{"id":58169,"date":"2014-01-02T08:00:11","date_gmt":"2014-01-02T13:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=58169"},"modified":"2015-09-01T21:39:27","modified_gmt":"2015-09-02T02:39:27","slug":"wanna-be-in-the-nba-it-helps-to-grow-up-rich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2014\/01\/02\/wanna-be-in-the-nba-it-helps-to-grow-up-rich\/","title":{"rendered":"Wanna Be in the NBA? It Helps to Grow Up Rich"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part of what makes professional basketball appealing, for kids who love to play as well as fans, is the idea that a person can come from humble beginnings and\u00a0become a star. \u00a0The players on the court, the narrative goes, are ones who rose to fame as a result of incredible dedication\u00a0and\u00a0extraordinary talent. \u00a0Basketball, then, is a way out of poverty, a true equal opportunity sport that affirms what we think America is all about.<\/p>\n

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz crunched the numbers<\/a> to find out if the equal opportunity story was true. \u00a0 Analyzing the economic background of NBA players, he found that growing up in a wealthy neighborhood (the top 40% of household incomes) is a “major, positive predictor” for success in professional basketball. \u00a0Black players are also less likely than the general black male population to have been born to a young or single mother. \u00a0So, class privilege is an advantage for pro ball players, just like it is elsewhere in our economy.<\/p>\n

\"Screenshot_1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"Screenshot_2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The richest Black men, then, are most likely to end up in the NBA, followed by those in the bottom 20% of neighborhoods by income. \u00a0Middle class black men may, like many middle class white men, see college as a more secure route to a successful future. \u00a0Research shows that poor black men often see sports as a more realistic route out of poverty than college (and they may not be wrong). \u00a0This also helps explain why Jews dominated professional basketball<\/a> in the first half of the 1900s.<\/p>\n

LeBron James was right, then, when he said,\u00a0\u201cI\u2019m LeBron James. From Akron, Ohio. From the inner city. I am not even supposed to be here.\u201d \u00a0The final phrase disrupts our mythology about professional basketball: that being poor isn’t an obstacle if one has talent and drive. \u00a0But, as\u00a0Stephens-Davidowitz reminds us, “[a]nyone from a difficult environment, no matter his athletic prowess, has the odds stacked against him.”<\/p>\n

Cross-posted at Pacific Standard<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part of what makes professional basketball appealing, for kids who love to play as well as fans, is the idea that a person can come from humble beginnings and\u00a0become a star. \u00a0The players on the court, the narrative goes, are ones who rose to fame as a result of incredible dedication\u00a0and\u00a0extraordinary talent. \u00a0Basketball, then, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":58178,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,23384,252,8080,778,8118,285,1760,3875,1757,341,108],"class_list":["post-58169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-social-construction-discourselanguage","tag-healthmedicine","tag-housingresidential-segregation","tag-intersectionality","tag-organizationsinstitutions","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans","tag-raceethnicity-jews","tag-raceethnicity-whiteseuropeans","tag-ruralurban","tag-sports"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2013\/11\/Screenshot_19.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58169"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":67302,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58169\/revisions\/67302"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}