What Counts As a Sport And Why Are Social Justice Issues So Prevalent In Sports?

     What counts as a sport is something that can be debated in many ways as there are many different definitions of what a sport is. There are hundreds of things that are called are a sport and many can be very different than others. American football and chess are two activities that are extremely different yet to many they fall under the same category of a sport. To me, both of these are considered sports as I define sports as an activity that requires skill and or athleticism to achieve a goal while competing against an opponent to win. A sport can be done for intense competition or leisure and can be done by anybody. A sport can be almost one hundred percent mental or could be almost one hundred percent physical.

     When looking at sports it is almost impossible to not see the presence of social justice issues, especially in today’s world where athletes are more outspoken than ever and hold more power in their words and actions than most people in society. Athletes can inspire change and make a serious impact on our society. There are multiple reasons that social justice is so embedded in sports, but there are two main reasons that they go hand in hand together. The first reason is that sports can be the great equalizer of people. A star athlete can come from anywhere, they could’ve grown up in a broke household with a single parent or they could have come from an extremely wealthy family and never seen a real struggle in their lives growing up. But that doesn’t matter in sports, what matters is if you can play and do it well. Anyone can be an athlete, it just depends on how much work you put into mastering your skill. Because of this, you can find so much diversity in sports and that gives you, people who have experienced the real world from every angle and have their own perspective on it. There are athletes who have experienced extremely harsh prejudice and have their story to tell and want to make a change. The reason they have the ability to make the change they want is my next point, athletes are some of the most famous people in our society. Sports are so embedded in our society that most people can name more athletes on a single team than members of congress. They are the biggest celebrities in our world and that gives them one of the biggest platforms to speak on. If Lebron James wants to voice his opinion on a certain social issue he can post to his Instagram for his 96 million followers to see, which he often does. Someone who grew up in poverty with a single mother and faced an immense amount of adversity now has a platform that can reach more people than almost any politician can with the click of a button. An athlete can come from any background you can think of and can have the ability to make their voice heard by millions, and that is why social justice issues arise so commonly in sports.