The United States is 13 percent black. The NBA is 75 percent black. But this year, the NBA’s Minnesota Timberwolves are “only” 30 percent black.
Obviously, this is a civil-rights issue.
Tyrone Terrell, chairman of St. Paul’s African American leadership council, told the Star-Tribune that he thinks the unbalanced roster could be seen as a ploy by the ownership to sell the team to a majority-white fan base.
“How did we get a roster that resembles the 1955 Lakers?” Terrell said to the Star-Tribune. “I think everything is a strategy. Nothing happens by happenstance.”
So the same fan base that supported the Timberwolves for the first 12 years of Kevin Garnett’s career, after he was drafted out of high school and eventually became the league’s highest-paid player, has decided to pull out their white sheets.
Ron Edwards, a longtime Minneapolis civil rights advocate, told the Star-Tribune that it was “somewhat disturbing” when he saw a game last season in which Wes Johnson was the only black player on the floor for the Timberwolves. The composition of this season’s roster has prompted Edwards to react even stronger.
“It raises some real questions to me about what’s really intended,” Edwards said. “I think, personally, that it was calculated. Is this an attempt to get fans back in the stands? Minnesota, after all, is a pretty white state.”
Edwards added that the Timberwolves’ roster decisions are a “nullification of diversity and a reversal of history.”
I should think it goes without saying that anyone watching an NBA game and sorting players by color is on the wrong side of history. (And that same person might want to double check the definition of “diversity.”)
Really, if this is what so-called civil-rights leaders are reduced to complaining about, the war for civil rights must’ve ended long ago.
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Comments
“Nullification of diversity??!!??!?!” If these teams were “diverse”, the player ratio would match the population ratios.
This is only “somewhat disturbing” to liberal racists and other race baiters that see every shadow as a racist event.
If the teams are mostly black because of ability, fine. But if they are trying to populate the teams based on color, then that is just stinking racism, perpetuated by someone who is clearly a racist, but thinks he can’t be because he is black. Hint: that doesn’t make you immune, it just makes you a lousy hypocrite.
Hey Edwards: it’s time to look in the mirror.
Cheer up everyone Happy Halloween!
MLB is only about 14% African American but according to ESPN this is a major problem! This one idiot named Rob Parker says it’s due to economic racism or something.
The classic authoritarian mindset:
Everything I have, I earned. Everything you have, you stole.
More like: everything I have is MINE. Everything you have is ALSO MINE.
Love the commentary on the USA Today article this seems to come from. Almost overhwhelmingly telling USAT to “get a life”.
Did anyone ask any of the female Timberwolf players for comment?
Black racist bigotry is alive and well.
As I watch the floor on Wall Street, I’m wondering: if I didn’t see 95% of those traders were white males, should I snivel: “that’s a nullification of diversity and a reversal of history?”
Slime.
Yeah, couldn’t possibly be because the WHITE players played better or scored more points.
I mean that’s just racist. Everyone KNOWS that blacks are better at basketball. RIGHT? RIGHT?
Somebody give Larry Bird a call.
Ah, Larry retired twenty years ago.
your point it?
is? is?
You opined that, “everybody KNOWS that blacks are better at basketball, RIGHT? RIGHT?”
Thus, you chose to employ the present tense. Thus, your attempt to invoke irony fails as No. 33 could not caryy the jock strap of any current NBA afro-american hoopster.
O stop it the both of you. It’s a dam GAME.
Sound like someone got cut from the student manager job while in junior high. Larry’s 55 or 56 now and my money says he can still take about half the league.
Afaik the legitimate civil rights movement was about equal opportunity. When equal opportunity was supplanted by affirmative action, the underlying movement was no longer legitimate; it became a scam and a hustle.
What’s worse, affirmative action is now giving way to BS like “diversity”, which the usual suspects claim is a compelling government interest. And of course there are “social justice” and “white privilege”.
The authentic civil rights movement ended with affirmative action quotas. The bogus civil rights movement is just getting started.
Seems like there’s a little bit of racial stereotyping / profiling going on here, by the perpetually aggrieved,
Just another comment by what I term a racialist. Personally, I could care less what is going on in the NBA. I stopped watching pro-basketball in the mid-80s and NBA stands for — Nothing But A-holes in my world.
So the same fan base that supported the Timberwolves for the first 12 years of Kevin Garnett’s career, after he was drafted out of high school and eventually became the league’s highest-paid player
Racists! Trying to keep him out of college, weren’t they???!!
This is giving me another case of Negro Fatigue.
What is “negro fatigue”?
Negro Fatigue: the feeling of exasperation that comes from endless decades of human events reduced into terms of white or black.
Thus, given your definition, could we not also call it “caucasian fatigue”?
Call it whatever you like.
It would be interesting how white and Asian the NBA would become if future athletes had to take literary and math exams in order to play.
I guess the policy would immediately be deemed racist…
Nice non-sequitur.
You DO understand that the primary purpose of a college is to educate young men & women, right? Why is it a non-seq. to postulate that some sort of educational standards should exist for an educational institution?
Oops, pardon me, I thought we had shifted over into college sports there.
Thank you.
The Civil Rights movement was intended to be a response to real and imagined issues. Unfortunately, while its impetus was principle based, its continued existence is not. It, like other reactive measures, has become a retrogressive enterprise.
Afirmative Action needs to die
Clearly, we are reaching the wrong conclusion here. 30% is simply too high when the black population is a mere 12-14%. 75% is an outrageous example of racial discrimination. Since, we know the Justice Department considers employee ratios outside of the normal population distribution to be indicative of discrimination, then there is a prima facia case for racial discrimination in the NBA. All the teams should be fined and forced to sign a consent decree limiting their black players to 15% of the roster and no more than one black player on the floor at any time. That should fix the problem and make everybody happy.
Did it ever occur to these mental giants that playing for a lousy team, in a small market, in the worst cold-weather city in the league may not appeal to a lot of NBA players?
Notice that this issue was first raised by the Minneapolis (Red) Star Tribune, arguably the most politically correct paper in the nation.
Minnesota isn’t so much liberal as many low information types are incredibly misinformed because the media is so bad. hat does it say about those in the media who live in a state that has few minorities that they will obsess about issues like this. For almost thirty years I went home to the Twin Cities for Christmas ever year and for most of them the newspapers there had big stories on Kwannza. Few of my relatives and friends had black acquaintances. I’d tell them all the blacks I knew in Chicago celebrated Christmas rather than Kwannza and that I seldom saw news stories in the Chicago media about Kwannza, They were surprised becuase the news coverage had led them to think not only that Kwannza was a big deal but that most American blacks didn’t celebrate Christmas.
[…] Civil Rights Movement Ends with a Whimper (and a Whine) […]
Basketball teams should follow the lead of our Universities. Asian Americans do best in math and engineering but are purposely, in the name of diversity, not selected for admission in porportion to their dominence in SAT scores .
Black atheletes, on the other hand, dominate other races in athletic prowess. It follows that, in the name of diversity, fewer black athletes should receive athletic scholarships or be allowed to outnumber other races on professional teams.
If this sounds absurd remember that I did not set the precedent and only seek diversity and balanced fairness.