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Video Reflection: African Americans in Sports

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Video Reflection: African Americans in Sports
Andrew Schelb
Video Reflection #1 After watching this video I feel very enlightened and that I have learned a lot about African American struggles through sports. I never realized the amount of discrimination and prejudice they faced, nor did I realize the diversity challenges they faced. From Jack Johnson all the way through to Hank Aaron the discrimination and threats that African American athletes faced was disheartening to say the least. Before watching this video I never realized that Jack Johnson faced the threats or that his fights caused many of his own race to be mobbed and rioted as a result. Even when he beat the all American Jeffries he had no respect, despite being one of the greatest boxers of all time African American or not. The lack of support from white America was surprising and personally, I always thought that they would just cheer on the best athlete regardless. Fast foreword to Jesse Owens in the Berlin Olympics and you wouldn’t know that African American athletes were not well supported. Jesse Owens seemingly had the entire nation backing him yet when he got back the beliefs still lingered and almost destroyed him. Moving to baseball, without Jackie Robinson baseball wouldn’t be the same as it is today, yet he faced death threats and had things thrown at him on a daily basis. Given all of their struggles with discrimination its hard to imagine sports being the same had America not eventually accepted the best athlete regardless of color. While the discrimination was rough the hardest thing to overcome was the prejudice they faced being less talented and not as good as White Athletes. The biggest obstacle for African Americans to overcome was without a doubt the prejudice. America had a set of beliefs based around the white man being superior in all things. Jack Johnson beat every man they put in front of him, yet his attitude was widely viewed as unacceptable. Even when he beat “America’s Champion” nothing changed. Hardheadedness of
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