Racial Discrimination in Professional Basketball: An Empirical Test

Organized athletics has until recently been an American institution virtually ignored by sociologists. In the last few years, however, an increasing number of sociologists and other social scientists have begun to focus on sports and are developing a growing body of literature in the area. This new focus has resulted in publication of a number of journal articles, in sections devoted to the field at regional, national, and international meetings, and several recent anthologies. The first text entitled Sociology of Sports has just appeared.1 An important focus of the research has been the documentation of racial discrimination in sports, which is frequently cited as an American institution in which blacks have opportunities equal to that of whites. Blalock (1961, 1967) has attempted to integrate data from minority participation in athletics with more general theory. He uses professional athletics to illustrate principles concerning conditions under which previously closed occupations will be opened to minorities. Assuming that minority group members will be hired into only the least desirable positions unless they possess compensatory resources, Blalock distinguishes two types of the minority group might have ? resources and resources. Competitive can be measured in terms of performance per unit of cost; the minority may possess certain special skills or be willing to work for lower wages. Pressure are those that could be used to punish the employer. A loss of minority group customers if the employer fails to hire minority group members is an example. The argument as related to athletics is summarized in the following way: In professional athletics, it is the competitive which have been most important, although the growing numbers of blacks in cities in which sports franchises are located has created a pressure resource. The major factor in the opening of professional athletics to blacks appears to be the competitive nature of athletics and the accuracy with which skills can be measured. The performance of one individual can be compared to the performance of another. For example, the ability of an athlete who can consistantly run the 100-yard dash in 9.3 seconds is obviously