The Racial Injustices in College Athletics

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DAVID HUGHES: Men's
football, men's basketball

was basically funding the
elite sports that are generally

geared towards white people.

It's very hypocritical.

DAVID RIDPATH: And I know
slavery is a very ugly word,

but it is a plantation economic
system of where we are making

money off primarily one race.

And that race is
restricted from earning

their generational wealth that
they should have access to.

BRIAN PORTO: The Black
athletes, in particular,

are saying, wait a minute,
we help the college

to earn this revenue.

None of it goes to us.

CHRIS HINTON: The
football and basketball,

the revenue-producing
sports, the student

athletes are African Americans.

A majority of those who
are benefiting financially,

whether there's coaches,
aides, or in the institutions,

I mean, it's white Americans.

DAVID RIDPATH: When you look
at the makeup of the two

highly commercialized
revenue-generating

sports, football and
men's basketball,

it is in upwards of
60% to 80% depending

on what conference, what team
of African American males.

Those African American
males are generating

a lot of wealth for
institutions, for individuals,

and yet they're getting punished
sometimes for taking a sandwich

or for taking a T-shirt or
getting a free tattoo, which

to me is absolutely ludicrous.

We would never punish a
regular student for that.

EMMETT GILL: Sometimes
it gets to me

the fact that some of
these schools, they

sit around the table and
have an executive staff

of 12 individuals, and
it doesn't dawn upon them

that there's something wrong
that the fact that all of them

are one color.

BRIAN PORTO: Many of
the people in charge

are white men making
a lot of money.

The workforce is
predominantly Black men

who come from poor backgrounds.

Not all of them,
but a good chunk do.

GERALD GURNEY: It sets
up a perfect storm

that is racially
biased, because who's

getting that quality education?

It's not the African Americans.

EMMETT GILL: And for us to
correct these racial inequities

that occur in
college sports, we've

got to be committed
to providing our Black

male and female college athletes
with a real education, one

that's going to allow
them to go out and compete

for spaces in graduate school,
in law school, in med school.

But at the very
least, an education

that's going to
allow them to have

a great understanding of what
they're good at, what they're

not so good at,
and what they can

pursue when they leave school.

DAVID HUGHES: The
inequality is something

that we need to combat.

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