The Future of Black Ownership in North American Sports

With the exit of Michael Jordan, there are no sports franchises with majority Black owners. But change may finally be on the horizon. <img alt="" src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:700/1*PSq2ui9xCLW0eIDdQq-69Q.jpeg" style="height:394px; width:700px" /> I recently finished reading Jason Reid’s book, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Black-Quarterback-Means-America/dp/1368076629#:~:text=Book%20details&text=A%20compulsively%20readable%20sports%20narrative,Black%20quarterbacks%2C%20including%20Colin%20Kaepernick." rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">The Rise of the Black Quarterback: What It Means For America</a>”. Reid does a great job of telling the history, struggle, and path of Black athletes that play American sports’ most glamorous position. It is a story that is weaved with the ugly truth of America’s racism against Black men that stretched well into the 1980s and 1990s. Even after the acceptance of Black men playing the position, Reid reminds us that even now Black quarterbacks deal with a different level of scrutiny than their white counterparts. The timing of me finishing this book was peculiar because of another sports story that highlights the lack of access of Black people that recently happened. Michael Jordan is arguably the greatest basketball player who ever played the game. But for as great as he was on the court, it can be argued that he is a greater magnitude of inept when it came to being the owner of the Charlotte Hornets. Jordan recently sold his majority stake in the NBA franchise for $3 billion, and ended a 13-year nightmare for fans in Charlotte. But with Jordan’s exit, North American professional sports no longer has a majority Black owner. And we are once again left to wonder why ownership in sports lacks so much diversity. <a href="https://omarzahran.medium.com/the-future-of-black-ownership-in-north-american-sports-97a27fedf0df">Read More</a>