# Is there a compelling interest for race-based diversity in sports? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 6, 2015, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-compelling-interest-for-race-based-diversity-in-sports/736791 "2015-11-06T11:20:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 1
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [November 6, 2015, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-compelling-interest-for-race-based-diversity-in-sports/736791/1 "2015-11-06T11:20:16Z")
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. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-a-compelling-interest-for-race-based-diversity-in-sports/736791)._