it would be nowhere near the total number of students of color.
stereotypes exist because information is false and it is taken as fact. hurting not only the students targeted, but society as a whole.

A Continuation...

First of all Katie posed an interesting question that I would like to address. She mentioned that diversity comes mainly from WSU's athletic department in that many athletes are those of color. Katie wondered if WSU was to blame, which I felt was a fair question. However, I decided that WSU, while participating somewhat in the stereotypes that athletes are students of color mainly, the problem arises long before that. I mean, I think various societal factors fit in when looking that the reasons behind the large amount of athletes of color. Throughout elementary school, middle and beyond it is reinforced that athletes are often of color, especially black. Even I, who hardly knows sports at all, know a few famous athletes and they are nearly all black: Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Muhammed Ali, etc. The only white ones I can think of are Babe Ruth, Michael Phelps, Reiner Klimke... anyways, you get the point. So yeah, it really seems like one of two things are going on here: 1.) People of color, namely, Black individuals have better athletic abilities or, 2.) Stereotypes cause a skewed perspective within our society that causes everyone to believe Black individuals are better at sports and thus are reflected. I am prone to believe that 2 is correct, especially from hearing about a test some psychologists did a while back. I can't remember the numbers completely now, but I learned about it in my Chicana Studies class that these scientists did a few tests on white groups of people vs other groups of people. The one most pertinent was between two groups of white people and two groups of black people, same numbers and genders, to determine whether stereotypes played a role. They interviewed all of them, but in one group of white and black people they made sure to bring up their race (just kind of nonchalantly ask about it, sort of imbedded within the other questions) while in the others they didn't. Then, they had them all play golf and this is where is gets interesting--in the groups where they mentioned the race of those being interviewed, the black people did like eight strokes better than the white people, but in the groups where they didn't mention their races the scores were nearly identical. This was further tested based on white women and Asian women while doing math tests and white people and black people on some academic testing too.

So, with that said, I will return to Katies inquiry. Because these tests further bolster the idea that stereotypes play a vastly bigger role on individual talent often times than actual skill, I believe that more than WSU is at work in building these stereotypes here. They are brought up within all people and with them come expectations. People expect people to be a certain way based on their looks. Jessica wrote earlier that "to reduce everyone within a social group to one quality is dangerous" and I completely agree--yet it is happening constantly.

At the tutoring session, I expected the students we were going to help were going to be less skilled at writing based on two levels: 1.) That they aren't English majors and it's just for a GenEd class and 2.) Because they were athletes. Both can be factors for being a little clumsy at writing--if you don't like it, if you haven't practiced a lot and also if you don't have much time, as Sarah mentioned. So I guess I made fair judgments but still carried the stereotypes of race with me (and it was actually kind of manifested--many who came in were those of color). So that brings up another issue actually: because stereotypes are in place, they are often reflected (if you are told you are made for something or are really good at it for a long enough, or vice versa, if will be unconsciously reflected by you.) and thus encourage these stereotypes.

So that gets me to an interesting point... that is, I'm now a little less clear on my stance. I mean, is it because of stereotypes that black people seem to be better at sports or is it because they are actually good at sports that the stereotype persists? I remember I was chatting with a friend once and he made a point that black people were bred through slavery to be physically better, thus more are better athletically than white people. I couldn't really completely disregard this, since it might be partially true that only the strong survived while enslaved, and it made me wonder. What do you guys think about this argument?

synthesizing

While it encourages me that there are students ("colleagues, as Sarah puts it =) who will have a discussion about this subject, it is also disappointing and disturbing to read anecdotes like Aaron's. One thing that I keep thinking of while reading these posts is Burke's rhetoric of identity and othering - specifically the part where he says something along the lines of "when you focus on one thing, you are choosing to ignore the other" - essentially creating that division that makes everything black and white, no gray. Everything we have been discussing - student-athlete or non-student-athlete, white or non-white, brains or brawn - falls under this category. Why is it that all students of color are assumed to be athletes, and that all athletes are assumed to be unintelligent? I think everyone has fallen prey to this stereotype at one point - a year ago I had a black guy in my History of Rhetoric class who showed up wearing a basketball jersey and basketball shoes, and when he pulled out a copy of "phaedrus" with pages of notes in the margins and highlighted sections and a list of questions for discussion, I almost fell out of my chair because I was so surprised. Why? Because he was black, so I thought he was an athlete (turns out he wasn't)? Is that how our university culture has conditioned us to respond? WSU tries to claim that we are diverse, hiring a black president, and on the "Why WSU?" page of the WSU webpage featuring an Asian-American professor speaking to a Middle-Eastern student (my exboyfriend, ironically, who I know occasionally felt out of place at this pretty much all-white campus), and yet one only has to look at the GLBT hate crimes that have been going on here or the way that the majority of campus dubs CES majors as "granola-chewing tree-hugging liberals" to see that the effort to increase diversity and understanding - cross-cultural communication, if you will - made by much of the campus (NOT everyone) is half-hearted, at best.

The fact that we are lumping all student-athletes into one category shows that we ourselves are almost victims of the same stereotyping we are trying to shed light on. As a former employee of Northside Cafe, I have worked in the Cougar Fitness Cafe and witnessed firsthand athletes boasting that they can break rules and get away with whatever they want just because they can, treat non-athletes rudely and in general act as though they ran the school. I have also witnessed firsthand friends on the swimteam and the rowing team who were up at 4:30 every morning to make it to practice, while working and going to school and DD-ing for non-athletes who were going out when they themselves couldn't go out because they had practice in the morning. While I understand that we have to, for the sake of our argument here, I do think that to lump all athletes into the same category does them a disservice, because like in every generalization, you will find exceptions on both sides of the spectrum.

One thing I would like to respond to in Sarah's post, about how student-athletes utilize the ARC because they are treated with respect and genuine care and that other resources on campus may be a "stigmatizing environment" where they are assumed to be lacking in intelligence. I work with hardworking, patient, respectful and genuine students (some of whom are volunteering their time) in a university-run resource center and I have yet to overhear any of them treating anyone disprespectfully based on any social aspect - ESL difficulties, which Greek letters are on their sweatshirt, if they are wearing an Islamic veil, etc. If student-athletes feel that they are viewed as "he/she must be dumb because he/she plays sports," perhaps this stems from the fact that to an outsider it may appear that student-athletes are too good for the resources provided for all students - that they have to have something different, something better, and something separate. Once outsiders get this idea, then student-athletes really do feel uncomfortable/unwelcome and then the whole cycle perpetuates, increasing the isolation and division of the student-athlete from the rest of the student body. While student-athletes may prefer the resources at the ARC because they know more people and feel more at home there, I do think it is unfair to say that anything outside the ARC stigmatizes athletes (I know this isn't what Sarah said, btw, I'm just taking it a step further to illustrate a point - although I think it is interesting to hear Sarah's point of view from a very similar job just in the opposite side of the student-athlete barrier). Also I think it is important to point out that other organizations are funded outside the university - Greek chapters by national organizations, student organizations by fundraisers, etc. - but that all student-athlete resources are funded by the university. So how much of the division between student-athletes and the other part of the student body is caused by the university itself? How much does the university just perpetuate those stereotypes, and how much do student-athletes perpetuate them themselves? Do they just get tired of trying to fight the stereotypes? What gives?