So it’s okay for there to be a black-only BET awards show
and a black-only Image awards show, plus a Black Caucus in the House and
Senate, and a Black Lives Matter movement, but because no black actors or black
directors were nominated for an Oscar again this year, that’s racist.
Hmm.
The majority of players in the NBA are black. Is that
racist? The majority of players in the NFL are black, but the majority of NFL
quarterbacks and head coaches are white.
Is that racist?
Many blacks think there’s nothing wrong with the racial disparities
in the NBA. But they are quick to jump on the racial disparities in quarterbacks
and head coaches in the NFL.
You can’t argue both sides.
Chris Rock once joked that he never heard anyone arguing for
quotas to insure that whites are equally represented as men’s room attendants;
so why should there be quotas for white players in professional sports? Yet whenever a coaching opportunity arises in
college or professional sports there are highly public calls for adding more
black coaches. However, when colleges are recruiting players, or pro teams are
drafting players, race for some reason isn’t an issue.
Well folks – black, white, Asian or whatever – some things
are decided by merit and talent alone. That’s just the way it is. Talent
allowed Jackie Robinson to break the color barrier in Major League Baseball; if
he hadn’t been a helluva ball player he wouldn’t have made it. The reason why
there are so many more black professional basketball players than whites is not
because they’re black, but because those specific individuals are better at the
game than anyone else of any color.
And the reason there are more white head coaches in the NFL
is most likely only because those head coaches have a better track record of
winning. If any white coaches in any sport lose too often, they get fired just
like any black head coaches who lose too often. And if they win a lot it makes
no difference if they are black, white, Asian, Jewish, Catholic, Buddhist or
whatever.
Regardless of race, in college or professional sports is you
don’t win you lose your job. If someone is better at winning than you, they’ll
get your job. It’s the ultimate meritocracy.
The entertainment industry is the same. If you make movies that
don’t make money for the studios, your race or ethnicity is irrelevant. If people aren’t willing to pay enough to see
you perform – or they don’t like you or your act for whatever reason – it doesn’t
matter where you’re from, how unfair it may seem, or what point you’re trying
to make. You still lose.
Performance is always open to fair comment and opinion. Some years there are black Oscar winners
because the voters thought they were the best.
Some years movies that feature a lot of black actors and black themes
win Oscars, again for the same reason. Some years white performers like Taylor
Swift win the Grammys; other years black performers win.
When white performers and directors don’t win, you don’t
hear them playing the race card. Yet you do when black artists and directors
don’t win. You can’t have it both ways.
Nor can you expect a quota system that insures a certain
percentage of black movies, artists, actors and directors win. Not when you have BET and Image awards shows
that exclude everyone who isn’t black from winning those awards. Will there now be a quota for non-blacks?
You can’t discriminate based on race for some things without
opening yourself up to charges of racial discrimination on a whole host of
others.
Either you want a merit-based system for everything –
sports, entertainment, acceptance into schools, academic advancement, employment
opportunities – or you don’t. If you think you can mix some quotas and some
merit-based systems, it doesn’t work.
All our years of setting artificial preferences and quotas for
everything from college admissions to institutional diversity have failed.
Be careful what you choose.
There’s no middle ground. If blacks choose quotas over merit there are
consequences black America won’t like.
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