Intro

It's time for a reality check ...

Maybe we’ve reached the point of diminishing astonishment.

But I suspect that much of what we’re hammered with every day really doesn’t make much of an impact on most of us anymore. We’ve heard the same stories too often. We’ve been exposed to the same issues for so long without any meaningful resolution. We recognize that reality is rapidly becoming malleable, primarily in the hands of whoever has the biggest microphone. How else can we explain a society where myth asserts itself as reality, based entirely how many hits it gets online?

We know that many of the “issues” as defined are pure crapola, hyped by politicians on both sides pandering to “the will of the people,” which is still more crapola. Inevitably, it’s not the will of all the people they reflect, but the will of relatively small groups of people with disproportionate political influence.

Nobody wants to face up to the realities of the issues. Nobody wants to say what’s right or wrong – even when it’s obvious and there are numbers to back it up. Most of us are afraid to bring up the realities for fear of being accused of being insensitive or downright mean.

So we say nothing. Until now.

It’s time for a reality check on the fundamentals – much of which is common knowledge to many of us, already. But it might be comforting to know you are not alone …

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Hey black America – you can’t have it both ways …

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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