How We Talk About Race In Sports

The big story this week regarding the National Football League was rightly the drafting of the first openly gay player.  However, as one barrier gets broken down, we should not forget about those we still are working on.  Deadspin has a great tool that analyzes how often certain words were used in scouting reports for white and black players.  For example, black players are more frequently described as “natural,” and the word “smart” more often is applied to white players.  You can use the tool yourself here.

And lest anyone think this generalizing applies only to race or is a new phenomena, here is a quote from the 1930s.

New York Daily News sports editor Paul Gallico wrote in the mid 1930s that basketball “appeals to the Hebrew with his Oriental background [because] the game places a premium on an alert, scheming mind and flashy trickiness, artful dodging and general smartalecness.”

That Jewish dominance of basketball really worked out well.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.