What is the percentage of African American players in baseball football and basketball each year dating back to 1940?

Answer 1

Fewer and fewer American blacks are pursuing the path cleared by Robinson. When the Red Sox became the final major league team to integrate in 1959 by signing Pumpsie Green, nearly 1-in-5 major leaguers was black. As recently as 1983, the ratio was better than 1-in-4. A report from the University of Central Florida’s Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport found that American or non-Hispanic blacks made up only 8.4 percent of major league rosters in 2006. Whites made up 59.5 percent, Hispanics (a group that includes Americanborn Hispanics, blacks from Spanish-speaking countries and others from Latin America) made up 29.4 percent and Asians 2.4 percent. The percentage of American blacks was the lowest in 27 years. Basketball and football are glamorized in African-American culture, while Baseball is seen as a traditionally white pastoral game. Thus, the majority of young black athletes gravitate to those sports instead.