Alex Del Valle // Contributing Writer
The argument can be made that in every major U.S. sport a black athlete is the face of it or fairly close.
The argument can be made that every major sport has a black athlete as the face of the game; Lebron James is synonymous with the NBA, P.K Subban represents the NHL and Andrew McCutchen is one of the best in the MLB.
The black athlete has made inroads to become the best athletes in their respective sports, but it wasn’t easy. Much is indebted to the sports pioneers such as Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and Jesse Owens.
It was not long ago when athletes of color were segregated from white athletes due to Jim Crow laws that were put in place after the Plessy v Ferguson Supreme Court case.
Yet, these competitors were brave enough to fight through adversity in and out of their sport. As a result the first African-American boxing champ appeared along with the first African-American to win an Olympic gold medal.
According to collegefactual.com, FIU is above average in ethnic diversity with 12.2% of the undergraduate class coming from a black or African American background; the school has stepped up to the plate during the MLK holiday and the upcoming black history month.
The first Martin Luther King Jr. bust in the North Miami area was installed at The Biscayne Bay Campus. A couple of days earlier the men’s basketball team taught blind children the game of basketball to honor the life of MLK.
It didn’t take FIU student Luciano Caminata long to come up with the black athlete that is most important to him.
“Dwyane Wade is my favorite athlete. Around the time Wade started his rookie year for the Miami Heat I reached an age where I finally started appreciating and watching professional sports” said Caminata. “He has always been a joy to watch due to his athleticism and his ability to create highlights. I am glad to say that my childhood idol is easily one of the top-five shooting guards the NBA has ever seen.”
The recurring theme among FIU students was proclaiming that the black basketball player has impacted their lives the most. In the case of FIU transfer student Diego Restrepo, the easy choice was Kobe Bryant.
“Loyalty, playing for one team for 20 years really stuck out to me,” Restrepo said. “He is the type of person that puts his mind to achieving his goals and completes the objective with hard work. This is something I have implemented in my life and I owe it to him.”
Sports would be unidentifiable without the talent that the black community has provided. However, they are more than just products in a game to entertain us. They are entrepreneurs, fathers and most importantly human beings who reap the same civil liberties as the rest of us.
Black History Month is a time to remind us of the stress and agony it took to achieve freedom and how far we all have come as one.
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