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Why Don't We See More Pictures Like This?

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Mar 19, 2009
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Ok, so do you also disagree with the statement that you're a product of your environment? If every high school in the country had a varsity cycling team, and Lil Wayne, T.I., and Dj Drama were doing a live show for the after Giro party, pro cycling would have a much different demographic. What are you still not getting jaylew?
 
Mar 19, 2009
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Ok, so do you also disagree with the statement that you're a product of your environment? If every high school in the country had a varsity cycling team, and Lil Wayne, T.I., and Dj Drama were doing a live show for the after Giro party, pro cycling would have a much different demographic. What are you still not getting jaylew?
 
RDV4ROUBAIX said:
Ok, so do you also disagree with the statement that you're a product of your environment? If every high school in the country had a varsity cycling team, and Lil Wayne, T.I., and Dj Drama were doing a live show for the after Giro party, pro cycling would have a much different demographic.

Absolutely, if every high school had a varsity cycling program and all universities had scholarship cycling programs and there were races on US television all the time, the demographic would be a bit different. Wouldn't even need Lil' Wayne and the crew to hype the Giro. It wouldn't be like that of football and basketball of course, but you would definitely see more black cyclists.

Where we differ is in the extent to which the "gangster element" as you say or gangsta rap and hip-hop is the reason black youths get into football and basketball and not cycling.

You do realize that hip hop didn't even exist until the 70s, didn't become really popular until the mid-80s and gangsta rap in the late 80s/early 90s. I can actually remember the day my cousin came up to me put a record on and said " You gotta check this out! It's called rap!!" And yet, before that there were few black cyclists and most black kids went into football and basketball. I don't think you'd see much, if any, difference in demographics if hip-hop never came into being.

We agree that fewer black children are exposed to the sport and a smaller percentage have the necessary funds to spend money on all the equipment.

I think seeing friends & relatives play a sport and watching it on television has far more influence than anything some rapper says. I've heard Tiger mentioned in tons of rap songs, but you still haven't seen a big spike in young black golfers. Why? If you're a black youth and your school doesn't have a golf team and none of your relatives or friends play, you're just not going to get into it. And of course there's the economic issue. Golf is too expensive for most people, period.

I just believe you're more likely to get into a sport because your friends and family are into it and you watch it on the tube, than because someone rapped about it or because you saw Snoop at the Super Bowl.
 
Mar 19, 2009
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jaylew said:
Where we differ is in the extent to which the "gangster element" as you say or gangsta rap and hip-hop is the reason black youths get into football and basketball and not cycling.
Misunderstood again, but yes you are right.
You do realize that hip hop didn't even exist until the 70s, didn't become really popular until the mid-80s and gangsta rap in the late 80s/early 90s. I can actually remember the day my cousin came up to me put a record on and said " You gotta check this out! It's called rap!!" And yet, before that there were few black cyclists and most black kids went into football and basketball. I don't think you'd see much, if any, difference in demographics if hip-hop never came into being.
Yep, I've been a fan since Eric B & Rakim were Paid in Full!
I think seeing friends & relatives play a sport and watching it on television has far more influence than anything some rapper says. I've heard Tiger mentioned in tons of rap songs, but you still haven't seen a big spike in young black golfers. Why? If you're a black youth and your school doesn't have a golf team and none of your relatives or friends play, you're just not going to get into it. And of course there's the economic issue. Golf is too expensive for most people, period.
I prefer fox hunting and a good scotch.
I just believe you're more likely to get into a sport because your friends and family are into it and you watch it on the tube, than because someone rapped about it or because you saw Snoop at the Super Bowl.
I don't know, that TDF song by Kraftwerk is partially responsible for my cycling affliction.:D
 
RDV4ROUBAIX said:
Not as a whole, and I did mention that some of these very racists I met are at the heart of the European bike industry, which nobody picked up on. I'm obviously not going to name anyone or any company they're affiliated with, because if I did it would make your head spin, and cause much bigger problems. You can argue back and forth about that comment being crude, rude, or way to general, but it's based on fact, I'm not making it up to cause controversy. Those that think that Europe doesn't have an inherent racism problem, generally speaking, or even in the bike industry there, are either living in a racial utopia, or living like an ostrich with their heads in the sand.

Saying that Europe has a racist problem, is like saying America has one. So? That Europeans brought black slaves to the American colonies is a historical reality, which does nothing to diminish the scandalous perpetuation of it by Americans (who also continued to eradicate native Indian culture) after the founding of the US nation. On the one hand because American slavery took place in the post-Enlightenment period, whereas Europe hadn't had homeland slavery since before it was Europe during the Roman Empire where no such Enlightenment principles existed in antiquity. All this says is that once "Americans" no longer called themselves "English" or "French" or "Spanish" etc., nothing changed. This is little surprising though, given that America truly invented nothing when it was born out of European stock. That's becaus the cultural, political and social characterisitcs which gave it birth, were all developed in Europe first before being more thoroughly implemented in the colonies. And they were phenomena which started to be developed in the post Medieval/Renaissance era, and then in the Enlightenment period. American capitalism is a development out of European commercial endevours of the Age of Discovery and banking practices of the 15th century Renaissance. Our constitution is the fruit of Enlightenment philosphies promoted by Europeans since the 17th century. Our earliest cities had stately architecture based upon the Neoclassical European model. Thats because till July 4, 1776 we were still a European saltelite state. Our governemental setup follows the ancient Roman Republican one that became so in vouge again with the Renaissance. While our legal code is derived from the lex romana.

Europe itself was the result of centuries of socio-demographic, religious and political mutations that began in the late antique Roman Imperial age and contined, after the fall of the Roman Empire , into the period of great migrations of the early Middle Ages. Slowly, due to a phenomenon of cultural reciprocity when the native Latin and Hellenic elements of Roman society began to mix with Germanic ones when the barbarians broke through Roman defences, the nations as we know them today on the European map began to emerge. Linguistically the Europena tongues followed suit. During the Romanesque period beginning around 1000 AD, the so called romance languages of Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese, but also Romanian began to emerge out of the rather dry, medieval Church Latin which had lost all of its ancient literary finess. Though there were many germanic infiltrations as we can see in modern Italian today, where 75% of the words are derived from Latin or Greek, whereas 25% come from German. Even Italy's Lombardy region is named after one of the Germanic tribes that settled the peninsula in the late 6th century, the Longobards.

Religiously, an aspect that has played a desicive role in the formation of the European cultural identity and consequently America's, the embrasing of the Christian faith by emperor Constantine in 313 and the subsequent abolishment of al pagan cult rites by emperor Theodosianus in 390, gave rise to a new order and a new power structure in the form of the Roman Catholic ecclesiastical heirarchy, whose bishops often also were regional governers in the various European emerging states who work in tandem with the temporal princes and monarchs: thus the first 2 estates. They are the reason as to why the much later Enlightenment philosophies were better able to be put into political and social effect in the colonies. On eof the cornerstones of the American democracy is the separation of Church and State. But even this was promoted first in Europe with the Protestant Reformation, however without that clear break comming befor the French Revolution. As it has often been said Europe just had too much history on its back to be able to rigorously impose the Enlightenment philosophies in its homeland teritories.

Today Europe has a different racism to contend with and that is connected to illegal third world immigration and that comming in from the former Soviet States. In any case, it is no more or less pronounced than US racism historically agianst blacks and how the w.a.s.p. American population saw the Italian and Irish Catholic immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That European racism is the reason why we don't see more blacks in cycling, as I have mentioned before, seems to me unfounded.
 
Mar 19, 2009
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No reason to write a book rhubroma. It's clear you're more offended that I didn't say Americans are just as, or more racist. I've made my point already, sorry you had to waste your time pontificating to me what I already learned in school. Good luck man.

+

I never said that European racism is the reason why we don't see more blacks in cycling. But, Europe is the epicenter of the sport, and from my experience there are people in very high positions that do not care for people of color.
 
RDV4ROUBAIX said:
Misunderstood again, but yes you are right.

Yep, I've been a fan since Eric B & Rakim were Paid in Full!

I prefer fox hunting and a good scotch.
I don't know, that TDF song by Kraftwerk is partially responsible for my cycling affliction.:D

Gotta love Eric B and Rakim!! I still listen to it on my itunes from time to time. Lyrics of Fury is one of my favorite rap songs of all-time. Aaahh memories...
 
I lost track of what this thread was about...

Roadies are often not the most friendly and inviting of people. The so called SURP (Stuck Up Roadie ***) thing is very real. It is bad enough when you are the same color and social class. I can imagine it could be much more intimidating to those of a different color.
 
Mar 11, 2009
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Power13 said:
We can quibble back and forth about what sport may or may not have been #1....but to say that cycling was a "dead sport" is 100% factually incorrect.

Taylor was a national phenomenon....and cycling was a HUGE sport, packing stadiums and velodromes across the country.

I might wrong here, I've not read the book, but didn't Major Taylor end up moving to Australia because he could make more money in races here? Given the size of the country at the time, I kind think it's possible that it wasn't as big as it could be in the US.
 
Mar 11, 2009
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Angliru said:
I am African-American and grew up in a major metro area and the reasons I believe explain the lack of black participation in the competitive side of cycling are the following:
-Lack of exposure to competitive cycling
-Lack of safe areas to ride a bike continuously without fear for your life from automobiles
-Football can be played on a local school field or even in the street (touch football) with your buddies
-Basketball can be played in one's backyard or a friend's, on local courts or gymnasiums and in school during gym class
-In the suburbs you have more county, state and national parks where riding a bike is safer and more likely to be a family experience from early on in a childs life
Great post - many of these reasons are similar to the ones I mentioned about people in the third world - which is why I mentioned them.

An interesting point you make about the safer roads in the country, this is really a double-edged sword though because country roads in many places in the world (not just third world) are narrow and a very bad quality (or even dirt) and as there is less traffic it can actually be more dangerous as the cars/trucks don't expect to see you there. In fact here in Australia they had a road safety campaign based on the evidence that 'country people die on country roads'. In addition there are many stories of pro riders who grew up in the country that had to travel for hours just to get to a race (for example in Australia the Goss/Sulzberger family - can't remember which - live 50 kms from the nearest town in Tasmania and the Meares sisters used to practice on a dirt track and travel 2-3 hours to the nearest velodrome on weekends). BTW - I've also lived in Los Angeles so I know these issues are also there.
 
Mar 10, 2009
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What about the idea of the American Dream, and the potential huge rewards per sport?

If we can make the assumption that afro-americans are overrepresented in 'below average income households' in society, would it make sense that they pick certain sports over others, because they yield higher rewards, if one accedes to the pro league?

American football, and basketball seem to be the equivalent of soccer/football in Europe and Latin America. At least a great number of Latin Americans try to escape poverty by becoming a great soccer player. When one succeeds, multibillion dollar contracts have your name written on it. And especially in the case of soccer and basketball, the initial investments are low, you need a ball and a hoop/goal and that's it. In all cases, soccer, Bball and Football, have a huge bling factor.

Cycling doesn't have the same exposure, and perhaps that's the reason, rewards are a lot lower. On top of that, it is considered a, and often even overly romanticized, 'hard sport'. Everyone recognizes the ugly, mudheads in P-R, teeth gritting faces when the lesser climbers attack a steep gradient, dramatic falls and broken bones... I doubt the term 'Flandrien' would resonate well in Afro-American, heck, even Latino, or White communities. In today's society, where fast money is the rule, from Wall Street to Sports, to revolving door Government/Public Service, why would anyone become a cyclist?

Isn't it like telling your parents that you want to become a miner instead of a lawyer? They would send you to an asylum!
 
RDV4ROUBAIX said:
No reason to write a book rhubroma. It's clear you're more offended that I didn't say Americans are just as, or more racist. I've made my point already, sorry you had to waste your time pontificating to me what I already learned in school. Good luck man.

+

I never said that European racism is the reason why we don't see more blacks in cycling. But, Europe is the epicenter of the sport, and from my experience there are people in very high positions that do not care for people of color.

No, no, didn't waste a minute of my time. And hey glad to know how well schooled you are, better than most I'll bet, though that wasn't at all clear form your positions...
 
jaylew said:
Look to the cookie, Elaine!

The thing about eating the black and white cookie, Elaine, is you want to get some black and some white in each bite. Nothing mixes better than vanilla and chocolate And yet somehow racial harmony eludes us. If people would only look to the cookie all our problems would be solved.
 
Mar 10, 2009
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At the Start of last years Amstel Gold Race, the riders were signing-on and the Announcer said (in English) - "Chris Froome, you are from Kenya, how come you are not black?"
 
Apr 12, 2009
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I happen to have some insight on this as I train riders in Jamaica although most rather to play soccer or basketball I train a couple good young black riders that can climb like a dream but when I try to get them a contract in the US we're not taken seriously even when I show their climbing talent I think the culture need to change as 1 of my talented riders has already taken up soccer as their main sport which is depressing to me.