Documentary: The divide between black Americans and soccer

Interesting topic - want to watch this. I think (wildly conjecture) that soccer has some potential in the black community - perhaps more than among certain anti-soccer segments of the white population. Right now Basketball and Football appear to be the dominant sports in black America. Baseball has dropped off and I see limited potential for Ice Hockey and Lacrosse. That leaves an opening for Soccer which is a relatively easy sport to get into.

I could really see many black Americans taking Soccer up as a 2nd or 3rd sport and then maybe you are really good at it and like it and some kids get into DAs and turn pro. Don't have to go through the NCAA to play pro soccer. That could then spark more interest in the community. I have noticed a number of black MLS Home Grown signings and my guess is not all of them are from immigrant backgrounds. And black immigrants will have some impact on the broader community.

Both Basketball and Football present some issues to the serious athlete - playing BBall at an elite level almost always requires 6'+ height. Pretty clear from your family whether you have the potential to reach that height (only 15% of men are 6' or taller). Even 6' is pretty borderline for high level BBall. Football presents higher risks of injury and brain trauma. Sure people in working and lower class areas are probably less squeamish than the white upper middle class - but nobody wants to send their kid out to get seriously injured.

 

One observation I have is that I have never heard the hostility towards soccer from blacks that I have heard from some whites (both commentators and dads). They may not be into it but I don't see that strange hostility. My kid is playing a variety of sports at the youth rec level and multiple times I have encountered thinly veiled scorn / hostility towards soccer from white baseball dad / lacrosse dad / hockey dad etc.. I don't get it but it is there. Baseball dad may know little or nothing about ice hockey or lacrosse but for whatever reason it does not inspire the same contempt as soccer.

 

The reason they have contempt is because they view soccer as a foreign sport aka un-American that means its sissy (flopping) and not our sport hence who cares if we're not good at it. If it was considered an American sport and we were as good historically as brazil Americans would love it.

Black Americans in my opinion can pick up soccer but the nba and football have more pull culturally plus you can pull yourself out of poverty quicker with these sports. Plus playing basketball requires nothing but a ball same with recreational two hand touch football. Soccer in America or organized soccer is geared toward middle class/upper middle class white kids in the suburbs who can have access and money to pursue soccer.

The untapped Latino talent that the US have not developed is hurting it in my opinion.

 

The point about costs is relevant, not just for blacks but for whites. It's ridiculous quite frankly. The easiest sport in the world should not be one of the most expensive.

 

Putting futsal courts in parks would help. They don't take up any more space than basketball courts. Any organized sport costs money -- including basketball. The answer is to make it easier to play informally, so that pickup soccer can become as much a part of American culture as pickup basketball.

 

You're not wrong. The only issue that informal soccer won't result in more blacks becoming professionals. Getting to the top requires money still, even with scholarships. It seems like you really need to be on the inside, like academies for example.

 

Agreed. As we develop a more regimented youth system, we should also consciously work promote organic and undirected growth and development. I think that that these approaches are complementary, and in a huge and diverse country like the US provide a lot of possibilities.

Definitely.

I think that the idea that football and especially basketball are dominant in black culture are valid. I would think that this is related to the fact that those sports are dominated by black athletes. For black children, it must be obvious that these 2 sports are arenas where their race is dominant, not to mention the fact that they have a lot of visible and high-profile African-American basketball players to look at as successful.

I wonder if athletes like LeBron Jame and Kobe Bryant expressing genuine interest in soccer will make the sport more visible to and desirable for young black athletes. It can't hurt.

 

Participation rates amongst African-Americans in soccer have never met the demographic ratio/percentage of blacks in the USA. The urban experience does not necessarily preclude exposure to soccer as a recreational outlet for inner city kids, but, by the same token, efforts to cultivate the game in the inner city have failed to produce, even, the diamond in the rough athlete. MLS is 18/19 years old...that's a generation long; certainly long enough to produce at least a star or two from this sector. More than half of the African-American representation on the current national team pool are players of dual nationalities (German/Americans: Jones, F Johnson, Boyd, Chandler) with DMB, Altidore and EJ hailing from the mainland (Altidore's is of Haitian descent). There are others (Agudelo, Edu) which brings us to 9 players out of a player pool of 35 or so who are African-American, approx. 25%...higher than the percentage of blacks in the general population (about 13%). This conflicts with the grass-roots reality, that African-American kids are not participating at the same rate as their non-black counterparts are in the organized sector of the sport.
I researched participation rates back in 1996, as MLS was getting underway, and things haven't really changed all that much. Looking at ODP teams from Eastern New York, which includes NYC and Long Island, African-American representation on all age group ODP teams, paled in comparison to the percentage of African-Americans in the general population. Some age groups had zero African-Americans on the rosters.
Just thinking about how long MLS has been around and the lack of in-roads made to excite and engage the African-American population is staggering.

 

I think we need to be cautious about generalizing about African-Americans, because at least in terms of sports culture, there are really two distinct groups. First- and second-generation African-Americans actually participate in soccer at a much higher rate than the general American population. They're a small fraction of the overall African-American population, but account for well over half of African-American MLS players. African-Americans are actually slightly overrepresented in MLS right now, but it's entirely because of the sons of immigrants. The participation rate for non-recent-immigrant African-Americans is still abysmal. That situation isn't unique to African-Americans; first- and second-generation Americans are also greatly overrepresented among white American players.

I actually don't think MLS has been around long enough to solve that problem. The American sports media has only recently started to grudgingly accept soccer as a legitimate sport, and the media is highly influential. 19 years may seem like a long time, and it's been long enough for lifelong MLS fans to start entering the league as players, but it takes longer than that to change media perceptions. Also, given the cost of playing high-level youth soccer, inner-city outreach has been too limited for most of MLS's existence. MLS has only had free academies for a few years (not long enough to develop more than a handful of players), and even now not all MLS academies are free.

 

I totally agree with you about the media. I feel like College Football/ college basketball gets more exposure than the MLS. The American sports industry is already saturated as it is. MLS also has compete with the European leagues

 

The "power" of the NFL and college football have impacted MLS dramatically (domestically) right from the start...MLS doesn't play a split fall/spring season because of their existence (plain and simple). The power rests with the incumbent/older leagues and they will do what they have to (dump gazillions of dollars into the broadcasters/owners/players pots), in order to hold onto it.
MLS has weathered nearly twenty years of second-fiddle status, while the popularity of European soccer has begun to make inroads into the American mainstream consciousness.
The next jump for MLS and soccer in the US may have to wait to occur until the USMNT conjures up its best tournament performance and advances to the semifinals and/or final of the World Cup. 2014? Plausible but far from likely at this point.