Pedram Peddy PPI Rahmanian Speech 7; Intercultural Communications Tuesday, March 22, 2011 Gladiators, Gazelles, and Groupies

Summery The article Gladiators, Gazelles, and Groupies, Basketball Love and Loathing, by JULIANNE MALVEAUX, different issues have been raised, about the success between men and women, especially within African Americans, in the American society! These issues encompass sports, womens sexuality and politics. The author speaks about her feminist view, professional basketball and the way it reinforces gender stereotypes Men play, women watch. Men at the center, women at the periphery Men making millions, women scheming to get to some of the millions through their sex and sexuality. There are those exceptional women, also, who have made it to the professional level of the sport. But as stated, Broader access to quality education must be a societal mandate; encouraging young African American men to focus on higher education is critical to our nations fullest development. The very violent speech to pump up the players during practice may have been a reason Latrell Sprewell choked one of his coaches. But also in Values of the Game, former New Jersey senator and 2000 presidential candidate Bill Bradley describes the game as one of passion, discipline, selflessness, respect, perspective, courage, and other virtues. Michael Jordan, for example, passed on the opportunity to make a real difference in the 1990 North Carolina Senate race between the former Charlotte mayor and Democratic candidate, the African American architect Harvey Gantt, and the ultra conservative and racially manipulative Republican senator Jesse Helms, preferring to save his endorsements for Nike. Women might possess the dynamic athleticism of the tennis-playing Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, or she might have the ethereal beauty of a Halle Berry. In either case, her product identification would solely be connected with womens productshair, beauty, and womens sports items. The commercial heavy lifting has been left to the big boys, or to one big boy in particular, Michael Jordan. But women sports dont have as many fans as men sports and Women? Always seen, never heard. There is little that women can do, in the realm of sport, capitalism, and imagery, to gain the same access that men have.

While women should not, perhaps, ask men to walk away from arenas in which they can dominate, they must ask themselves why there is no equivalent space for them; why the basketball tenet that men play, women watch, reverberates in so many other sectors of our society.