Not quite a fair comparison:
If basketball was a paid profession, like say, carpentry, that a large number of folks thought of as a career path, then effectively making players be within black culture rightly wouldn't be acceptable.
If basketball was a paid profession, like say, carpentry, that a large number of folks thought of as a career path, then effectively making players be within black culture rightly wouldn't be acceptable.
The analogy is not that basketball forces people to adopt black cultural traits. Certainly computing does not force you to enjoy Star Trek. According to the original article, women have negative views about geeks and don't wish to associate with them.
The analogy is that people who don't like black cultural traits might avoid a moneymaking career in the NBA because they don't wish to be exposed to black people. Here is a paragraph from the article, with "black" replacing "geek":
Cheryan's research offers an explanation: White people don't identify with the archetypal image of basketball players. Cheryan's subjects describe this image as "loud, trash talkin, complaining about their babymommas, drinking 40's and eating fried chicken." The black room conjures this picture in our minds, Cheryan says, based only on the stuff we find lying around (such as posters of Malcolm X and Obama).
A real profession is a self-supervising, self-educating specialty. The model of the professional is the accountant, an individual who, hypothetically, answers to both his supervisor and the strictures of independence imposed by his professional association. Even union carpenters, electrician and plumbers partially fit this description - a qualified contractor, for example, will should and sometimes actually will refuse work that involves not meeting the building code.
Many specialties in this society have lost their professionalism, have lost the independence that provides a lot of the value in their wages. This is ultimately degrades our social relations - it results in people caring about their bank accounts and not their personal achievements (the last bubbles were furthered by the degradation of accountants and real estate appraisers).
I suspect that this process is related to children who would rather be like the people they see on TV rather than being like their mothers and fathers.
Unfortunately, all this degradation seems to be a self-reinforcing process.