Author Topic: Sports Culture  (Read 2459 times)

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Offline kimmy

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Re: Sports Culture
« Reply #30 on: May 01, 2021, 12:27:00 pm »
This year's edition of the Oilers has Darnell Nurse (black Canadian), Ethan Bear (aboriginal Canadian), Kailer Yamamoto (American with Japanese ancestry), and Jujhar Khaira (Canadian with Punjabi ancestry) playing every night.  Not just as randos who get called up for one or two games from the minors, but as major contributors, especially Nurse.  Hockey is seen as a very white sport, but there have been an increasing number of black players in recent years. There have been a modest number of aboriginal players over the years, but they are pretty rare. Players of Asian ancestry have also been pretty rare, and aside from Manny Malhotra,  Khaira is the only player of Indian background that I can think of.

Hockey is an expensive sport to get your kids into. The cost of the equipment alone is a big barrier to entry that probably disproportionately affects aboriginal Canadians.  But that doesn't explain the rarity of players of Asian background in the NHL.  Canada has large and financially successful Asian communities... if it was just a matter of demographic data one would expect to see more Canadians of Asian background go to the NHL.   I wonder how much of it is cultural.  There's a stereotype about Asian parents being demanding and focused on academic achievement-- and feel that having their children waste so much time playing sports will hurt their grades. There are probably also many parents who arrived in Canada as immigrants from poor backgrounds who feel that spending a bunch of money to get their kids into an expensive sport is wasteful.  But I think also that some of it is to do with a lack of role models.  I think that probably many black kids saw Jarome Iginla winning trophies and gold medals playing hockey and thought "I could do that too." Perhaps if Jarome Iginla wins the Rocket Richard Trophy and you go down to the local rink, the other kids won't tell you "black people can't play hockey" anymore.

  I remember when I was young and my Asian friends were interested in Paul Kariya.  They weren't interested in hockey in general, but Paul Kariya was exciting for them.  It was exciting for them to see somebody who looked like them succeeding in something that seemed like it's just for white people.  Perhaps Ethan Bear or Kailer Yamamoto or Jujhar Khaira will make some kid think "hey, I could do that too."

 -k
Paris - London - New York - Kim City
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