Conversations for Social Change

One of the greatest challenges for human-service agencies today is to meet the needs of their diverse clients and participants. The recreation profession, by its very nature, serves individuals through a wide range of agencies and programs. Yet constituents come to those programs with a host of different experiences, backgrounds, and world-views. How can we best serve these diverse constituents? Understanding issues of race and ethnicity, age, disability, sexual identity, social class, and gender has become essential for effective organizations. This book provides a unique and comprehensive discussion of the journey toward greater diversity and multiculturalism in recreation policies and programs.

This book offers educational and psychological perspectives to inform practice and increase options in addressing conflict situations. The first part of the book helps the educator understand the reasons for resistance and ways to prevent it. The second part explains how educators motivate dominant groups to support social justice. This book is an excellent resource for group faciliators, counsellors, trainers in classrooms and workshops, professors, teachers, higher education personnel, community educators, and other professionals involved with educating others about diversity and equity.

The noted cultural critic Gerald Early explores the intersection of race and sports, and our deeper, often contradictory attitudes toward the athletes we glorify. What desires and anxieties are encoded in our worship of (or disdain for) high-performance athletes? What other, invisible contests unfold when we watch a sporting event?

Donald Sterling. Ray Rice. The Washington Redskins. The Miami Dolphins. NCAA Athletes. These names, among countless others, have blanketed the headlines as the media has brought global attention to several recent sports controversies. In Sport Matters: Leadership, Power, and the Quest for Respect in Sports, Shropshire examines the need for diversity, inclusion, respect, and equality in sports, focusing on the need for leadership to embrace and deliver these principles in a real and tangible way within the sports industry. He also introduces the Sports Power Matrix, a framework for understanding power within the sports industry. Sport Matters addresses what the Donald Sterling drama can teach us about race and the need for inclusion at the ownership level; the lessons learned from the NFL and Ray Rice case; the Washington Redskins name and the economics of change; what the Miami Dolphins matter tells us about respect in the workplace and beyond; and compensation and equality in "amateur” sports. Sport Matters, filled with disturbing revelations and uncomfortable truths, also provides hope, revealing how obstacles to achieving an ideal culture of equality and respect within the sports industry can be removed. Shropshire argues that while change matters, continued emphasis on diversity, inclusion and respect is needed to create true progress.

This book discusses the role that sport participation plays in the lives of black male high-school students and strives to counteract the problems associated with students who place sport participation ahead of academic achievement.

Former athlete and coach Pat Griffin makes a provocative and impassioned call for attention to a topic too long avoided by women's sports advocates. In Strong Women, Deep Closets, she provides a critical analysis of discrimination and prejudice against lesbians in sport. The book is the first to explore the lesbian sporting experience as well as examine homophobia and heterosexism in women's sport. The work is based on theoretical and historical foundations and is written in an academic yet engaging style. Griffin brings to light the experiences of lesbian coaches and athletes in their own words. Strong Women, Deep Closetsconcludes with Griffin's assessment of the current state of lesbians' rights in athletics, set against the overall social picture in the United States. The author lists obstacles lesbian athletes face in transforming sports and details numerous personal and political strategies for leveling the playing field.