White people obsession with kids sports

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is it never called racist when people put down “white” people whose kids play sports?

OP is absolutely being judgmental and not simply asking a question. Lots of kids of many backgrounds enjoy playing sports. As many others have said, there are a lot of type a people who are good at sports and academics. Many people feel strongly that being physically fit and developing teamwork, cooperation, and fueling a competitive nature provide solid skils to kids as they enter adulthood.

One kid’s interest in sports is no less enriching than another kid’s interest in music, theatre, or art.

The sports bashing gets so old.

+1 This was very racist and it needs to be called out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Op it’s a little obnoxious to say these culture value education as if American white people don’t. The immigrants coming here usually from wealthier background so there’s also that.

Op again, I saw some white kids (and even fewer black and Hispanic kids but those systemic issues are well researched and noted) at my sons ‘It’s academic’ completion this weekend. That is also a quizzing team activity and they were definitely under represented. Our highest level math class has lower than 15% white kids in a school with over 50% white by demographic. Sure, it’s all anecdotal but I’m sharing what I see.
I understand why Asian parents push education even though I don’t. Because often in our countries of origin, completion is intense and you try to inculcate the same work ethic in your kids. The analogy doesn’t extend directly to sports for kids being raised in relative comfort and privilege.

Seriously? You’re thinking demographics at an “It’s Academic” quiz show are a meaningful indicator of anything other than that a tiny minority of families know about this competition?

I’m doubting the bolded.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow this thread is pretty devoid of actual information but sure is full of mindless generalizations. So congrats.

First I want to point out a problem with OP's argument that is common of racial generalizations on this website: "Asians" and "Asian immigrants to the US" are not the same. There are things that are common Asian immigrants in the US that are not necessarily true of all Asian people.

Also the nature of immigration skews perceptions of US culture. OP is basing their perception on interactions with colleagues. I am guessing OP works in a white collar profession in the DC area and that their workplace is full of UMC white people from UMC backgrounds. OP might have different perceptions if they were working in a different setting. OP has a view of "American culture" that is viewed on a narrow experience and with an outsider bent. All of this tends to skew reality.

Here are some actual statistics on youth sports participation:



While white children participate in sports at slightly higher rates than other races, it is not nearly as dramatic as some of you are portraying it. Also the participation of both white and black children in youth sports has actually declined in the last 10 years whereas rates of participation among AAPI and hispanic children are either holding steady or increasing.

The real divide is in family income -- families with HHIs of 100k or more account for nearly half of all youth sport participation. This should be unsurprising to most people -- youth sports are increasingly expensive and also require a lot of time investment by parents. So there is a clear advantage for families with both more financial resources and the kinds of jobs that accommodate having a stay at home or part time parent, or schedules that are conducive to things like evening and weekend practices (parents doing shift work have a serious issue with these demands).

The narrative that white people care a lot about sports and Asian people don't is both wrong and interesting -- the fact that so many of you are ignoring the participation of black and hispanic kids in youth sports altogether says a lot about who you view as your peers and who "counts" when it comes to cultural perceptions.

https://projectplay.org/youth-sports/facts/participation-rates

There’s a lot of grey to this.

I’m Hispanic and I don’t know a lot of other Hispanic families that go hardcore into sports. Our kids play games of soccer organized by themselves, occasional sports at the community center (not every year, not every season), and less often on school teams. It’s not intense unless the kid is showing talent.

I think OP is talking about a culture of sports where parents will take an average child and have them practice organized youth sports multiple times a week and spend weekends at games for a good part of the year. That’s very different imo.

Again, I’m speaking out of what I see and have experienced, but that type of difference, if widespread and not just me, wouldn’t be reflected in the data above.

Your experience IS reflected in the data -- you are part of the large percent of hispanic families that don't emphasize sports. It's right there in the data. The chart doesn't say "100% of hispanic families have children in travel sports." Though there are absolutely hispanic families in the US who are obsessed with sports -- please spend literally any time in schools in parts of Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona (I grew up in one of these states and have first hand experience) and then get back to me. Baseball and football in these areas are often dominated by hispanic players. You also see high participation in other sports. No one in Las Cruces New Mexico sits around musing "why are white people so obsessed with kids sports" because that would be stupid.

It also doesn't say that 0% of Asian families have kids in sports. Because that's not true! It's also not true that 100% of white families are obsessed with sports. These are simply not accurate statements and yet it hasn't stopped people on this thread from posting broad generalizations about large groups of people based on their anecdotal observation of how the people they know in their own life behave. Your personal experience may be interesting but it is not a foundation to draw conclusions about how participation in sports varies among races.

Your specific experience is interesting but it's not data and it doesn't undermine the assertion that there are actually pretty minimal differences in sports participation between races in the US, and that the more significant division is between between families based on income.

Yeah, I get that it doesn’t say 100%. Your response is really condescending, and that’s unnecessary.

My point is that there’s a big difference in what “regularly playing” means in terms of intensity. Your graph doesn’t capture that. Maybe the if it did, the difference would still be insignificant across all racial groups, or maybe the difference OP noted would appear.

There are lots of hispanic families who are obsessive about youth football and baseball. Just because that's not you doesn't mean they don't exist. You are determined to push a narrative about how certain races are better parents than other races which is weird and deserves condescension. And is based on nothing but your extremely biased and self-interested personal observations and not on actual data.

If you read my comment, you would see that I said you could be correct. I have no agenda. I think there could be value to playing sports. Your graph, however, doesn’t address anything more than who plays sports “regularly.” Your graph doesn’t make the point you claim: that there’s little difference among racial groups. There’s little difference in that metric, but that metric doesn’t account for the intensity OP is interested in exploring.

My kids who play rec sports would count as playing regularly right now according to that graph. They don’t do it every year, but they would count in that category if polled now.

They have friends, on the other hand, who are far more intense in their sports. Counting them both as regularly playing doesn’t really make sense in this specific context (OP’s question/observation).

Data is good, but not all data is fully relevant. If you have better data, post it! I’d love to see if there’s no difference in intensity. I’m just saying right now that you posted a graph which counts playing regularly as all the same. That’s not data that says OP and so many others on this thread are automatically wrong.

How do you measure intensity? Which kid is picking daisies at practice and which isn’t?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow this thread is pretty devoid of actual information but sure is full of mindless generalizations. So congrats.

First I want to point out a problem with OP's argument that is common of racial generalizations on this website: "Asians" and "Asian immigrants to the US" are not the same. There are things that are common Asian immigrants in the US that are not necessarily true of all Asian people.

Also the nature of immigration skews perceptions of US culture. OP is basing their perception on interactions with colleagues. I am guessing OP works in a white collar profession in the DC area and that their workplace is full of UMC white people from UMC backgrounds. OP might have different perceptions if they were working in a different setting. OP has a view of "American culture" that is viewed on a narrow experience and with an outsider bent. All of this tends to skew reality.

Here are some actual statistics on youth sports participation:



While white children participate in sports at slightly higher rates than other races, it is not nearly as dramatic as some of you are portraying it. Also the participation of both white and black children in youth sports has actually declined in the last 10 years whereas rates of participation among AAPI and hispanic children are either holding steady or increasing.

The real divide is in family income -- families with HHIs of 100k or more account for nearly half of all youth sport participation. This should be unsurprising to most people -- youth sports are increasingly expensive and also require a lot of time investment by parents. So there is a clear advantage for families with both more financial resources and the kinds of jobs that accommodate having a stay at home or part time parent, or schedules that are conducive to things like evening and weekend practices (parents doing shift work have a serious issue with these demands).

The narrative that white people care a lot about sports and Asian people don't is both wrong and interesting -- the fact that so many of you are ignoring the participation of black and hispanic kids in youth sports altogether says a lot about who you view as your peers and who "counts" when it comes to cultural perceptions.

https://projectplay.org/youth-sports/facts/participation-rates

There’s a lot of grey to this.

I’m Hispanic and I don’t know a lot of other Hispanic families that go hardcore into sports. Our kids play games of soccer organized by themselves, occasional sports at the community center (not every year, not every season), and less often on school teams. It’s not intense unless the kid is showing talent.

I think OP is talking about a culture of sports where parents will take an average child and have them practice organized youth sports multiple times a week and spend weekends at games for a good part of the year. That’s very different imo.

Again, I’m speaking out of what I see and have experienced, but that type of difference, if widespread and not just me, wouldn’t be reflected in the data above.

Your experience IS reflected in the data -- you are part of the large percent of hispanic families that don't emphasize sports. It's right there in the data. The chart doesn't say "100% of hispanic families have children in travel sports." Though there are absolutely hispanic families in the US who are obsessed with sports -- please spend literally any time in schools in parts of Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona (I grew up in one of these states and have first hand experience) and then get back to me. Baseball and football in these areas are often dominated by hispanic players. You also see high participation in other sports. No one in Las Cruces New Mexico sits around musing "why are white people so obsessed with kids sports" because that would be stupid.

It also doesn't say that 0% of Asian families have kids in sports. Because that's not true! It's also not true that 100% of white families are obsessed with sports. These are simply not accurate statements and yet it hasn't stopped people on this thread from posting broad generalizations about large groups of people based on their anecdotal observation of how the people they know in their own life behave. Your personal experience may be interesting but it is not a foundation to draw conclusions about how participation in sports varies among races.

Your specific experience is interesting but it's not data and it doesn't undermine the assertion that there are actually pretty minimal differences in sports participation between races in the US, and that the more significant division is between between families based on income.

Yeah, I get that it doesn’t say 100%. Your response is really condescending, and that’s unnecessary.

My point is that there’s a big difference in what “regularly playing” means in terms of intensity. Your graph doesn’t capture that. Maybe the if it did, the difference would still be insignificant across all racial groups, or maybe the difference OP noted would appear.

There are lots of hispanic families who are obsessive about youth football and baseball. Just because that's not you doesn't mean they don't exist. You are determined to push a narrative about how certain races are better parents than other races which is weird and deserves condescension. And is based on nothing but your extremely biased and self-interested personal observations and not on actual data.

If you read my comment, you would see that I said you could be correct. I have no agenda. I think there could be value to playing sports. Your graph, however, doesn’t address anything more than who plays sports “regularly.” Your graph doesn’t make the point you claim: that there’s little difference among racial groups. There’s little difference in that metric, but that metric doesn’t account for the intensity OP is interested in exploring.

My kids who play rec sports would count as playing regularly right now according to that graph. They don’t do it every year, but they would count in that category if polled now.

They have friends, on the other hand, who are far more intense in their sports. Counting them both as regularly playing doesn’t really make sense in this specific context (OP’s question/observation).

Data is good, but not all data is fully relevant. If you have better data, post it! I’d love to see if there’s no difference in intensity. I’m just saying right now that you posted a graph which counts playing regularly as all the same. That’s not data that says OP and so many others on this thread are automatically wrong.

There is not data that breaks down the involvement of families in youth sports by "level of intensity" and race because that would be an insane thing to spend money studying.

Your only "data" to show that white parents are more "obsessive" about youth sports than other races is your personal observation. But as several posters have pointed out, those observations can easily be countered by others -- here is the roster of the team that won the Little League World Series this year, with only 5 of 12 players being white and the rest hispanic or black (https://www.littleleague.org/world-series/2024/llbws/teams/southeast-region/). Of the 5 members of the US womens gymnastic team at the Paris Olympics, two were black, one was Asian American, one was hispanic, and one was white. Of the US girls players in ranked in the top 40 on the junior circuit, two are black, one is Asian American, and one is white.

I use those examples specifically because these are sports that require "obsessive" levels of dedication at the youth level. You cannot compete at those levels at those ages unless you are training year round and getting extra coaching and your family is pretty focused on your success in the sport, from the time you are 6 or 7 years old (many if not most of these athletes will have started in preschool).

You have absolutely nothing on which to base your claim that culturally, white families in the US have their kids participate in sports at substantially higher levels or at a higher level of intensity than other races. Nothing. And I could go further if I wanted to. Look at lists of recruited athletes for all of the top collegiate sports programs in the US -- they are highly racially diverse. Some sports skew more towards one race or ethnicity but it's not like it's always white -- it depends on the sport, but there are incredibly high level athletes from every race and none of them got there without a high level of support and interest from their families. None.

I don't know what annoys me more. This weird desire to portray all white parents as sports obsessed when this is demonstrably not true (the majority of white kids don't participate in ANY sport on a regular basis, even at the rec level), or this bizarre refusal to recognize how many non-white families are obvious investing tons of money and time in athletics for their kids. It's just such a weird claim that does pretty much everyone a disservice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The fact of the matter is less than 1 percent of these delusional travel sports kids will play and level of college and .05 percent will play d1

What an incredibly crappy attitude. If you can't make a living off it, it's not worth doing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Engineers can make 6-figures, but a lot of desirable jobs require different and non-academic skills. For example to be a CEO you need to manage teams and motivation all while overseeing layoffs. A board member needs to be able to pull the right people from his or her network to solve a difficult problem quickly. A lot more of this is learned through sports than books. In fact, statistically, career success is more closely aligned with team sports success than academic success.

My kids are dropping their team sports for other interests. They are also strong academically. I know that they will be losing out on valuable life lessons and skills that come from sports.

I would love to see the studies that support this, if they exist.

It's basically about being a team player, the ability to work with others and to advance the group agenda.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow this thread is pretty devoid of actual information but sure is full of mindless generalizations. So congrats.

First I want to point out a problem with OP's argument that is common of racial generalizations on this website: "Asians" and "Asian immigrants to the US" are not the same. There are things that are common Asian immigrants in the US that are not necessarily true of all Asian people.

Also the nature of immigration skews perceptions of US culture. OP is basing their perception on interactions with colleagues. I am guessing OP works in a white collar profession in the DC area and that their workplace is full of UMC white people from UMC backgrounds. OP might have different perceptions if they were working in a different setting. OP has a view of "American culture" that is viewed on a narrow experience and with an outsider bent. All of this tends to skew reality.

Here are some actual statistics on youth sports participation:



While white children participate in sports at slightly higher rates than other races, it is not nearly as dramatic as some of you are portraying it. Also the participation of both white and black children in youth sports has actually declined in the last 10 years whereas rates of participation among AAPI and hispanic children are either holding steady or increasing.

The real divide is in family income -- families with HHIs of 100k or more account for nearly half of all youth sport participation. This should be unsurprising to most people -- youth sports are increasingly expensive and also require a lot of time investment by parents. So there is a clear advantage for families with both more financial resources and the kinds of jobs that accommodate having a stay at home or part time parent, or schedules that are conducive to things like evening and weekend practices (parents doing shift work have a serious issue with these demands).

The narrative that white people care a lot about sports and Asian people don't is both wrong and interesting -- the fact that so many of you are ignoring the participation of black and hispanic kids in youth sports altogether says a lot about who you view as your peers and who "counts" when it comes to cultural perceptions.

https://projectplay.org/youth-sports/facts/participation-rates

There’s a lot of grey to this.

I’m Hispanic and I don’t know a lot of other Hispanic families that go hardcore into sports. Our kids play games of soccer organized by themselves, occasional sports at the community center (not every year, not every season), and less often on school teams. It’s not intense unless the kid is showing talent.

I think OP is talking about a culture of sports where parents will take an average child and have them practice organized youth sports multiple times a week and spend weekends at games for a good part of the year. That’s very different imo.

Again, I’m speaking out of what I see and have experienced, but that type of difference, if widespread and not just me, wouldn’t be reflected in the data above.

Your experience IS reflected in the data -- you are part of the large percent of hispanic families that don't emphasize sports. It's right there in the data. The chart doesn't say "100% of hispanic families have children in travel sports." Though there are absolutely hispanic families in the US who are obsessed with sports -- please spend literally any time in schools in parts of Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona (I grew up in one of these states and have first hand experience) and then get back to me. Baseball and football in these areas are often dominated by hispanic players. You also see high participation in other sports. No one in Las Cruces New Mexico sits around musing "why are white people so obsessed with kids sports" because that would be stupid.

It also doesn't say that 0% of Asian families have kids in sports. Because that's not true! It's also not true that 100% of white families are obsessed with sports. These are simply not accurate statements and yet it hasn't stopped people on this thread from posting broad generalizations about large groups of people based on their anecdotal observation of how the people they know in their own life behave. Your personal experience may be interesting but it is not a foundation to draw conclusions about how participation in sports varies among races.

Your specific experience is interesting but it's not data and it doesn't undermine the assertion that there are actually pretty minimal differences in sports participation between races in the US, and that the more significant division is between between families based on income.

Yeah, I get that it doesn’t say 100%. Your response is really condescending, and that’s unnecessary.

My point is that there’s a big difference in what “regularly playing” means in terms of intensity. Your graph doesn’t capture that. Maybe the if it did, the difference would still be insignificant across all racial groups, or maybe the difference OP noted would appear.

There are lots of hispanic families who are obsessive about youth football and baseball. Just because that's not you doesn't mean they don't exist. You are determined to push a narrative about how certain races are better parents than other races which is weird and deserves condescension. And is based on nothing but your extremely biased and self-interested personal observations and not on actual data.

If you read my comment, you would see that I said you could be correct. I have no agenda. I think there could be value to playing sports. Your graph, however, doesn’t address anything more than who plays sports “regularly.” Your graph doesn’t make the point you claim: that there’s little difference among racial groups. There’s little difference in that metric, but that metric doesn’t account for the intensity OP is interested in exploring.

My kids who play rec sports would count as playing regularly right now according to that graph. They don’t do it every year, but they would count in that category if polled now.

They have friends, on the other hand, who are far more intense in their sports. Counting them both as regularly playing doesn’t really make sense in this specific context (OP’s question/observation).

Data is good, but not all data is fully relevant. If you have better data, post it! I’d love to see if there’s no difference in intensity. I’m just saying right now that you posted a graph which counts playing regularly as all the same. That’s not data that says OP and so many others on this thread are automatically wrong.

There is not data that breaks down the involvement of families in youth sports by "level of intensity" and race because that would be an insane thing to spend money studying.

Your only "data" to show that white parents are more "obsessive" about youth sports than other races is your personal observation. But as several posters have pointed out, those observations can easily be countered by others -- here is the roster of the team that won the Little League World Series this year, with only 5 of 12 players being white and the rest hispanic or black (https://www.littleleague.org/world-series/2024/llbws/teams/southeast-region/). Of the 5 members of the US womens gymnastic team at the Paris Olympics, two were black, one was Asian American, one was hispanic, and one was white. Of the US girls players in ranked in the top 40 on the junior circuit, two are black, one is Asian American, and one is white.

I use those examples specifically because these are sports that require "obsessive" levels of dedication at the youth level. You cannot compete at those levels at those ages unless you are training year round and getting extra coaching and your family is pretty focused on your success in the sport, from the time you are 6 or 7 years old (many if not most of these athletes will have started in preschool).

You have absolutely nothing on which to base your claim that culturally, white families in the US have their kids participate in sports at substantially higher levels or at a higher level of intensity than other races. Nothing. And I could go further if I wanted to. Look at lists of recruited athletes for all of the top collegiate sports programs in the US -- they are highly racially diverse. Some sports skew more towards one race or ethnicity but it's not like it's always white -- it depends on the sport, but there are incredibly high level athletes from every race and none of them got there without a high level of support and interest from their families. None.

I don't know what annoys me more. This weird desire to portray all white parents as sports obsessed when this is demonstrably not true (the majority of white kids don't participate in ANY sport on a regular basis, even at the rec level), or this bizarre refusal to recognize how many non-white families are obvious investing tons of money and time in athletics for their kids. It's just such a weird claim that does pretty much everyone a disservice.

Look Op is an immigrant to this country, presumably from one that’s not multicultural. I guarantee if you immigrated to my country you would get all of the honorifics wrong.

OP should’ve written why do Americans play sports. 1st generation immigrants from certain countries do not seem to value them as much. Should’ve made it about nationality. OP mixed up nationality and race. When you come from a country of a singular race it’s easy to get wrong. Just as when you come from a place without a word for she or he (3rd person is not gendered), it’s easy to mess those up too. You would mess up culturally sensitive things if you moved elsewhere too. People would be outraged, and you’d be there struggling to explain you didn’t mean it that way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow this thread is pretty devoid of actual information but sure is full of mindless generalizations. So congrats.

First I want to point out a problem with OP's argument that is common of racial generalizations on this website: "Asians" and "Asian immigrants to the US" are not the same. There are things that are common Asian immigrants in the US that are not necessarily true of all Asian people.

Also the nature of immigration skews perceptions of US culture. OP is basing their perception on interactions with colleagues. I am guessing OP works in a white collar profession in the DC area and that their workplace is full of UMC white people from UMC backgrounds. OP might have different perceptions if they were working in a different setting. OP has a view of "American culture" that is viewed on a narrow experience and with an outsider bent. All of this tends to skew reality.

Here are some actual statistics on youth sports participation:



While white children participate in sports at slightly higher rates than other races, it is not nearly as dramatic as some of you are portraying it. Also the participation of both white and black children in youth sports has actually declined in the last 10 years whereas rates of participation among AAPI and hispanic children are either holding steady or increasing.

The real divide is in family income -- families with HHIs of 100k or more account for nearly half of all youth sport participation. This should be unsurprising to most people -- youth sports are increasingly expensive and also require a lot of time investment by parents. So there is a clear advantage for families with both more financial resources and the kinds of jobs that accommodate having a stay at home or part time parent, or schedules that are conducive to things like evening and weekend practices (parents doing shift work have a serious issue with these demands).

The narrative that white people care a lot about sports and Asian people don't is both wrong and interesting -- the fact that so many of you are ignoring the participation of black and hispanic kids in youth sports altogether says a lot about who you view as your peers and who "counts" when it comes to cultural perceptions.

https://projectplay.org/youth-sports/facts/participation-rates

There’s a lot of grey to this.

I’m Hispanic and I don’t know a lot of other Hispanic families that go hardcore into sports. Our kids play games of soccer organized by themselves, occasional sports at the community center (not every year, not every season), and less often on school teams. It’s not intense unless the kid is showing talent.

I think OP is talking about a culture of sports where parents will take an average child and have them practice organized youth sports multiple times a week and spend weekends at games for a good part of the year. That’s very different imo.

Again, I’m speaking out of what I see and have experienced, but that type of difference, if widespread and not just me, wouldn’t be reflected in the data above.

Your experience IS reflected in the data -- you are part of the large percent of hispanic families that don't emphasize sports. It's right there in the data. The chart doesn't say "100% of hispanic families have children in travel sports." Though there are absolutely hispanic families in the US who are obsessed with sports -- please spend literally any time in schools in parts of Florida, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona (I grew up in one of these states and have first hand experience) and then get back to me. Baseball and football in these areas are often dominated by hispanic players. You also see high participation in other sports. No one in Las Cruces New Mexico sits around musing "why are white people so obsessed with kids sports" because that would be stupid.

It also doesn't say that 0% of Asian families have kids in sports. Because that's not true! It's also not true that 100% of white families are obsessed with sports. These are simply not accurate statements and yet it hasn't stopped people on this thread from posting broad generalizations about large groups of people based on their anecdotal observation of how the people they know in their own life behave. Your personal experience may be interesting but it is not a foundation to draw conclusions about how participation in sports varies among races.

Your specific experience is interesting but it's not data and it doesn't undermine the assertion that there are actually pretty minimal differences in sports participation between races in the US, and that the more significant division is between between families based on income.

Yeah, I get that it doesn’t say 100%. Your response is really condescending, and that’s unnecessary.

My point is that there’s a big difference in what “regularly playing” means in terms of intensity. Your graph doesn’t capture that. Maybe the if it did, the difference would still be insignificant across all racial groups, or maybe the difference OP noted would appear.

There are lots of hispanic families who are obsessive about youth football and baseball. Just because that's not you doesn't mean they don't exist. You are determined to push a narrative about how certain races are better parents than other races which is weird and deserves condescension. And is based on nothing but your extremely biased and self-interested personal observations and not on actual data.

If you read my comment, you would see that I said you could be correct. I have no agenda. I think there could be value to playing sports. Your graph, however, doesn’t address anything more than who plays sports “regularly.” Your graph doesn’t make the point you claim: that there’s little difference among racial groups. There’s little difference in that metric, but that metric doesn’t account for the intensity OP is interested in exploring.

My kids who play rec sports would count as playing regularly right now according to that graph. They don’t do it every year, but they would count in that category if polled now.

They have friends, on the other hand, who are far more intense in their sports. Counting them both as regularly playing doesn’t really make sense in this specific context (OP’s question/observation).

Data is good, but not all data is fully relevant. If you have better data, post it! I’d love to see if there’s no difference in intensity. I’m just saying right now that you posted a graph which counts playing regularly as all the same. That’s not data that says OP and so many others on this thread are automatically wrong.

There is not data that breaks down the involvement of families in youth sports by "level of intensity" and race because that would be an insane thing to spend money studying.

Your only "data" to show that white parents are more "obsessive" about youth sports than other races is your personal observation. But as several posters have pointed out, those observations can easily be countered by others -- here is the roster of the team that won the Little League World Series this year, with only 5 of 12 players being white and the rest hispanic or black (https://www.littleleague.org/world-series/2024/llbws/teams/southeast-region/). Of the 5 members of the US womens gymnastic team at the Paris Olympics, two were black, one was Asian American, one was hispanic, and one was white. Of the US girls players in ranked in the top 40 on the junior circuit, two are black, one is Asian American, and one is white.

I use those examples specifically because these are sports that require "obsessive" levels of dedication at the youth level. You cannot compete at those levels at those ages unless you are training year round and getting extra coaching and your family is pretty focused on your success in the sport, from the time you are 6 or 7 years old (many if not most of these athletes will have started in preschool).

You have absolutely nothing on which to base your claim that culturally, white families in the US have their kids participate in sports at substantially higher levels or at a higher level of intensity than other races. Nothing. And I could go further if I wanted to. Look at lists of recruited athletes for all of the top collegiate sports programs in the US -- they are highly racially diverse. Some sports skew more towards one race or ethnicity but it's not like it's always white -- it depends on the sport, but there are incredibly high level athletes from every race and none of them got there without a high level of support and interest from their families. None.

I don't know what annoys me more. This weird desire to portray all white parents as sports obsessed when this is demonstrably not true (the majority of white kids don't participate in ANY sport on a regular basis, even at the rec level), or this bizarre refusal to recognize how many non-white families are obvious investing tons of money and time in athletics for their kids. It's just such a weird claim that does pretty much everyone a disservice.

Look Op is an immigrant to this country, presumably from one that’s not multicultural. I guarantee if you immigrated to my country you would get all of the honorifics wrong.

OP should’ve written why do Americans play sports. 1st generation immigrants from certain countries do not seem to value them as much. Should’ve made it about nationality. OP mixed up nationality and race. When you come from a country of a singular race it’s easy to get wrong. Just as when you come from a place without a word for she or he (3rd person is not gendered), it’s easy to mess those up too. You would mess up culturally sensitive things if you moved elsewhere too. People would be outraged, and you’d be there struggling to explain you didn’t mean it that way.

Right-- OP made made a logical mistake of assuming that Asian immigrants=all Asians, and that the white UMC Americans she encounters at her job= all white people.

A number if people in the thread have pointed out this error, which is obvious from OP's explanation of her conclusion and data that shows it's incorrect.

But for some reason, OP and others are refusing to acknowledge this error and doubling down. It's odd.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The fact of the matter is less than 1 percent of these delusional travel sports kids will play and level of college and .05 percent will play d1

What percentage of these delusional Kumon obsessed academic parents will have their kids go to that prestigious university they live their whole lives gunning for? Just curious.

[Anonymous]

This is sounding more than a little racist

[Anonymous]

OP is a hater. We get it your kid is a dork

[Anonymous]

I do not see ‘all white peoples’ obsessing over sports.

[Anonymous]

I am surprised that such a profoundly racist post can be allowed. I really am.

[Anonymous]

Now wait a minute - all the professional athletes are black - football, womens tennnis, womens soccer, basketball. The only white sports left are swimming and hockey.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Now wait a minute - all the professional athletes are black - football, womens tennnis, womens soccer, basketball. The only white sports left are swimming and hockey.

Don’t forget baseball