Jon Entine and Kenneth Shropshire: "Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It"

Document Type

Metadata Only

Date

2-15-2001

Venue

Mills Godwin, Jr. Building - Auditorium

Lecture Series

President's Lecture Series

Description

A discussion of the book of the same title and issues associated with discussing stereotypes of African Americans in sports. Also highlights conjecture of genetic issues and discusses legal and business aspects of the sports and entertainment industries.

Jon Entine is a television producer and reporter who first stepped into the national spotlight with his 1989 documentary "Black Athletes: Fact and Fiction." Today, using clips from his documentary and drawing on genetic and sociological research, Entine argues that biology and ancestry are significant components of the disproportional emergence of world-class black athletes.

The author of a book also titled "Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It," Entine has written for several publications, including The Sunday Times of London, Chicago Tribune, GQ and the Utne Reader. A seasoned network television producer, he has worked with Sam Donaldson, Diane Sawyer and Chris Wallace on ABC's "PrimeTime Live" and "20/20" and served for many years as Tom Brokaw's producer at NBC News.

Entine, a recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for Journalists, earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Trinity College and has taught as an adjunct professor at New York and Columbia universities.

An author and scholar, Kenneth Shropshire has provided legal consultation for the National Football League, the U.S. Amateur Boxing Federation and the World Wrestling Federation. From 1982-1985, he served as assistant vice president/sports manager for the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee.

A frequent contributor to various national publications, Shropshire has written for the New York Daily News, USA Today and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is the author of five books, including "Agents of Opportunity: Sports Agents and Corruption in Collegiate Sports" and "In Black and White: Race and Sports in America," for which he received the 1997 Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Human Rights in North America Outstanding Book Award.

Shropshire, who currently serves as a professor of legal studies and real estate at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, earned a law degree from the Columbia University School of Law and a bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University.

Media Type

VHS

Run Time

80:00 min

Comments

A 1/2" VHS copy of this lecture is available in the Special Collections & University Archives Department of Old Dominion University Perry Library. Call #: LD4331.A57 2001c

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