As March Madness kicked off on Thursday, the debate of if college players should get paid an annual salary to play sports still is being debated.
The Huffington Post posted a poll on their website to see how people felt about collegiate athletes getting paid an $5,000 a year salary. The poll broke down the results according to people’s age, race, sex, education, political affiliation, sports fandom or playing college sports oneself. The results from their poll show that there is a separation when it comes to race.
Men are 18 percentage points more likely to support paying college athletes than women. Democrats are 17 points more likely to support the idea than Republicans. Adults under 30 are 11 points more likely to favor the notion than people 65 and older. But none of those gaps is as large as the 25 points between white and black respondents.
Vice Sports concluded in their poll that race too has a perspective among whites to not support college athletes getting paid and blacks supporting it.
Harboring negative racial views about blacks was the single strongest predictor of white opposition to paying athletes.” It was more of a factor than age, education, political affiliation, sports fandom or playing college sports oneself.
Why is race the common divider to this debate? The answer could be the fact that black athletes make up the majority of men’s football and men’s and women’s basketball. White people see these athletes as already receiving a “gift” to get a full ride scholarship to play a sport. When asked many white people saw athletes as “complaining” when it comes to asking to get paid by NCAA.
The opposite feeling happens when black people talk about this subject. Instead, as many of the black athletes come from a low to middle-class background and sometimes a one parent home. Black people can relate more than white people to those situations and can empathize with the students that they should get something for their hard work on and off the court/field.
Let us know, do you think student athletes should be paid or not?
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Source: Huffington Post
