Professor Pat Rubio Goldsmith (TAMU Department of Sociology) and Carol L. Goldsmith (Bush School Institute for Science, Technology and Public Policy) presented their research at the International Sociology of Sport Association 2025 World Congress.
Their research, “Is Baseball a ‘Rich’ Kid Sport or a ‘White’ Kid Sport? Race, Class, and High School Athletic Performance in Baseball, Basketball, and Football,” examines how race, class, and culture influence high school sports performance using Cultural Capital Theory, Racialized Capitalism, Critical Race Theory, and Black Cultural Capital. Using national data on 450,000 high school contests for U.S. high schools from the 2017-2018 school year, the study analyzed how the racial and economic makeup of schools relates to winning margins in each sport.
Their study found that performance in all three sports improves with the economic status of the students in the school, which is consistent with cultural capital theory. Schools with a higher percentage of African American students outperform other schools in football and especially basketball. However, these schools perform worse than other schools in baseball. These results illustrate how cultural capital separates sports performance by class, thereby negating the framework of racialized capitalism in which working class minority athletes would be exploited. Within the Critical Race Theory umbrella, the racist notion of the black male as a natural athlete is inconsistent with blackness and performance in baseball, yet the findings are consistent with the critical race tenant that systemic racism bifurcates culture. Black cultural capital is strongest in basketball and football given the high levels of performance by black athletes in these sports.
