Winter Races -- and the Races of Man

My new VDARE.com column is up.

"So try not to laugh when someone says these are the world’s greatest athletes, despite a paucity of blacks that makes the Winter Games look like a GOP convention."–Bryant Gumbel on HBO’s Real Sports

Last fall, the Air Force Academy's distinguish football coach Fisher DeBerry was put through the wringer by white sportswriters for alleged racial insensitivity.

His crime: Mentioning that black players tend to be faster than white players.

But newscaster Gumbel's statement, quoted above, has been met with little outcry, so far.

Why the difference?

Well, unlike DeBerry, Gumbel is black. Everyone already knows he's less of a fan of white men than he is of white women, such as the blonde trophy wife for whom he traded in his black first wife of 26 years.

And everybody knows these periodic "two minute hates" directed by white sportswriters at white sportsmen too old fashioned to avoid blurting out the truth have very little to do with blacks, per se. This is just a white-on-white war over status. Blacks are free to say whatever they feel like because white journalists seldom consider them rivals.

Predictably, sportswriters are already playing up the 1000 meter speedskating gold medal won by the African-American Shani Davis as an epochal social breakthrough, one that will finally unleash the cleansing power of diversity on the white bread Winter Olympics.

It won’t. The truth is that African-Americans' sporting interests have been getting less diverse, as they focus ever more on their strong suits, basketball and football.

For example, when Tiger Woods, who is one-quarter black, won the Masters nine years ago, it was widely predicted that blacks would soon flood the ranks of pro golf.

Instead, the opposite has happened. Between 1964 and 1986, five black pros (Pete Brown, Charlie Sifford, Lee Elder, Calvin Peete and Jim Thorpe) won a total of 23 PGA tournaments. But in the 20 years since, no black other than Woods has won.

Similarly, Arthur Ashe won the U.S. Open tennis tournament 38 years ago. But no African-American man has won a major championship since him.

And Wendell Scott, a black driver, won a NASCAR stock car race back in 1963. But African-American interest in motor sports is minimal today.

The African-American share of major league baseball rosters has fallen from 27 percent in 1974 to 9 percent last year. Last fall, home run king Hank Aaron criticized the Houston Astros for having no African-American players. (But that black lack didn't stop the team from winning the National League pennant).

The unmentionable truth: human beings like to hang out with people like themselves.

And they will develop institutions to allow them to do so.

For instance, the middle of February was traditionally the deadest time of the year in sports. But today, Sunday, February 19, was full of events that have turned into de facto ethnic pride celebrations.

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My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer