Rodeo - Minority Participation in The United States and Canada

Minority Participation in The United States and Canada

Mexican Americans have had a long history with both rodeo and charreada. In spite of long association with southwestern culture, there has been significant assimilation and cross-acculturation — Mexican Americans are so integrated into the southwestern cowboy culture that they are not visibly distinct.

Native American and Hispanic cowboys compete in modern rodeos in small numbers. African Americans constitute a smaller minority of rodeo contestants, though many early rodeo champions, such as Nat Love, were African American. Bill Pickett and bronc rider Bill Stahl were both elected to the Cowboy Hall of Fame. During the 1940s and 1950s, African Americans created the Southwestern Colored Cowboys Association. Although the PRCA never formally excluded people of color, pre-1960s racism effectively kept many minority participants, particularly African Americans, out of white competitions. In the 1960s, bull rider Myrtis Dightman vied for national honors and qualified for the National Finals Rodeo. In the 1990s, the Black World Championship Rodeo was held in New York City and other locations across the United States.

In 1976, the first gay rodeo was held in Reno, Nevada as a charity fundraiser. Several regional gay rodeo organizations were formed in the following years, and, in 1985, the existing organizations formed the International Gay Rodeo Association as a national sanctioning body. The melding of homosexuality and straight cowboy culture in gay rodeo simultaneously embraces archetypal Cowboy Code traits and contemporary gay identity. Openly gay competitors stage their own rodeos because they are not welcomed in the straight circuit. "We can ride with the best of them," one person stated, "But they don't want us around."