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Originally Posted by Jermyn Davidson
Well I must return to work.
I do wonder about the lack of diversity within the NBA.
I think some teams are trying to diversify their teams and it is good they're doing it on their own, and not without a mandate.
That being said, could the NBA do more to diversify their teams?
Would any action to purposely diversify their teams be seen as voluntary AA?
I wonder why the NHL has not been targeted by the NAACP yet?  |
The NHL is a traditionally "Canadian" sport. Until recently Canada had almost no Black population. Immigration has been changing that dramatically lately.
Sports, especially team sports excel within cultures. To develop world class athletes in a given sport you have to have a culture that promotes excellence in that area from a very early age.
Some people have argued that there are "racial" and even "genetic" factors that causes one society to dominate a particular sport, and the NBA has been used as an example to say that "black Africans" are genetically "superior" to other races in the areas needed to excel in basketball.
This line of reasoning fails however when we look at the sport of basketball on a global scale. No African nation has ever medaled in Olympic Basketball in the history of the sport (since the 1920s). If "black Africans" were genetically superior to all other people shouldn't Nigeria, South Africa or some other nation have won at least a Bronze by now?
We are left to conclude that there are social factors that have led to the dominance of African-Americans in the NBA and not racial or genetic factors. Perhaps there has even been a sort of "reverse discrimination" at work in the youth leagues and college game that has caused aspiring Blacks to be encourage to "out hustle" Whites who were susceptible to the overt suggestion that they simply could never be good enough.
Spike Lee played on the "reverse racism" theme in his film "
White Men Can't Jump." The Wesley Snipes character (Black) along with the Woody Harrleson character (White) would go through the inner city's basketball courts and play a sort of con game on the perceived racism of the Blacks in the area. Seeing that the Snipes/Harrelson twosome contained a "White Guy" the Blacks were encouraged to bet even more money on the outcome of the games because hey, White Men Can't Jump!
Then Harrelson is shown in dramatic footage slam dunking and stealing rebounds away as he and Snipes win every two-on-two game they play. Lee's film did a good job of pointing out how racism and prejudice exists in every community and how it causes those who play to those antagonisms to eventually lose out on a lot of life's "bets."
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