Diversity And Discrimination In Sports

Issues that are prevalent through out many sport organizations is the lack of diversity and potential opportunities for discrimination. Often times intertwined with one another, there is a need to understand why this is occurring and how myself along with other practitioners of sport can make strides in combating against these issues. Although not dependent on one another, they are both equally worthy of discussion. In respect to human resource management, diversity and discrimination are two topics that can not be avoided when creating policies, hiring practices or rules and regulations for workplace environments. This paper will discuss the backgrounds of each topic and how they are both portrayed and represented in sport organizations.

Unlike diversity, the word discrimination does have some legal obligation and foundation to its meaning. In its most simplistic form, discrimination is defined as the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or thing. According to the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commision (EEOC) there are twelve forms of discrimination. They range from discrimination due to age and disablility to discrimination of sex and race. The inclusion of this definition, as was mentioned prior, was because before something can be discussed it needs to be understood. Discrimination in the workplace occurs quite often through a magnitude of industries, albeit in overt or covert manners. Individuals can be blatently discriminated against in actual practice or companies and organizations can have strategic wordage within their bylaws or unwritten rules. Discrimination at the workplace can take place at any point throughout interactions, sometimes even before. For example, someone can be discriminated before even applying, at the hiring stage, firing, or through demotion and promotion if done on a prejudice of some kind that results in unfair

Sport organizations don’t get a pass on this phenomenon. An organization that is deserving of the attention and focus for this assignment would be the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Examining all levels of the NCAA from ranging from NCAA headquarters to the student athletes, while juxtaposing them to one another and discussing the lack of reflection of the higher ups among those underneath them. In an organization where in 2015, 56.9 percent of the athletes are non- white (Lapchick & Baker, 2016), it should be important that this is reflected among all levels. However, 89.9 percent of FBS university presidents, 90 percent of FBS commissioners, 80.8 of white administrators, 87.5 percent of coaches, were all white (Lapchick & Baker, 2016). The NCAA in partnership with the National Association of Collegiate Women Athletics Administrators and the Black Coaches Association have worked together to create a human resource handbook titled “Best Hiring Practices.” This handbook was published to provide rules and regulations on hiring specific candidates for key administrative positions in the structure of NCAA (NCAA, 2006). Within the handbook it discusses strategies and methods to properly hiring employees, increasing diversity while going through the process. While the NCAA may have made some efforts to provide a sense of diversity, the