Social Justice and Racial inequality
correlate Strategic Communication Theory, faith, with the topic of interest.
ANSWER
Racial Justice and Racial Inequality
Introduction
The sporting world is advancing progressively and making positive changes in the social domain. As most global communities continue to experience different forms of social injustices and racial inequalities, sporting personnel have taken advantage of their positions to create awareness. Professional sports bring people together. During these events, people put their differences aside and engage as one. However, away from sports, they assume their usual routines. Sporting individuals have engaged in various protests to create awareness of racial injustices and inequalities. Recently, athletes organized a protect seeking to generate attention on a key tag such as ‘Black Lives Matter’ (Watanabe & Cunningham, 2020). These campaigns are intended to educate people regarding detrimental racial perceptions and attitudes that affect peace and unity. Individuals assess realities through their faith lens. Everyone should believe in each other’s dignity. People should denounce racism and commit their time and efforts in confronting supremacy and systemic racial injustices.
Attendance to sporting activities is, at times, affected by ethnic and racial attitudes. Racial injustices negatively affect sports. Fluctuation in attendance to gaming events emerge from the explicit attitudes associated with race and racial prejudice. According to Watanabe and Cunningham (2020), understanding racial attitudes and animus helps stakeholders assess consumer behavior. Considering that sports aids in bringing people together, especially when they align themselves with a similar sporting party, there is a high chance that sports personnel can positively impact people’s lives. Lee (2015) states that sports professionals use their position to encourage fans to participate in social justice activism. Fans tend to listen to and following the directives of their preferable sports personnel. Thus, strategic communication tactics that focus on creating awareness about social justice and racial equality create a viable room for appropriate behavior change.
The cognitive-behavioral and spiral of silence theories are useful perspectives for addressing social injustices. These strategic communication theories can assist sporting personnel to engage their audience to support elimination of racial inequalities. The cognitive behavior theory assesses individuals’ perception of injustices and how their thought processes determine their emotional reactions. It considers human behavior across an environment (Nurius & Macy, 2008). The theory assists in disconfirming irrational beliefs and teaching people about potential change processes. Professional sports can help their fans to change negative racial attitudes. The spiral of silence theory helps minority populations to restrict themselves from accepting the status quo. They should be on the frontline to demand the recognition of their rights. For instance, black sportsmen and women can form activist events to create awareness about respect for black people’s rights and freedom.
Rationale
The purpose of the paper is to examine how sporting professionals can utilize strategic communication processes to create awareness about social justice and racial inequality in the world at large. Sports individuals have an influential role to play in addressing systemic racial inequalities and injustices. The utilization of the cognitive behavior and spiral of silence theories enables global populations to change their harmful racial and ethnic beliefs and become keen and considerate of everyone’s well-being irrespective of their background.
Thesis statement: Professional sporting personnel reach out to their followers to support initiatives and events targeting abandonment of harmful racial and ethnic beliefs to address prevailing social injustices and racial inequalities.
Research Question
What is the role of sports personnel in adopting strategic communication approaches to address social injustices and racial inequalities in the social setting?
References
Lee, W. (2015). Moving toward social justice in sport: A comprehensive study of social justice activists in sport and the factors that shape them (Doctoral dissertation).
Nurius, P. S., & Macy, R. J. (2008). Cognitive‐Behavioral Theory. Comprehensive handbook of social work and social welfare, 2. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470373705.chsw002007
Watanabe, N. M., & Cunningham, G. B. (2020). The impact of race relations on NFL attendance: An econometric analysis. PloS one, 15(1), e0226938. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226938
