Racial Discrimination in Professional Basketball

Abstract

have been good to blacks by offering them chance to escape poverty and leave the slums of ghettos. Thus, athletics has been called a land of opportuni ty for Negroes.1 Statistics are often cited to sup port this argument. These data show the dispro portionately large share of pro basketball players, for example, who are Negro. More than half of all professional players are black, and this pro portion far exceeds the 12 per cent Negro share of the total U. S. population.2 In fact, profes sional basketball has almost literally been taken over by nonwhite players .... 3 As further evi dence in support of the contention that blacks have found opportunity in sports, salaries of big-name Negro players are also mentioned. In basketball, salaries of such super-stars as Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson, Bill Russell, and Kareem Abdul Jabbar are referred to, and it is also commonly added that few white players receive salaries which compare with the income of these outstanding black players.