The Dominican Pipeline
There is no question that our culture, Western society, is becoming more and more multi-ethnic. Societies across the nation are having minority population percentages skyrocket with little interest in “why?” the increase and more of the “how?” Arguably the most visibly seen instance is right within the society and world of sport; even more specifically, baseball. In the New York Times’ sports playlist video The Dominican Pipeline we are thrown into this ethnically wide and diverse game of baseball. It is a video that’s purpose is to show a new era of business that’s operations are philosophically based on helping out an underprivileged minority, the youth of the Dominican Republic, by providing them the opportunity to be seen and recognized by baseball scouts in the United States. It is also, however, an unfortunate reality that these ‘business men’ are using the Dominican population as nothing more than a stepping stone to give themselves more power and money.
Indeed, it may be difficult to understand the true meaning behind the relationships between ethnic and racial differences, but that is what sport sociology is all about; researching why certain things are. As Sage (1987) put it, “…sport sociology will not very often provide neat recipes for the practitioner” (p. 273). This being the case, we must figure out why the white male looks at Dominicans as an investment, or a piece of property, rather than a human being. In The Dominican Pipeline, there needs to be very clear transparency between what is right and what is wrong with regards to the treatment and handling of each and every Dominican youth baseball player. New York Mets owner Sandy Alderson said of this ‘Dominican Pipeline,’ “If [American investors] want to be involved in this kind of activity and generate some sort of investment profit, it could be a positive. But they need to make sure that it is a positive.” He does not want it to become a business that is solely based upon the ideology of taking these ‘underprivileged’ kids to merely generate return for themselves.
According to Bourdieu (1978), “it is possible to consider the whole range of sporting activities and entertainments offered to social agents…as a supply intended to meet a social demand” (p. 237). In reality, this is exactly what these Western philosophy thinking, white males are trying to do with the Dominican youth. While they are focusing on the individual side, they see these kids as nothing more than an entertainment venture with little to zero overhead needed to produce their desired outcomes. They have a low budget with sub-standard living conditions and ultimately unlimited return. This is where you can strongly see the idea of social class and race clash with ethnicity. Furthermore, a sense of Marxism can be seen between the ideology of capitalism and the white male. While the ideas resonate throughout the world of Marxism, they are more along the lines of social conflict theory:
"Social conflict theory assumes that the normal state of affairs in society is tension between major economic interest or classes. In capitalist societies, these major classes are the dominant capitalist class of owners of the resources used in industrial production and the subordinate class of industrial workers, who are exploited by the capitalist owners and are paid less than their work is worth and as little as possible so that the capitalists can earn as much profit as possible" (Nixon, 2007, p. 32).
The methodology used by Nixon suggests that there needs to be a shift away from these ideologies in that the subordinate class (the Dominican youth) should not succumb to the power of the major class (the Western, white business men from America). Coakley (1982) further explains the dominance by white males over minorities (subordinate class) in describing Goodman’s account of the banning of New York children, who lived in working-class neighborhoods, playing outside on the streets and forcing them to be involved in an organized playground. Coakley said, “…the organized activities sport programs became a means for training the children of immigrants to fit into a world of work founded on time schedules, the stopwatch, and production-conscious supervisors” (Coakley, 1982, p. 27). This further illustrates how the Western ideas are imprinted into the ‘underprivileged’ Dominican youth’s minds. While empirical data is indeed of importance in these regards, the shift from positivism to a more complete and inclusive type of research, particularly various theories such as this social conflict theory, is necessary. Sociologists will want to understand the true meaning of businessmen and their intentions.
There is also an obvious and unfortunate sense of political power that seems to drive the alienation of the Dominican youth. It is power that is being enforced as the ‘do as I say if you want to be successful’ mantra by the white, upper-class, Western society males. Andrews (2008) confirms this notion by saying “that societies are fundamentally divided along hierarchically ordered lines of differentiation (i.e., those based on class, ethnic, gender, ability, generational, national, racial, and/or sexual norms), as realized through the operations of power and power relations within the social formation” (p. 57). This describes how there is a hierarchical establishment of power between not only Western society ideologies (strictly America?), but more specifically within race and ethnicity. We can see this through the operations of white managers of these Dominican baseball entities as they establish themselves as the only option for the Dominican Republic’s youth. Smaje (1997) believes, confirming the thought of Andrews, that there is great debate on the idea of race and ethnicity being the “somatic and cultural principles of social hierarchy” (p. 309). Smaje says, though he is not willing to argue the point, that there is an utmost interest in the studying of somatic and cultural ideologies and the affect that they have on the relationships within societies; particularly hierarchical relationships. Furthermore, Smaje goes on to say that any type of “ethnic sentiment” we establish “is merely displaced by one relating to a particular economic relation” (Smaje, 1997, p. 311). What this tells us is that we now not only believe that the Dominican youth are doomed without us, but that because they are Latino, we assume they are economically deprived. By judging them on nothing more than their ethnicity we believe that we can assume their entire identity. Allport observed and claimed “that being the target of a negative stereotype about an important social identity is distressing and promotes a number of defensive reactions” (Stone, Sjomeling, Lynch, & Darley, 1998, p. 1213). Unfortunately, this is exactly what is happening. Western society is forming these negative stereotypes and connotations with who we think Latinos are, and if not, who we think they should be.
A major detriment to the Latino community is that they are given this idea by Western males from the dominant class that baseball is the be all end all. It then becomes, more or less, a self-fulfilling prophecy in the sense that the youth from the Dominican Republic do not believe they can do anything other than play baseball. This is shown through a study by Harrison and Lawrence where “college students in a predominantly white midwestern university in the United States embodied the notion, among a number of racialized perceptions, that black athletes are superior in certain sports to whites” (Azzarito & Harrison, 2008, p. 349). While obviously in this case the variables are white and black athletes, it still holds true in The Dominican Pipeline. Due to this, some of the kids who choose to enter these baseball training academies may miss out on education that they would otherwise be receiving. The academies even go as far as having barbed wire surrounding their grounds, something that is said to keep them from leaving at night to meet girls. The video also discusses how most of the kids in these settings will not even make it to any one of the professional leagues in the United States. It just shows our unfortunate sense of greed and power and how we have the ability to change young kids’ lives for the better or the worse. The investors, as they call them, admit that they make millions of dollars on these kids by taking higher percentages than allowed in the United States on players’ signing bonuses if picked up, but that what they are really trying to do is “improve the conditions which these kids live under” and that they “ultimately do want to have [for the kids] education.” Yeah, right.
Andrews, D. L. (2008). Kinesiology’s Inconvenient Truth and the physical cultural studies imperative. Quest, 60, 45-62.
Azzarito, L., & Harrison, L. (2008). ‘White men can’t jump’: Race, gender and natural athleticism. International Review for the Sociology of Sport, 43(4), 347-364.
Bourdieu, P. (2008 [1978]). Sport and social class. In A. Tomlinson (Ed.) The Sport Studies Reader (237-241). New York: Routledge.
Coakley, J. (2001 [1982]). Sport in society: An inspiration or an opiate? In S.D. Eitzen (Ed.) Sport in contemporary society (20-37).
Nixon, H. L. (2007). Social theories and research methods in sport sociology. Sport in a changing world. Boulder, CO: Paradigm.
Sage, G. H. (1987). Pursuit of knowledge in sociology of sport: Issues and prospects. Quest, 39, 255-281.
Smaje, C. (1997). Not just a social construct: Theorising race and ethnicity. Sociology, 31(2), 307-327.
St. Louis, B. (2003). Sport, genetics and the ‘natural athlete’: The resurgence of racial science. Body & Society, 9(2), 75-95.
Stone, J., Lynch, C. I., Sjomeling, M., & Darley, J. M. (1999). Stereotype threat effects on black and white athletic performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 77(6), 1213-1227.
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