Why aren't there more figure skaters of African descent?

[Wicked]

Don't forget Derrick Delmore, 1998 World Junior Champion and from the DC area.

I think another reason more African-Americans do not go into skating is because they tend to be encouraged to do other sports. I also think that's part of the reason for the lack of African-American swimmers. Cost and lack of access to the facilities are other factors.

 

[jcoates]

...lack of access to the facilities are other factors.

This is an important point. Quality skating facilities don't tend to be inside urban areas. On the other hand, basketball, to pick one popular sport, is fairly cheap to play and facilities (also inexpensive) are plentiful. Gymnastics, while very expensive at the elite level, can be introduced fairly cheaply as tumbling classes in day care and after school programs. Then if sufficient talent is spotted, funding sources like scholarships can be sought in some cases.

I think because of these factors, skating is seen by many, regardless of race as an unattainable endeavor.

Also regarding the attraction of African-Americans to gymnastics , I think part of the catalyst began with Dominique Dawes in the 90's She made several Olympic teams and won many Olympic and world medals. Her longevity probably allowed her to influence a full generation of young girls to enter the sport. If you watch US gymnastics nationals, there is almost always at least on black male and female contender for the team these days. That sort of visibility fosters further interest in the sport. The same can be said about tennis. The USTA has poured millions of dollars into grassroots efforts with black youngsters in the wake the the Williams sisters and James Blake's success. The dividends are starting to pay off and attract middle class blacks in particular to tennis.

Sadly, despite the presence of several mid-range skaters over the last two decades, the last top level black skater in the US was Debi Thomas and she retired in 92 to return to med school. Hopefully some of the up and coming youngsters mentioned will make an impression with viewers and attract parents to enroll their kids in skating programs.

Still the Harlem program is a good model to build on in other parts of the country. Many grassroots programs in other sports in urban communities are built around balancing education and sport. It would be good for the USFSA to expand such outreach efforts. It might also be a way to attract corporate sponsors.

 

[Dee4707]

Don't forget Derrick Delmore, 1998 World Junior Champion and from the DC area.

Wicked thanks so much ..... I was racking my brain trying to think of Derrick's name. I love his skating!! He always seemed to enjoy skating and he was so musical. Love it!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQgQflL38G8

There was a young black lady that I only saw skating at Nationals (2003-2004), can't remember her name but she was very elegant.

 

[Mathman]

There was a young black lady that I only saw skating at Nationals (2003-2004), can't remember her name but she was very elegant.

Andrea Gardiner.

 

[Olympia]

Thanks, Mathman! I remembered Gardiner's last name but kept thinking Angela was her first name. Yes, I enjoyed her skating, too.

Frankly, at this stage I'm amazed that anyone goes into skating in this country. It's not as glamorized as it used to be. Two of the longtime "queens" of skating, Peggy Fleming and Dorothy Hamill, are not really in the public eye anymore. Michelle is offstage. No female skater from this country is really a contender on the world scene. To add to the disincentives, the judging right now is perceived by the general public to be incomprehensible and unduly punishing (edge calls, UR penalties). Whether the system is fair or unfair, it certainly sounds oppressive to casual viewers when announcers talk of losing decimal points for some invisible transgression--skating starts sounding like homework! Add to that the high cost and the grueling hours of practice...who'd want their kid to go into that sport, and what kid would want to go?

I think skating needs to do a better job of PR all around! And--my personal opinion--I think skating coaches or clubs should recruit out of dance classes, not out of other sports.

 

[jennylovskt]

Maybe it's just not a popular choice for a sport among African-Americans, just like football and baseball are not popular choice for Asian-Americans.

 

[Phoenix347]

Maybe it's just not a popular choice for a sport among African-Americans, just like football and baseball are not popular choice for Asian-Americans.

Uh, did you know that the MVP from this year's world series was Japanese (Matsui)? Baseball is very popular in Asia. I'm sure many Asian-Americans are inspired by that. There are many Asians playing the the MLB. Maybe not that many Asian-Americans but I'm sure that's going to change one day. It's more likely that their strict parents are forcing them to study instead of playing sports.

Also don't forget Hines Ward of Steelers (Superbowl XL MVP) is half Korean. Also there was Eugene Chung (Korean) who played for the Patriots, Jaguars and Indianapolis. Dat Tan Nguyen played for Dallas. Kailee Wong played for VIkings. Johnnie James Morton who played 11 season is the NFL is half Japanese. Kevin Kaesviharn who plays for Saints right now is half Thai. Tedy Bruschi has played 13 season with the Patriots as a linebacker and is half Filipino. Ben Leber played 7 seasons as a linebacker ... 1/2 Korean. I also heard that Roman Gabriel, who played football in the 60's and 70's, is the son of a Filipino immigrant. Chris Gucong for the Eagles is Filipino. Of course there are many Samoans in the NFL. Aren't they kind of Asian? Probably not. But anyway, there are more than you think and more and more coming!

 

[gkelly]

Frankly, at this stage I'm amazed that anyone goes into skating in this country. It's not as glamorized as it used to be.

But most people who go into skating and actually stick with it do so not because it's glamorous, but because they tried skating, enjoyed gliding across the ice, and wanted to do more.

The initial goal might be something as simple as "I want to be able to skate backwards," but by the time they've mastered that, they're hooked.

Committing to serious training and competing usually comes later.

It helps to live close enough to an ice rink that casual skating for fun or beginning lessons is a convenient choice of leisure activity.

 

[Dee4707]

Andrea Gardiner.

Yes, that's her name....thanks Math, my mind is mush!!!

 

[Tinymavy15]

Originally Posted by jennylovskt
Maybe it's just not a popular choice for a sport among African-Americans, just like football and baseball are not popular choice for Asian-Americans.

Well baseball is becoming more and more popular among Asians...great players like Matsui and Chan Ho Park contribute to this surely. As for football, I think that is largely due to body type. Pro football players (or even sucessful high school and college players) are about 6 feet tall and weigh in over 200 pounds. Asian as a rule are petite, thus have more success in sports like golf and skating where greatness is not measured in brute force.

 

[jjane45]

Larry Holliday had an outside shot at making either the 1992 or the '94 Olympic team, and is still active at Adult Nationals.
Interestingly at my rink there are more African American male skaters than females. Two of these guys are very athletic and flexible, with deep sit spins and beautiful beilman positions :yes:

 

[skatingpunk]

Conventional wisdom spouts that African-American children do not compete in sports like tennis and golf because of the prohibitive costs. A former anthropology student, I’d like to argue that cultural dimensions are the dark matter that influences why children of certain ethnic groups gravitate toward given sports and not others. And while I am fairly certain the ISU did not intentionally set out to create a culturally biased system with the implementation of COP, what I learned from my studies would lead me to believe that skaters from high-context cultures such as Japan and Korea may find it easier mastering the numerous technical demands now required. I am not claiming that one culture is superior to another. What I am going to try to articulate is that Asian learning cultures, with their emphasis on “correct” form and repetition, may in fact, be conducive to producing the kind of skater the ISU now wants to see.

Very briefly, high-context cultures (Asia, Africa, Latin America) are those that emphasize group harmony over the interests of the individual. Uniformity is prized; “creativity” can be frowned upon. Low-context cultures, which would include most Western cultures, tend to be more individualistic. With this general rule of thumb in hand, it is no surprise that African-American children are drawn to sports with strong group dynamics—basketball, handball, any street sport. Nor is it particularly surprising that Latin American and Southern European countries with strong Latin influences dominate the game of soccer. This is not to say that Americans do not excel at team sports. They do. The group dynamic can be instilled in any given group of children. Pay them each a New York Yankees salary and they will surely coalesce. The group dynamic just doesn’t come as easily or naturally in a country like America where everyone is taught to prize individualism.

So why have Asians come to recently dominate figure skating? Well, having tutored many Korean and Japanese students in English, I have found that they are always looking for the “right” way--grammatically and syntactically correct--to say something even though there may be many correct ways to express a given thought. The “right” way is what the teacher wants to see and this “right” way is what will create a healthy student/teacher dynamic. Asian students will do their grammar lessons over and over and over again until the written sentences are perfect. Ironically, this does not always make for a verbally proficient speaker; in fact, the overemphasis on “technique” makes for students who cannot express their thoughts easily because what they need to say in daily life and what they have practiced in their grammar lessons are usually never the same thing. But if you were to ask me which high school student—American or Korean—has a better mastery of the rules of English grammar, I would say the Korean student, 7 times out of 10.

An expert no less than Dick Button essentially said on national TV that American figure skating students do not pay enough attention to mastering proper technique “in their headlong rush to do another triple jump”. In American culture, with its emphasis on individualism, there is always more than one way to skin a cat. Hence, we see vastly different jumping styles in Sarah Hughes and Caroline Zhang. Under the old system, where pretty much all you had to do was land the jump, Sarah could win a gold medal at the Olympics. (I doubt her performance would have won gold under the new Code of Points.) Now, the ISU insists on fully-rotated jumps, proper edges, flow and speed. In a sense, they are asking that all technique look the same. Is this right? Should Caroline’s mule kick be such a point of debate? We know where the ISU now stands on this issue.

With the future of figure skating staked on technical prowess and perfect forms that require hours and hours of robotic practice, don’t be surprised if children from Western cultures where individualism is prized become discouraged with the sport. And in my humble opinion, the powers that be who want to market skating to children in African-American and Latino communities should do so with pictures and videos of groups of children having fun. We all know that skating at the elite level eventually becomes an individual proposition. But to get minority kids through the door, you don’t entice them with the prospect of a gold medal. You do it with the promise of hours of fun with their friends.

 

[bigsisjiejie]

^^^ As a former anthropology student, I'd say you're way overthinking this. Someone with a more biology/anatomy/physiology background might just as well put forth the observation that a larger proportion of African-Americans at and after puberty--especially the girls--simply have a body type not as conducive to learning and maintaining elite level skating. More specifically: denser bones and muscles and less of that Asian waif-like body type that makes rotation easy and beautiful.

As for me, I tend to go with the fact that until relatively recently, most African-Americans live in central urban areas which lack access to facilities...or facilities at reasonable prices that lend themselves to a lot of repeat attendance, which would in turn lead to getting hooked on skating. And that skating has a well-deserved reputation as an expensive sport, which relatively fewer African-American parents find affordable. I think you would find no shortage of African-American athletes and their families who would reason that if they are going to devote time/effort/money into a sport, it's more likely to be one with at least some chance of a better financial payback in the future.

Also wanted to add another black US skater: Megan Williams-Stewart. I believe she now skates for Puerto Rico, but she has been a national Sr level competitor and in USFS Team Envelopes in the not-too-distant past.

 

[Wicked]

I wonder if the success of Shani Davis, the African-American speedskater, will bring more African-American kids to that sport.

 

[jennylovskt]

I think in general, more Asians go into the sports that require individual hard workings and technical skills rather than powers and impacts because Asians are mostly small built. So table tennis, figure skating, tennis, and gymnastics sorts of sports are more popular. African descendents have long legs and strong muscles and good at running and require physical contact's sports, so tracks and fields, basketball, football kinds of sports are their first choices.

 

[prettykeys]

^^^ As a former anthropology student, I'd say you're way overthinking this. Someone with a more biology/anatomy/physiology background might just as well put forth the observation that a larger proportion of African-Americans at and after puberty--especially the girls--simply have a body type not as conducive to learning and maintaining elite level skating. More specifically: denser bones and muscles and less of that Asian waif-like body type that makes rotation easy and beautiful.

I took a single Anthropology course, but I have a pretty strong background in the physiological/biological sciences, and I can say that it is generally held that the continent of Africa has the largest genetic diversity of any other continent or region. There are many Africans and African-Americans with slender, "waif-like" body types, just as there are Asians with stout/thicker builds. However, the ones who have that kind of body type, I think they do typically have proportionately longer legs, so their centres of gravity are higher...?

Either way, I would put the biggest factors on cultural and social influences/preferences. Costs mayyybe, except there are plenty of African-Americans and other minority Americans (e.g. Indian-Americans or Hispanic Americans) who have plenty of money, but not the motivation to go into Figure Skating.

...The group dynamic just doesn’t come as easily or naturally in a country like America where everyone is taught to prize individualism.

With the future of figure skating staked on technical prowess and perfect forms that require hours and hours of robotic practice, don’t be surprised if children from Western cultures where individualism is prized become discouraged with the sport. And in my humble opinion, the powers that be who want to market skating to children in African-American and Latino communities should do so with pictures and videos of groups of children having fun. We all know that skating at the elite level eventually becomes an individual proposition. But to get minority kids through the door, you don’t entice them with the prospect of a gold medal. You do it with the promise of hours of fun with their friends.

I'm not sure I agree with everything that was said...but in general, I agree that there is more individualism in American culture than elsewhere. I am (or was?) deeply involved in a competitive community (which I'd prefer not to say) that is dominated by European teams, whose attitude and approach to teamplay contrasts starkly with American teams full of talented individuals who don't have the same level of chemistry. But even so, I don't see how this ties in to the lack of black figure skaters, though. Or, for that matter, how it explains why there are now plenty of Asian golfers (from so-called high-context, low-individualistic societies) in one of the most individualistic sports. Furthermore, there are plenty of activities rated highly in black communities/culture that are individualistic, for example, Track & Field events, or being a solo musician.

Yeah...too overanalyzed and generalized...

 

[skatingpunk]

I'm not sure I agree with everything that was said...but in general, I agree that there is more individualism in American culture than elsewhere. I am (or was?) deeply involved in a competitive community (which I'd prefer not to say) that is dominated by European teams, whose attitude and approach to teamplay contrasts starkly with American teams full of talented individuals who don't have the same level of chemistry. But even so, I don't see how this ties in to the lack of black figure skaters, though. Or, for that matter, how it explains why there are now plenty of Asian golfers (from so-called high-context, low-individualistic societies) in one of the most individualistic sports. Furthermore, there are plenty of activities rated highly in black communities/culture that are individualistic, for example, Track & Field events, or being a solo musician.
Yeah...too overanalyzed and generalized...

I certainly didn't mean to generalize as there are always exceptions to every rule. I simply wanted us to consider the fact that there might be other factors at play besides money when it came to the issue of underrepresentation, hence my use of the phrase "dark matter". (The universe is comprised of over 90% of a kind of a kind of matter and energy that we can't see, but which is responsible for its current shape and holds the key to future existence.)

As for the sudden rise of Korean golfers, I suspect that the repetition involved in developing technically sound golf swings plays into the way they are taught to learn in school.

 

[n_halifax]

Another skater to add to this list would be Collin Thompson. He was a Canadian junior mens champion in the mid 90's and spent a couple/few years competing as a senior as well... and Ravi Walia, a Canadian bronze medallist - not sure of his heritage?

 

[moby23c]

I must say that as an african american, that slept through most of his anthropology class, this conversation is hilarious

i tried skating once, but my coach stopped teaching me, he said my bones were too dense and my booty was too big

 

[silverlake22]

If you look at a lot of the African and African American marathon runners and track stars, they look like they would have a good build for figure skater. If I didn't know Yuna Kim was a figure skater, from looking at her I would guess she is a runner, with her strong legs and thin, wiry arms. I think more people of African descent are likely to go into running because they dominate that sport, whereas Asians dominate figure skating. Americans want to dominate everything so they do everything.