Another interesting point that came up in the movie Rize is the idea that in the inner city the one thing you can always seem to find is a sports team. Maybe is one of those catch-22 types of things, but the truth is that a lot of do-gooders come into an inner city neighborhood and start sports teams. This makes some sense because there are a lot of kids that want to play sports, and thus we have our little catch-22 (I could be using the term all wrong, sorry).
But there are plenty of youth in the inner city that have no desire to play sports and would love to have other outlets. In the movie they mention the lack of performing arts schools and studios which is very true from what I know. There is a definite need for more of these things in the inner city.
If you have tons of sports options available to youth, you’ll continue to hear plenty of “rise out of poverty to sports star fame” types of stories. If you make performing arts more available, and good education available, you’ll eventually hear many more, “rise out of poverty to” broadway renown, ballet all-star, symphony elite, science genius, and the list goes on.