Society likes to paint a picture of what ethnicity belongs in what type of job or career. In movies, TV shows, or even in advertisements we see certain races portray certain roles. Hispanics usually are seen is housekeeping or hard labor roles, whites usually are portrayed in professional careers like doctors, lawyers or business men. While African Americans are usually view as athletes, whether they are in high school, college or the professional level they are seen playing sports. In an essay written by Henry Louis Gates Jr. called “Delusions of Grandeur” he makes a lot of great points regarding African Americans and how they are viewed in the professional aspect lifestyle.
In the essay Henry Louis Gates Jr states some very interesting facts regarding the number of professional African Americans athletes vs. other careers they actually hold. Before reading his essay I was under the same impression as others that most African Americans hold professional athletic careers than they do any other career. According to Gates research “ there are 1200
…show more content…
makes a lot of great point in his essay, especially how talented African Americans waste their time on concentrating on how to be a professional athlete. Many stop caring about their grades or even what they are actually studying for because they believe that they are going to make it in the pros once they get to college. What happens to the ones that don’t make it? What happens when they put all their dreams in one basket and let their education fail because they believed that they would be a professional athlete? I think a lot of people in society have the assumption that professional athletes are mostly black and we are surprised to see that they are actually not the dominating race in that profession. The media has a lot to do with how we perceive who belongs where. In movies, news, even commercials athletes are usually portrayed by African American, so we expect to see the same thing in real