I am an aggressive supporter of race-based AA university admissions on the grounds that race-based diversity is a worthy goal for academia. I hold that no criterion other than a consideration of self-identified race is effective in enabling the highest-performing black students to get access to selective higher education.*
I am being accused by my anti-AA peers (quasi-retired academic curmudgeons with nothing to do but complain about the world ) of hypocrisy (Oh the humanity!) because I do not also support race consideration to drive diversity in athletic endeavors. If the football or basketball team is underrepresented by whites and the lacrosse team underrepresented by blacks, (and asians underrrepresented everywhere but ping pong ), I don’t give a crap.
Yes; sports is a route to an opportunity for higher education as is academic performance (and perhaps more, in terms of full rides without means-testing for the brightest stars?) but I nevertheless hold that we should leave sports a pure meritocracy and ignore race-based (or opportunity-based, for that matter) diversity.
Is there any compelling interest for sports, anywhere along the continuum from schools to professional, to reflect the diversity of a population, or is it OK to let culture, biology and happenstance drive the outcome of who is successful?
*Full disclosure: I hold this view because I believe that self-identification into race categories parallels self-identification into population divisions where the disparate frequency of advantageous genes underpinning academic or sports skillsets is a fundamental driver of the outcome differences we see. However, I’m not sure the nature/nurture argument has any relevance here. I’d like to assume that it doesn’t matter if culture or biology is creating the observed difference in proportionate representation for either academics or sports. The fact is that either way there is a markedly disproportionate representation in both academics and sports as compared with the general population.
Aside from your quasi-retired curmudgeon acquaintances, is there anyone actually calling for ethnic diversity in sports? It is not a theme I have encountered.
**[ Moderating ] **
Everyone stick to the actual question asked and quoted.
Let’s not turn this into one more “is so/is not” exchange on the OP’s perceived beliefs regarding ethnic groups and intelligence.
Nitpick: I very much doubt that sports (or anything else, probably) can be accurately characterized as a “pure meritocracy”.
That said, I support dwindling levels of diversity promotion in sports as the age and ability levels (and league competitiveness) of the participants increase. E.g., I firmly believe that:
All the neighborhood first-graders should be allowed and encouraged to participate in, e.g., their neighborhood tee-ball or soccer team, irrespective of their athletic merit.
All elementary schoolkids should be actively supported in their interest in playing any available sport in phys ed classes. And the barriers to sports participation in clubs or teams at that level should be very low, so that different socioeconomic or cultural backgrounds don’t end up effectively segregating child athletes by race or socioeconomic status. Individual children should be gently but actively encouraged to consider trying new sports that they’re less familiar with from their own cultural contexts.
High school varsity teams should be permitted to rigorously screen applicants for ability and skill (depending on how competitive the local leagues or rankings are), irrespective of diversity issues. Lower-level teams and intramural teams should still consider inclusiveness along with or even instead of athletic merit.
Professional and Olympic sports teams, and all the training structures that directly feed into them, should be rigorously, not to say fanatically, achievement-focused. Diversity issues should be completely irrelevant at that level.
Back to community rather than high-powered competition settings: local sports clubs for adults should provide a spectrum of inclusiveness from around the elementary-school to the high-school varsity level.
One argument I can think of in support of the OP is that the the small pool of very lucrative jobs in, say, the NBA, should be open to all. And since it appears that if AA is not going to be instituted there, Whites and Asians, are in effect being locked out of the market.
AA and “quotas” in any form is discrimination and prejudice and shouldn’t even be considered whether in academia, sport or business.
Money and effort should go into ensuring equality of opportunity for all and trying to raise the bar for underachieving or under-represented cultures and communities, regardless of skin colour. By doing that you widen the talent pool and you will slowly begin to see greater numbers come from those communities if the raw talent is there.
Couple that with rigorous enforcement of strict anti-discrimination laws and things will change. Slowly perhaps, but more completely, acceptably and organically that simplistic AA or quotas can achieve.
Yes. it’s equality of opportunity that is important, no equality of outcomes. It wasn’t that long ago that some sports had laws enshrined barring certain people from even having a chance to play (baseball, golf, etc.) Not to mention the defacto rules that also applied to Hispanics and Asians.
If admissions to a University were scored strictly on a fixed scale, a Valedictorian with a 4.0 from a poor underperforming inner-city school might not score as high as the 50th ranked kid from a rich private school or a Charter School with highly involved and academically inclined parents. It’s hard to get extra credit for AP or IB courses if your school doesn’t offer them.
Give everyone the same chance and let them sort themselves out once they’re there.
You mean like a white person quota for the NBA? No. I like the idea of 0 quotas based on sex, race, ethnicity, or sky fairy worshipped. Only preferential treatment I advocate is based strictly on economic class and applied strictly to academics.
Taking the OP’s premises at face value, I would say there’s no compelling interest in race-based diversity in sports because the outcome of sporting events serves no greater purpose in society.
I think most people would agree that it’s better for society if the best possible scientists and engineers and physicians are working in those fields. We all benefit from their efforts.
But I don’t see an equivalent value in sports, even as a fan. If somebody who had the potential to be a great baseball player lacked the opportunity to develop and use those skills, was society as a whole harmed? We just had baseball being played at a slightly lower level.
Race based considerations should always be used to improve diversity and help bring up minorities that have been historically oppressed by whites in the past, but never the other way around because whites as a whole do not need any more help
That assumes that white/not-white is the only dividing line between oppressed and non-oppressed groups. What about historic oppression based on class as reflected in the fact that the white working-class (especially those who are Southron, Scotch-Irish and/or Southern Baptist) is disproportionately unrepresented at places like Harvard, Yale, or Stanford? What about historically oppressed groups such as Jews and Asians who’ve risen to an advantageous position in society?
Its too hard to trace the genealogy of a hundred million people. But the impossible should not be the enemy of the good. If you look non-white, boom, race consideration! There is also the matter of how some non-white races can pass as whites, thereby not having been completely oppressed so they deserve less consideration. Its the fairest way to do things
Its pretty to easy to look at the current income level of households and look at which parts of the country have been geographically unrepresented.
And thus, like the Dixiecrats, your policies would drive a sword of division between the white and nonwhite underclasses of America.
Asians certainly can’t “pass” as whites, yet they are tremendously successful. And a lot of time, its not “passing” as white so much as the definition of “white” evolving from White Anglo-Saxon Protestant to include other Germanic Protestants than Celtic Catholic Irishmen, then Slavs, Latins, and Jews over the course of American history.
I like what we have now. Melanin is to be used in case of a tie.
We still talking about sports? A lot, I don’t know how many, of athletes come from poor backgrounds. And sports is a lot more physical merit-based than something like education scholarships or jobs.
Its ok if you’re trying to help people. If too many whites don’t like it, we should do the same thing, but sneakier
I’m fine if they want to save some spots for Asians in sports though
By matching up the completely arbitrary reasons why races were oppressed in the past. I agree completely, its arbitrary, but that’s why they were racists. To make up for it, you don’t help the whites, you help the people who were arbitrarily oppressed in the past.
I agree with others that equality of opportunity is the important thing. If I was in charge at a school and the representation of the various sports was wildly off from the rest of the demographics of the school, I would try a little bit to find out why that is. If there are arbitrary restrictions or hurdles that disproportionately impact some students more than others and that’s why some students don’t do certain sports, I’d see if those restrictions could be changed. If students of X race tried to join a team, but all the students of Y race bullied them or pressured them out of joining, I would definitely try to address that the best I could. If the coaches are biased, and picking players based on stereotypes (more likely to pick black players for varsity teams in basketball, more likely to pick white players for lacrosse) then I would try to address that with the coaches.
But if everything is equal, and no one is being discriminated against or hurt in any way, and it’s just that certain groups are underrepresented in different sports because they are just less interested, then I wouldn’t worry about it and I’d just let it be.
Equality of opportunity is a nice idea, bit it fails in practice. Since, people don’t have equal opportunities. If one is from a poor background where they only chance they got was a pickup game in the street, while the other had coaching, equipment, youth programmes. Do you nearly think Michael Phelps, even with all his talent would have ever reached the Olympics if he had been Mikhail Popalzai from Afghanistan?
And, affirmative action in cricket got us Ntini. Would a goat herder have been able to reach such heights on his own?
) of hypocrisy (Oh the humanity!) because I do not also support race consideration to drive diversity in athletic endeavors. If the football or basketball team is underrepresented by whites and the lacrosse team underrepresented by blacks, (and asians underrrepresented everywhere but ping pong