If you really push this through that’s a valid point.
What makes it so that Asians are underrepresented, and would the games be more interesting if these causes were addressed ?
What makes it so that Asians are underrepresented, and would the games be more interesting if these causes were addressed ?
Their physique.
Fact of the matter is, black peoples' bodies are far more suited for strenuous physical activities than asians'. For the NBA specifically, the average height of blacks compared to that of asians is a significant factor; the taller you are the more advantageous you will be.
For a more in-depth example, over in Japan (note: I'm Japanese-American) athletes who have some foreign blood in them tend to perform better in sports compared to 100% Japanese athletes. Not to mention 100% foreigners who moved to Japan who will, in general, perform better than anyone with Japanese blood.
The reality is asians aren't as physically capable as other races, generally speaking.
>and would the games be more interesting if these causes were addressed ?
No. I think I speak for the majority when I say we watch sports matches to spectate top-of-the-class athletes doing their best, regardless who or what they are.
If there are obvious diversity quota players in the mix, that would /reduce/ the overall fun and interest because the sport stops being about the best athletes performing their best.
> […]
> The reality is asians aren't as physically capable as other races, generally speaking.
Do you apply similar logic to explain why black people are underrepresented in technical fields while Asian people are over-represented? Would you say that Asian peoples’ minds are “far more suited” for strenuous intellectual activities than black peoples’?
This is also the reason why there are far few women software engineers than men. It is not about their capabilities, physical, intellectual or otherwise. It is about their environment where they grow up in - some people grow up with programming computers from very early age because their parents do something similar, most of these (by a wide margin) are white or asian boys.
For the record, I also don’t think it’s about “differences in capabilities”. I think that amongst other things, as personal computing came of age different types of men became attracted to computing, and changed the culture around computing to one which excluded women (in most cases probably unintentionally). If that’s true, there might be parallels with the software industry today and race.
Early computer "programmers" were doing something more akin to data entry than churning out CRUD apps using the latest js framework. Comparing the programming jobs of the 70s or whatever to the jobs today therefore makes little sense.
But that was the 60s and 70s, and the women at the time were in their 20s and 30s.
Many of those women remained "computers" and did not go into "engineers", and there is a big difference between the two. A computer is great at solving equations and doing the menial work of data calculation, similar to what we use spreadsheets for today.
Engineers on the other hand is a more creative approach to problem solving, when presented with various problems (not just of math) that need some solutions, an engineer would try and find that solution by being creative.
About 20-30 years ago, there was a large population of engineers around the world who are the parents of today's engineers who are 20-30yo right now. Those engineers were white men, and women, and asian men and women. Not many of them were black families, so today's 20-30yo black men (and women) are not only a small portion of the world population, they are also heavily underrepresented in engineering. That is not to say they are incapable, as I mentioned above, it is more influenced by the "environment" where these people grew up in.
Also, early women programmers does not mean that today's women had the same upbringing and attraction to the same professions as the women in the 60s and 70s. Back then being a "computer" was similar to being a secretary, it involved a lot of menial work and precision. Today's secretaries might be required to be good with spreadsheets and document writing software, quite a leap away from programming.
The above are generalizations, since there are absolutely definitely amazing women software engineers today, as well as black men software engineers. It is just that they are barely a minority in the software engineering industry, there are just very few of them - which makes sense why the software engineering jobs don't have any significant representation of these people working there.
The brutal reality is that various peoples and individuals have varying aptitudes to various things depending upon their genetic makeup, upbringing, social factors, and more.
You literally can not round up a random group of people and expect them all to behave the same. That's not how this works.
Systemic discrimination and inhibitors can't be set aside in a discussion about representation. The results you're referring to have those two baked in.
You seem to be upset over his pointing out this fact. Why is it no problem to point out that these Kenyans are dominating long distance running - even NPR reports about this - but problematic [3] to point out that the Japanese, Swiss, Chinese, Americans and Dutch dominate when it comes to intellectual pursuits? I suspect this is because intellectual pursuits have a higher standing among the "educated" classes who tend to ruminate about these things than physical activities. In a way this itself is problematic just like the way many "educated" people look down upon physical labour is problematic - to use a term often bandied about by those same people. A healthy society needs both those who are more into physical activities as well as those who are more into intellectual pursuits to develop and thrive - this is true diversity.
[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2013/11/01/241895965/...
[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/duncanmadden/2019/01/11/ranked-...
My comment was more related to the fact that in my experience there are quite a number of people who have no qualms about suggesting that black people are over represented in sports like running and sprinting, professional basketball, and professional football because they are just naturally better athletes, but then will absolutely refuse to even entertain the possibility that some other races or ethnic groups might be naturally better in other fields like science and engineering. I find that sort of thinking rather inconsistent, so I was mostly just probing to see what the person I was replying to believed.
Of course this sort of discussion is going to be controversial since suggesting that a certain ethnic group is naturally better than other ethnic groups in some sense, even if only in certain areas, would seem to fit the traditional definition of racism.
We can't make meaningful decisions until we properly understand the reality in which we all live.
Regardless of the veracity of your claim, Japanese physiques don't represent all Asian physiques. And even Chinese historical records often mentioned who short the Japanese were.
I merely used Japan because I'm actually qualified to talk about them with some degree of specificity, and the rest of the comment is hopefully written in a more generalized manner.
Then wouldn’t be more interesting if a variety of players with different top-of-the-class physical profiles moved the game through strategies optimized to their strengths and weaknesses ?
To take a concrete example, the addition of the 3 point rule expanded the category of players that could have a critical impact on the game. I personally wouldn’t see that rule addition as a dilution of the game or a pandering to physical diversity, it genuinely makes the games more interesting.
We could imagine other rules that bring in even wider physical profiles and change the game in interesting ways.
As such, diversity quotas would not be appealing to my interests and demands in the first place. I /don't fucking care/ what they are, I care if they are good athletes.
If a sport presents me with diversity hires, I'm just going to go watch or do something else.
https://www.espn.com/college-football/story/_/id/13175331/ho...
What about baseball then? MLB has only 3% asians[1]. However, asians have demonstrated excellence at a very similar sport (Cricket), so physique should not matter.
[1] https://routine.com/blogs/press-box/mlb-player-demographics
That comes down to MLB play being on an entirely different plane of existence from Japanese (and I would presume other asian locales') professional league baseball.
Japan has two of their own professional leagues, and a handful of players manage to move over to the MLB in their careers. But only a handful make it, because the minimum skill and performance levels demanded by the MLB are several orders of magnitudes higher than Japan's leagues.
This isn't about racism nor discrimination, the reality is the vast majority of Japanese baseball players simply don't make the cut for MLB.
Players like Nomo, Ichiro, and Ohtani were among the cream of the crop in Japan's baseball leagues when they moved to the MLB. They make it all look mundane, but they quite literally busted several asses to get in the MLB.
Conversely, MLB players who move over to Japan's baseball leagues tend to wipe the floor with Japanese players because the performance floor is so much lower.
This is all to say physique, and also attitude, very definitely matter. That shit ain't easy; mad respects from me as a baseball fan. Baseball is as meritocracy as it gets.
P.S. Kudos to Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers for making the MLB one of the pioneers and forerunners in true equality for mankind.
Many inuits left their land and moved to cities. A second generation inuit living in Toronto has no reason to be better or worse than anyone else at basketball.
I always thought stereotypes arise because they're commonly observed behaviours within a social group?