I think diversity in pro sports is generally a good thing, although I don’t necessarily think it’s so important in its own right that huge outreach efforts to popularize certain sports in ethnic groups and communities where they aren’t popular. Or, for that matter, where the population isn’t typically suited for pro-level play in those sports.
In other words, I’m all for black curlers, or asian basketball players or Samoan long-distance runners, but I don’t necessarily think there really needs to be a solid effort to introduce curling to inner-city black youth, nor does there really need to be a push to try and get asians to play basketball, or to get Pacific Islanders to do long-distance running (well, maybe for health reasons, I guess).
And I tend to agree with the notion that pro sports should be a meritocracy; the best players ought to play and start, regardless of their socio-ethnic background, even if that means that the NBA is nearly all black, or that competitive swimmers are nearly all white, or that baseball is heavily hispanic.
Why is it assumed that kids can only be inspired by someone of their own race? You didn’t have to be black to wanna be like Mike. More importantly NBA stars or others from other sports aren’t there as some sort of social project. They may be role models but that’s because others make them into role models rather than because they’re particularly admirable. Heck a lot of them a first class jerks. They’re there because people like watching them play a game.
Since the different human populations making up what we socially consider “racial diversity” are (on average) genetically endowed differently for the skillsets that enable top performance, creating “racial diversity” in many pro sports such as football or basketball would require diluting the quality of performance. You’d have to have a race-based AA quota system creating slots for under-represented populations.
I do not think this would go over well with fandom.