As the parent of a sports-obsessed 10-year-old, I was grateful that I was able to relive the Michael Jordan era with my son by watching The Last Dance, ESPN’s series chronicling the Chicago Bulls’ 1997-98 championship season. I was even more pleased that it led to us having in-depth conversations about Jesse Helms’ racist history, the economics of sports, and the expectations often thrust on star black athletes to speak authoritatively on social issues.
Today’s reduction of live sports—combined with the abundant ways that two current major events in the United States have crossover connections to sports—provide ample opportunities right now for parents to start deeper conversations with sports-loving kids about relevant social issues.
For example, currently unsigned NFL player Colin Kaepernick began kneeling to protest police violence against the black community in 2017—and now every state has had protests and rallies in response to the death of George Floyd after an encounter with police in Minneapolis.
Also, the seriousness of the COVID-19 outbreak was elevated when Utah Jazz star Rudy Gobert tested positive before a game, causing the immediate suspension of the NBA season. Now, the NBA recently approved a plan to continue its season; a decision that—perhaps more motivated by economic interests rather than what is in the best interest of public health—is an opportunity to talk to kids about whether or not sports should even return in the midst of a pandemic with no vaccine.
“I think it’s a great opportunity to actually demonstrate a little bit about how power is working, how money is working and to create spaces to talk [to kids] about how sports might be reimagined,” says Dr. Amira Rose Davis, assistant professor of history and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Penn State University. “Why are people eager for this [sports returning] to happen? What are the risks? And who’s making the decisions?”
Davis’ research is focused on race, gender, sports and politics in the 20th century United States. She is also co-host of Burn It All Down podcast, a popular feminist sports podcast, and is writing a book titled, Can’t Eat a Medal: The Lives and Labors of Black Women Athletes in the Age of Jim Crow. She notes that sports offer parents a chance to begin dialogues with their children around social and cultural topics that are often avoided, particularly by white parents.
“Studies show that white parents are far less likely to talk with their children about issues of systemic oppression and other things layered on top of that, particularly around race,” Davis says. “With sports as this highly popular cultural thing that is widely consumed, parents can play a great role in contextualizing what messages kids might be passively receiving.”
At a basic level, sports are an avenue to simply encourage inquisitiveness in kids, starting simply with understanding the rules and nuances of each game. Jessica Luther, a journalist and author of Unsportsmanlike Conduct: College Football and the Politics of Rape, notes that those simple questions can lead to bigger and more important ones.
“You can talk to kids about all kinds of stuff to get them started thinking about like, why do we do it this way?” Luther says. “Some of that stuff is not serious, like where the three-point line is or why the goalkeeper can touch the ball. But that can lead to big stuff like, why does the Washington NFL team have a racist name? Or why don’t boys and girls play sports together?”
Luther also notes that some of these conversations don’t occur simply because parents don’t want to interrogate the topics themselves.
“It’s easier to say, ‘Oh, kids can’t understand this,’ than to actually have the conversation,” Luther says. “We think … we have to protect kids’ innocence or something, which of course is only true if you’re a certain demographic. Most of the time, white parents find race hard to talk about, but black parents are having conversations with their children about it.”
Dr. Paul Emory Putz, assistant director of the sports ministry program at Baylor University’s Truett Seminary, studies the intersection between sports and Christianity. As a kid, his interest in sports was part of the reason he later became a historian.
“Sports helped me [as a kid] see there are people who have come before,” Putz says. “And by them participating in sports, they’re actually part of this much bigger story and narrative. For me, that was really compelling as a kid.”
Topics like race and gender span generations, and Putz notes that using sports as an entry point to get kids interested in and aware of history can provide them with a skillset they can apply to more complex topics as they grow and mature.
“If you have a team you connect with your kid on, talk with them and go watch old games or read about the history of the team,” Putz said. “Just opening them up to the past is sort of the first thing that can be helpful, and recognising that it’s not going to be as complex or socially aware at first as you’re hoping to be, but it can be an entry point into broader conversations.”
Davis also points out that, even if kids don’t fully understand the context of race or gender issues, there are still things they observe, and they can be given the tools to look at through a more critical lens at the youth sports level.
“I remember the messages about the value placed on the boys’ and girls’ soccer teams in fifth grade, even though I didn’t have the language to express it,” Davis says. “I remember what was said about the girls who continued to play with the boys and what was embedded in the messages we received about that. That cuts right at the issue of the way we value women and the resources allocated to women’s sports.
“A 10-year-old can understand that their team is all white and a team from another zip code is all black. Youth sports are already carrying so many of these same issues, but it’s certainly a place to start having conversations and, perhaps, make it a little easier to have them down the road when it shifts to a collegiate or professional environment where it’s really easy to get lost in the sauce of fandom.”
More resources to check out:
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This article, by Shireen Ahmen on Today’s Parent, about how to help kids understand injustice
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This blog post by Paul Putz titled “Reckoning with Race in American Sports History”
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The Pro Hoops History newsletter by Curtis Harris
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Power Plays, a sexism in sports newsletter, by Lindsay Gibbs
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