Tokenism in Shows and Maybe Sports

During class the last couple days we have been talking about TV tokenism and how blacks and minorities in TV shows are just there to possibly make minorities feel better. Not only are minorities getting less screen time but they are also the "sidekicks" to white males. The examples that Mr. Bolos showed in class were really cool, and it was something that I did not notice before, and because of what Mr. Bolos did I can not watch a show without thinking about the race of the characters, and how minorities are ALWAYS treated worse and have less screen time. It is one of those things that you don't think about or notice before someone opens your mind to it, and it changes your TV watching experience FOREVER.

Now I'm going to try to make this relate to sports. I dont know if it does at all and is probably a huge stretch. First, lets look at hockey. About 97% of NHL players are white and teams with minorities don't play them much and they are usually not as good. For example Dustin Byfuglien of the Chicago Blackhawks is a great role player but they wanted to cut his ice time for the playoffs because they thought he would make a bigger impact with less ice time. Mr. Byfuglien has played great this post-season, and still not getting as many minutes. Other minority NHL players are not getting a lot of ice time not only due to the fact that there aren't a lot of them, but maybe because they are black.

Now lets look at the NBA. The NBA is an example of reverse tokenism. Minorities have taken over the sport of Basketball. There are so many more amazing African American players than White. Therefore the minorities are getting all of the playing time because they are so much better right? Even in the most black dominated sport teams still "have" to play white guys. So, maybe, teams are playing white guys for the same reason shows have black guys; to appeal to the audience. Yes, we all love watching LeBron, Kobe, and Durant, but we also love watching Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki, and David Lee. Are these white guys that good? yes they are really good, but maybe we think of them as amazing because they are white, and not by their talent level. Maybe. The more white guys that are on the court the funnier it looks. I remember I watching a NBA game with a couple friends and we were amazed to see a total of 5 white guys on the court. 50% of the guys playing were white, that's almost un-heard-of. So, just maybe reverse tokenism is alive in the NBA.

These are just two of the major sports and there are many more sports out there and if you have example of tokenism in sports or shows of course please feel free to share.