by Donald Willis, NDG Contributing Writer
The old saying is “just give me a piece of the American pie” and you can make it in today’s society, where jobs and opportunity are slim to none. It is so true because the pie has not always being divided proportionally for minorities and women. This despite the fact the education and expertise indicates their readiness for leadership. Fortune 500 companies have always known that minorities and women are capable of running companies before a one term senator became President in 2008.
I recently took a look at the National Basketball Association (NBA) where 82 percent of the players are African-Americans and a record 15 African-Americans head coaches opened the season. That is half of the teams in the NBA, which is something you do not see, even in corporate America. For the NBA, the proof is in the pudding as they like hiring their own, currently 12 of the coaches are former players.
Larger companies of 1,500 or more employees usually have about 1.4 percent of minorities as directories, managers or vice presidents. The ratio may vary because some companies pad their count with the Anglo woman as a minority.
The NBA pie is delicious compared to the National Football League (NFL) considering they have only three minority coaches as of 2012, which is a drop from six a year ago. This statistic comes in a league where 67 percent of the players are African-American. Major League Baseball is more like a cupcake with only two African-Americans managers out of thirty teams but only eight percent of the players on their roster are African-Americans.
The corporate pie in professional sports is not getting any better because owners in sports are often stuck on recycling coaches in their pursuit of quick fixes for the franchise.
So, enjoy the NBA pie and add a little ice cream for the Michael Jordan alamode as the only African-American owner in the league.
You can listen to Donald “Spider” Willis on Sport Talk with Spider each Sunday from 7-9 p.m. CST on fishbowlradionetwork.com. For suggestion and topics call 469-335-6668 or email dwillisdw@yahoo.com
