Chapter 10: Sports, Opportunities, and the American Dream: Athletic Investment and Mobility Aspirations of Ethnically Diverse High School Students

The “American dream” is characterized by the belief that America is a nation of opportunity, where personal striving leads to upward mobility and improved lifestyles and life chances. For many Americans this “dream” is elusive. Individual access to the American dream has always been influenced by membership in particular racial, ethnic, and gender groups. The chances of attaining the American dream for ethnic, racial, and other minority groups are circumscribed by structured social inequality in which race and ethnicity play a critical role in the nation’s ranking system (Yet- man, 1999). This chapter examines the relationship between participation in school sports and adolescents’ perceptions of the American opportunity structure. Put differently, we consider whether sport participation influences the development of positive perceptions of future life chances among adolescents, thus increasing their perceived chances of attaining the American dream.